When Martial Arts meet Reality pt1

For those of you new to me and my website, let me catch you up really quick. I am a scientist, a data person, an exerciser, and a teacher; both by training and by trade. The surprising thing about this is that I never actually saw myself going this way years and years ago. I am a musician, an engineer, a linguist, and (definitely saving the most relevant identity until last) I am a martial artist.

It is the martial arts which I want to focus in on with this post and many others. If you subscribed to this blog, or you visited my website because you saw me as a data guy, or a kinesiology (science of human movement) guy, or a cognitive science guy... or any of my other professional interests; it is worth telling you now that none of that would ever have come into being without the martial arts, and I want to tell you (briefly) why that is. Please indulge me a few minutes to give you a reason for reading on.

The Reason

Like most people in the martial arts, I started because I was not very athletic, I was/am a bit goofy, nerdy, awkward, introverted, and not particularly intimidating. I was getting picked on at school and my brother, the clever-confident-attractive type, wasn't going to let that continue. He was enrolled at a Kung Fu school near my hometown and brought me along one day. I wasn't hooked right away, I was scared and didn't know if this is something I wanted to do. As time went on and the lessons sunk in, it was clear that martial arts were going to be in my life forever. Fast forward many years, and a lot of training sessions, and I find myself committed to their practice. Even though I started in Kung Fu, I find myself hungry to learn every martial art there is. I teach, I train, I discuss and debate martial arts with people in every walk of life, from every profession, and at every level of the community; from world champions to hobbyists, from law enforcement and security professionals to florists who like to wrestle at the weekend (don't underestimate your local florist, you have no idea how good at throwing down they might be).

And eventually I went a direction most martial artists never go, and that is to science. My PhD thesis focused on teaching complete beginners some drills and techniques from three of my favourite martial arts: Muay Thai, Kali, and Jeet Kune Do. I wanted to find out if I could improve people's brainpower by teaching them techniques but without putting them at any risk of harm, such as sparring or competition. For more specifics, have a look at the links down below for my thesis and few other papers on exercise and cognition you might like a look at.

Now, where am I going with this? I want you to think about martial arts for a second. If you have a few minutes to pause, I'd like to throw out a few questions for you to consider, not because we do/don't know the answers to them, but because they can reveal how differently we think about martial arts:

1) How do I perceive martial arts and martial artists?

2) Do I see any value in learning the martial arts? If No, why not? If Yes, what is that value?

3) What is the connection between martial arts and fighting?

Over the next few posts, I want to explore these questions and others like them, to see where our assumptions about martial arts come from and where they might inadvertently create barriers to understanding. We will start, by addressing what martial arts are (or could be), how people define them, and what role they might have played in our history.

The Definition

I like to keep things simple, wherever possible, but defining martial arts isn't something you can risk over-simplifying. Google, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, and a number of reddit blogs all go different directions. Some believe martial arts is a term for Asian systems of combat, like Kendo, Karate, or Kung Fu; excluding any system of fighting from outside the Far-East Asia-Pacific region. Other definitions exclude combat sports such as boxing or wrestling, fencing or kickboxing. Some even stress the art has to be for unarmed combat in order to be considered, which would throw Kendo and Fencing out of the conversation. For the sake of discussion, here is my definition:

"A Martial Art is any system of combat, codified by principles and concepts either written down or passed on verbally, with techniques and training methods designed to improve the practitioners understanding and competence in a fighting situation."

I like this definition because it is internationally inclusive, doesn't alienate combat sports, arts deemed too culturally specific or less valuable for self-defence, or exercises which many feel are not related to fighting at all (such as Tai Chi). If it meets the criteria of:

• Has a curriculum (written down or not)
• Improves the practitioners understanding of fighting (a little or a lot)
• Is a form of physical activity (mild, intense, or otherwise)

Then it can be considered a martial art.

The History

Systemized combat has turned the tide of wars, moved borders, and risen people who might never have featured in the annals of world history to near legendary status. I'm from the UK originally, and few heroes are as well-known in British history as Robin Hood. "Isn't he an archer?" I hear you cry, well, consider that archery takes years to master, is a tradition passed down from generation to generation (going back as far as the stone age) and fundamentally improves someone's understanding of combat. For centuries, the bow and arrow were the weapons of the common soldier, commanded enormous respect, and required a diligent and disciplined approach to learning and applying on the battlefield. Archers did not suddenly stop when they ran out of arrows. In the European history at least (and likely in many other cultures, but I will defer to experts in that field), were skilled in swordplay and wrestling so they could join in with the melee once all their arrows had been spent. Robin Hood would not be the legend he is without mastery of his martial art.

Roman soldiers of the Empire were issued standardized equipment in their spears, shields and short swords. With training they began working as a team, in sync with each other, until they were the most feared army in the world. They held this reputation for centuries, not just because of the look and feel of their equipment, but because they knew how to use it, and that is a martial art. A martial art doesn't need to have a name. Many cultures went generations without giving names to their fighting styles, even if they knew and respected fighting masters. Kung Fu, a catchall term for the Chinese martial arts, doesn't actually mean martial arts, it means "skill". The term for martial arts is wushu, and now the name of a performance based martial discipline and competitive sport.

Why should I care?

There is almost a mathematical certainty that one of your ancestors was involved in a major conflict sometime in history. Whether based on evolution, serendipity, or some other law of nature, we are all descended from people who have survived fights. The likelihood is you are descended from someone who was taught, at least to some significant level, the martial arts of their people. They were part of a class or tribe that took time out of their day to move in unison, practicing specific techniques to capture, disarm, kill or otherwise incapacitate another human being. They might not have been a knight in shining armour with amazing swordplay, they might not have been a Viking, a Samurai, a Mongol warrior, or a Kung Fu master; but they were a martial artist. And the odds are also skewed towards another truth: if it were not for the skills they were taught, they may not have survived to have children. This is not an accusation or a provocation, just a reminder of how integral to the human survival story these disciplines are:

Without martial arts, you would not exist.