This post intends to fill a gaping hole in the previous one and to take a hard look at traditional martial arts. Are they real? The basic assumption I made in the previous post is that if there is sort of competition where apart from extremely dangerous techniques everything is allowed, and it is open to any style, and it runs long enough to provide statistically significant results, then, in the long run, it will show which styles work in practice, and which don't.
This series of repeated experiments is impartial, quantifiable, and requires no expertise, only common sense. The UFC satisfies the above criteria. There have been more than 500 fights so far inside the octagon in the span of three decades, featuring fighters from all kinds of martial arts and combat sports. Everything from Western boxing to Chinese kung-fu had the opportunity to prove itself.
And traditional martial arts didn't shine. No one who was proficient in traditional styles only - like Karate, Taekwondo, Wing Chun, Tai Chi, Kung fu, ... - ever got close to the middle tier, let alone the top. Which came as a surprise for most. Aren't arts developed for centuries, by masters honing even the smallest moves to perfection, supposed to be superior to mundane "sports", like box or wrestling? The defenders - those who at least recognize that the burden of proof is on them - offer many explanations, and I want to address the most frequent ones here before I attempt to come up with the reasons for why the result should have been predictable.
Explanations
But there are UFC champions using traditional arts
What about Lyoto Machida, George St-Pierre, or Stephen Thompson? These karatekas are among the very best fighters in UFC! Well, yes and no. First of all, they are not simply karatekas, they are also expert grapplers, who are additionally trained in wrestling, boxing, Muay Thai, etc. Second, although they have a recognizable background in Karate, it amounts to maybe 10% of what they are doing. It lends their fighting style a distinctive sheen, but 90% of their moves are indistinguishable from the other fighters'. Also, when talking about statistics, having a handful of counterexamples against hundreds doesn't make a case. A God-given talent can compensate for a lot.
In real life, there are no rules
Eastern martial arts have been developed for life and death situations, so goes one argument, not for playing by the rules. That is, their masters on the street would employ techniques that are too dangerous, therefore illegal even in the UFC. On the other hand, the effectiveness of combat sports in real life is hampered by the artificial rules and protective gear their practitioners are used to.
This is a very weak argument. Lethal techniques by definition can not be sufficiently practiced. You can't learn how to crush someone's jugular with your fingers by practicing it in slow motion against an obliging partner any more than learning how to hit someone with a right hook by only imitating it many times over while your partner patiently plays the role of a sandbag. One can only master a technique by continuous and persistent trial and error. By trying to apply it hundreds of times against training partners who do their best to thwart it. The only proof of having learned anything practical is if you can successfully apply it frequently enough. If you not a single time did it for real, thinking that you'll be able to in a situation where you are in real danger is delusional.
Prizefighting is beneath the arts
The next explanation is that it is beneath a real master to participate in such a bloodsport entertainment. I'm sure that many masters share this view. But I'm also sure that not every one of them does. From the tens of thousands of students of martial arts, there must be a large number of them who don't feel the competition demeaning. Yet, they are nowhere to be seen. At least not among the winners. There is a craze nowadays about exposing fake masters, and youtube is overflowing with videos where some MMA fighter beats the crap about masters of exotic styles. Plus, in the martial arts lore, the stories of wandering masters who developed their style by accepting and actively seeking challenges are abundant. The founders of almost every style were famous for their supposedly numerous victories where they proved that their new school is better than the rest. The conveniently risk-averse high-mindedness is a recent phenomenon.
The aim is spiritual development
Then come the ones who claim that the purpose of martial arts is developing the character and keeping the body healthy - therefore the effectiveness of them as combat styles is of secondary importance. This is lame. If the aim is health and spiritual development, don't call your method a martial art. Either it is "martial", that is, it prepares its practitioners to defend themselves in violent situations, or it's just a cheap PR trick to claim that what you sell is more than it really is.
