As someone who loves researching and practicing the techniques and methods of traditional martial arts, I have to say that the traditional martial arts (TMA) community is a weird one to be active in. Seemingly everyone is out to tell everyone else what they're doing wrong. Be it neglecting to cultivate their qi, failing to use a technique effectively because they don't believe in it, or not learning it from the one true source. Fruity arguments about lineage and who is the real student of whom abound.

In what I hope will become a recurring feature, because god knows there's enough material, today we'll be examining some of the stupidest things I've ever seen in my time in martial arts.

Barbaric Bloody Master of None

To kick things off with a current idea, last week a photo made the rounds on Facebook that made me cringe.

On the left is a tattooed, muscled up brute. On the right is a small Asian man in a gi, with a black belt on—a master of martial arts. The man on the left competes in cagefighting: where hitting on the ground is legal and where seemingly anything goes. He studies widely and therefore cannot understand deeply. The man on the right has that perfect combination of wearing a gi, owning a black belt, and being Asian going on: he must have some deeper insights on the purpose of life and human endeavor.

Of course, anyone who follows mixed martial arts or competitive grappling even a little knows that the 'cagefighter' is in fact Jeff Monson. Far from a master of no trades, Monson has competed at the highest level in the world in pure grappling. He's thoughtful, well spoken, and pretty much just a fun guy to listen to talking about martial arts. He has some unique political views, but believing things would be better another way—whether wrong or right—is not a character flaw.

Does Monson lack obedience and tenacity? I'm fairly certain that he didn't swagger up to the gym on day one, ready to take on the best grapplers in the world. No, he started out as a wrestler in high school. One of the most grinding, thankless sports to excel in: you work as hard as any other athlete but for no money or even the hope of it in future.

Then he went on to train in submissions and build a striking game of sorts, spending his weekends driving to tournaments of no note, to wait ages to compete, and sometimes lose. Loyalty? Well the man has been with the guys at American Top Team for the best part of a decade and earned a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu which, in turn, takes years.

Funnily enough, the group of traditional martial arts fanatics who believe MMA is too brutal and barbaric shares a notable overlap with the group who believe that their martial art just won't work in MMA because of the bans on eye gouging, hair pulling and groin striking. Of course, that is what most traditional martial arts were developed for—that's the reason for the light lead foot and the knock kneed stances, everything is about kicking the crotch and stomping a man while he's down.

If you look at any ancient training manual, pre-dating the move towards making chuan fa and karate more spiritual, good-for-exercise systems in the twentieth century, everything is about grabbing a hold of something tender and hitting your man while you hold it aloft. Modern students of these arts getting upset about a combat sport because they forgot that blood is just one of those things that happens when two bodies collide at force is pretty darn silly.

70s Karate is the Best Karate

Over the years I have been fortunate enough to accumulate a library of books—some of which are good, some of which are bad, and more than a few of which are outright hilarious. Almost every martial art started in a good place, the purpose was to win fights or protect ones self or possessions. Forms contained techniques, these techniques were practices through pushing hands exercises or sparring. A couple of generations form the source, everything becomes a lot more basic. Suddenly instead of performing a grip strip or a release from a hold, everything is a block for the same old stepping punch. The one which no one ever, ever uses.

One need only look at Gichin Funakoshi. There's photos of him teaching kata-guruma, double leg takedowns, and a host of other throws, but after a while in Japan, the Okinawan school teacher was suddenly all about down blocks and stepping punches. When the martial art becomes about the form of the fundamentals rather than the function, things get very weird when you start trying to twist logic to apply said techniques. Masatoshi Nakayama wrote a series on self defence with the great American martial arts explorer, Donn Draeger, and it was straight up garbage. This tradition has continued in the works of seemingly every traditional karateka who has been moved to write about self defence since.



70s London in an image.

