Martial Eras

From a Martial Arts consumer point of view, there have been 3 significant waves of martial arts in the USA. Each era has:

1. one dominant sport striking martial art,
2. one dominant sport grappling martial art, and
3. one dominant self-defense martial art.

These three arts have different needs for uniforms, safety gear, gym equipment, and training methodologies, which creates natural barriers between them. However in each era there are ALWAYS practitioners who commonly do any combination of the three arts of their era.

Globalization is the main evolutionary force that has caused one era to give way to the next.

THE OLD WEST ERA

Inherited from European culture, the Civil War and Old West, the first wave of martial arts for consumers was:

1. Boxing (the dominant sport striking martial art,)
2. Wrestling (the dominant sport grappling martial art,) and
3. Fencing (aka "Western Single Stick," the dominant self defense martial art.)

These arts are so deeply rooted in our history that it is hard to talk about martial arts at all without referencing these arts. These arts are quite literally part of the English language.

THE COLD WAR ERA

As the USA became exposed to its first non-European nation state enemy in World War 2, Japan, our military had to compete with a new way of looking at martial arts which they had not seen before. Beginning a decade or two after of the end of World War 2 and extending all the way up into the early 90's, the martial arts consumers were consuming the most were:

1.Karate (the dominant sport striking martial art. This includes numerous other Asian martial arts of various origins, but which conformed to Karate's competition rules.)

2. Judo (the dominant sport grappling martial art, now competing with submission holds,) and

3. Aikido (the dominant self defense martial art. This includes numerous other Samurai martial arts which involved too-dangerous-to-spar-with techniques, weapon kata or attempts to train to fight multiple attackers.)

These arts however between the early 60's and early 90's were watered down by the relentless materialism of the 80's, as instructors made compromises in order to sell more classes, or were influenced pacifistic agendas. At first Karate was what would now consider to be kickboxing:

But as sparring standards fell apart, so did Karate's reputation, to where it was something nerds would use to try (and fail) to fend off bullies with:

Judo, preserved as an Olympic Sport, fared much better than Karate, maintaining most of its value as a martial art. Aikido, thoroughly infected with pacifist ideology, fared far worse than Karate, to the point where it is now the laughing stock of the martial arts world.

Boxing, Wrestling and Fencing still managed to maintain a loyal following. Boxing seemed immune to the erosive forces destroying Karate and Aikido. In theory Professional Wrestling may have been an example of these forces having their way with Wrestling, but serious fighters still trained to complete in amateur wrestling. But ultimately style vs. style analysis were completely theoretical, with no actual proof as to what techniques were the most effective.

THE INTERNET ERA

Then in the mid 90's two important events transpired which reshuffled the deck for martial arts consumers in the USA again: the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which was the USA's first widely publicized and popularized Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) event, and more importantly the World Wide Web became a part of most people's lives in the USA, giving them global access to knowledge and communication. The 90's brought unlimited access to information, combined with a format to really test the value of different martial arts against each other.

By the mid 2000's, the dominant martial arts for consumers in the USA were:

1. Muay Thai Kickboxing (the dominant sport striking martial art, not in terms of professional pay scales but in terms of actual practitioners.) With Muay Thai's open ended rule set for striking and clinch fighting, it became the format for proving techniques from Karate, Boxing and traditional martial arts.

2. Brazillian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ, the dominant sport grappling martial art.) With BJJ's open ended rule set for take downs and submissions, it became to format for proving techniques from Wrestling, Judo and other grappling martial arts.

3. Kali (aka Arnis or Escrima, the dominant self defense martial art.) Though containing many too-deadly-to-spar-with techniques, training for fighting multiple attackers and weapon kata, the culture around these Filipino Martial Arts was very friendly towards fighting and sparring. FMA "Gatherings" (Tipons) are now the dominant format for testing techniques from Fencing, Aikido and other self defense or weapon oriented martial arts.

As mentioned above, besides being full of highly effective techniques that influence other martial arts, these three martial arts have open ended rule sets that naturally assimilate the techniques of other martial arts. Beyond that, these three arts are very friendly to beginners, the average martial arts consumer can get very good at these three martial arts without becoming an instructor or professional fighter because they have strong practices when it comes to free sparring at different levels of intensity:

MMA, fulfilling its role as the supreme fighting sport, doesn't make compromises for average martial arts consumers: as of 2019 there is still no universally accepted rule set for MMA-lite tournament, as there are for BJJ and Muay Thai. MMA was never some love child of Muay Thai and BJJ, instead MMA proved to consumers that Muay Thai and BJJ were the best styles of martial arts when it came to style vs. style competition. 

You Spar Or You Don't!

All proficient practitioners of the martial arts spar, because learning to go through the motions of a technique is only about 10% of learning the technique, the other 90% is learning to do the technique while sparring:

There are often newbies who are delusional about their abilities who pass on forms (kata) without having mastered any techniques through sparring. They and their students are not proficient practitioners, being generally ignorant of the real martial art from which those forms came.

