http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KArX8iNnY4Q&feature=related 

                From the opening line, “It is called Qigong…” this is all about drama. There is very little in the entire video that has anything to do with real issues or a close and unbiased examination of facts. The line claims, “science will attempt to reveal the truth” is quaint, but when the facts are in your face and you ignore them in favor of drama, then you are not going to be taken seriously.

                The fact is, I would not even take this clip seriously enough to write about it except for one problem – a student sent me the clip wanting to know if I would be willing to teach them “Iron Shirt Qigong”.

                So when there is a student taking this garbage seriously enough that they actually want to learn it, we have a problem.

                Take another look at the swing taken on the crash test dummy at the 1:59 point of the video. One can clearly see that the strike was intended to achieve maximum impact. The strike goes well into the chest of the dummy and there is a false recoil made by the person swinging the bat after it had already bounced free from the dummy. This is important later.

                When we take a look at the strike on the “monk” at the 3:43 mark, we can clearly see that the strike was pulled. The recoil happens almost on impact. There was a strike, as is evidenced by the red mark, but I have to let my inner skeptic out and ask, why did they allow the strike to be performed by the “monk’s” student. Why not A-Rod? Why not any pro baseball player? If Qigong does protect, what would there be to fear from a strike from anyone. Let me take a swing at him!

                The spear is very impressive to the uninitiated, but it is an ancient parlor trick where the pressure is not going straight in but rather, down. They make passing reference to the redness on his chest below where the spear tip was but fail follow up on why it should be red, and exactly how much pressure was applied there to cause the redness.

                Sorry kids, this is one for the crackpot file. Nothing special here, just some pseudoscience and a heavy dose of drama.  

The study of practical application within the Japanese and Okinawan Martial Arts seems to have begun in earnest with the debut of the UFC. In this event, on a huge stage, the traditional striking martial arts got it handed to them in short order, and everyone who had any sense saw immediately that we needed to go back and take another look at what we had been taught and what we were teaching.

For the Japanese and Okinawan systems, this study took on a very serious note and many open minded practitioners saw that much of the problem lay in a lack of objective understanding of the techniques themselves. Where it had been standard practice to teach a block as a block, these thinkers began to see blocks as strikes. The chambered hand, long taught as being an elbow to the ninja that had just jumped onto your back, was seen more and more as being a limb control/repositioning of the opponent type of maneuver. And as this study goes on, much is being re-evaluated and understood to have a much more practical use than had previously been taught.

Within the Chinese Martial Arts, there was a lot of resistance to the idea that we didn’t know what the techniques were supposed to mean. As I mentioned in a previous article, for many years I had taught that a particular technique was a swinging strike to the underside of the jaw, when in looking at things from a more practical perspective it is a scoop to the underside of a kicking leg that allows you to (quite easily) dump your opponent onto his backside.

The people who resist have pointed out to me on a regular basis that the techniques of Hung Gar need not be seen as anything complicated. They love to point out the tiger strikes as their support for their position.

In Hung Gar, the tiger strikes are quite obviously a redirect with one hand and a strike with the other. And on the surface, there is nothing complex. I think, at least to me, the real complexity would be readily apparent to anyone as soon as they try to use these tiger strikes on a fully uncooperative opponent. The first time I experimented with this, I was amazed at just how difficult it is to pull off the techniques properly, and have them deliver as promised, when the opponent is doing everything in their power to prevent you from being successful. It took quite a bit of training to understand some of the more subtle aspects of timing, pressure, and adaptation required to make the techniques successful. They payoff was not just that I developed the ability to use the techniques. Better still was that I understood how to use them well enough to effectively teach how to use them.

There need be no insecurity in this study. In fact, insecurity should be the last thing you feel. Each time out, I got better at it, and eventually made it look and act like I was told that it would.

So, once again, we find ourselves back at the basic idea of training. No matter how basic and obvious the application may seem to the naked eye, unless you get out there and work until you can apply the technique on an uncooperative opponent, you will never be all that you think you are.

Here are some training ideas that I found useful:

• Start Slow. It can be very disheartening to dive into full speed application study. Starting slow allows you to build up the understanding form the most basic levels. As you become more confident, you can increase the speed of everything going on, and then increase the level of resistance that your partner is providing in the exercise. But learn to do it right first, and only then start increasing resistance.
• Be sure the opponent in not always wearing long sleeves. Yes, train with sleeves, but train sleeveless as well. You will need to understand the differences in what you have to do to make a technique effective under both circumstances. Have you partner, if they are not sweaty enough, go run water on their arms. This will provide some further exploration in the study of application against a slippery opponent.
• Multiple Opponents. Have three to four partners standing at various angles around you. Do not fool yourself into thinking this means you will be able to take on multiple adversaries! Rather, this training provides a quick change up as a different level of resistance, as each person will define the level of resistance differently. For Hung Gar people, you can position them to allow you to go through the Ten Tigers section of Fu Hok for a great drill.
• Have the opponents stand at different distances and practice the appropriate footwork needed to reach the opponent. Not everything is going to take place at the optimal distance. Allow for this by varying the distance in the starting point throughout the drill. Have the partner start out too far, as well as too close, and also start from poor angles (place the defender at a disadvantage)We have to train as realistically as possible, and yet maintain our understanding that “close” is as good as we are ever going to get. We have to make every effort to get as close to the real thing as possible, but at the same time maintain a safe environment. We must also take care not to make claims that we are mimicking an actual violent encounter, because in the end it is only training. Training is not just our best hope for surviving a violent encounter, it is our only hope.

I hope that the point I am trying to make is clear. Understanding that this is the probable application of this or that individual technique helps only a little. You need to take time and drill the technique. A surface understanding is going to do you no good. There is no replacement for experience. There never will be. Train the use of the techniques more than the mere repetition in the air. You do need a live opponent. Where many schools go wrong is in not trying with a partner at all, usually out of never seeing the initial stage of slow technique as being “step 1” of the process), or in jumping to full speed too soon.

When training for application, one must start very slow, to learn placement and footwork. Then pick up the pace of the entire execution. Once this becomes proficient, then the opponent will begin to offer resistance to the execution, and the real learning will now begin.

This is not a well thought out idea, and in this article we will look a little more closely at what the truth of the matter probably is.

First let us take a look at a trained martial artist. We spend our time in a relatively clean, very much controlled environment. Any martial arts school, aside from the decorations on the wall, is going to look pretty much like any other martial arts school, a big open floor, mostly free from clutter. The classes will be pretty similar; repeated practice of techniques from the style or system. Whether this practice will be in the form of kata or partner drills makes little difference in what we are seeing. The bottom line of this point is that the situation will not be chaotic. You will know what you are working on, and you will know you are safe. Even in sparring, where you may not know the actual technique your opponent will be using, you do know that it will fall within the construct of a known set of particular rules. These rules are necessary (no matter how much this is downplayed) to ensure the safety of the participants. Over time you will develop a certain mindset regarding the training. You will not have to think about the rules, legal targets and techniques and so on. It will become a habitual act to follow these rules, and free the mind for the creation of strategy.

But here is where we fool ourselves.

