It's because most in TMA don't know how to use the techniques that they train. I'm always talking about what I did in sparring and showing part of the form the technique is found.
This is true in many schools. The problem is there has evolved a mindset that forms and fighting are two different things. This began for karate in the 1930's as competition divided the art into forms and sparring. Since many techniques in forms were not allowed in sparring, the divide grew. Over time applications of the forms were forgotten, or at least ignored.
This should be a TMA class for all instructors. Be like water.... funny how some will explain it yet they are not the same when it comes to their forms. It's like flexibility is forbidden for some. Greatest example is how I sometimes have remind students to move their feet instead of keeping it planted and twisting on the knee. Or stepping with the feet to get into position.
I don't know if you ever learned any Five Element Fist routines, but pun intended (water), they are in advanced Hung Ga, Jow Ga, and others, and the sequence is designed in a way that a flurry of strikes are thrown in a natural flowing way. There's some theory behind it, but in practice it's how you said, flexible. A test of flexibility actually.
I should define the term "for those who fight". It means that those who treat developing combat skill as the highest priority of their MA training goal. It doesn't mean that who likes to get into street fight.
All arts originally were for fighting hence the name "martial" now over years that's changed some and in some systems completely changed. But you can find effective fighters in all styles guys and gals you don't want to mess with. I've seen people from arts that get joked about being harder opponents than some of the guys I used to spar at my old mma gym. Everybody is training the same stuff now a days with the mma craze. Everyone's training muay thai and bjj, honestly it's getting predictable and I'd say even though a high level fighter in one of those combat sports have a very good 95% advantage over most people on the planet that there's still some traditional guys out there that train with the same intensity and have equal or more experience. Don't under estimate a karateka or tkd guy who has been training hard for 40 years and is a master of the art. Everyone is becoming predictable kind of like the 80s when everyone was doing karate and it ended up with alot of karate getting watered down then the ufc and now some people who train other arts think they are superior to karate or kung fu. Muay thai is good bjj is good but so are traditional arts. Want to see a fight where a former world champion and bjj phenom gets owned by a tkd blackbelt? Bj Penn vs Yair Rodriguez, Yair used a traditional tkd move to knock bj out and it wasn't even a kick. I've seen bad asses in all arts and respect everyone. Traditional guys have an advantage too, we might not be high level thai or bjj guys but we have many techniques and training methods that can make us unpredictable in a fight especially against a predictable opponent fighting the way everyone else is fighting now a day's. Don't take this the wrong way I'm not angry or mad or trying to be disrespectful and I say this with no bad intentions but the mma craze is so over saturated with the same stuff that it's to the point where people are starting to sprinkle in traditional moves they learned and getting the advantage over their opponents, and if these traditional techniques are good so is the system imo. Also I'm not a hardcore traditionalist I've trained in bjj, American kickboxing, muay thai, judo, fma, and dabbled in a few cma arts and I've seen guys from systems people joke about who could wreck some mma fighters like regional pros. A world champion is 99% advantage over the population but they are rare and a special breed. It's not the art or traditional vs new school it's the fighter and their mindset and experience. Sorry for the essay.
Being honest, it is same brush comments like this I hate about TMA's. Just old, worn out, and inaccurate at least half the time. Like you, I agree there is just too much good training out there, this includes TMA's.
My GM has black belts in three different arts. He would probably answer your question similarly.
I think that going into a fight one should just have a general strategy. For example, get in close and initially pick a couple of the following:
IMO, the best fighting strategy can be:
So true. The transition from form vs real combat often entails some slight adjustment to make the technique make sense and work. It may (in the case of footwork) entail a shuffle, an angle shift, a pivot, etc. In hand techniques, it may require a wrist rotation, a grab, a doing a combo in one count instead of two, etc.
On the subject of TKD and MT, this appeared recently.
If you're not an MMA fighter, you're not training for the purpose of fighting other martial artists.
Yeah, maybe, kinda sorta...
MMA is not the only full contact fighting system though. It might be the most popular and televized nowadays but there are definitely others, going back a long time. Some countries have long histories of such events, China, Greece, Italy, Spain, Brazil. Vale Tudo is considered a precursor of MMA but even that format is kind of young.
You know, I've seen Wing Chun students fight in Sanda, MMA, but even push hand competitions, you can tell who knows and who doesn't.
I don't think that helped them that much. You only need one guy to put the fears in to his local community enough to have the "best system". And suddenly everyone stops developing.
Yes. When I teach horizontal silk reeling I use the term 'polishing the mirror' from liuhe bafa and I teach my students that when we do this, it represents (ex. single hand push hands) but we hide the technique by adding the second hand and not turning the wrist so much. This also helps us internalize the technique by modifying how we train it from time to time. I also note that there are different techniques.
I just think it comes down to comp format. Not everyone has to compete but without some type of active 1v1, a martial art is basically incomplete. And every (legit) martial art out there has some sort of 1v1 format.
