What makes a Martial Art?????

[chrismay101]

So what exactly makes a martial art?

Is being able to jump in the air and do 100 spining kicks Break boards with your hands, arm locking someone?

Or is it being able to perform your arts Kata, Pattern, Forms, Tul's

Or is it a combination of both.

some of the MMA fighters are they martial artists? or are they just good fighters?
Im not talking about the guys who have learnt Taekwondo, Karate, Ju-jitsu or any of the other arts - got there Black belts then learnt another art.
I mean they Learnt how to kick, punch, grapple and thats it or are these the true martial artists?

Just want peoples opinions?
Please no arguments.

 

[Chizikunbo]

First and foremost RESPECT makes a martial artist, and seperates us from common street thugs, the second aspect is PHILOSOPHY, cause without philosophy we are just stylized brawlers...
--josh

 

[tellner]

This is where a little etymology can help. Back in the day Art meant great skill, generally of a sort which transcended mere technical perfection. Martial meant things associated with Mars, the god of war, but had conotations of physical conflict of other sorts. Someone with Art is a martial artist. The school or style is just someone's particular avenue to that exalted state. Throughout history students of any discipline start by copying the master. They learned the technical aspects of their practice, gained skill and eventually worked for him or set out on their own. Masters of Defense in the West and their equivalents elsewhere had similar schools although fewer of their students made a living at it than did the the blacksmiths, the bakers or even the fine and decorative artists.

So if you're learning the skills and understanding to help you master and gain Art in things related to combat or conflict - don't get me started on what constitutes "real" combat - you're doing a martial art. If you're making progress towards that you are a student of the martial arts. If you've gotten there and other people who have can recognize it then you are a martial artist.

Forms, breaking things, snappy delivery and a working knowledge of about fifty words in Korean may be useful means towards that goal. They are training aids in pursuit of Art in the old sense. Someone who doesn't have that but has the attributes and skills that will help him in whatever fight he's likely to get into is closer to the right track.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Said it before and I will say it again

Before coming to MT I would have said

martial arts

any of the traditional forms of Oriental self-defense or combat that utilize physical skill and coordination with or without weapons, as karate, aikido, judo, or kung fu, sometimes practiced as sport.

After coming to MT I now say

any of the traditional or non-traditional forms of self-defense or combat that require training and that utilize physical skill and coordination with or without weapons. Sometimes practiced as sport.

One of the things I train is Sanda, no forms and it is very much a martial art
Another thing I train is Xingyi which has forms and is very much a martial art
And another is Taiji which has a whole lot of forms and it too is very much a martial art.

Is MMA a martial art, I would say yes, very much so.

 

[tellner]

First and foremost RESPECT makes a martial artist, and seperates us from common street thugs, the second aspect is PHILOSOPHY, cause without philosophy we are just stylized brawlers...
--josh

I have a huge Honeydew list today, so you'll just get the short version.

First, not one in a thousand martial arts teachers knows the square root of diddly about philosophy, either homegrown or traditional. Rather fewer are qualified to instruct it. What passes for philosophy in most martial arts schools is few platitudes, some warmed over Zen by someone who has never spent a day sitting and staring at a wall, maybe a few quotes from the Tao Te Ching and speculations on the dojo kun.

Any practice taken far enough will lead one outside the purely physical and technical. You'll get insights and gain perspective about the outer world and the inner. If you know people who've gone through the same thing many will have reached similar conclusions through a similar process of development. When you're a student they will teach you things to keep
you headed in the right direction. This is true for any worthwhile practice from botany to barrel making.

If you're bumping up against mortality, profound emotional trauma and having to do terrible things on a regular basis it will be a lot more acute. That's why the Janissaries were tutored by Bektashi Sufis and why the Samurai practiced esoteric Buddhism. People like that need to find a way to live with these extremely unpleasant realities and maintain their humanity in the face of horrors which they may have to perform. There's also nothing quite like getting shot at to get you considering the bigger questions even if it's only "What happens when we die? Why am I holding this spear? Why didn't I stay on the farm, grow rice and marry the neighbor girl like Momma wanted me to?"

