HAS IT ALL CHANGED?

 By Phillip Starr

How many times have I heard, “That traditional stuff doesn't work in a real street fight!” And all the blather about “reality based” methods, as opposed, I guess, to the methods different from theirs which, I guess, are based on “unreality?” Oddly enough, I've never heard one of these alleged combat authorities explain just WHY they don't work, or if they ever did, just exactly WHEN did they become obsolete...? As nearly as I can determine, many of the critics of the “traditional stuff” believe there was a time in the hazy past when the bad guys fought with perfect reverse punches and side kicks, and the good guys defended themselves with textbook blocks and counter-attacks. These “reality critics” must believe that the “street fight situations” of the past looked much like a modern karate class. When was this?

If we follow the logic of the aforementioned critics, we must suppose that around the mid-1970's (when “full-contact fighting” came into vogue), someone woke up and realized that “real fighting” involved things like head butting, gouging, and multiple attacks. Wow...! How brilliant of these innovators to have discovered this hidden truth and to set out to rectify matters.

It is typical of many people (especially nowadays) – mostly those of adolescent mentality – to believe that nothing really important has happened unless it has been in their lifetimes. Apparently, they believe that until the advent of grappling (using the worn-out adage that “all fights go to the ground”), contact-type combative SPORT fighting arts consisted of dorks attired in pajamas throwing jerky punches and kicks and, of course, “judo chops” at each other. And we'd have to conclude that all these “traditionalists” were either involved in a massive cult-like deception or that the bad guys of the past were just really, really stupid and easily defeated by such methods.

The truth is that people engaged in hand-to-hand fighting – whether on a battlefield or a tavern – tend to go about it in the same way that they always have. Physiologically, we haven't changed much in a rather long time. It's true that culture plays a role in how we fight; I remember when I was a youngster, anyone who kicked in a fight was a “sissy” and striking to the groin was unthinkable (I even saw a WWI hand-to-hand manual that instructed soldiers that such a vicious tactic was to be used only when one's life was at stake!). Nowadays, everyone from citizens to criminals and even police officers are apt to kick an opponent. A schoolboy in old England could expect his foe to accept defeat if his nose was bloodied. City gangs of the 1950's often had elaborate rituals of approaching each other, stalking, and even posturing. Nowadays, such rituals have vanished and business often starts with a drive-by spray of gunfire. Although gang members are often criminals, they aren't stupid (for the most part); they adapted their behavior to meet a change in combat.

But these are actually secondary considerations in most cases; when it comes down to people engaged in personal combat hand-to-hand, we haven't suddenly discovered anything new. This is why it's silly to speak of “traditional” ways of fighting. Rather than comparing “traditional” and “reality” disciplines, it's more appropriate to think of distinctions in APPROACHES to learning to fight. Certainly, there are superior and inferior ways of teaching and learning this skill. The karate/taekwondo/gong-fu school where forms are perceived as a rote exercise, performed robotically and always against an imaginary assailant is NOT engaging in traditional training. More accurately, it is engaged in inferior training, probably led by someone who never learned correctly in the first place and is now passing down his bad habits and training methods to his pupils. The grappling school wherein students immediately go to the mat and students are taught in a haphazard way that doesn't teach fundamentals, always hoping to “find what works” in the heat of the action, isn't really doing anything new or revolutionary. It's just poor training, like tossing someone out of a boat to teach them how to swim.

Oftentimes, what passes for traditional training - even in Japan and China – is no more than a stylized pantomime in too many schools/groups. Just because my gong-fu, karate, or judo doesn't work is no indication that these arts are unrealistic. If I'm doing some diluted form, it's my APPROACH to them that's unrealistic. To believe otherwise is to embrace the crooked logic that these ancient arts have been an enormous fraud; to believe that judo has been little more than 150 year-old delusion. It worked in the past. If it doesn't work now, it isn't because people have learned to fight differently. It's more likely that you're simply not doing it right.

Nearly all the problems we have with martial arts today can be traced back to poor teaching. I'm not necessarily speaking of those teachers who pretending to have skill that they don't really have, or who teach because it fills a need in their egos (although there are plenty of those), but there are also teachers who are honest, well-meaning, and truly dedicated...but they're still poor teachers.

Let me posit this...first, it is very, very difficult to teach the martial ways. Second, there are few who are really qualified to do it. Many of us feel that the martial ways aren't too difficult to learn so long as you have the physical and mental stamina for it. There are many thousand of martial arts schools and clubs around the country with many more thousands of teachers who lead them. The truth, however, is that the authentic martial ways are enormously, dauntingly sophisticated. They are ferociously hard to learn and even harder to teach. Most people just don't get that.

For instance, learning how to perform a proper side thrust kick, hip throw, or wrist twist and understanding their mechanics AS THEY APPLY TO YOU doesn't necessarily mean that you can reproduce it in someone else who's built entirely differently than you. Acquiring the understanding of the technique on a level where you can deal with these situations takes years of training, experience, and insight. In the same sense, being able to execute the technique while practicing in a comfy environment with a cooperative partner is one thing, but learning to do it under more difficult conditions and in conjunction with other techniques is another. Some people have learned because they possess the natural talent to teach themselves. They learn not BECAUSE of the teacher, but IN SPITE of the teacher.

Moreover, the teacher needs to learn more than just how to perform his techniques; he needs to understand the underlying principles of his art so thoroughly that he can see how they are embodied in it's techniques (each one). In this way, he can teach the foundations of the art as a whole instead of in disparate, unconnected techniques. This is really a widespread problem in the martial ways. It's why so many teachers actually just instruct a mishmash of disparate techniques and tactics, hoping to cobble them together in a sort of “best of” collection of the different arts they've learned. They fail to understand that viable fighting arts must be based on coherent principles that organize body and mind in a way that's dependable and capable of being integrated as a whole into the individual.

Imagine, in a crisis, a shooter who's been taught by one instructor to use the weapon's front sight to aim and taught by another how to shoot instinctively. He's going to be confused when the cards are down. The same is true of the martial arts student.

The person who would be a teacher has to climb to a point where his view is sufficiently broad in order to show others how to get where he is and to go beyond. Even with such a teacher, it isn't easy. Without one? No way...