Are Traditional Martial Arts Useless? Part 1

This post is based on person observances and opinions as a martial artist, the general opinion of traditional martial arts as I’ve seen from reading, and of course fights, both sanctioned like boxing and the UFC and the sort of spontaneous fights that end up on Youtube. I have not done any research nor read any...peer reviewed scholarly articles or anything. Like anything there are exceptions. There will of course be sport martial arts schools and traditional schools that do things differently than I mention but I believe what I talk about to be what you’ll most often encounter. My intention is still not to support either traditional martial arts or modern sport martial arts, but to raise a point and give my opinion. For reference most of my martial arts career has been spent studying Tang Soo Do, a traditional Korean martial art, although I've dabbled in sport martial arts as well and plan to continue studying both types of martial arts. I will also not be factoring in the military martial arts like Krav Maga.

Maybe punching other children mellowed me out? Photo courtesy of McCoy's Action Karate www.mactionkarate.com

If you read the last martial arts post you know I've been musing recently about martial arts (and if you haven't its right here). That post dealt with the inherent problems in comparing martial arts, but I didn't get into the problems brought up by the sport martial arts (SMA) crowd; namely, are traditional martial arts (TMA) actually useless or is there some merit to studying them? That will be the question I try to answer over the next two articles. In this first post I will be comparing some of the practices of both SMA and TMA and in the next part I’ll talk about what I believe that means for the usefulness of TMA.

The Comparison

Traditional martial arts and sport martial arts are, of course, both martial arts. They are flip sides of the same coin, if you will. Since they are both martial arts they share many common techniques. Every martial art has techniques for attacking the opponent, techniques for defending oneself from an opponent’s attack, and some kind of preferred stance. While not every martial art has a straight jab or a right cross and some kick low while others kick high there are often similarities and the essence, the idea, is the same; hit the opponent better than they hit you. If all martial arts have these things then the problem cannot be with the general idea of a specific martial art, but with how that idea is implemented.

Stances

Let’s begin with the stances found in the different martial arts. Sport martial arts seem to favor a boxing style stance that keeps the weight forward and the back heel off the ground. Sometimes you will also see a karate style sideways guard stance which often stays on the toes and keeps the weight centered between the legs. It could be argued that this is a traditional martial art stance but it seems to me to be more prevalent in the sport aspect of the martial arts that use it. Many traditional martial arts favor a stance that keeps the weight back and the heels on the ground to help root the body, generate power, and defend against opponent’s attacks. They may also use other stances to suit the situation, like the side guard stance, the front stance with the weight mostly centered and heels on the ground on the corners of an imaginary box, or the cat stance, with most of the weight on the back leg while the front leg has its knee bent and toes touching the ground.

Techniques

The sport martial arts seem to break their techniques down into three main areas. The first is striking where a handful a techniques are put into combos and used to attack. Think some combination of the jab, cross, hook, and uppercut with some kicks added for good measure. Next they have a close range clinch style technique that aims to control the opponent and attacks with elbows and knees. Finally there may be some sort of ground fighting in case the fight goes to the floor. With the exception of BJJ ground fighting, which seems to have a large number of possible submissions, the number of actual techniques doesn’t seem that high. They can be learned quickly and then the focus becomes perfecting them to make them better and more efficient and learning different combinations to catch your opponent off guard. The arm strikes generally attack the head, with a lesser focus on the body. Kicks and knees may target the head and body if distance allows, or the legs if not.

Traditional martial arts seem to be much more dense with techniques. While I suppose most self defenses are still a combination of other moves, the actual number of those other moves seems much greater than in sport martial arts. There are a number of different punches from different angles and kicks that attack both low and high. The attacks also target most of the body: head, eyes, throat, body, back, legs, knees, ankles. There are also a number of sweeps, throws, locks, and manipulations that are not seen as often in SMA (with the exception of ground fighting and it’s many submissions).

Training

SMA seem more focused with their training tools. They do bag work and pad work to practice techniques and combinations, they condition to keep you fit, and they spar. Sparring is done pretty high intensity and while obviously different from a real fight is meant to be the best approximation you can get without much risk of injury.

TMA split their training time between more things. They also practice techniques and combinations, often using pads or bags, like SMA, but it’s less of a focus. They spend a good deal of time with forms which are codified sets of moves to practice things like rotation, indexing, and transitions. Finally they do self defenses, which are specific sets of moves to defend against specific attacks. Sparring also takes place, but it is often of lower intensity than that found in SMA. Conditioning may be done, but seems to be of lesser importance, since there’s so much other material to learn. It may be left to the practitioner to do on their own.

Thanks for sticking with me. Check out part 2 here to see what I think after putting all of this together and tell me what you think but please don't leave disparaging comments towards any other martial arts. We're all here to improve and that doesn't help anyone.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you on my next trip. Don't forget to click the links below and follow to stay up to date on what I'm doing and where I am and to see all the pictures and videos from my trips.