Of course, most people will not be professional soldiers or get in more than one or two life-threatening situations. Like the physical training the philosophical should be appropriate to your situation, your goals and your capacity. That's why there are different yogas for soldiers, peasants and priests. If you are going to be in combat every day for the next five years you need one thing. If you are taking up Oriental boxing as a hobby, a sport and a social activity you can probably get by at the fortune cookie level or use it as an excuse to study other interesting things. There's no need for the trauma of the other sort. And there's no reason to spend inordinate time and energy on it. If you're a competitive athlete you need the things that coaches have been doing for millenia. And if you want to be a conscious, complete, fully awakened human being martial arts can be a wonderful vehicle for that. Unless your teacher is also trained in an appropriate spiritual discipline it can be a very tough row to hoe. The overwhelming majority aren't no matter how many stripes they have on their fashionably frayed black belts.

Then there is the matter of "respect" and "humility". A lot of martial artists take great pride in their humility and are pretty arrogant about how humble they are. Unlike mere brawlers they are Martial Artists. They know the True Meaning of Respect. Hai, Sensei!

Big. ****ing. Deal.

Don't strain your arm patting yourself on the back.

If your school derives from mass physical training for soldiers there will be an emphasis on military style discipline. That means tearing someone down and destroying him so that he can be rebuilt into the sort of competent Pfc. who will stay in line, perform predictably and charge into cannon fire without a second thought. If that's what you want, the US Army is looking for people who want to serve their country. And they'll do a much better job because the training is designed by the best professionals in the business. You'll get the whole thing, not just bits of PT from someone else's army sixty years ago. Part of that training is reflexive obedience to authority. In many martial arts schools that constitutes "respect". "Salute the uniform, not the man" turns into neurotic performance and exaggeration of rituals connected with the training when it's divorced from actually going out onto the battlefield.

Outside of that it's mostly a matter of not being a complete *******. That's something that's harder than most of us imagine. Be polite and respectful to elders. Don't cause fights. Don't give offense that could cause fights unless you have a really good reason to start one. Be kind to those weaker than you. That's what a lot of this comes down to. It gets formalized because people want to make sure everyone's reading off the same page and because there are some pretty dimbulbs out there who need to have things made really really clear.

Look at wild animals. If they are hurt, they can't forage. If they can't forage they die. The more social they are the more mechanisms they have to keep from fighting unless they really have to. There are threat displays, dominance and submission displays, Don't Screw With Me displays, displacement gestures, appeasement gestures and all the rest. They're all ways of communicating intention and avoiding mistakes. It's not just the predators. Wildebeest do amazing jumping displays when predators get too close. They're saying "See how athletic I am? If you hunt me you'll get tired and won't eat today. So let's avoid the unpleasantness. Go eat him over there. He's kind of lame and scrawny."

Respect in this case means an understanding that the other guy can be dangerous. Because of that it's best not to underestimate him or get into a situation unless you've got a reason that outweighs the risks. That's what most of this comes down to, making sure people don't get into fights that they don't have to or shouldn't. Well, that and not being a jerk so that you will be able to function in the world. Different cultures have different ideas about exactly what that means, so there are different forms of respect and different standards about proper human relations. And they can look pretty weird when they're applied outside that culture.


Hell, here's a better example close to home. I spent a summer living with some friends. They had a cat. He was a huge, muscular small-animal-killing kind of ur-cat. He hadn't had his spark plugs since he was a kitten, but the queen cats would come around when they were in heat to look for him. He'd look at them as if to say "I don't know what you want from me, lady." He wasn't a house cat. Definitely outdoors. And he would do things like push his food dish out so that birds would come and eat from it while he lay in ambush.

One night we heard sounds like something out of the Christian hell. He was in the garage pretty cut up. There was his orange fur. There was gray fur. There were cat claws. There were bits of racoon claw. After that this young boar racoon would come in every night. He wouldn't attack the cat. He'd go over to the food dish. He and the cat would exchange a look. He'd take two mouthfulls of kibble and head off. The cat respected the fact that the coon really could have killed and eaten him. The coon understood that if he did he'd be too badly jacked up to find food and would probably starve. In the world of combat that is the essence of respect.

