GET REAL!

 By Phillip Starr

I don't know about you, but I'm really tired of hearing from and seeing pointless articles penned by practitioners of so-called “reality martial arts.” That moniker suggests that there must also be “fantasy-based martial arts” and many of the “reality” crowd would quickly point to traditional martial ways as being just that. Oftentimes, they come up with some fairly creative reasons to lend their position some measure of validity. These include:

• Some “traditional” techniques don't really work “on the street.”

• Nowadays, people fight differently than they did back in the “old days.”

• Training in a proper uniform in a smooth-floored dojo is very different from the conditions under which real self-defense occurs.

• Learning to “control” one's techniques can become a dangerous habit. Practicing control will cause one to subsequently “pull” his punches in an actual encounter.

• If students are never allowed to experience what it's like to get hit, how can they expect to survive a real fight?

• Actual combat is extremely stressful, both physically and mentally. The “lizard brain” concept is pushed to the fore. This idea tells us that because of the mental stress and fear involved in a real encounter, one loses the ability to make fine, precise movements such as striking to various vital points and so on.

And so on, ad nauseum. Frankly, it's my opinion that most of the people making such statements have had rather limited experience in traditional martial disciplines, if any at all. Let's look at the aforementioned arguments and see what's inside...

The statement about traditional techniques being useless in actual self-defense is patently absurd. If they are flawed, why would our martial arts forefathers have continued to practice them ? Yeah, I can see a scenario where one of them is confronted by a couple of street-smart thugs. In the midst of the battle, he attempts a technique and is immediately knocked down. “Wow!”, he thinks. “What an ineffective technique! It nearly got me killed! I'm going to continue practicing it everyday!”

Yeah, right. The techniques that were passed down through the generations were forged, tested, and tempered in battle. On the other hand, the ineffective techniques (and I'm sure there were many) didn't make it to the present day because their exponents would have quickly tossed them away after suffering a painful defeat. I imagine a good number of them were killed in battle and took their flawed techniques and tactics with them to their graves.

The claim that traditional techniques don't work in the “real world” is often made by people who haven't trained extensively in the traditional forms and/or who have experienced considerable difficulty with some of the time-honored methods. I remember having a LOT of trouble with several techniques when I was a beginner. I lacked the coordination, balance, and/or muscle tone to perform them correctly. But I believed my teacher, who insisted that these techniques would be essential parts of my personal arsenal and I continued to practice them. Sure, there were times that I considered giving up but then I'd hear his voice in my head and I'd keep at it until I eventually learned how to make them work.

The claim that people fight different nowadays than they did in the past is equally nonsensical. For starters, how could anyone know for sure just how people fought each other back in the day? And the truth is that in so far as personal combat is concerned, people haven't changed much over time. Sure, we now have weapons that didn't exist 500 years ago (such as firearms) but actual hand-to-hand fighting has always been vicious. I daresay that it may have been a bit more brutal in the distant past because law enforcement wasn't quite up to the standards that we enjoy today and lawsuits were for injuries incurred in a fight were pretty much unknown.

I will be the first to agree that training in a nice dojo in a proper practice uniform is substantially different than fighting “in the street.” However, it's well to remember that the practice uniform was designed with two main things in mind...durability and safety. T-shirts don't last long in a class where grappling techniques are taught. It's also a good idea to conduct classes in a safe place where everyone will be sheltered from the elements.

As regards the issue of pulling punches and kicks just short of contact becoming a habit, that's a very old argument that's never managed to hold any water at all. In my fifty-plus years of training and teaching traditional martial arts, I've never known or even heard of anyone who's had this experience. To counter the loss of this argument, many “reality martial arts” advocate permitting students to strike each other with what I consider to be rather excessive contact. This is really quite dangerous and instructors should remember that injured students can't train.

Moreover, beginning students whose physical, mental, or spiritual strength is lacking will soon give up on training altogether. I wonder how many of these “reality martial arts” instructors would happily practice knife-fighting or Japanese fencing with live blades? And how about a combat shooting course!?

And then there's the “lizard brain” argument. If this argument is valid, why is it that soldiers and peace officers are taught to use the small sights front and rear on their weapons? That requires some real concentration, doesn't it? Such people, who are engaged in an occupation that may very well place them in conditions of incredible mental and physical stress, are also taught to perform numerous other tasks that run against the grain of the “lizard brain” argument. How are they able to effect these tasks in the heat of combat? It's because of something called TRAINING and that's exactly why traditional martial arts practitioners do it on a regular basis.

If some people enjoy dressing up like some kind of wannabe commandos and practicing self-defense in their combat boots and camouflage trousers, that's their business. But what they're doing is not what I would call a martial art, per se. There's no real “art” in it.