Mike Brewer

As a first day student into an admittedly impractical and completely non-combative art, allow me to direct you to another thread for my answer to this question.

Saturdays on Defend

Often times, it's not about fighting. I agree completely that sword arts are about as impractical for modern combat as they can be. Attempts to make them relevant to combat are, at best, attempts at justifying your own time and expense. The fact is, they are impractical as self-defense arts, they serve little purpose as combative pursuits, and if you're really after methods to "translate" into fighting effectiveness, there are a thousand other ways to go that will make you better, faster.

However, I personally feel like most martial artists suffer from a delerious sickness that makes them feel like they've got to prepare for some kind of nuclear holocaust of a streetfight that'll never ever happen as long as they live. We martial artists are delusional and maniacally egotistical in the way we tend to pursue our Holy Grail of "Fighting Effectiveness" and we almost always refuse to acknowledge that the average person will never ever have to deal with the kinds of fights we say we're preparing for, or the fact that they're going to spend hundreds of times the dollar amount on lessons and seminars as they'd ever lose in a mugging. It kills our egos to think that maybe there are some valid reasons for training that don't involve killing people with our bare hands or tapping guys out in a competition. But the simple fact is, there are more martial arts out there that suck for fighting than there are martial arts that will help you fight, and most of them are littered with devoted practitioners who really love what they do.

I've said it before: There are as many valid reasons for training in martial arts as there are people who do it. Not everyone needs to be Chuck Liddell or Bruce Lee. Some people just flat out like the cameraderie of being around like-minded people who want to have some fun doing something unique. If you look at most of what any art does, it's bullshit. For example, it would be extraordinarily easy to criticize MMA/BJJ people for using Brazilian (Portuguese) terminology for their techniques or for wearing sponsorship patches on their gi tops from companies that have never heard of them. If they speak English, just use English terminology, right? After all, if the people who developed the art spoke English, that's the language they would have used! At least a part of what we do is rooted in our "cultural" identification with the groups that do it. We like the MMA "culture" or we like the streetfighter "culture." Some people just dig the Japanese culture or the Chinese culture. Doesn't mean you're better than they are because you have different hang-ups.

In the end analysis, I'd submit to you that it's all just about doing what we like anyway. You're as unlikely to face a group of gun weilding bad guys as these folks are to have their sword with them in a streetfight, so it's all fantasy anyway. You've just found an easier way to justify your fantasy than theirs. And as someone who HAS experienced groups of gun-weilding attackers, knives, groups, ambushes, and all the other heinous shit we say we're preparing for in the real world, I can tell you - I didn't need 95% of the shit I ever trained to survive those situations, but I survived them.

I realize that without being able to hear my tone of voice or see the smile on my face right now, that post may come across as a little belligerent, but I assure you - it's not. It's very light-hearted, but sincere. I think we're all too hung up on trying to get people to see things the same way we do, and we're all a little too involved with trying to make them find the same things important that we do. If someone gets his jollys from putting on tiny gloves and trying to crack his buddy's skull in, awesome. If he likes putting on Japanese clothes and doing katas, who gives a damn? It's all the same thing in the end:

Personal Fulfillment