We think that this training is for the real thing. It could not really be much further from the real thing, but we turn a blind eye to this fact and press on and convince ourselves that we are in fact training for the ultimate street fight. We know that whenever the day comes that an untrained street fighter is dumb enough to attack our well trained self, we will defeat them while dazzling the onlookers and bystanders with our prowess.

Now let us take a look at these untrained street fighters. Street punks have more than likely spent their entire life in or near violence. In the real world, there are gangs and fights every day. When kids in these neighborhoods grow up like this they are quite likely to have a much more clear understanding and much more intimate knowledge of violence than any martial arts student ever will. The fights these kids grow up having as a part of their life are not pretty, but they are violent. Proper technique and sound strategy are not to be found.

What comes to mind for me is a scene from “A Game of Thrones” wherein Ser Vardis Egan is in a fight to the death with a common sellsword named Bronn. Here is a look at it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN30YMzja6Y

In the scene, the knight is well trained, and much better armed and armored. Bronn does not fight a clean or pretty fight, but he uses experience and “street smarts” to kill Vardis.

When violence happens, it is not going to be pretty. It is going to be sudden, and a lot faster than you can imagine. Visit www.nononsenseselfdefense.com , http://www.conflictcommunications.com/  , and http://iainabernethy.co.uk/forum  for further reading on the topic by people who can present much more thoroughly, and from a much more experienced perspective.

            I have made no secret of my initiation into the martial arts through the door of mysticism. The true appeal of the martial arts to me was that aura of secret knowledge and power. And I chased these powers for a disturbingly long time. On some level, I knew they probably didn’t exist, but I wanted them to exist. I was, quite truthfully, choosing to believe in something that more than likely (to my best knowledge of the time) was not true.

            The folly of youth is to believe in nonsense. Belief is a funny thing. The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon root lief (to wish) and it is a strong hope that things will turn out to be this or that particular way.

            This hope does a funny thing to many people who become interested in training in the martial arts. We seek out these extraordinary powers. We listen to tales that, were we in any setting outside of a martial arts school, would be brushed aside as children’s fairy tales without so much as a second thought. But inside the martial arts world, these tales are not merely believed in, they are held up as examples of the powers we can have for our very own, if only we put in the time and effort under the guidance of our esteemed master.

            Some of these tales are beyond absurd. I have been told by people asserting in all seriousness;

• A master can walk on snow and leave no footprints.
• A master can thump you on the head and produce a stream of tears from only one eye.
• A master who had the ability to produce an electric shock in your body by stroking your armpit.
• A master who could strike you and cause you to start bouncing. You would be unable to stop bouncing until he un-did whatever it was that he did.
• A master who had the ability to make your nose bleed by stroking one of your buttocks. (No, I am not making this up…)
• A master who could kill animals with a light touch to certain acupuncture points (this one is very widespread and extends to the “touch-of-death” claims which are still widely popular today).
• A master who could shout and cause the fish in a lake or river to become unconscious and float to the surface where they could be scooped up with a net. (When I was in the Philippines, I chanced to see some kids in a river with nets, and their Father was up stream tossing lit sticks of dynamite into the river to produce much the same effect).
• Masters who could climb a wall like a lizard.
• Masters who could levitate.
• Masters who were able to defeat 20 or more armed attackers, while they themselves were unarmed. (Except for the awesome powers of Chinese kung fu!).
• A master who could be sliced open and not bleed.
• Masters who could seal a wound with their mind, and heal broken bones in minutes through herbs and massage.
• Masters who could extinguish a candle flame by staring at it intently (I would just blow it out…).
• Masters who could read your mind.
• One master I met claimed the ability to travel in another dimension. He claimed the ability shorted his life, so he refused to do it, “unless the world was in danger”. Nice way to not get tested.
• Many masters claim the ability to knock you out without touching you in any way.

     One thing the people who make these claims are good at is in avoiding the scientific method. Would that the martial arts communities were more like the field of science. In science, when someone makes a claim, they must also provide proof, in the form of testing. When they get certain results, other scientists step in and repeat the test. Claims are examined to see if there are other possible explanations. Even claims that have been generally accepted for great lengths of time are subjected to further testing as our ability to test more accurately grows. In the martial arts, a person makes a claim, and far too many people just accept it as fact!

     In the mid 1990’s in Austin, a fellow took his Wing Chun school, which was not making any money, and claimed he had discovered the lost fighting art of the Aztecs! He began teaching Wing Chun and Filipino stick fighting, and renamed it “The Hand of War”, and he started making money! People bought memberships in his school, and bought his videos for further training. And it was all nonsense, but they kept buying, until the next fad came along.

     I have attended many seminars where the “masters” claimed they were teaching the inner esoteric martial arts. They claimed amazing powers and gave demonstration of some strange skills (always demonstrating only on their own students). Exactly why I thought I needed the ability to stand behind someone, and with intense concentration and strange hand gesticulations, cause them to slightly sway side to side is lost to me at this moment, but rest assured, at the time I really thought it was important.

     But underlying this was a simple cause – I wanted to believe. I am certain that on some level I knew it was all BS, but I wanted it to be real. I wanted to have these super powers, however useless they might have been. I wanted to be different, superior, better. I deliberately ignored the sound advice of those who were not so deluded as I. I bushed off the facts, and the overwhelming evidence that these powers are not, and never were real. I convinced myself more than they ever could have convinced me that these powers were real, and attainable. All I had to do was find the right master and train hard enough for a long enough period of time and spend enough money.

     Why would anyone do this? Why would anyone, facing the scorn and pity of their friends and family, ignore the truth and choose these flights of fancy.

     When we study the martial arts, we seldom hear reference to the scientific method. For something to be accepted in science, it has to be observable, explainable, testable, and repeatable. When a claim is made that this or that happens because of Qi, well… that just falls short. There have been studies going on for decades, and the only studies that show any promise for Qi to be real are studies conducted in China. Now, this could (I suppose) mean that Qi only exists in China. Or it could be that, with much to gain on many levels, the Chinese Government, never known for being the bastion of freedom and truth, skewed the results, or left out counter information. Studies conducted in the west have, as yet, been unable to find one shred of evidence that Qi even exists.

     In the regular world, most people when pressed will admit that psychics are frauds, they possess no real powers and are really just stealing you money by exploiting your hope that they really do have powers. There are palm readers and psychic healers. There are those who claim they can communicate with the dead. Anyone who has lost someone dear to them has a deep ache and a longing for even just one last moment with that person, to right some wrongs, to ease their conscience over some past slight, or simply to say a goodbye that was left unsaid. Because there is a desire to communicate with lost loved ones, there is a market for these people. But take a close look and you will see that the psychic is never quite specific on anything. They throw out very vague generalities until someone in the room latches onto something. “I’m getting a name from a male spirit…a male with the letter j in his name…did anyone lose a male with a j in his name.” “I did! Not really j but g…his name was Geoff!”

     This is where subjective validation starts to come into the picture. The person who lost someone overlooked the obvious in order to have that contact with their lost loved one. For a start, the guess of “male” is going to be right for someone in the room. The letter thing is easy, because the psychic never specified that the name started with that letter. The “mark” filled in the blank and the carny show continued. We overlook or dismiss all of the wrong guesses. We do this because we want to have contact.