People always bring up trash-talking MMA competitors. Some athletes are good people. Others are prima donnas. Others trash talk to establish dominance over opponents or as a marketing ploy. They are all tactics for competition, part of the game. So a lot of the whole "They are not Martial Artists who understand Respect" is really asking the wrong question. Besides, a lot of the really Great Masters of Old were arrogant, nasty, spiteful, violent, drunken skirt-chasing sons of bitches.

And that is about all I have to say now about philosophy and respect.

 

[xTNVx NirVana]

Wow, nice speech.
Bigger than I would write for a school report sometimes
Hehe

 

[kuntawguro]

wind him up and watch him go!!!

 

[Kacey]

From Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: martial art
Function: noun
: any of several arts of combat and self defense (as karate and judo) that are widely practiced as sport
- martial artist noun

This is, of course, the most basic definition. Most people would add things to it - for myself, I would add that to be a good martial art, and therefore a good martial artist, there must be some measure of morality, of proper use of the skills obtained - otherwise, you are, IMHO, a street brawler who fights for the pleasure of fighting.

 

[exile]

not one in a thousand martial arts teachers knows the square root of diddly about philosophy, either homegrown or traditional. Rather fewer are qualified to instruct it. What passes for philosophy in most martial arts schools is few platitudes, some warmed over Zen by someone who has never spent a day sitting and staring at a wall, maybe a few quotes from the Tao Te Ching and speculations on the dojo kun.
...a lot of the really Great Masters of Old were arrogant, nasty, spiteful, violent, drunken skirt-chasing sons of bitches.

And that is about all I have to say now about philosophy and respect.

I'm not sure anything else needs to be said. From their own writings, and what was reported about them by their contemporaries, Bushi Matsumura, Anko Itosu, Chotoku Kyan and Choki Motobu were hard-fighting, hard drinking street brawlers who fought out of both necessity and pleasure, or something related to it. There is no question they did `fieldwork' in their exploration of karate's technical possibilities: as Bruce Clayton reports of Motobu, possibly Itosu's most gifted student ever, `every time Itosu taught him a new technique, Motobu would rush down to Shuri's red-light district and try it out'; he also cites Mark Bishop to the effect that `Kyan admonished his students that hard drinking and fornication with prostitutes were an essential part of their martial arts training', and by all accounts he practiced what he preached. Matsumura and Itosu were both ruthless fighters who dispatched their opponents pitilessly and swiftly, without worrying too much about minimizing damage. Taken as a group, the founders of modern karate and its Japanese and Korean variants were harsh, tough fighters who would have laughed in your face if you tried to tell them that respect, humility, or anything else except for fighting skill, were essential to being a martial artist.

Funakoshi sold karate to the Japanese education and military bureaucracy as a character-builder, sure. But as Bill Burgar observes, `character building' had a somewhat different meaning in 1920s Japan than it does in the modern West, something more along the lines of trainability for, and acquiesence in, self-sacrifice in the service of the Emperor (in particular, self-sacrifice on the battlefield). And Funakoshi sold the same story to the American occupiers of Japan after the war for a different purpose, as part of a con job that karate wasn't, after all, about training people to fight effectively. This allowed him and his students to keep teaching it during the postwar phase when the Allied authorities were demilitarizing Japan down to the bone and suppressing every vestige of preparedness for combat that they could find.

Anyone is free to ignore these facts, of course. But I don't think that a definition of `martial art' which excludes the founders of Okinawan karate, Shotokan and related Japanese styles, and the Korean arts which became Tang Soo Do and Taekwondo, is going to have much credibility, eh?

