Martial Arts Myths 1 of 12
January 21, 2011 by goshinman · Leave a Comment
The Hits and Myths of Martial Arts – Myth 1
by
Chris Hepler and Jennifer Brandes
A Role Playing Games Perspective
Myth 1: Taking a martial art is the same as knowing how to fight.
Whenever you listen to anyone talk about fighting, consider the source.
A martial art is a body of folklore, a tradition orally transmitted down several “generations” by master and student, modified by the personal preferences and needs of those involved. Depending on the learning environment, fighting and self-defense may be the class’s focus, or could be passed over in favor of exercise, tournament fighting, or cultural and spiritual lessons. Every martial arts instructor has a different idea of what the art is used for, and what aspects or techniques are useful and useless when violence actually hits.
Some people look at this subjectivity and get discouraged, rejecting martial arts entirely and saying that they don’t work in combat situations. This is like saying being taught a foreign language in high school is useless. It depends on the teacher and the student. Many people will never have to use it; most people can’t get it right unless they are immersed; throwing too much knowledge out at once is as bad as too little; and those who don’t make learning it a priority will only remember fragments under times of stress. The ones the knowledge works for are the ones who can make the skill seem “natural” whenever they need it.
Making use of martial arts means you must ultimately recognize what is meant for fighting and what was an “extra” designed to get the practitioner in physical and mental shape. Quite often, tradition has an unspoken reason behind it…and just as often, it is vestigial due to specific, no-longer-applicable circumstances.
For example jujitsu was created for samurai to fight other armored samurai who were well-protected against punches and kicks. However, throws, joint locks, and other grappling maneuvers still worked fine, and were in fact critical against assailants with swords. Now, while punches and kicks are obviously not always ineffective, these circumstances created an entire school of fighting which heavily favors grappling. The famous Brazilian variant of jujitsu, the Gracie system, teaches to swat the opponent’s face as a distraction technique rather than advocating punching to the face at all — reasoning that punching at high speeds in stressful situations could hurt their hand, and throwing and choking moves are more reliable.
Over-relying on a martial art’s favored moves is especially dangerous when the martial art has turned into a sport. Judo and Greco-Roman wrestling are former fighting styles from which the deadliest techniques were removed to make for matches that didn’t break murder laws. They can be reverse-engineered to become effective fighting styles with a little effort and some understanding of their principles, but learning them is not the same as training specifically to fight.
Other Myths…
1. Taking a martial art is the same as knowing how to fight.
2. Self-defense is the same thing as fighting.
3. My martial art can make you unbeatable.
4. There’s no difference between “fighting” or “kicking butt” and killing or maiming people.
5. Fights last ten minutes or more, at which time the hero can make an impressive comeback.
6. A fight only concerns the combatants.
7. Martial artists don’t need or use weapons.
8. Fighting with two weapons is difficult or confusing.
9. Weapons are heavy.
10. You can mash someone’s nose bones into their brain and kill them with a single mighty palm strike.
11. All martial arts look like Tae Kwon Do.
12. A style is a style.
The Award Winning Multiplied Force Fighting System (MFFS) 5 DVD Set.
Martial Arts Myths 11 of 12
January 21, 2011 by goshinman · 2 Comments
The Hits and Myths of Martial Arts – Myth 11
by
Chris Hepler and Jennifer Brandes
A Role Playing Games Perspective
Myth 11: All martial arts look like Tae Kwon Do.
Not by a long shot. TKD is probably the most popular martial art in America, followed closely by Shotokan karate, and quite honestly, lots of gamers have taken one or the other. (The most popular martial art in the world, actually, is t’ai chi — mostly because millions of Chinese practice it.) Tae kwon do is what you see in most movies and American television like the Power Rangers, Buffy, and Xena. It uses lots of aerial and high kicks, emphasizes flexibility, and stresses fighting at relatively long ranges, standing up, with a lot of room. This is perfect for movie cameras and audiences who want a show.
Its punches are horizontal, and hit with the first two knuckles. Practitioners wear a gi, and a colored belt indicating their rank. It’s not unusual to spin around and kick someone in the head — as a matter of fact, this is encouraged in tae kwon do tournaments, which often give two points for hitting the head, allow no direct punching to the face, and don’t count blows to the back. Fighting under these rules in real life, however, may fall into that “playing the opponent’s game” category mentioned above.
By comparison, jujitsu, aikido, and judo practitioners’ emphasis is far more on grabbing the opponent, breaking their balance, and dumping them or immobilizing them in a painful lock. Practitioners wear a heavy, quilted gi that can take the stress of a human body being picked up and thrown many times a day. High-ranking practitioners in jujitsu and aikido wear a black skirt called a hakama. This skirt, by the way, hides their footwork, and some actually have a back support that enforces proper posture.