     In the martial arts, we have our own peculiar version of psychic power. We have Qi masters! These people deliberately, willingly and knowingly steal you money by exploiting your desire that super powers are real. Some of them actually believe their own hype, but many and more know it is all a sham. In order to make money doing this, one need only learn a few parlor tricks and sacrifice all of your morals and sense of accountability. To be a victim of these charlatans, you need only believe. There are people in the martial arts who are making a lot of money by exploiting the wishes of people who like to fool themselves.

            As one who was deeply immersed in the hoax, who spent disgusting amounts of money in pursuit of Qi power, I can tell you from real clear experience, the people teaching and training it know it isn’t real, but we play along. In much the same way that the Evangelical “healers” cause people to pass out by a mere touch (Wayne Coleman tells a funny story of “passing out from a preacher’s touch and laying on the floor, when another “believer” asked how, “How long are we supposed to lay here?), the “believers” of the Qi lie play along and tell stories of how they felt the Qi, what it did to them, and how amazing it is. I’ve done this myself. This is, at least in part due to the conditioning the “masters” use, wherein they tell of how “normal” people, people of a lower level cannot always feel it, and how if you cannot direct it to various parts of your body, then you are very weak in your kung fu, or may simply not have any hope of developing it at all. So, we lie. We say we can feel it, direct it, project it at will. We do side research to find out how the parlor tricks are done so that we too can perform them and be thought of as Qi masters as well.

            Very few people have what it takes to be totally and completely honest with themselves. It takes a lot to admit we are too fat, too lazy, are less. It is not a comfortable position to know that others are better than we are.

            But others are better than us, in nearly every category we care to name. There need be no shame in this fact. No one among us is perfect, and no one ever will be. Even when you are the best, you are only the best at that moment. In the next moment, things will change. You will change. There is no real need to be perfect. Accept your imperfections, your shortcomings and your weaknesses. Work on them, but do not punish yourself over them, or worse still – feel guilty about them. Guilt and shame are what lead people to follow the charlatans and liars.

            Be better than that.

            Common sense doesn’t seem to be all that common anymore. In the world of martial arts, common sense seems all but dead. Armed with the skills of critical thinking, you can move beyond the nonsense and start to learn and earn some real skills. With practice, and education martial artists can start to rise up and reclaim some of our lost respectability.

Fun stuff.

Just as often, we also tend to leave our brains outside as well. We can be rational, intelligent, competent individuals outside of the dojo, but once our feet hit the floor of the training hall, we somehow willingly give up our intellectual freedom.

I have written at length recently on the moronic mysticism that so permeates the martial arts as to leave we devotees looking pretty asinine. I do not intend to revisit that aspect of the subject here. I am going to look at a more practical aspect. Below are some of the unexamined misconceptions to be found in most martial arts schools.

The Black Belt is always right. Martial arts Black Belts and Instructors are human. Just as there are no perfect people, there are no perfect instructors. People, every single one of us have good and bad qualities. A friend of mine relayed a story to me once about an instructor who, while holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, admonished him to “learn to think like a champion”.

As students, we tend to take every word from the instructor’s mouth as being rock solid fact. And although it is sad to admit, we rarely take a moment to examine what we are being told. Leaving aside the mystical claims, we are still told some pretty strange things. We have a strange concept of the black belt as being a morally superior human. A simple google search can turn up over a million results on black belts who commit crimes. And many of these crimes are not simple self-defense gone too far. Assault, extortion, murder, rape, crimes against children, and the list goes on. No, a black belt means that you have trained in a system for the prescribed length of time and can meet the minimal physical requirements set forward by whatever sanctioning body you are attached to. It has nothing whatsoever to do with ethics or character.

Martial arts can build character. But it will require the right approach from both teacher and student or it will not work.

Related to the “Black Belt is always right” is the mistaken conclusion that “the black belt knows everything”.

I am just as stupid as anyone else on many subjects. I make mistakes every single day, and I am blessed to have many opportunities each day to discover that I am wrong about something. If you keep your eyes open, you might just find that Black Belts get flustered when proven wrong, and will very often throw out many logical fallacies in order to prop up their opinion on the topic in which they were just shown to be wrong. Most often, in my experience, the “master” will use the Appeal to Authority. When shown that they are wrong, they come up with “Grandmaster Stin Kee Toes said, “Blah blah, blah.” The idea being that “Grandmaster Sin Kee Toes is an expert on this subject, and he agrees with me, so therefore I am right.” That dog won’t hunt…

All you need to know about self-defense. There are the claims about how the practice of kata, or sparring will teach you how to handle a real self-defense situation.

While I love to train forms, and in my younger days sparring was life, neither one will teach you what to do when someone steps up behind you and cracks your skull with a baseball bat. In looking at the statistics from the Department of Justice’s website, 76.4% of the time the criminal was the first to use violence in the situation. What this means is that the violence occurred before the victim knew the situation was going to become violent. Action is, and always will be faster than reaction. The attacker knows going in what they intend to do, and they are prepared for it. You were going along in your day, and things took a drastic turn. When you are in this situation, nearly everything you learned in the dojo is going to be unavailable to you. Another interesting fact from the site is that resisting the attacker made them angrier and more aggressive 66.1% of the time. Women are injured more often than men in a violent encounter. Time does not permit, nor does inclination urge me to go into great detail of these statistics and what they mean, you can view all of the stats here: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus0804.pdf  

So, most of what we are told in the dojo about self-defense is not true. The training hall is a good place to be, get a workout, hang with like-minded friends, and hit people. But self-defense is a legal term, and most of what we are taught in the dojo is not self-defense, it is assault.

Lineage. We are taught to place much more importance on the idea of lineage than we really should. True enough, lineage can show that a person comes from a legitimate line. And very often in our modern world, with all of the training videos on the internet, one should be careful to select an instructor who actually trained in a system and didn’t just memorize some forms off of the internet. But beyond this, is lineage that important? Or is it the fallacy of the Appeal to Authority? I have stated before, and others before me that the famous masters of the past were well-known because they were well-known, and not because they were the best. If my lineage passed through the famous Wong Fei Hung, does that really mean that my kung fu is more legitimate than someone whose lineage did not? I don’t buy it. The legitimacy of my kung fu is found in the kung fu itself, and nowhere else. I do not recognize the need to cling to well-known people from the past in order to legitimize myself or my style.

When an instructor goes on and on about lineage, to me it screams of one thing – insecurity. In trying to continually show that he is legitimate, he starts to look less and less so. And in any other field of study; medicine, science, technology, you name it, modern means progress. There is no way on earth that we know less about kinesiology, proper training, etc. than what  they knew 200 years ago. That entire line of reasoning is just fatuous.

A Black Belt knows how to teach.  Knowing how to perform a technique, and teaching someone else to perform that technique with the desired level of skill are two completely different fields of study. Most black belt instructors have not gone through any training in how to teach, and just rely on what their instructor did. Unfortunately, their instructor probably just relied on how his instructor did things. This is not, and never should be confused with actual teaching. The martial arts organizations, in large part, have overlooked the real value to be found in setting up and running an instructor trainee program. IN most organizations, the trainee program is nothing more than putting the trainee at the front of the room and telling them to teach. Placed in this situation what will the trainee most likely do? You guessed it – he will do what his instructor did! So it isn’t really an instructor training program at all, it is a way for the instructor to get someone to do his work for him, without paying him!