 

[Xue Sheng]

I'm not sure anything else needs to be said. From their own writings, and what was reported about them by their contemporaries, Bushi Matsumura, Anko Itosu, Chotoku Kyan and Choki Motobu were hard-fighting, hard drinking street brawlers who fought out of both necessity and pleasure, or something related to it. There is no question they did `fieldwork' in their exploration of karate's technical possibilities: as Bruce Clayton reports of Motobu, possibly Itosu's most gifted student ever, `every time Itosu taught him a new technique, Motobu would rush down to Shuri's red-light district and try it out'; he also cites Mark Bishop to the effect that `Kyan admonished his students that hard drinking and fornication with prostitutes were an essential part of their martial arts training', and by all accounts he practiced what he preached. Matsumura and Itosu were both ruthless fighters who dispatched their opponents pitilessly and swiftly, without worrying too much about minimizing damage. Taken as a group, the founders of modern karate and its Japanese and Korean variants were harsh, tough fighters who would have laughed in your face if you tried to tell them that respect, humility, or anything else except for fighting skill, were essential to being a martial artist.

Funakoshi sold karate to the Japanese education and military bureaucracy as a character-builder, sure. But as Bill Burgar observes, `character building' had a somewhat different meaning in 1920s Japan than it does in the modern West, something more along the lines of trainability for, and acquiesence in, self-sacrifice in the service of the Emperor (in particular, self-sacrifice on the battlefield). And Funakoshi sold the same story to the American occupiers of Japan after the war for a different purpose, as part of a con job that karate wasn't, after all, about training people to fight effectively. This allowed him and his students to keep teaching it during the postwar phase when the Allied authorities were demilitarizing Japan down to the bone and suppressing every vestige of preparedness for combat that they could find.

Anyone is free to ignore these facts, of course. But I don't think that a definition of `martial art' which excludes the founders of Okinawan karate, Shotokan and related Japanese styles, and the Korean arts which became Tang Soo Do and Taekwondo, is going to have much credibility, eh?

Well of course it was that way in Japan…. OBVIOUSLY!!!!… Unlike China, they were all Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist scholars….

Aw who am I trying to kid :uhyeah:

Bottom-line here folks is that martial arts of old were designed for fighting, killing and survival not spiritual well being or honor. I am not as up on the history of Japanese martial arts as I am China but if I had to guess the whole honor thing came along with Bushido.

But when you are talking any thing from East Asia they do not separate things like we do so it can be said that Taoism and Buddhism are part of the martial arts of East Asia. This does not mean that every martial artist is a Taoist, Buddhist, Confucian or gives a hoot about honor. They just don’t see the separation between things like we do in the west.

So in China you have very well trained Taoist martial artists (Wudang) and you have very well trained Buddhist martial artists (Shaolin). Both are very religious both are martial artists but that does not mean that the guy down the street that is trained in Long Fist or Xingyi is either. It also does not mean that either Taoist or Buddhist will not kick your butt should they see fit or that they have any concern about honor what so ever beyond that which they feel is directly associated with Taoism or Buddhism and of course ancestor stuff and the Emperor, but they could be just as arrogant as the next guy.

 

[kidswarrior]

This is where a little etymology can help. Back in the day Art meant great skill, generally of a sort which transcended mere technical perfection. Martial meant things associated with Mars, the god of war, but had conotations of physical conflict of other sorts. Someone with Art is a martial artist. The school or style is just someone's particular avenue to that exalted state. Throughout history students of any discipline start by copying the master. They learned the technical aspects of their practice, gained skill and eventually worked for him or set out on their own. Masters of Defense in the West and their equivalents elsewhere had similar schools although fewer of their students made a living at it than did the the blacksmiths, the bakers or even the fine and decorative artists.

So if you're learning the skills and understanding to help you master and gain Art in things related to combat or conflict - don't get me started on what constitutes "real" combat - you're doing a martial art. If you're making progress towards that you are a student of the martial arts. If you've gotten there and other people who have can recognize it then you are a martial artist.

Forms, breaking things, snappy delivery and a working knowledge of about fifty words in Korean may be useful means towards that goal. They are training aids in pursuit of Art in the old sense. Someone who doesn't have that but has the attributes and skills that will help him in whatever fight he's likely to get into is closer to the right track.

OMG, I agree with tellner. Nuff said.

And anyone who can work 'etymology' into a MT discussion, well, that's extra credit. Now the long rant on philosophy which came later, I don't know. Didn't read the whole thing.