Taijutsu, the unarmed combat style of the ninja, deserves its own special mention. It combines kicks and punches with the locks and throws of jujitsu, but is not the stuff you see in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. Though ninja clans definitely emphasized gymnastics as a part of their harsh training, and they do have some neat moves to roll out of locks and spin people over, they really didn’t believe in a stand-up fight. They needed martial techniques to take out sentries, pin people down and suffocate them in their beds, and to fight off one or two folks before they could get to their weapons and get the heck out. If they were going to run into armored samurai who trained eight hours a day in cutting people up, they were going to lose. Their favored kick is a stomping sort to the hips or knees to knock someone down so the ninja wouldn’t be chased. Lots of their hand techniques include shots to the throat, eyes, and pressure points for the same reason.
Though karate styles resemble tae kwon do superficially, there are differences. The Japanese-grown Shotokan karate and its offshoot Kyokushinkai karate are probably closest, though they emphasize lower stances and sliding the feet rather than stepping. The majority of karate styles, by the way, are not Japanese, but Okinawan. Most of the Okinawan schools use about 70% hand techniques and 30% foot techniques, have very low and sometimes pigeon-toed stances, and work with weapons. These styles include the two most popular ones of shorin-ryu and goju-ryu, as well as their synthesis, isshin-ryu (recognizable by its consistently vertical fists when punching), and uechi-ryu and shoreiryu. Most of the traditional versions do not advocate kicking above the waist. Though our research is not exhaustive, we have yet to see a movie that takes full advantage of what these karate styles have to offer. I believe The Karate Kid series were choreographed in uechi-ryu, but the movements are somewhat sloppy, and fairly slow.
In China, the one thousand or more kung fu styles should be divided into northern and southern styles, and a few progenitors. They tend to have a great variety of techniques, including some “esoteric” stuff that is meant to rip pieces (like ears) off the opponent or blind them, and dozens of different ways to hold your hand rather than a fist. Kung fu styles don’t wear gis. If a modern kung fu student isn’t wearing sweat pants and a T-shirt, the outfit is more like pajamas with a sash rather than a belt, and black sashes may or may not indicate high rank.
What you see in Jackie Chan movies and most Hong Kong flicks is lots and lots of wu t’shu (also spelled “guoshu” or “kuoshu”). This is a martial art that was a blend of many long-fist styles and standardized to be a national symbol of the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s. It’s got wide-swinging, hooking punches, spinning and aerial kicks, and weapons galore.
Northern styles tend to be “hard,” use a lot of long stances, use dozens of weapons, take up a good deal of room, and toughen the body through painful work. However, there are so many styles it is hard to generalize. Certainly Chang Chuan, Hsing-I, and White Crane fit these stereotypes. However, Monkey style, the circular Ba Gua (or “Pa Kwa”), and T’ai Ch’i are comparatively soft martial arts with fewer battlefield weapons involved.
Tibetan white crane is visually distinctive because it is a true “long-arm” and long-range form. It hardly ever draws the hands close to the body, preferring to leave them fully extended. The practitioner whips from side to side, knocking away the opponent’s arms with one and hitting them with the other. They also train to strike straight up and down more so than most styles, hitting the groin, nose, or collarbone with great bludgeoning effect.
Southern styles are stereotyped as having more hand techniques, and Southern Praying Mantis, Wing Chun, and White Eyebrow certainly emphasize very in-close, frenetic flurries of fists, palms, and fingers. Choy Li Fut and Hung Gar, though Southern, resemble Northern ones slightly more.
As an aside, the kung fu style of kempo and its somewhat-related American version of karate, kenpo, resemble most closely a mixture of Okinawan and southern Chinese styles. What is basically “the” kenpo movie is The Perfect Weapon, which also displays a little double-weapon work from arnis de mano.
Arnis was heavily influenced by (or evolved parallel to) wing chun kung fu, but while the two espouse the same principles and are seen as very combat-ready martial arts by military professionals, they are very visually distinctive.
Wing chun likes maintaining posture and balance. Given the choice between ducking and blocking, wing chun fighters generally will cover themselves with blocks and try to maintain contact with the opponent, to fight like fencers who feel the opponent’s blade and follow it along up to the target. Unlike many systems, it spends little time or emphasis on throws, primarily because it trains to avoid a grappling situation whenever possible. They’d much rather take your balance for a quarter-second and hit you than risk a half-second trying to throw you.
