*If you haven't read part 1 please go here and check it out first.*

Here we go. The answer you’ve all been waiting for (unless you missed part 1, then go read that first). Are traditional martial arts useless?

NO

Now wasn’t that easy? I’m kidding of course. The short answer is no they aren't useless but it’s not really that black and white. First and foremost martial arts can be studied for a number of different reasons, not just self defense. My parents enrolled me in martial arts as a kid to try to help get my temper under control (I was a petulant child I'm told). Some people practice martial arts to help take their mind off whatever else they're doing. Many people practice martial arts as a sport or activity to help improve their health, fitness, flexibility, etc. Some people do it to challenge themselves in much the same way someone might try to run a marathon as a challenge. Some people do it to try to help combat aging. Some people do martial arts simply because they find them fun or they appreciate the aesthetics of the art. In many if not all of theses cases the martial art is not studied for self defense but if it enriches the practitioner’s life it is pretty clear that TMA are anything but useless. But from a self defense perspective? What then? I'd argue that they aren't useless then either, but a much closer look needs to be taken. First it is true that TMA seem to lose regularly in fights against SMA, but as I pointed out previously that is a poor way to compare martial arts. Furthermore, fighters such as Cung Le, Lyoto Machida, and Roy Nelson have trained in some form of TMA, at least when they were younger, and to say it has had no effect on their current fighting style seems foolish. In order to see where the problem lies we need to look at some of the differences I talked about in the last post and what a fight might be like.

Fighting

To set a baseline for what I think I need to explain my opinions on fighting since they inform my opinions on self defense. In general I would guess most people will never get in a fight, especially if they keep their cool, think about what they’re doing, and watch where they go. In addition, in many places you aren’t likely to encounter much violent crime. Not every city is Pablo Escobar era Colombia and many cities that have dangerous areas also have areas that are plenty safe. Of course I’m not saying that the whole world is safe, but most of the ‘developed world,’ if you will, is at least relatively safe. You also need to remember that in some places the force you use to respond to an attack cannot be disproportionate to the force you’re attacked with. If it’s judged to be disproportionate you could get in trouble, even for defending yourself when you’re not the aggressor. This is probably something to watch out for especially when traveling when you might not know all the local laws.

I think most fights probably fall into the following three categories: people who just want to rough you up, people who want to seriously hurt you, and people who want to kill you. To get an idea of the first kind you should watch the sort of fights that end up on YouTube or those guys who brawled at the Shenzhen McDonald’s. They want to knock you out and rough you up but they aren’t looking to seriously injure you. A long jail sentence isn’t on their bucket list. The second kind of fight involves someone who wants to legitimately hurt you and might even pull a weapon like a knife or baseball bat or MAYBE a gun. You have probably done something wrong to make them decide to seriously injure you and death or serious injury is a much greater threat. Finally there’s the people who actually want to kill you. Not in a spur of the moment way like above, but actually premeditated. They’ll gun you down from their car or stab you when you’re down a small side street. There’s no real way to defend against this honestly, other than to keep yourself out of situations that could lead to this.

The chances of getting into a fight are probably pretty slim to begin with, but the second and third types of fights I think are slimmer still. I think most people who are unlucky enough to get into a fight will probably find themselves in a fight from the first instance. If the other person has a weapon, like in the second and third cases or a robbery, you do NOT want to fight. Your chance or winning, or even surviving, is extremely low if the other person has a weapon. You’re much better off giving them what they want or running away if possible. Since the first type of fight is probably more likely for your average person my opinions of practical self defense will be based on this, not the other more dangerous situations. For clarity I believe this would be a situation where the other person is unarmed, maybe has some friends, and has no intention of killing you. Finally keep in mind that if you keep your head and you’re careful about what you say and do and where you go it’s entirely possible to never get in a fight, which is probably the best self defense. If you live in an area where violence is much more prevalent then the equation certainly changes.

Practitioners

Next I want to look at what the average person is probably looking for in self defense. While there are certainly serious martial arts enthusiasts who spend years training their art, be it BJJ, tae kwon do, or whatever, I think many people who approach martial arts for self defense are not looking for a major time commitment. They want to take an 8 or 10 week sort of crash course in self defense so that they have some basic level of understanding just in case something bad happens. These people aren’t looking for an intensive class that meets 4 or 5 times a week for two hours at a time and teaches all sorts of advanced martial arts principles. They just want to learn some basic techniques and run some somewhat realistic drills to practice under pressure and then go back to their normal lives. They don’t necessarily need to dominate a fight, they just need to know enough to get themselves out of the dangerous situation and find help.