Let's start with the ultimate example, Tai Chi. People love to talk about Tai Chi like it is a set of line dancing routines that after decades of practice cause people to be deadly. Though some Tai Chi forms are ridiculously time consuming, the forms are only meant to augment other important training methods, namely standing meditation, stationary push hands drills, moving step push hands sparring, kickboxing and in many cases sword sparring:

Another common example brought up is a form of Japanese Tai Chi called Aikido. But the style of Aikido that is closest to the real martial arts roots of Aikido is Tomiki Aikido, which is still based on sparring. In fact, they are the only sport in today's world that actually spars with one person having a knife and another person being unarmed - the real self defense situation so many martial arts are obsessed with:

People like to talk about other forms of pseudo fighting besides forms/kata as an alternative to sparring, such as Karate Kumite-Point Fighting. But the man responsible for making Karate world famous, Mas Oyama, didn't fool around with that nonsense, his sparring strongly resembled what we now think of as K-1 Kickboxing:

Some like to use cultural or fitness excuses as to why so-called martial artists would not spar. Capoeira is the best example of this, yet serious practitioners of that art do indeed spar:

No matter how "traditional" your martial art is, sparring is a moral choice. Either you choose to do martial arts related exercise without sparring under the false pretense that you are learning martial arts - OR - you pay the price that it takes to really learn martial arts, enduring the minor injuries and physical pain associated with sparring: 

You spar or you don't!

Utopians

(This is an ideological post, here are my posts about: Martial Arts.)

Globally, there are three main ideological orientations:

• Conservatives emphasize change often causes more problems than it solves.
• Libertarians emphasize individual freedom is paramount.
• Progressives emphasize that government is what drives modern civilization.

The left/right dichotomy in the USA divides the Libertarian perspective in half, with conservatives embracing individual economic liberty, and Progressives embracing individual lifestyle choice liberty.

What I have noticed is a new political movement afoot, which I call "Utopians." The Utopians look past the current political fray, and ask "what challenges are humans facing as we inevitably face the future?" The best example of an Utopian is Elon Musk. He puts his money were his mouth is, aggressively working on space exploration, solar power and electric cars, literally doing everything he can to prepare the human race for its inevitable future. If it wasn't for the fact he was a billionaire who rubs shoulders with the infamous President Trump, you would think Musk, captain of industry, was a socialist based on his comments in public:

But he is no socialist, and is a capitalist to the core on a level few conservatives can really appreciate, seeking private investments into his futuristic projects.

He is not the only popular personality sharing these kind of views. Consider for example Joe Rogan:

The future, Automation, is going to continue to reduce the need for labor. Eventually, we need some form of Basic Income in order to be able to decide who needs the goods that are going to be produced by that automation. 

Utopians are generally in favor of access to information, be it Elon Musk's open-sourcing of his battery patent, or Joe Rogan's push for free education. In general, they are also in favor of universal health care:

Many seen as libertarians and socialists now have much in common. AOC infamously claims to have socialist ideology, but consider how she actually talks about it:

She may or may not fashion herself to be some fabulous lefty commie, but her background as a scientist is telling. If the Trump supporting Elon Musk could be considered a right wing Utopian, AOC is a left wing Utopian, and standing their views side-by-side there is no daylight between them.

Sure they believe the science and are concerned about the effects of global warming, but they have no problem with private property, free markets, investment, etc. In fact they have little opinion on weather something should or shouldn't be in the future, they are just facing the future head on like adults. Anyone expecting the Utopians to be friendly humanitarians using government to appease their ideology will be in for a rude awakening:

The Walking Dead Got Aikido Right

Aikido and FMA have remarkably similar Kata:

Some say Aikido is mostly technique unrelated to weapons. That is incredibly naive, and rooted to the same pacifism in Aikido culture that eschews sparring. In reality, the self defense prescribed by Aikido's founder involved incredibly violent weapon technique (and probably some form of now lost sparring):

What keeps FMA from turning into a martial arts failure (like what Aikido has degenerated into in 2019) is continuous contact weapon sparring. The issue is you can't really learn a martial art technique until you spar with it until you can land it:

Continuous contact weapon sparring could save Aikido (not that I expect it to):

Update #1 - this post has a sequel: http://bfgalbraith.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-walking-dead-got-aikido-right-2.html

Update #2 - Icy Mike did a video on what I call the "supposedly not Pakua strike in Aikido":

Update #3 Hein actually saved Aikido already under generally these same premises.

MMA vs Muay Thai and BJJ

There is no more practical self defense instruction I have ever received than learning MMA directly from an MMA fighter. However, even a the gym I did this at, MMA fighters weren't often available for this direct instruction. Instead, typically the MMA grappling is taught by people with BJJ credentials and the MMA striking is taught by people with Muay Thai credentials. MMA coach Ramsey Dewey has mentioned numerous times that MMA is a sport in and of itself that you should train for specifically if you are going to compete in it: MMA gyms training submission grappling and Muay Thai separately with no MMA specific class are not adequately preparing their students for MMA.