Arnis, because it teaches weapons very early on, moves the body much more, ducking and clearing long distances with total commitment, to get inside an opponent’s weapon range. It covers an entire gamut of weapons, from staff to stick to fist to elbow to wrestling (dumog). Ideally, a good arnis guro will teach you everything you need to know about fighting and they’ll do it quickly. But by spreading itself out, most arnis training does not have quite the same demand for refusing to give the opponent any grip whatsoever the way wing chun does, and at the lower levels, arnis is less concerned with form and precision.
Incidentally, if you are primarily familiar with a martial art through formalized practice and “forms,” or “kata,” you are not necessarily seeing all of the style. While most American karate schools teach that the movements in their kata are simple combinations of blocking and striking, ancient karate in the days of the samurai looked a lot more like jujitsu than most modern practitioners think. Most kata which are practiced in the air can be used at much closer ranges than most sensei teach. The “retreating hand” that tucks at the waist or underneath the arm is not there for show (nor is it necessarily an elbow strike to a second opponent behind you). If you want a real eye-opening exercise, practice a kata in which every pulling-back motion is done with the opponent’s wrist or elbow firmly in your grip, dragging your opponent off-balance and into your strike. Half of the awkward “blocks” or “strikes” are, in fact, throws, joint breaks and pressure-point manipulation.
Other Myths…
1. Taking a martial art is the same as knowing how to fight.
2. Self-defense is the same thing as fighting.
3. My martial art can make you unbeatable.
4. There’s no difference between “fighting” or “kicking butt” and killing or maiming people.
5. Fights last ten minutes or more, at which time the hero can make an impressive comeback.
6. A fight only concerns the combatants.
7. Martial artists don’t need or use weapons.
8. Fighting with two weapons is difficult or confusing.
9. Weapons are heavy.
10. You can mash someone’s nose bones into their brain and kill them with a single mighty palm strike.
11. All martial arts look like Tae Kwon Do.
12. A style is a style.
The Award Winning Multiplied Force Fighting System (MFFS) 5 DVD Set.
KSOMA Martial Arts Studio
November 27, 2009 by goshinman · 2 Comments
KSOMA – King’s School of Martial Arts full time martial arts studio
KSOMA – King’s School of Martial Arts has been providing quality martial arts instruction in and around the Peterborough area since the beginning of 2000. With the continued success and growth of its student base KSOMA has now opened a full time martial arts studio in Peterborough. The studio has been designed to supplement the quality of teaching by providing a quality equipped training environment, giving students access to facilities and levels of training not previously possible for us when training in church halls and sports centres.
The new centre located at Unit 4, Mancetter Square, Peterborough PE4 6BX, offers, quality instruction in Jujitsu, Eskrima, Tai Chi and Self Defence.
KSOMA Martial Art Studio
KSOMA has five experienced black belt instructors, both male and female and can provide female only sessions on request.
Classes are available for all age groups from 5yrs old upwards in separate classes for different age groups. Students can study any mixture of the arts offered in separate classes.
As we now have our own premises available we can also offer corporate classes for any of the arts as either ongoing training or short courses tailored to corporate requirements. KSOMA is also working closely with schools in the area to provide extra curricular after school classes, martial arts within PE lessons and themed days.
King’s School of Martial Arts is located at Unit 4, Mancetter Square, Peterborough, PE4 6BX
Anyone interested in classes should contact Paul on 07732 465763 or email classes@ksoma.co.uk
More information can be found at http://www.ksoma.co.uk.
KSOMA Announces Full Time Martial Art Studio in Peterborough
June 16, 2009 by goshinman · Leave a Comment
KSOMA – King’s School of Martial Arts full time martial arts studio
KSOMA – King’s School of Martial Arts has been providing quality martial arts instruction in and around the Peterborough area since the beginning of 2000. With the continued success and growth of its student base KSOMA has now opened a full time martial arts studio in Peterborough. The studio has been designed to supplement the quality of teaching by providing a quality equipped training environment, giving students access to facilities and levels of training not previously possible for us when training in church halls and sports centres.
The new centre located at Unit 4, Mancetter Square, Peterborough PE4 6BX, offers, quality instruction in Jujitsu, Eskrima, Tai Chi and Self Defence.
KSOMA Martial Art Studio
KSOMA has five experienced black belt instructors, both male and female and can provide female only sessions on request.
Classes are available for all age groups from 5yrs old upwards in separate classes for different age groups. Students can study any mixture of the arts offered in separate classes.
As we now have our own premises available we can also offer corporate classes for any of the arts as either ongoing training or short courses tailored to corporate requirements. KSOMA is also working closely with schools in the area to provide extra curricular after school classes, martial arts within PE lessons and themed days.
King’s School of Martial Arts is located at Unit 4, Mancetter Square, Peterborough, PE4 6BX
Anyone interested in classes should contact Paul on 07732 465763 or email classes@ksoma.co.uk
More information can be found at http://www.ksoma.co.uk.