Verdict

Traditional martial arts have all of the necessary components of self defense, but I do not believe that enough time is spent on the truly useful aspects, often being sacrificed to practice things that are a little more ‘art’ and a little less ‘martial.’ Again I have no problem with the art but from a purely self defense standpoint it can get in the way. The TMA were supposedly forged in a war torn past where they were necessary to fight and survive and maybe go to war. Personally I feel this is a modern glorification created to help further the myth of martial arts and get people to sign up for classes. I read somewhere that hundreds of years ago martial arts practitioners in China primarily focused on weapons while open hands were reserved as sort of back up and for conditioning. This makes sense if we believe the warrior mythos of martial arts. Who would get in a fight without a weapon? It would put you at an immediate disadvantage. If we believe this to be true then we can also believe that many aspects of TMA are not necessarily advantageous to self defense, since they are weaponless. That being said in the modern world I think training in open hand fighting is useful. Since I think most people unlucky enough to get in a fight will not encounter a life or death situation it would be unwise to stab or club the other person. The force would be disproportionate to the attack and the defended could end up in trouble. So let’s look at the techniques and such, bearing all of this in mind.

Stances

The SMA and TMA stances often distribute weight differently. While the weight back TMA stance may allow for good defense and rooting to create power I believe that the more mobile stance afforded by middle or forward weight distribution is better in a fight. Power can still be generated from rotation and acceleration and the mobility allows you to dodge, especially if you’ve found yourself in a fight against more than one person and can’t run away (do try to run away).

Techniques

TMA have far too many techniques and variations. While all of them have some use most people will lock up at least temporarily if they get into a fight. If they’ve learned too many techniques they may get overwhelmed trying to decide what to use instead of just acting and lose before they can do anything. If the number of techniques they have learned is more manageable hopefully the risk of indecisiveness is low enough that they will still stand a chance when a fight starts.

Training

SMA have a much more focused version of training. They condition to keep the body in better fighting shape, they train their techniques with bags and pads to help develop power without hurting anyone and get used to the attacks, and they spar to get as close an approximation of a real fight as possible. TMA are too scattered. Conditioning does not get a strong enough focus. The forms aren’t particularly useful for self defense but instead help practice rotation, indexing, and transitions. All of these could be practiced in a more realistic way. The self defenses are also not particularly useful. A self defense may expect you to block a punch, trap, attack the elbow, swing the arm around while you move under it, and then throw the attacker. But it’s unlikely this would happen in a real fight where the other person is struggling and continuing to attack. They also regularly defend by attacking joints and eyes, which could get you in trouble in some places by being considered disproportionate force. While none of the things TMA does in training are really useless they all really require a much greater time commitment that the person I mentioned above may be willing to make, focus on the ‘art’ which some people probably find superfluous, and tend to teach things that may be too violent for most people in the real world. Bare bones self defense can be achieved with much less.

So?

Traditional martial arts are not useless if practiced for one of the many reasons other than self defense but they can still be useful in a self defense situation. The problem is that they are overextended. Instead they need to focus on the realities of self defense. You probably aren’t being targeted for a hit and you probably can’t (either because of law or morals) kill or maim the person attacking you. You need to use only enough violence to discourage the attacker and remove yourself from the situation and it needs to be focused and learnable in a relatively short amount of time. The problem is that TMA are often focusing on too many things in order to keep students and propagate their art. There is nothing wrong with this. Without schools making money you and I would likely not be able to study martial arts. It is hard to fault them for this. SMA probably make their money either from a stable of professional fighters bringing in sponsorships and television deals or from the current gym/weight loss/get fit fads. I would not be surprised to see the SMA begin to struggle if everyone becomes less obsessed with fitness. But even though this is understandable if a TMA school wants to have a legitimate self-defense program they ought to design one focused on the things that make their art unique while avoiding the pitfalls I’ve mentioned in these posts.

Thanks to everyone who's stuck with me through both posts. I'd love to know what you all think so leave a comment or send me a message. Please don't be negative towards any arts though. We're all here to learn and improve.

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.