The death of "traditional martial arts".

[straightblast]

Todays MMA schools with kid/youth programs promote self esteem, confidence, respect, self discipline, anti bully skills, life skills. These are the same type of things being promoted when I did kenpo and shotokan.

[andym]

To me, MMA doesn't enter into this debate. My view is linked to martial arts clubs that try to teach everything and be 'all things to all men'. They teach a generic sport Karate, usually of a poor standard. This is the issue for me. As I said

the lack of a definitive style

Or the 'Karate' (or Ju jitsu, or what ever term they want to use) is obviously a miss-mash of karate , kick boxing and a bit of some Kung Fu etc , the teacher has picked up. That's if they want to use the flag of tradition. sometimes the same thing is passed off as MMA !

[cheesefrysamurai]

I'm right there with you but, as hard as it is for me to accept, some people just arent looking for tradition, or kata, or lineage or spirit building.

They want to learn MMA techniques like they see on TV. They want the workout, they want to compete, and learn how to fight.

Nothing wrong with it.

[muttley]

At the end of the day, is MMA self defence? After some of the podcasts I have been listening to, there is a lot of debate to be had.

[Kusotare]

It's a funny thing, but there seems to be a huge amount of hyperbole behind the insistence that MA = Self defence - or in order to qualify as a decent MA it should turn out folk that have a good ability to fight or indeed defend themselves should the situation arise.

Frankly, that opinion is both out dated, narrow minded and dangerous.

You don't need to have burning desire to be a good fighter or defend yourself to be classified as a good martial artist, nor does an art need to deliver good fighters / people that know how to defend themselves - in order to be qualify as a "decent" martial art.

That’s just nonsense imo.

K.

[muttley]

What I meant by my previous comment was that for a martial art to be a good self defence tool, it has to teach more than how to be a good fighter. I think it was Iain Abernethy that said something to do with for a confrontation to get physical, everything else has failed. Therefore to fight someone on the street, you have failed at everything else that goes before (awareness, de-escalation, avoidance etc). And in my line of work, this is very true.

[Harkon72]

Kusotare, I totally agree; Tai Chi practitioners are great martial artists, Okinawan Karateka can be the best Kata artists and even self defense based arts like Aikido pride themseves in inner peace and if they never have a fight in their lives they consider themselves to achieved the ultimate goal.

[Kusotare]

even self defense based arts like Aikido pride themseves in inner peace and if they never have a fight in their lives they consider themselves to achieved the ultimate goal.

Aikido is not a self defense art.

But I understand what you mean.

K.

[cheesefrysamurai]

I agree with this statement whole heartedly.

You can be an amazing martial artist and not have the ability to defend yourself and you can have no martial arts experience and go bezerker on someone.

I think, to directly answer Muttley I would say that if your sole purpose for training is self defense, I probably wouldnt go with sport fighting, In the same respect, krav maga isnt worth much in the ring.

I wanted a traditional type system and I wanted to be able to defend myself. I looked at the systems available to me. I filtered through the instructors, goju ryu was the obvious choice for me, street effective and traditional.

It's a funny thing, but there seems to be a huge amount of hyperbole behind the insistence that MA = Self defence - or in order to qualify as a decent MA it should turn out folk that have a good ability to fight or indeed defend themselves should the situation arise.

Frankly, that opinion is both out dated, narrow minded and dangerous.

You don't need to have burning desire to be a good fighter or defend yourself to be classified as a good martial artist, nor does an art need to deliver good fighters / people that know how to defend themselves - in order to be qualify as a "decent" martial art.

That’s just nonsense imo.

K.

[JusticeZero]

Aikido is not a self defense art.

I'd disagree with that. It has a lot of self defense use and skills in it; it is functional in the wild even if it was never designed to excel in the octagon - it's not LESS suited for use in the wild than MMA is in any case.