 

[exile]

Bottom-line here folks is that martial arts of old were designed for fighting, killing and survival not spiritual well being or honor. I am not as up on the history of Japanese martial arts as I am China but if I had to guess the whole honor thing came along with Bushido.

Hey, XS, not to derail the thread or anything... but did you just score your third gold star???

 

[Flying Crane]

The concepts of Honor, Respect, and Character-building in martial arts really came about with the modern age of effective police force and judicial system, which were designed to take on the roll of protection of the populace and retribution for crimes done. Theoretically, the individual was no longer supposed to take responsibility for their own safety (of course reality and theory are often at opposite ends of the spectrum), so the focus in training began to change.

On one level, the newer law enforcement systems are effective enough that most people do not have a regular reason to fight anybody. This gave people a reason to become introspective and come up with new reasons to justify training. So many people began making the philosophical connection, albeit somewhat forced. It also paved the way for karate daycare and the sensei as glorified babysitter. Martial arts did not need to prove their worth any longer, in order to survive. According to the new philosophy of training, martial arts aren't even about fighting anymore, and some would have you believe that THEY NEVER EVER WERE!

In old China, every village or clan had its own method of fighting. This is why we see so many different Chinese systems today, altho many are probably very similar to one another. But this was the first line of defense against bandits, marauders, and invading warlords. Their methods were designed to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. After all, it was probably a three-week hike to the next larger town to get the local magistrate to come out with a group of soldiers/police to protect the citizenry. A bit late by then. The people needed to defend themselves, to the extreme.

 

[tellner]

Well Kacey, I'm not being negative about practicing martial arts. Even when it's tedious and difficult martial arts practice is about as much fun as you can have with all of your clothes on. It's a great hobby. If you have good teachers like I am blessed with you can get some skills with depth and learn how to be a better fighter. And as a discipline, not for discipline but as a discipline it can incidentally be a great vehicle for making some very worthwhile changes in yourself. For me there's also a religious aspect. My most deeply held beliefs require some sort of service to promote good and prevent evil. Providing for the common defense of good people helps fulfill that obligation.

Philosophy? Yes, it can be a vehicle for that, too. A lot of things that were woo-woo mumbo-jumbo and horse apples turn out to be simple matter of fact truths. At the proper time and in the proper measure the mental and spiritual training work synergetically with the physical. That depends on having the right sort of teacher. You can do it yourself, but then the teacher and the student both have to be the right sort of person

What do I dislike, maybe even despise? Lots of things. For instance, if I ever find the guy who invented the blow in cards in magazines or Canter and Siegel (who invented spamming) there may well be blood on the floor :ak47:

In this case what I hate are lies and nonsense designed to turn people into things. Most martial arts history is faked and prettied up. A lot of the "traditions", "philosophy", "respect" and ritualized trappings do not serve any useful purpose. They are there to make people unthinkingly obedient. Or they become an end in themselves. The more elaborate and rigid they become the easier it is to denigrate anyone who doesn't quite measure up. The more one's quality as a martial artist depends on following a code of dogma and ritual and the less on her actual qualities as a human being and fighter the crazier the whole thing gets. A lot of the supposed ancient traditions seem downright bizarre to people from the original cultures. They've taken on a life of their own in the minds of latter-day foreign practitioners. That life gets further and further from original intent.

Sometimes the original intent isn't all that hot. Others have alluded to the uses of what Draeger would call "Modern Budo" as tools to turn people into self-sacrificing machines. The advanced Buddhist idea of detachment becomes willingness to die for the State. Loyalty becomes subservience. Etiquette becomes a series of stupid status games based on secret knowledge of arbitrary rituals. Histories get invented to make local boxing the culmination of a 2000 or 4000 year unbroken history. This makes certain people falsely proud and everyone else seem a little less while bullying the faithful into giving up their critical faculties. After all, who are insignificant you to question the wisdom of millenia?

All of these things detract from the martial arts. They make unimportant things seem vital and cause people to lose their capacity to perceive things clearly.