These are just a few of the unexamined practices that can be found in most martial arts schools around the world. The list goes on, but the main message is simple. Don’t take anything for granted, and don’t take it as fact based solely on the instructor’s word, or the sheepish mindset of the students. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, and legitimate and honest instructors are not afraid of, nor offended by questions.

                There is an old joke in martial arts circles that “The older a Black Belt gets, the better he used to be”. I have never wanted this to be me, and use a lot of self-effacing humor to keep anyone from putting me into the category of those “masters” who embellish their stories more and more as they promote themselves to higher and higher ranks.  

                I have given a lot of thought to this, and I want to find a clear definition of what rank is, and what it means.

                I hold various ranks in different systems of martial arts, black belt (or equivalent) in some, under belt in others. I do not study for rank. When I was a beginner, rank was everything. The black belts were special people, and you just knew they had some mystical powers. After I became one I found out that black belts were just ordinary people, with good skills, but skills that anyone who was dedicated enough to keep training could have for themselves.

                Somewhere along the line things changed in the martial arts. I tend toward the theory that the changes probably began with people wanting to be a black belt more than they wanted to earn a black belt. I still run into people of this sort every day, and it seems to happen a lot more than in the past. With the advent of the McDojo across this country, black belts got a lot easier to have, and people had to go through the time and classes and test to get it, who cares if no one ever fails the tests in these schools, these students can still tell themselves that they earned the rank.

                Of course with the massive promotion of people to black belt, the McDojo needed to keep their instructors and/or organizational founders up above the rest of the people. 10^th Dan was suddenly 15^th Dan (google it and you will find some!), and even 20^th Dan! Why? There is one guy not to far from where I live who claims a rank of 15th Dan.

                Why do we need this sort of nonsense at all? Why can’t Black Belt be just like every other rank?

                As I thought about this, I kept looking at my own belt. It is a Japanese style karate belt, with gold markings to note my rank in the Hung Gar organization of which I am a member. Silly. I don’t remember what I was thinking when I ordered it. It is embarrassing, but I take refuge in the fact that there are others more silly by far.

                I am changing over to a plain black belt with no markings of any kind on it. As moment to moment, what I am teaching my students is probably coming from different points of my own experiences, should I change uniforms and belts for each area that the lesson comes from?

                The belt system itself is a relatively recent invention, contrary to popular opinion. The first black belts were awarded in 1880. Initially, we are told, there were two ranks, white and black. This grew and grew. There is one group (ATA) that has 17 ranks before black belt! I have heard that there are other groups that have as many as 20! This is where the road leads that starts with promoting and promoting, and yet feeling the need to keep their own rank above everyone. I am opting out of the nonsense. I will wear a plain, non-embroidered black belt when teaching.

                Why would this be important enough to write about?

                I try very hard to practice what I preach. In my stand against using lineage as a badge of authenticity, I had to examine what I was teaching and took the approach that I know what I am teaching, and it shows in my product (my students). I don’t need to ride on the reputation of a particular person or family for legitimacy. When I publicly expressed my doubts about the existence of Qi power, I had to withstand the assaults (verbal…but still…) from those in the CMA that hold to this antiquated and asinine lie, as well as go through everything I teach and find ways to test, re-test and prove how it does what it does.

                I have been saying for years that there needs to be no rank beyond black belt. All that Dan ranking does is give people something else to feed their own ego. They are given a method wherein they are able to tell themselves that they are still better than their students, even when through the decline of skill that comes with age, there are many areas of the art where they are not better than their students.

                There are some things that I teach that are no longer a part of my skill set. In my late teens and early twenties, I could fly with the best of them, but with a missing LCL and a torn ACL in my left knee, flying kicks are no longer something that interests me. With my wrecked back and crumbly knees, I would prefer to wait for you to come to me than fly to you. There is no ego left for me. When you reach that point where some of what you teach is done through verbal explanations, drawings on the board, and “Billy, show them how to do this kick”, illusions of your own greatness dissolve. There does not need to be any shame in this. I was good. I was very good for a while. I am still pretty good at what I do. There are just some aspects that I had to discontinue training (or get better acquainted with my orthopedic surgeon). If we older black belts can let go of that ego issue that still gets us, if we can cherish but not live in our past accomplishments, and if we can look ahead to where we can go from here, we will be a lot better off, and we will not be mistaken for the guy in the joke at the top of this entry.

                I am a black belt, and that is enough.

     Once again, the idea for this is lifted from a podcast by Iain Abernethy. He put together an excellent work on what traditional martial arts and modern mixed martial arts can learn from each other. In this piece I am going to take a look at what I feel are the things that Traditional Chinese Martial Arts (TCMA) can learn from the modern Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) schools.

     Before I go on, I must address one thing which has come up on some internet forums, and much more so in email correspondence. In my most recent posts here, I have written at length criticizing some of what I feel are the detrimental practices found in the TCMA. This has been misinterpreted by some as a hatred for TCMA. I wish to make perfectly clear, I do not hate TCMA, I love it! I only wish for some of these practices to go away so that our arts can be placed on a level of respect that I feel they deserve. When I am criticizing, I am doing so out of a deep wish that we can unite and show our true value and proper standing in the martial arts community. However, for as long as the issues myself and others have pointed out go unresolved, then such respect will not happen. There is too much information out there in such easy access to any student with an internet connection for some of the idiocy to continue. To be frank, I find nothing noble in defending a particular viewpoint based on the age of the idea or practice being defended. There are many who (quite loudly) proclaim that anyone who dares to say that qi power is a lie is a doofus, and the entire basis for their defense is that the idea has been around for such a long time! There are those who take a strange sort of pride in the tale that they practice an art which is supposed to have been unchanged in hundreds of years. Pride? Really? One does not need to dig all that far into the past to find that the idea that a martial system must remain unchanged is a pretty recent practice. So in the end, who is the traditionalist? I speak about the shortcomings of the style I train and teach, and I do so in the hope that there can be growth. If there is no growth, the art itself is dead, and can no longer be called an art at all.

     While I have dabbled in MMA, I have never gone full bore into the training. I bring this up only to illustrate that I am not in any way trying to present myself as an expert in MMA. So, if there are things I say about training or viewpoints of the MMA athlete which are wrong, I will direct you back to this paragraph. However, I have trained in TCMA for most of my life, and while I do not consider myself to be a “master”, I do feel that I am knowledgeable on the subject. This in no way means that my word is law, but if you argue a point I make about TCMA, I am more than comfortable in defending my position until proven right or wrong.

     The Ultimate Fighting Championship first came on the scene in the early 90s, and the original concept was to set a stage to show the Gracie Family’s Brazilian Jujitsu. What happened was too good to be a movie. The traditional martial artists were completely out of their element from too much time spent in believing that what they were told would work actually would work, and deeming it “too dangerous to test”. Never mind that the real traditional martial arts had been tested and tested for generation after generation going back far into history. TMA practitioners scrambled to find out where they went wrong. The traditionalists lost, well and thoroughly.