Furthermore, the traditional arts are suboptimal by their own standards. What instills more respect and humility and the appreciation of hard work into the students: testing their progress and facing their limitations every day on the mat or practicing forms and meditating on theory?
Self-defense is more than dueling
The last explanation is that martial arts focus on self-defense, which is more general than a one-on-one fight. Situation awareness, fighting with multiple or armed opponents, etc. This argument has some merit. But still, a more holistic approach to combat doesn't explain why the practitioners tend not to excel in one-on-one fights - which is still supposed to be the center of any martial art.
These are the common arguments for the lack of evidence that traditional styles work. I tried to explain why they are all unconvincing. The simplest explanation is often the best - and the burden of proof is on the one who argues against it. The simplest explanation for the lack of evidence supporting the effectiveness of conventional martial arts is... that they are not very effective. They are tradition-bound, overcomplicated, inward-looking, and they emphasize practicing forms over sparring exercises.
The problems
Overcomplicated
By overcomplicated I mean that the Eastern styles tend to have a huge repertoire of techniques, and most of them are not very usable. Karate (and I'm sure various kung fu styles as well) for example, has a plethora of exotic strikes, such as the one using the pressed-together fingertips in form of a bird's beak (chicken-head strike) to hit the side of the neck just behind the collarbone. For one, hitting the neck with a simply clenched fist is probably much more damaging - unless one imagines that he can tear up some artery or hit a deadly pressure-point with his beak-transformed hand (watched too many movies presumably) -, and for two, good luck with hitting a small specific area on a moving opponent. Or as another example, the world is yet to see anyone in the octagon going down from a classic, back-of-the-neck-hitting, knife-hand Karate chop. It's as if the founders of most styles had wanted to incorporate every possible move that can be useful in some imaginable situation, while not giving much thought to how frequently those situations are likely to happen in real life.
The majority of defense techniques are not that versatile maybe, but equally useless. Traditional Karate blocks are practiced with opponents who stop and freeze after a strike, so the blocking hand has enough time to meet the attacker's hand helpfully held motionless in the air. The testament of their impracticality is that these blocks go unused even in Karate-competitions, where the fighters resort to simple parries, like boxers.
The unnecessary large and mostly useless repertoire also means that even if it contains reliably effective techniques, the students have much less time for practicing them than kick-boxers or Thai-boxers.
Tradition-bound
Due to their heavy emphasis on tradition, martial arts evolve with glacier velocity. The MMA world fully adopted BJJ in the course of a few years only. It simply worked and everyone recognized its necessity. Low-kicks from Muay-Thai got integrated as well in no time. Martial art techniques evolve beyond trivial changes only when someone founds his own school and redesigns the repertoire. If the students ask about the reasons behind a certain technique, the master doesn't point to the twenty-five times Royce Gracie submitted his opponents with that particular arm lock - instead, the explanation often boils down to that "the old masters knew what they were doing, and you should believe it works".
Navel-gazing
The inward-lookingness is the inevitable consequence of the tradition-bound mentality. Since we know that ours are the best offensive techniques, learning defense only against them is sufficient. Traditional Karate or Wing Chun with their emphasis on linear moves don't have an idiomatic way to deal with circular strikes like a boxer's hook. And repeating the Wing Chun mantra of "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line" won't deflect a body shot or an uppercut. Wing Chun in particular is a style that lives inside its own bubble. The famous sticky hands practice, in which the partners keep constant hand contact to be able to react to the opponent's move, is often a spectacle of strikes and parries exchanged with almost supernatural speed when demonstrated by advanced students. But it works only if the opponent plays the same game, as the very few Wing Chun practitioners stepping in the octagon can testify.
What about Aikido and the like?