And that is both fair and true. I believe this is more common than not at most schools in the USA that teach anything MMA related. But from a consumer advocacy position, most martial arts students are not aspiring MMA athletes. For the average martial arts lessons consumer, this separation of Muay Thai and BJJ has some VERY IMPORTANT advantages.

The most important advantage is that MMA fighters do not score by throwing others on the ground while remaining standing themselves. This is an important self-defense trick most martial arts students would like to know. The most common martial art that teaches this effectively is Muay Thai. Training in straight Muay Thai without MMA rules is the easiest way to learn to throw while staying standing yourself.

Then, if the student takes the BJJ class as well, they are prepared for fighting on the ground. Sure there could be a few bad habits for striking on the ground that they could have, but it being a Muay Thai school they will be sure to have some awareness of striking. In many cases the BJJ program is actually a Gi program, which gives the added advantage of teaching how to utilize heavy clothing in a fight.

Also, this arrangement avoids "fightercitis" (a tendency for martial arts schools to focus on fighters sparring and forgetting to have "people just taking classes" spar frequently.) In the case of Muay Thai, this is the style that actually introduced causal light sparring to the MMA community in the United States... by design, anyone doing a real Muay Thai workout is going to do some consumer friendly light sparring. In the case of BJJ, the next tournament is always on the calendar, and everyone is contemplating weather or not they will participate, and classes without "rolling" (BJJ sparring) are rare.

Finally, by encapsulating their martial arts, if they want to add a 3rd martial art in the mix, the students already get that there are separate martial arts to consider, it isn't all about winning in the cage. Many of the schools teaching BJJ and Muay Thai separately are also teaching FMA... which is the most common traditional martial art that 1) has many instructors incorporating sparring, 2) gives active consideration to weapons and weapon fighting, 3) covers all those banned moves not allowed in Muay Thai and BJJ competition, and 4) considers self-defense situations outside of the ring such as being attacked by by multiple opponents.

This arrangement, though less than ideal for MMA fans, is indeed ideal for most of today's aspiring martial artists:

Fightercitis

I have seen this happen in the last few years, and I have seen this happen decades ago:

1. A martial arts gym is teaching martial arts, with the vast majority of students doing contact free sparring.
2. Some of the students get good enough to participate in combat sports.
3. The instructor starts putting focus on these good students, knowing that the reputation of the school is on the line.
4. The pressure comes off the other students to spar, because it is something that those advanced students do.
5. Next thing you know, class by class, sparring gets so deprioritized in favor of conditioning, drills, or some other "critical" type of training, that sparring disappears in the regular "classes" of the school.
6. New students think that a certain level of fitness is first achieved before sparring, leaving no one to spar with for the not-official-fighters. 
7. The classes become first and foremost conditioning classes with little or no sparring, while the relatively few fighters at the gym are the only ones sparring.

I call this disease "fighercitis." It's sad. It destroys schools. It destroys entire great martial arts systems. I know of no cure. All I can do is warn to never allow non-sparring classes into your gym or school, because it will destroy you as a resource for average students to learn martial arts skills, and perpetuate backwards, destructive ideas about martial arts. You will burn in hell for teaching that Tae Bo bulls***:

Kicking It

There is, simply put, a right way and wrong way to kick, one virtuous "traditional" and the other nefarious "Superfoot." Traditional uses a whole-body-motion to generate power with the hips, while Superfoot prides itself in "only the foot moving." The Superfoot technique comes from that abomination that is stop-and-go kumite point fighting. The foremost advocate of this was Bill "Superfoot" Wallace:

Consider what this Superfoot technique did to the art of Tae Kwon Do. Before they started using Superfoot kicking, Tae Kwon Do produced fighters with real skill:

But now that Tae Kwon Do has come to rely on Superfoot technique, it has now turned into a pile of silly garbage:

It is interesting to note that Bill Wallace actually lost a testicle kicking that way, exactly as you would guess from watching the first above video. I am not saying Bill Wallace couldn't fight, I am saying that if he had not retired when he did he would have probably lost his other testicle, and I am also saying his Superfoot kicking style did not survive the scrutiny of the global martial arts community:

Notice how that mentions Benny "The Jet", and how he sought out competition in Japan after having fought a Muay Thai fighters. The traditional style of kicking was far older and and more ubiquitous throughout East Asia, and was prominent in China and Japan, not only Thailand:

This is more obvious when observing this type of lead leg kicking technique with the most traditional kick of all, the front kick. Notice how much more similar this is to kicks found in old Karate and Kung Fu forms than the strange antics of the Superfoot technique:

This is another example of why I say Muay Thai is the key to understanding most Traditional Martial Arts.

Update: check out the sequel to this post, Kicking It 2.