     In the karate systems, there was a renewed interest in the study of Bunkai, the training of applications of the techniques. No longer was every technique to be used against a reverse punch. This study has brought about a huge increase in the numbers of karate students who are learning to actually use their art. There are still those on the fringe, who either completely resist the ideas that there is more to the techniques than meet the eye, or cannot see that their instructor didn’t know how to use the art, and there are also those who come up with some really outlandish uses for the techniques, but by and large the study is getting good results, and in my opinion is a powerfully positive change in the karate systems.

     For the TCMA, things are actually at the other end of the spectrum. We have some few who are making the progress in training harder and studying applications, but the majority stay with the mystical side of things. I have written at length recently on my point of view as to the mystical claims in the TCMA, and do not wish to go into that again.

     Let us look at exactly what the MMA students do that gives them such confidence that they are not afraid to call out TMA practitioners.

Practical Application

     The list of techniques is an MMA school is pretty short compared to the list of techniques one will learn in a TCMA school. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing. They are training for something specific, and their training methods and technique list will quickly reveal this. One must be careful to keep in mind what we are discussing.

     Iain Abernethy made a very important point when he stated that in determining practical application, we must first define what we mean by practical. What is practical is going to be based on what the purpose of the training is, i.e.; if you are training for tournament competition (sport karate or MMA) what is practical is going to be different than if you are training for self protection in a violent confrontation.

     I have two jobs. I teach sport karate by day, and TCMA in the evenings. I have two very different goals in each setting. For the kids that are learning sport karate from me, some of the training my TCMA adult students go through would be very inappropriate for the goals. In sport karate, the students are training to become fast, lower reaction time, increase flexibility, and train to deliver clean snapping techniques which do not harm the opponent in a tournament setting. For my adults, I teach them to deliver tremendous impact to specific targets in order to incapacitate an adversary and allow for their own extrication from the conflict. Very different goals, very different definitions of what is practical.

     For the purpose of this article, I am going to stick with the second set of goals, as my focus in this article is MMA and TCMA.

     In an MMA school, the students come to class to get a workout. They will do various exercises, and train a limited set of techniques in order to gain the level of proficiency they wish to have. The training is hard, as a main focus of these schools is a degree of physical fitness needed for competition.

     In many TCMA schools, the pace and environment is a lot less stressful. I have visited schools where there were frequent breaks due to the instructor starting to sweat. In all honesty, there was one instructor who’s school I visited, and he actually taught that sweating is bad for you, and that training should be kept at a light pace, and sweat meant it was time to rest!

     When a student in an MMA school is told how something is to be done, or used, or how it fits in with the overall strategy of what the school is teaching, the next step is to get on the mats and practice it. They drill and drill and drill until they become proficient, and confident. The term we use for this study in TMA is “practical application”.

     For many years in the traditional martial arts, there was a lack of study in practical application. Some techniques were determined to be “too dangerous to test”. In some cases, this was correct. But not always. In some of the cases, the techniques which were so classified were simply unreliable, or not understood. For years I was taught that a kick to the side of the knee would destroy the knee joint. Having suffered some pretty severe knee injuries in my life, I figured it had to be true. And all of us have seen the original karate kid, where the kick to the knee almost does in poor Danny Larusso. Tune in to any MMA event now, and you will see the kick delivered much more solidly, and simply shaken off by the one kicked. What we are told in TMA schools was not always the truth, it was an opinion.

     One huge step that can be taken by TCMA schools would be to practice practical application. The MMA schools have moved ahead and regularly test the very techniques we call “too dangerous”, so we should join them. Even when we are dealing with the more dangerous techniques, there are still ways to train them and bring about an understanding and an ability for the student to use them. There are schools doing this, but they are currently in the minority. This needs to change.

Critical Thinking

     In the TCMA there is a tradition of never questioning what we are told. When the master says it, we do it, end of story. In the MMA schools I have visited, this is not the case. The students are told what they are going to do, they are shown what they are going to do, they are taught how and why it will work, then they drill it until they get good.

     This type of approach does a two great things for the students. First, it shows a respect for the students as a thinking and reasoning person. Second, it brings about a greater confidence within the student about what they are learning. These are two incredibly important elements in the training of a student.

     If the first point is not addressed, the respect issue, the student will grow a resentment at some point. But the second point, if the student does not have confidence in what they are learning, they will quit training with you and go somewhere else.

     This does not mean that our classes will be constantly interrupted by inane questions. One visit to an MMA school will get rid of that notion. Contrary to what many TMA practitioners think, there is an air of respect inside of an MMA school. They are just martial artists like we are. If we could let go of some of our ego issues, we would see things clearly. I know of one instructor who refuses to call MMA a martial art! This is more than silly. MMA is a highly focused martial art. It has clearly defined goals and objectives, and the teachers and students set about directly working on the achievement of those goals.

     There are times when our traditions get in the way, and the issue of critical thinking, or more specifically, the lack thereof, can really get in the way of progress. We are thinking beings, and questioning is in our nature. When you are told something works, examine how and when and where it works. Also train to understand where and when and how it does not work. When someone tells you something does not work, examine for yourself to see whether or not they are correct. Critical thinking is not assuming everything you are told is a lie, is is actually being open to ideas if they can be proven true.

     In looking at some of our unexamined practices, we find very quickly that there are some that serve no purpose in the modern world. In the TCMA, there is a practice called the Bai Si. This is a ceremony wherein the student is essentially adopted into the family of the instructor. There was a time now gone) where there was an actual reason for keeping some techniques secret, at least that is what we are told. There is a common teaching that the secrets were to protect practitioners of the style in the event they were attacked by someone from another school, the secret techniques would be what would save them. I have my personal doubts, but I’ll will save it for another day. Suffice to say here that in the modern world, any instructor who is going to hold out any part of the system as being a “secret” is not worth your money. There are no secrets. Train hard, and train consistently under a good instructor and you will progress a lot further and a lot faster than someone who trains under a “master” who hides their lack of knowledge behind mysticism and “secret knowledge”.

     Another example is found in the way that we are brainwashed into thinking that to question the teachings of the instructor is borderline sacrilege. The simple fact is that it is a sign of a very insecure instructor when he is offended at being questioned. The secure and confident instructor welcomes questions for the simple fact of what is shown in student questions – 1. the students are listening, and 2. the students are interested. What more could a quality instructor want? That, my friends, that is great stuff. There is not much in this world more rewarding than to have an opportunity to teach something you are passionate about to someone who wants to learn it! 

     In an MMA school, many of the questions are answered before they are asked. However, when a students has a question, it is not only welcomed, it is answered! Who thought of that?

     Remember, people think, and they learn. As more martial artists begin to practice critical thinking, these practices are going to have to end in the TCMA schools.

Hard Work

     I am not an expert in the Chinese Language, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt, but as I have been told many times, kung fu means “hard work”. As stated earlier, there are only a few kung fu schools where the students are working hard. This has to change. In order for this to change, there will have to be a shift in the mindset of the school owners. I spoke with an instructor in California earlier this week (as of this writing), and he said to me that he cannot work his students any harder without them quitting. I told him to not be afraid so much. The students sign up in a martial arts school expecting a workout – give them one.