Opening Karate Defence and Attack by Keinosuke Enoeda and John Chisholm on a random page, I was treated to this escape from that most dangerous of all holds, the Full Nelson:

Step one, be Full Nelsoned. Step two, stamp on the foot. Step three, grab the groin. You have now escaped the Full Nelson.

Turn the page and there's nothing. That's the escape from the Full Nelson. Stamp on the foot, then somehow get your hand down to the attacker's groin. The very thing which makes the Full Nelson so valuable is that even an untrained boob can keep his victims arms way up in the air and away from his crotch.

Held at gunpoint in your living room? Crescent kick that sucker and send it sliding across the room, then fight the attacker for it.

Or better yet, side kick without putting the foot down.

But it gets better.

You arrive home from work. The wife isn't in, she's gone line dancing, and she's probably left the house in the state it was when you headed off this morning too. Maybe she'll have left something on the side for dinner at least. As you approach the front door, you hear a shuffling from the side of the house. You pause... something is off. You edge along the wall to the corner of the house, check your pants at the knee for some freedom of movement, and WHAM!

Your ura-mawashigeri hook kick lays out an armed assailant. What are the chances? That'll show the doubters for all the times there wasn't someone there. Chisholm and Enoeda add that you should position yourself so that as you kick you can peak around the corner.

Here's a nice defense against a wrist grab from Eric Dominy's 1974 publication, simply entitled Karate. Faced with a same side grasp on the wrist grab, Dominy simply circles his arm outward and down to his side, twisting his opponent's wrist all the way over, forcing them to bend down and expose themselves to the knee. Look solid? Try it.

Weirdly enough, when someone grabs a hold of you they tend to work to restrict your attempts at counter movements. If your escape technique requires them to not use the tremendous strength advantage they have working with their pectorals and weight against just your shoulder, it's probably tripe.

Obligatory Dillman

No article on flim flam in the martial arts would be complete without a quick look at kyusho-jitsu or pressure point fighting. To be clear, I believe in the so-called 'vital points' or the solar plexus, sternal notch, the jawline, the orbital bones. It is undeniable that hitting some areas causes more damage than others nearby—that's why good fighters aim. When you start pretending that all you need do is probe three of four points in connection to lay out an aggressor of any size, we're getting into the realm of silliness.

The king of this lunacy is George Dillman. I must confess that I've probably spent more money on Dillman's books than any sceptic should, but if I see one in a book shop I have to snap it up. They're comedy gold and make a long flight a great deal easier. Dillman has gone off the deep end in recent years, claiming to have mastered the art of toate—the no touch knockout. Normal procedure for this discovery involves the wearing of robes and hiding among a cult of your own followers as the formerly great Shigeru Egami did towards the end of his life. Dillman, breaking with tradition, had the good grace to stick around and allow science to test him. You can watch that debunking here:

Spoiler Alert: He tells you how to counter it at the end!

The kyusho-jitsu racket is a dangerous one though. It seems to be largely built around that area of traditional martial arts I despise most—the beating up of unresisting demonstration partners. Now this works in two ways. On one end, kyusho-jitsu is almost cult like in the devotion of its practitioners—seemingly the higher rank you become, the more the attacking of your meridians messes you up. Here is a sixth dan being struck on the arm by a master:

Be sure to subscribe to his channel, you could make a highlight reel of the uke's reactions alone.

If you're up for another nine minutes of head wobbling fake falls, check out this video.

But if you want to flop on the floor like a fish every time someone touches your meridians, that's fine. The really dangerous moments in this art are full force strikes against unprepared ukes. Here's a couple from Paul Bowman, England's answer to Dillman:

You say exploitation of chi meridians, or messing up someone's yin and yang—I say smacking dudes in the temples without warning, often deliberately mid-sentence, and letting them fall on often unpadded floors. Of course, that takes some force and effort, so folks like Bowman normally stick to demonstrating on their favorite students.

Join me again soon for more of the stupidest stuff I've ever heard.

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