My teacher's teacher has said a lot of very wise things over the years and the usual fraction of stuff that's nonsense. One of them was an unvarnished piece of The Straight Dope(tm): "The truth is hard enough. Don't feed them ********."

Ritual behavior disconnected from purpose is ********. So are things that actively make a worse fighter (in whatever arena the person is planning to fight in) for some abstruse senseless rationalization. So is pride of the sort masquerading as humility. So is mindless obedience to whomever is in authority even when there is evidence that they are leading you off the edge of a cliff. So are things which make you deny reality in favor of parrotting what you have been told. "Oh, that's not real martial arts. It's just fighting. Don't worry about it. Wave your arms and legs in patterns you don't understand and feel superior to him," is only one of the more obvious examples.

This stuff is hard enough when it's taught and done right. If you've got an interest in prevailing or even surviving in the conflict you are preparing for you don't have time for things that make you worse or blinder and stupider. You don't have the luxury of denying reality or doing things that really don't have a function, especially when you aren't experienced enough to tell the difference. If it does, then do it. If it doesn't, there's no reason to propagate the error by pushing it on the next generation of practitioners.

Do I respect my teachers? Of course. Beyond the normal human courtesy everyone starts out with it's based on my experience with them and their record of showing they deserve it. Do I respect the rights and prerogatives of others? Hope so. Do I respect everyone I cross arms or get in a fight with? Damn skippy I do. I respect the fact that they are dangerous and show that respect by not pulling punches or letting up as long as they are a danger. Maybe some day I'll find someone whom I can "fight with contempt" as my guru puts it. But I'm not holding my breath over that one.

Beyond that, what sort of respect should a person give? How does putting reasonable limits on it make me negative about martial arts?

Here endeth The Rant :angel:

 

[exile]

The concepts of Honor, Respect, and Character-building in martial arts really came about with the modern age of effective police force and judicial system, which were designed to take on the roll of protection of the populace and retribution for crimes done. Theoretically, the individual was no longer supposed to take responsibility for their own safety (of course reality and theory are often at opposite ends of the spectrum), so the focus in training began to change.

On one level, the newer law enforcement systems are effective enough that most people do not have a regular reason to fight anybody. This gave people a reason to become introspective and come up with new reasons to justify training. So many people began making the philosophical connection, albeit somewhat forced. It also paved the way for karate daycare and the sensei as glorified babysitter. Martial arts did not need to prove their worth any longer, in order to survive. According to the new philosophy of training, martial arts aren't even about fighting anymore, and some would have you believe that THEY NEVER EVER WERE!

In old China, every village or clan had its own method of fighting. This is why we see so many different Chinese systems today, altho many are probably very similar to one another. But this was the first line of defense against bandits, marauders, and invading warlords. Their methods were designed to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. After all, it was probably a three-week hike to the next larger town to get the local magistrate to come out with a group of soldiers/police to protect the citizenry. A bit late by then. The people needed to defend themselves, to the extreme.

Exactly right, and this was just what I was thinking of in connection with the different contexts in which TMAs were first created in Asia as vs. those which now support them in the modern West. I strongly suspect that, as with many things, the TMAs have been recruited to satisfy certain romantic yearnings that members of our (post)industrial urban societies harbor, which all our sophisticated (and extremely successful) reductionist views of the universe—and our place within it—just can't address. The immense popularity of Tolkien's work, and other fantasies incorporating essentially feudal ideals of chivalry, fealty and all the rest, is another expression of these same longings for a kind of heroic way of life that seems utterly impossible now (and in fact never really existed historically). But for some reason, we seem to want badly the possibility of such a way of life, of some kind...

The TMAs play perfectly into these vague aspirations, and the thoroughly fictitious codes of completely idealized ancient warriors and fighters wind up serving the same end as the fantasy medievalism, with the extra benefit that people can add a strong dose of humility, self-denial and wisdom—not exactly the strong points of the western heroic tradition, even in Arthurian legend, except in its most absurdly romanticized form!—into the mix. But the history of the TMAs and their practitioners, so far as we can document, is very much as you say in all the countries where they originated. They were harsh, brutal systems of self-defense designed for those harsh, brutal circumstances that most people were forced to live in throughout their lives.