     But you still have to keep in mind that exertion does not equal learning. Yes, the student needs to have a good workout, but at the same time, they should be walking out every day with new knowledge. This has to be a part of the equation, or you are spinning your wheels. Some of my greatest memories are of classes where Sifu worked us to near death, and then pushed us a bit further. We loved it! We learned more  than just a new technique or a new application, we learned about ourselves. There is a lot of knowledge to be found in pushing yourself to the limits. Obviously, pushing to the limit cannot be done every day, but it an be done regularly. Give your students these memories and this training.

A Question of Forms

     If we look at things realistically, in most schools of TCMA, there is an over-reliance on the practice of forms. Understand, I teach forms, and feel that they hold an important place in the TMA. But in many schools, the forms are taught as an end in and of themselves. There are regular casses whee the students do nothing other than forms.

     There is a better approach.

     When looked at properly, the forms are a type of textbook. They really do contain everything the students needs to internalize the underlying strategy and tactics of self defense as viewed by that art form. But, and this is a huge “BUT”, they have to be trained and taught properly. There has to be extensive training – step by step – in practical application. There also has to be an understanding that the student is going to have a different body type and set of psychological and physical predispositions that will affect performance. There is no need for an idea that the art must be a perfect imitation of you, because you are the perfect imitation of so-and-so, who is the perfect imitation of Lord Autumn-bottom.

     _____

     In the end, I would be happy to see TCMA practitioners recognize one simple fact, MMA practitioners are traditional martial artists too. Just don’t tell them.

    I have been thinking over the last few days about how many students I have had over the course of my career in teaching martial arts. The number is pretty big due to all of these years working with the KICKSTART KIDS Foundation. Over 1100 students have passed through my doors from KICKSTART KIDS classes alone, and I hope all of them carried something away with them that they didn’t have when I met them.

     The point of this article is what separates those of us who are martial artists for life form those who are here for a while and then gone, never to be heard from again?

     I have put together a list of what I feel are the contributing factors to people who quit training in the martial arts. I must point out first, this is nothing more than my opinion…here is my list, in no particular order.

1. Personality clashes
2. Unrealistic goals
3. Boredom
4. Priorities
5. Life gets in the way

     1. Personality clashes. When asked why I have trained in my style for so long, I tend to give the answer that I think the questioner wants to hear (because in my heart I don’t think anyone really cares why I have trained in my art for so long, they are really just making polite conversation). I have given answers along the lines of the effectiveness of the system, temperament, physical fitness in relation to the overall strategy of the system, etc. But the simple fact of why I got so deeply immersed in Hung Gar is not so complicated, or all particularly well thought out for that matter. I stayed because I liked my instructor and think the training is fun. Plain and simple. We got along quite well. He was often short tempered, but not with me. We had a similar work ethic, we enjoyed hard contact in training, and we never felt that either of us had completed the journey and knew all we needed to know. He was fun to be around, had a ton of knowledge, and never grew tired of teaching.

     With many students, a big factor in their quitting must be a lack of that kind of personal rapport with the instructor. There are instructors who are teaching for the money and not for the joy of sharing the martial arts journey with another like minded person. There are students who begin training for the wrong reasons. There are also people that we just don’t like, for whatever reason. This is a two way street. There may be students that the instructor just doesn’t like, and he or she may then put less effort into that student’s training. But as often there are students who simply do not like the instructor. These students will undoubtedly quit, and there is little to nothing that can be done by the instructor to prevent it.

     2. Unrealistic goals. I cannot count how many times I have had students show up with amazing energy and outrageous expectations in the beginning, only to end up quitting before they ever really got started.

     Many students come in with the idea that they are going to become Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris in the very cliché “Ten easy lessons”. The real world doesn’t work that way. I have said many times, but it does need to be repeated – the only secret in the martial arts is that success comes only through hard training and sacrifice. Period, end of discussion.

     Okay, not end of discussion, because I want to go on about this…

     Black Belt level skills are a product of years. Not weeks, not months – years. There are no shortcuts. And, as any Black Belt who has ever let their training slip can affirm, the skills of that level require constant practice. There is no end point. Proper expectations for martial arts training in any system would be to commit yourself to years of rigorous training, and never stop. Again, there is no end point. There is no time when you will be able to truthfully say, “I’m there! I’ve arrived!” Skill in the martial arts is a process.

     3. Boredom. There is no easy fix for this one. To one who has a passion for the martial arts, the training never is really boring, but it can get monotonous. Unfortunately, there is no real way around it. I remember reading a line from Gichin Funakoshi, wherein he stated that he had been studying a reverse punch for over forty years and was only now beginning to understand it. This is a little excessive on first glance, but I think something must have been lost in the translation. You can really learn all you need to know about the actual mechanics of delivering a reverse punch in less than an hour. But to reach that point where you can deliver it from different distances, different angles, and less than ideal circumstances is going to take a lot more practice. And if you do learn the reverse punch in less than an hour and never return to practice, you won’t really understand what is involved in all of this.

     It is frustrating at times, as an instructor, to have students tell me, “But we did that last week”. You have to repeat and repeat and repeat to make even modest gains in skill. To any martial arts student reading this, please take this to heart! Some of the repetition will never go away, deal with it.

     4. Priorities. My students laugh at me when I bring this up, but I bring it up anyway as it serves to illustrate a very important point. I went out on my first date when I was 20 or 21 years old (I don’t really remember which…). M teen years were filled to the brim. School, work, and kung fu. I simply didn’t have time for “extracurricular activities”. There were (and still are amazingly enough) only so many hours in a day. I really didn’t have time for dating.

     Many of the students who quit training simply do not have martial arts as a priority in their life. There is nothing wrong with that, but don’t whine and cry about how much time training takes up. This is part of what old timers are speaking of when we use the term “sacrifices”. We lost time with friends and family on our journey, and we did it because we had a single minded determination, and we were not going to be swayed form the goal. There are few students left who have this kind of determination. I don’t say this to insult the modern students. There are some who are quite determined, even up to the levels of determination I am speaking of here. But “some” does not equal “a lot”. And when you factor in a simple fact, everything changes.

     You will always have time for whatever you want to have time for.

     5. Life gets in the way. I cannot leave the previous point without addressing this one. This one is huge because I cannot argue with it. When someone is training in the martial arts, and they find out a baby is on the way, or they get a job promotion which is going to require more hours, and so on. These are the types of life events that can get in the way of training. I have had students who had to quit training with me because they were working full time, and going to College full time. It would be very out of line to try to argue against this. I have friends who were training but ended up in a life situation where they could either train or buy diapers for their kid, and again, if one were to argue against this, it would be monumentally stupid.

     The simple fact here is that there is more to life than martial arts for many people. Life can get in the way of your goals. Some things can be avoided or overcome, and others cannot. My kids are my top priority in life, everything else, and I mean everything else takes a back seat to my time and energy for my kids. I do understand this one. I am lucky that life never got in my way, but everyone has their own set of circumstances, and we must all handle what comes our way in our own way.

      —–

     There is my list of things that I have seen as what makes people quit training. As stated everyone has their own life to deal with. Next up, a look at the  people who are “lifers”, and how they handled some of the obstacles listed above.

