I ask the many combat arts students if they are really practicing or training in a martial art or if they are playing with the “art of the school boys”.
First we must define martial. It is a term that denotes military, of or appropriate for war, fighting, warrior, brave, fond of fighting. The Oxford Dictionary also mentions fighting sports like judo and karate. So these are the arts of war. Fighting sports such as mixed martial arts, judo, karate, and taekwondo would be better classified as “martial sports” or “martial athletics.” I get a little irritated by people when I mention martial arts and they say, “Oh really, that’s what my 6-year-old does.” I have operated a public dojo. It was incorporated as a 501 (C) (3) non-profit organization. I did it for eleven years. I even taught young children. If you want to earn money you have to teach young children. But it is not really martial art that they are taught. They come to have warm plushies, self-esteem, confidence, and respect while wearing fun-looking pajamas like a suit covered with patches and colored belts. All good things I guess, but let’s not call it a martial art.
I still teach. I teach by invitation only. I teach a martial art that is not suitable for use in the ring nor is it something that children should learn. I think it can be correctly called a martial art because we use the mantra, albeit politically incorrect, of the United States Army Infantry: get close and kill or maim the enemy in the shortest time possible. OK, I go out with myself. I went through infantry school before political correctness was mandated in our military and changed one of the words but not the intention. Now I have been told that it is wrong PC to use the term “kill” or “maim”, but that we should use the term “neutralize”.
In my forty-two years or more of being associated with one art or another, I have developed the perception that there is only one art. Every style, system or technique can be found in the concept of “One Art”. There is no such thing as mixed martial arts because they are actually putting together fighting concepts that were originally just a fighting art or system. On the battlefields of feudal Japan, China, Korea, and elsewhere, warriors had everything they needed in technique to survive. As schools developed and students went their own way, different styles of the same art emerged. Different cultures have different fighting arts, right? Yes, but you can find the same or very similar techniques in practically every other culture that claims a fighting tradition. Even old-style boxing contained jiu-jitsu techniques. Only when boxing became an authorized sport did all the truly lethal techniques disappear.
The media have done martial arts a disservice. I have had students ask when we are going to learn to do cartwheels. My Answer: Don’t do a backflip in a fight. You are likely to get trampled on a lot, a lot. Some people actually believe what they see in movies without regard to the laws of physics, anatomy, physiology, and kinesiology. So are you doing a combat art or something that is a distant cousin?