Tellner's point about what `martial' (referring to combat) and `art' (referring to a well developed set of skills, as in e.g., `domestic arts' etc.) mean in combination really contains the answer to the OP's question, I believe. A martial art is a well-developed system of combat skills that has been tested by the experience of a sufficient number of fighters over time to have some claims to effectiveness in use in a violent physical confrontation (and thus has enough breadth and depth to provide resources to defend against a wide variety of common attacking moves). A martial artist is someone who has, to some degree or another, mastered such a system. Anything further you want to add on... well, that's up to you. But I don't think it makes sense to deny the description `martial art' to anything which meets this `minimalist definition', because so far as I can see, that definition correspnds to the common properties of the things we call martial arts. I certainly don't think there's the slightest historical justification for demanding training in, or knowledge of, Asian philosophical/religious/cosmological/whatever thought, or saintly humility, or any of the rest. I'm not saying that such knowledge or saintliness isn't admirable, just that it doesn't have any more to do with the TMAs than it does with other useful skill systems such as chess or skiing...

 

[tellner]

I propose that Exile, Flying Crane, Xue Sheng and I form a cranky-yet-heroic band known as "The Four Cynical Curmudgeons". We can travel the Intrawebs fighting naivete and squashing innocent enthusiasm wherever it rears its head. We can have cool names like "Feet of Clay" and "Captain Verbosity" and RantGirl (or RantBoy depending).

 

[chrismay101]

Tellner.

thanks for the replys you must have alot of time to waste! just kidding!

Is a kick just a kick? Is one persons round house kick the same as another persons turning kick?

 

[Xue Sheng]

I propose that Exile, Flying Crane, Xue Sheng and I form a cranky-yet-heroic band known as "The Four Cynical Curmudgeons". We can travel the Intrawebs fighting naivete and squashing innocent enthusiasm wherever it rears its head. We can have cool names like "Feet of Clay" and "Captain Verbosity" and RantGirl (or RantBoy depending).

I Prefer “Captain Reality” or simply "His High Omnipotent Lord, Master and Evil Wizard of Xuefu”.... actually I prefer the second one over the first

 

[Bigshadow]

Martial means War or war-like. People who are war-like are warriors. Warriors by and large protect others. Those are "Martial" artists. Then there are those who are in it for themselves. For them it is about "Me". My title, my rank, my trophies, my score, my ego, etc.

Certainly martial artists can, do, and will protect themselves, but they give of themselves as well in times of need. They protect those who cannot protect themselves. They save lives, including the ones that would do them harm, if at all possible. There is a balance between self and others.

Art is another giving endeavor. Artists create things for other's enjoyment. They give of themselves. Music, painting, drawing, flower arranging, etc. These people learn and do these and express themselves through their actions for other's to enjoy life. Again, I go back to Protecting life is what Martial Arts are about.

Things like kicks, punches, weapons, throws, and the myriad of other things that make up an art, is just but a note, a strokes of the brush or pen, or a placement of a flower.

This is what separates a martial artist from a common thug.

 

[TraditionalTKD]

Difficult to explain. To me, a martial art is an activity that trains the body and mind to express beauty, grace, power, and self expression through actions that could be incorporated as warlike or military.
In that aspect, free fighting in itself is not martial art unless you are training to achieve something other than knocking out the opponent or making a point. If you are training to practice grace, flow, beautiful technique, and rhythm then you are practicing martial art. Art, remember, is something that allows you to achieve self expression. Someone who is able to put all this together is unique in the sense that he/she is readily identifiable and their technique is unique to them.
Form also plays a big part of this. Do we practice form for self defense? Not really. We train in form to help us achieve the actions I described above. In this sense, Bruce Lee's opinions about form were off the mark. Remember, he was a young man when he said that. I know lots of young men who would rather free fight than do form. Form can assist and aid in free fighting, but the two are separate entities. Both assist in the ultimate goal-helping us become martial artists rather than simply fighters.