     Like anyone who was in their early teens in the early 80s, I watched a LOT of pro wrestling. Unlike a lot of people, my favorites were not Hulk Hogan, Junkyard Dog and Hillbilly Jim. I liked the wrestling that seemed more realistic. I watched a lot of Southwest Championship Wrestling, with stars such as Cowboy Scott Casey, Hangman Bobby Jaggers, and Mr. Piledriver Bob Sweetan. I also was hooked on World Class Championship wrestling, with the Von Erich family being at the top of the list. And every Saturday I would tune in at 5:05 to TBS and watch Georgia Championship Wrestling and stayed a fan as it evolved into World Championship Wrestling.

     Never having been one to do anything half way, I not only was a fan, but I had every intention of getting in the ring myself. I had to become a wrestler, and thus pay true homage to my wrestling heroes.

     Now, just in case there is anyone left out there who does not know, pro wrestling is a work, a term which means that it is an exhibition, not a competition. This is, still in my mind, very different from fake. Bodies fly, and bones are broken, and that my friends is real. This could just be leftover from the brainwashing that is involved in training someone for the ring. It is this brainwashing that makes us think we are doing what we are supposed to do when we cut our head open, or take an unprotected chair shot to the skull for the sake of making the show look real. One thing I need to point out here, to the wrestlers themselves, it is real. At least back at the time I am speaking of. We would get out there and give 100% of what our bodies had to give to entertain the audience. When the boys in the back would talk about a match they had worked, it always sounded as if it was a fight to the death. “I didn’t think I would get outta there alive” was a common saying. We took pride in what we were doing, even if it was a very strange sort of pride.

     At the time when I was first breaking in, it was still very closed to outsiders. The business had a set standard where no one was permitted in unless they knew the right people, the right people being those who were already insiders. I finally met a guy named Michael Shapiro who introduced me to the people who would get me a chance to get into the ring.

     The first thing the trainers did was try to make you quit. I thought this was a stupid way to do business, as when someone actually shows up for training, they are already proving their real intentions, but this was just the way things were done. In my first workout I was put into a “ring” which was nothing more than a slightly padded area of the room, with ropes set to form a crude square. I was put up against someone, but I cannot for the life of me remember his name. We squared off and lock into collar and elbow (a basic starting position for any pro match). The guy was strong, but I was no slouch myself. By this time I already knew that it was all a work, but this guy was going through this as if it were a shoot (competitive). By this point in my life, I already was a pretty capable wrestler, as well as being a solidly trained martial artist as well. I was not afraid, and I handled his rough wrestling pretty well. He grew frustrated, as his job was to really push me, and make me quit, and he wasn’t getting it done. He clubbed me in the face with a forearm, and I did it right back to him. We slugged it out (Brett would call it “one potato, two potato, three potato, four). Then he took it to the ground. I managed to lock a double underhook on him, and scissor his waist with my legs. This is not a particularly painful move, but it is a booger to get out of, and he was trapped. Although it wasn’t the most remarkable match, I took what they threw at me and won. Then the trainer took me aside and proceeded to “smarten me up”, which means he was exposing the business.     

     Over the next few weeks I kept training with the hope of getting a match in front of people. The trainer was a little shady, and kept asking for more and more money, of which I had none. He promoted his own shows in and around Austin, and he would have the people who sold the most tickets go over (win their match). If you didn’t sell enough tickets, you might not even be on the card. I kept getting passed over for matches, mostly because I didn’t have more money to pay the promoter, and in part because I didn’t go out and sell a lot of tickets.

     I was about six months into my training when I had my first match. It took place in San Antonio at a Flea Market. The promoter ran a flea market and had matches every Sunday. So I got to start working matches pretty regularly for him. The ring was pretty unforgiving. My first match was against my buddy who wrestled under the name “Chief Lightfoot”. Later he would be Best Man at my first wedding. (Yeah, that’s right, my four month marriage…)

          So, in my first match, I learned a tough lesson. I tried to show the audience every move and trick that I knew. Inside of three minutes I was completely blown up. I was dead on my feet, and we still had more time to fill. I managed to get through the match, and went back to training to get a better understanding of how to work a match that I could actually survive.

      I was back the next Sunday, and had a much better match.

      I was only a few weeks into actually working and getting paid (poorly) when I had my first in ring injury. My opponent sent me into the ropes and executed a clothesline on me when I came off the ropes. I really wanted this to be a memorable bump for the audience, and intended to really put my opponent over. I was a lot bigger than him and I felt we needed something big to happen to change the course of the match, and allow him to win in a way that would make it seem believable. I tried something I had never done before – to spin 360 degrees in the air and land flat on my back with what I hoped would be an earth shattering THUD.

     Well, in reality I managed to get pretty high in the air, about five feet up, totally horizontal, and spin about 90 degrees.

     Ooops.

     When you are six and a half feet tall, and (back then I weighed) 245lbs., and you are in the air with your butt higher than your head, it ain’t gonna end pretty. I landed on my right shoulder and it separated on impact. I felt it pop back into place when I rolled over on my back, and the strangest thing, I was wearing a mask, but you can still somehow see that expression of pain on my face on the film.

     The show, of course, must go on. When Oscar pulled me to my feet, I told him I messed up my shoulder. Like a true professional, he chopped my throat before asking me if I could continue. I said I would try, so he chopped me a few more times and threw me out of the ring to let me think about whether or not to continue. I opted to continue, and we did for about another ten minutes or so, if memory serves. The match ended when he tried to remove my mask and reveal my identity. I was instructed that he would seriously try to get the mask off, and under no circumstances could I allow him to succeed, because they were promoting me to the audience as a major star hiding under a mask. If he had managed to pull the mask off there would have been a serious let down for the audience…

     With the match over, I was in the back thinking about the long drive back to Austin. One of the boys kindly offered to yank on my arm and make sure it was correctly back in place, but I opted not to take him up on it. There are a lot of “doctors” in wrestling, guys who have been hurt and figured out ways to get out of seeing a real doctor. I never did let any of them practice on me.

     I waited to get paid, this time it was five dollars! Yes! My first big payday! Never mind that he paid me in quarters, I had laundry money! So I took my coins and started the long drive back to Austin.

     On the drive, my yellow ‘86 Camaro had a blowout. So, here I am, dead tired, one working arm, and trying to change my tire on the side of I-35. Not fun. It gets better folks! I managed to get the lug nuts loosened, and get the car jacked up with only one arm. I pulled the tire off, and the car fell off of the jack.

     Yeah…that day kept getting better and better.

     You can always rely on the kindness of strangers, and that was the case here. Someone saw me sitting on the fender staring blankly at the world that had somehow gone very, very wrong, and changed the tire for me.

     I kept working matches around central and south Texas for several more years. In the end, I realized the big leagues were turning more and more to the ‘roided up monsters, and being unwilling to juice, I called it quits.

     I am not bitter about it at all. I think if I had been given the chance, I could have done some pretty good things, but I had my innings. I don’t watch a lot of the current product because I don’t like it. When I was a wrestler, we wrestled. The boys now are stuntmen, not wrestlers. When I was in wrestling, you had a match where everybody thought the two guys were hurting each other, and we weren’t. Now, you have two guys jumping off of balcony’s and landing in piles of barbed wire and thumb tacks, and people think they aren’t getting hurt. It really isn’t worth the time to watch anymore.

