Previously, I posted a blog entry about martial arts and the scientific method. In it I talked about how important aliveness is to a productive learning environment, that way you can actually pull off what you learn. After I posted it, martial arts schools around the world began incorporating more aliveness into their curriculums, while those who didn’t were forced to shut down in shame. Thanks to that entry, I am now stacking paper to the ceiling and riding on 24 inch chrome.
Okay, that story is as full of myth and magic as the stories you heard in your Karate class growing up. In reality, a lot of people who responded wanted to know about self-defense specifically, which makes a lot of sense. What good is an activity that improves your health, self-confidence, concentration ability, body awareness, speed, strength, and coordination if you can’t use it to hurt someone? Some people went even further and pointed out that alive arts can’t prepare you for the streetz because of all the deadliness.
Honestly, these people have a point, but not in the way they think they do. Its like when you agree with someone that you’re both disappointed with Obama’s presidency, but as you begin to express your disappointment that he hasn’t closed Guantanamo Bay, they start going off on a tangent filled with so much closet racism that coat hangers become the new international symbol for hatred. The fact of the matter, though, is that alive martial arts can’t completely prepare you for the streetz.
I’ve never gotten into a fight in the streetz, but I’ve gotten very close many times and have seen quite a few happen right in front of me. You want to know what stopped me each time from getting into one? If you think emotional maturity and feeling like I have nothing to prove is the answer, then you’ve never met a male between the ages of fourteen and dead. The reason is because every fight I’ve ever seen outside of a school yard (and plenty of them on one, as well) has involved either weapons, far superior numbers, or far superior weapon numbers. Knives, bats, brass knuckles, gun blades- I’ve seen them all.
I’ve.. sniff… lost many a friend to the gun blade.
To think knowing how to properly pull off a jab-cross or uchi mata will help you get through ten opponents or someone with a knife is as misguided as thinking a snap kick will do anything other than let nearby predators know that you will be their easiest kill of the day. You simply can’t prepare for such an unpredictable, dangerous event in any sort of controlled environment that requires respect for your opponent’s safety and genitalia. However, and this is important, an alive martial art is immensely better than a shitty interpretive dance.
If you wanted to use eye jabs on people, which would you rather take: boxing, which teaches you how to properly throw and avoid punches, or a shitty LARP fest where you throw eye jabs in slow motion at someone who isn’t even trying to block, stopping right before you hit them? If you were a boxer and tried to pull off a finger job, all you’d have to do differently is point out your fingers when throwing punches.
If you did a “deadlier” martial art, though, the list of things you’d have to change on the spot would be much longer. You’d have to learn how to react when your opponent is actively trying to block instead of compliantly letting you attack them, deal with them actually attacking back instead of just absorbing what you are throwing, raise your qi to a level deadlier than your opponents, roll for a +5 to agility, and fight in a way that doesn’t reveal you’ve been training in something better suited for opening a plastic water bottle case than poking out a person’s eyes. I’ll take boxing, thanks.
Some “clever” people are going to want to point out that you train the way you fight. I’ll respond with this: you’re about as clever and free thinking as someone who points out that Justin Bieber or Twilight are terrible, an observation so safe and bland trying to disguise itself as edgy that it probably writes jokes for Jeff Dunham. Also, while alive martial arts don’t train with deadly techniques, martial sharts (my new name for shitty martial arts that lack aliveness) train slow, without a resisting opponent, and people usually stop their attacks before the “kill” (read: mildly uncomfortable) position. In actuality, this argument could be reversed and used against these people much more effectively. In debate we call that a "turn" and in freestyle ciphers we call that an "oh shit, son!"
Here is a video where Bas Rutten explains in two minutes why LARPers' deadly patty cake game wouldn't work in an actual fight, as well as the fact that you should never fuck with Bas Rutten (perhaps the most important lesson of all).
I know a lot of people aren’t going to like this, and explain their combat ideas as if abstract theorizing will ever help you outside of an 8 year old ass kick fantasy. To quote Mike Tyson, “everyone has a plan until they get hit.” If you heard that quote and want to give me a lecture on how you could use a special striking technique you've mastered that would let you push someone’s nose cartilage into their brain, I already know I can beat you in a fight. If you attacked me at a bar I’d say the exact same thing your former significant other used to say: “the only reason I haven’t called the police is because of how unthreatening you are when you put your hands on me.”
This man has bitten another human being’s ear off, and he is still more pragmatic than most RBSD practitioners.
Then again, maybe these martial sharts actually do train with Death Kumites when people aren’t looking. In boxing, it is well known that constantly being hit on the head takes a toll on the brain, especially when you compete at high levels. Considering how stupid, corny, and pseudo-philosophical martial sharters are when they speak or type, theres a very real chance that they test their deadly moves out on each other under the light a full moon. Many don’t survive, and those that do, well… the night, it… it changes them.
Even if that awesome theory isn’t true, though, I think I may have another. In fact, I think I may have blown the lid off the entire Ninjitsu disciple. In most parts of the world, self-defense laws only let you react with a certain amount of force or else you cross the line from victim to assailant (unless you’re Israel, that is). With such an ineffective style, anything that isn’t an emotionally riveting ballet recital or Firaga spell will probably qualify as “excessive force.” After suing you, your assailant can then sneak back into the shadows with all your riches- it is the way of the shinobi.
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