Choosing An Art

Techniques or Concepts

Defensive Concepts

.A lot has been written over the years about how to choose a fighting arts instructor and

what to look for in a school. What about the art or method itself? Let's presume that your

purpose for studying a fighting art is, well, learning how to fight.You can call it self

defense or anything else but the bottom line is this. If your goal is to develop skills to deal

with unpleasant people doing unacceptable things to you and yours, you're going to fight.

Exercise, tournament trophies, spiritual enlightenment or just having fun may be part of

the program but the goal is fighting. Now that we've established that we can probably

rule out a lot of martial arts schools. Most, like it or not, are geared for the

sport/tournament scene. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it may not be where you

want to go. I've been in studios/dojo/dojang where if you want to advance you have to

compete in a tournament. When asked why the sensei/instructor/grand pubah said "The

stress of competing in a tournament will teach to deal with the stress of a street attack". I

thought the guy was kidding at first. No, gentle reader, he was 100% serious. Folks, I've

done both and I'll tell you this, the only kind of stress that tournaments train you to deal

with is, tournaments. Even with a full contact match you have training time, you know

when and where the fight will be and there are agreed upon rules. Thinking this will help

you prepare for the pucker factor that occurs during a barfight, a car jacking attempt or

someone trying to stab you while you're minding your own business, not bothering a soul

is nothing short of fantasy land, presuming you even see it coming. All I could do was

shake my head and walk away.

    Anyway, what art or method do you train in? If the only places to train are sport

oriented schools are you out of luck? What about tapes and books? More importantly,

Which ones? Do you go with the latest "Killer SF/SEAL Hand to Hand Method"

advertised in whatever martial arts magazine you choose to read? How about the

thousand year old, battle field proven methods used by the invincible (fill in the blank)

warriors who protected the ancient kingdom/province/region of (fill in the blank)? (One

question, if these guys are invincible how come the kingdom isn't around anymore?)

    Let's see if we can come up with some guidelines to give you a better learning curve,

waste less time and save you some hard earned money.

    First, attitude is everything. In spite of what I said earlier, you can get some benefit

from a sport oriented school, if you have the right attitude. You can pick up the basics as

far as striking and kicking in a relatively short time. You must, however, take a 'jutsu'

approach to your training. Major Forrest Morgan did an excellent job of putting this idea

into print in his book "Living the Martial Way". The approach is, in a nutshell, you

always train with an opponent in mind, period. Forget trophies, the goal is to prevail.

Work against partners who will attack you seriously and develop a winning (not whining)

attitude.

    Second, know the kind of art you are looking at. In my opinion (and remember this is

all my opinion) you can sort the various fighting arts into three distinct categories. The

first requires the student to mold himself to the art. He must perform exactly as his

teacher does. If self defense is actually taught you are generally told "If your attacker does

'A' you will do 'B', if he does 'C' you will do 'D'". These arts are martial ways. Their

purpose is primarily to improve the individual. Self defense/survival is a secondary or

tertiary goal. They try to improve the inner man by encouraging perfect technique. Good

form is important and you will learn it in this type of art. It may, however, take you

awhile to develop solid skills that will work in the street. The second type of art is

descended from the martial ways and is primarily concerned with the sporting aspects and

competition. Their goal is to win trophies and/or prize money. Sparring is emphasized. If

self defense techniques are taught they are usually done with an eye to winning a trophy.

That means they will be eye catching, flashy and athletic, but perhaps not the most

practical thing to use when it's for real. Those reading this that are old enough can

remember when kata competition was not a musical/gymnastics number. The kata were

done as they were first designed to be done, now they may be more crowd pleasing but

any value that could be gotten has been tossed aside in the pursuit of a trophy. Self

defense competition in the tournaments I've seen recently is following this same path.

The final type of art is the conceptual methods. I've experienced two types of conceptual

teaching. The first throws multiple options for dealing with attacks at the student. He is

free to use whatever works for his physio/psychological make up. He is also encouraged

to improvise. Some of this seems to fly in the face of current research. The fewer choices

you have the quicker you can make them so the thinking and research goes. However,

what happens with this type of training is that the student is taught to do SOMETHING.

In a real attack, the worst thing you can do is nothing. A quick, violent reaction will at the

least buy you a second or two to escape or break the attack and mount your own counter.

Concepts of motion are taught through the techniques and not usually talked about. The

second type of conceptual teaching runs the student through developmental drills to build

the 'do SOMETHING' reflex. The difference is that the concepts of motion are taught

intellectually as well as through the physical techniques. You will normally find the

conceptual models taught in arts that are more 'tribal' in nature. They generally have a

very sharp learning curve when it comes to being able to learn useable skills. A final

benefit is that once a student has internalized a concept he can apply it on a broad scale.

Musashi wrote of this in the Go Rin No Sho "The principle of strategy is having one

thing, to know ten thousand things".

    Train hard, train smart, stay safe.