     Anyway, that is a quick peak inside the world of pro wrestling from someone who was there and managed to survive past the age of 40. When I watched the Mickey Rourke film “The Wrestler”, I was actually thankful that I never made the big time. That could have been me. I never got famous, but looking back, it doesn’t seem that I ever even tried to get famous, so I don’t look at it as a failure. It was fun, and I met some really good people, and that is what life is supposed to be about.

     There is a struggle facing the practitioners of the Traditional Chinese Martial Arts (TCMA). This is something which is always facing any martial art as the world evolves, but it seems at that right now we are closer to the edge of irrelevance than we ever have been before.

     In the TCMA, we have had an issue for a long time. The pretty hand gestures, the silly poses and so on, they have been there for a while. There must have been, at some point in our history, an understanding that these things were poses, and that they were part of the entertainment in our art. But somewhere, this part of our story was lost. There are still entire systems that think that the poses and gestures mean something, that they are functional, and as often as not this opinion is based on nothing stronger than the say so of the “head of lineage”.

     Over time, and with the widespread practice of either watering down the curriculum to make it more suitable for children, or listening to the nonsense spouted by people who didn’t have the wherewithal to follow the truly traditional road of hard training and hard work, far too many questionable practices had crept into the training halls. When contact was reduced to prevent injuries, at some point people began to make up stories that the techniques could not be tested, as they were too dangerous. This was never the case. Yes, the techniques were dangerous, but not so much so they could not be tested, only that they placed the student at a greater risk of injury. Then contact was reduced further and then the rules of the tournament changed to allow for techniques which were far removed from any practical application. I am certain that legal considerations came into play at some point as well. At this writing, if a student gets injured in your school, insurance rates will go up as there is always a risk of getting sued.

     Back in the 1990s, something happened that would change traditional martial arts for a long time to come. The debut of the Ultimate Fighting Championship was so promoted, and such a huge spectacle, and so talked about, that no martial arts event before had compared.

     In the first UFC events, traditional martial artists had their eyes opened the hard way. All of the time spent in not testing the teachings because they were “too dangerous”, all of the time spent with a focus on non-contact, all of the lack of understanding of the basic concept of practical application and the true nature of combat came to a head, and there was no choice but to admit we were wrong.

      As TCMA faced up to the reality of what was shown to the world in the UFC events a crossroads was reached. Some of the instructors chose to pursue our roots – practical application and hard work. Other schools clung to the history (which was made up), and the mysticism.

      Karate fared better in my opinion. There was a pretty widespread renewed interest in the study of Bunkai, practical application. Much more so than in TCMA. There are always going to be those who promote themselves as masters of everything, and all traditional martial arts have problems of this nature, so it is pointless to focus on that.

      I have recently written at great length, and through several articles on the subject of the falsehood of the mystical claims of the Chinese Martial Arts. I do not wish to go further into that, but if you are interested in my opinions on the subject, the articles are published and available on this website.

     The question that forms the title of this article is direct – Are the Traditional Chinese Martial Arts in danger of becoming irrelevant? The short answer is, “yes” with a “but”, long answer “no” with an “if”. 

      Yes, TCMA are in danger of becoming irrelevant, but it is avoidable.

      No, TCMA are not in danger of becoming irrelevant if we make some changes. What follows are the changes I see as being necessary if we are to remain relevant.

      1. Begin training harder. One of the biggest things that the TCMA schools should immediately take upon seeing the success of the MMA schools is to give the people what they are looking for – hard training. We all know that “kung fu” means “hard work”, lets live up to that meaning! Endless repetition of forms is not the hard work the people are looking for. The trend right now, and for the foreseeable future is to teach the fighting skills behind the martial arts, and drill them. It has to be practical. The modern martial arts student has an unlimited access to tons of information. When you start teaching and promoting BS, expect to be discovered, and expect to get shut down. There are so many ways to drill the basics that it is insane to just drill in the air or in forms. Just for the record, I am going to begin posting a series of articles and videos that will demonstrate some of the drills I use, as well as links to videos from others who have taken the lead in this movement and who are already posting such videos.

      2. Understand how to use what you teach in the forms. Let us be clear, if a student only wants MMA, they will go to an MMA school, not a TCMA school. But, if like so many people out there, they want to learn a traditional martial art, but they also want to be able to use it, they just might call a TCMA or TMA school. As an instructor, you can increase the chances of this happening if you do the work, and study and learn to use your art. If you cannot use it, you are a Master Fancypants, but not a martial artist.

      It takes extra work, and a lot of study, but live your role! If you are only in it for the money – OPEN YOUR EYES! There are much better paying jobs out there. If you truly want to be the best, then get to work and know your job.

      3. Be able to identify which parts of the forms have no function. It is painful to admit, but we have to face the fact that there are parts of our forms that have no practical usage. Once we face this fact, we are free. We are free to openly study the form and see what parts no longer have value. We don’t need to just drop these parts, but it is important to know that they are there. I take no joy in bringing this point to public attention, but facts are facts. One may well ask why I do not recommend dropping the sections, and I will answer. It would be a mistake to simply drop the sections, in my own opinion, because they are still a part of the form. The sections were put in for a reason. And while I may not understand the function, there could be one. What I will not do is try to tell my students that I know a function that I cannot understand or find. As long as the application is hidden from my sight, I am not going to make any claims that I know it. And if you try to tell me that these parts are for the development of Qi, I will hit you in the head with a steel chair.

       4. Practice critical thinking. Critical thinking is both a skill and an attitude. It is the application of certain questions to a given claim, and using the answers to evaluate whether or not the claim is well founded. This skill can be applied to any situation, evaluation, and even social issues.

      When you approach the martial arts from the perspective of critical thinking, you are able to make well thought out, informed and rational decisions. The other path is to simply accept whatever you are told as being true, and this leaves you to take whatever opinion you read or hear and adopt it as your own. In such cases, you may be right or wrong. But if you use critical thinking, you are able to examine the different positions before you take any of them as your own.

      As stated above, critical thinking is a skill and an attitude. It involves using the tools of rational, logical evaluation to determine if a claim is well founded. It allows you to react rationally to what you are told or read. You need to be able to rationally evaluate any claim made.

       5. Stop hiding. Be proud of being a practitioner of TCMA. For far too long “masters” hid from the light of day like so many cockroaches. In some cases, I am sure that they truly believed that they had some secret hidden ancient knowledge, even when they didn’t have anything secret, or even special for that matter. In other cases though, I am sure they hid from public view because they knew they didn’t really know anything, and were scared that they would be exposed as frauds.

      But for the true martial artist, stop hiding. Make videos and post them. Be public about your curriculum. The entire concept that what we teach has to be hidden from view is baseless. We say on the one hand that no one can learn form a book or video, but on the other we say that we cannot post videos because we don’t want people to learn our secret stuff.

      Which is it? Seriously.

      The traditional Japanese and Okinawan and Korean systems freely film and post their material. Why are we hiding still. Are we scared? I am taking a stand on this as stated above, I will be posting a series of videos and articles detailing everything we do and teach in my school. I hope to get the entire curriculum up before too long. I challenge other instructors of TCMA to do the same. You and I both know you don’t have anything truly secret.

      The fact is that when we move into the 21st century, we will start to regain some of the lost respectability. Some instructors have already started down this road, we should join them.