So far, I have only mentioned martial arts focusing on strikes and kicks. What about the ones using wrist locks, throws, arm-twists, like Aikido or Japanese Jiu-Jitsu? There is even less evidence in their favor, and every problem above applies to them. The simple fact is that just can't catch a wrist in the air. Sure, some can if his opponent tells him exactly what technique he will use. When the attacker can choose randomly between two pre-agreed techniques, it is much harder. When it's a choice of five, I think it's almost impossible. So what about a real fight with two dozen possibilities? What if he can also fake? Or do combinations? Boxers who practice nothing else than evading punches can only block or duck one - and often not even that. Catching one in mid-air and improvise something...good luck with that.
What about the famous "using the opponent's weight and strength against him" principle? This is even more ridiculous than the aforementioned Wing Chun aphorism. Does anyone really think that the weight categories in Judo competitions are there to protect the heavy and strong from the smaller people?
It is not to say that Aikido or Jiu-Jitsu is completely useless. They probably come in handy in self-defense situations when someone is trying to shove you around or grab your jacket, and thus expose himself to a counter-attack. But the assumption that the opponent is always less competent or can be taken by surprise is not something to reliably count on.
Emphasizing forms over sparring
The little emphasis on sparring in the training sessions is the ultimate problem with traditional martial arts and the one from which the others follow. And also a probable reason for their existence. Sparring is a force for convergence. Whatever background one has and whatever forms he practices seem to have little effect on the techniques he will use in a full-contact sparring match or in a real fight. Look at occasional videos on Youtube where kung fu masters are challenged and you'll see none of the moves you expect from movies or staged demonstrations. But it doesn't exclusively apply to people who volunteer to get disabused of their delusions in front of the whole world. To a lesser extent maybe, but it's true for professionals as well. The differences between the moves of a, let's say, Thai-boxer and a Kyokushin karateka in a full-contact match are far outweighed by the similarities. Martial arts even at their bests are guilty of the narcissism of small differences.
Infatuation with the number of techniques and the importance of perfecting every little detail crowds out the development of the most important skills in a fight: the sense of distance and timing, the ability to read the opponent, keeping your composure after eating a heavy blow, the ability to cope with the messiness of a fight where nothing ever goes exactly how one plans it.
Caveats
Of course, my arguments above are sweeping generalizations, bound to be false here and there. There must be very combat-centric styles that, nevertheless, are not interested in competitions, or not in UFC, at least. Not every style is equally bad either, and there can be huge differences between dojos of the same style. Some dojos are competition-oriented and pay lip service only to the rest. Some traditional Karate styles, most prominently Kyokushin, are very much combat-focused - and produced great UFC champions, like Georges St-Pierre. The most decisive factor that reliably predicts a style's effectiveness is not whether the traditional label applies or not. It is how much emphasis it places on sparring. For example, there are great Judokas in UFC, but I also know about black-belts who didn't even need to spar on their exam.
Old myths in the new world
Will traditional martial arts disappear eventually if enough people watch combat sports and read this post? I don't think so. They appeal to the human psyche in ways that down-to-the-earth sports like wrestling or box don't. Their techniques can look amazing. Demonstrations, like shows of acrobatics, are often a joy to watch. They provide not only physical education but lifestyle guidance, social structure, a feeling of belonging, and mystery. The promise of secret knowledge - who knows, some old masters perhaps really can control hidden energies or you can be lethal even in your eighties - always lingers in the back of the mind even for skeptical and reasonable students.
The myths surrounding martial arts are not in any way less fascinating and enjoyable than other kinds of fiction. Today's UFC champions are 30-some guys who mostly have bodies of Greek gods and are experts in multiple fighting styles on Olympic levels. The idea that there still are some old masters in the mountains of China that could beat them easily if they deigned to do so is a hilarious and amusing testament of human gullibility. And yet it's something that life would be poorer without. Suspending our disbelief is necessary to enjoy works of fiction. Movies of Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan, Van Damme, Seagal have been formative experiences of many kids, me among them. If some have problems with re-adjusting to reality when the film is over, it's not the end of the world. And it's not incurable either. A punch in the nose with a boxing glove usually helps.
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