Revitalization of TMA?

[Tom Yum]

Can it happen?

As an MMA practitioner, what would attract you to the traditional martial arts?

Would such TMA classes have to spend more time rolling or sparring?

Can you spar with knife hand strikes, palm heels and spear fingers using adequate head gear?

[chris davis 200]

I think the first step isnt to revitalise the TMA's but to research them enough to understand what they do actually do. I would say that TMA stands for arts with an established tradition. But i also think that TMA doesnt mean all too much in the real world ....

Chinese wrestling is basically Very advanced Judo (although far older!) with striking retained. pretty much like most MMA gyms i guess. But this is a TMA.

Muay thai is an very old system but we all know how effective it is, I would say that the TMA form of MT is more combatively effective than its sport derivative.

Then we have all the hugely effective Silat styles, Escrima, Kali, etc - all TMAs in my opinion. Then the combat proven arts like ba gua chang, and Xing yi....... Old school western boxing - although majorly rare .... The list of realist Combat proven and massively effective 'old' martial styles is long. Not going into competition does not mean 'not effective or realistic'.

If, by TMA you actually mean - walking up and down hitting the air, lots of forms, no sparringh, no hitting pads, no grapppling. Then i think you are talking about the minority of traditional systems.

Sadley the poor show of idiotic, Low standard, out of shape, poorly trained martial artists in early UFC's, who often claimed to do TMA's has tainted the view of old systems in the mind of the modern sport fighter.

no that it matters too much

cheers

Chris

[Tom Yum]

Nice post, Chris.

We forget that muay thai is a traditional martial art that has been in existance for ~ 1,000 years.

Can you elaborate more on Chinese wrestling? Are you talking about shuai jiao?

[chris davis 200]

tom,

yeh shuai jiao - but normally when i say that people hit the .... 'all kung fu is RUBBISH' thing.



Cheers
Chris

[pstevens]

Chris has a good point. When you look at it, most TMA's are rooted in effective training and techniques. It was actually modernization that did many of them in. There's a lot of differences in the training of someone who does it to survive from bandits, and someone who does it as a hobby, or at leisure. So it's kind of ironic that people say that TMA's are useless, when in reality, modern training methods as they pertain to TMA's are useless (punching in the air as opposed to kicking trees, rocks)...

The most obvious example is TKD. Mention "TKD" and people automatically envision a group of people doing forms and light sparring in a well-lit, capeted room. However, my Master informed me that when he was learning it, they were running through forests, kicking trees, rocks, and hardening their hands for real combat. His hands and feet were so hard and caloused.

[chicken legs]

well I'm studying Kung fu based on Bagua, Tai Chi and Xingyi and the attraction for me is being able to continue studying the art til I'm really old and not to mention the older I get the better I will get, is that possible with MMA's?

this is a brief description

http://www.taichiacademy.com.au/courses2.htm

this is my teacher (scroll down to Taoist Qigong DVD)

http://www.taichiacademy.com.au/products5.htm

[Tom Yum]

I think people train in TMA because they provide good phyiscal excercise, discipline and focus. You can't find that in most conventional sports. I competed in baseball for years and while it was fun to get out and raise hell, its not the same.

TMA are not the same as MMA, because MMA and other combat sports involve fighting as the competitive goal.

Is it possible to train in a TMA that teaches someone how to fight?

I think so - as long as the training is dynamic, can be practiced against any style and develops the fighters conditioning and strategy.

There are karate, kung-fu and silat guys who can fight without using some bastardized version of point sparring techniques, but they are so rare and hard to find. On top of that, these kinds of fighters take pride in what they do as a way of life but don't have the interest in fighting professionally, which is very sad but makes sense.

This might sound like the old 'my art is too deadle for teh ring', but there are TMA blackbelts who never say this and will use their art when they have to.

Great example is of Master J. Lee, when he puts the pimp down (and out) with an outside knife hand technique. Moo Yea Do Master Mark Hall fought against a Sumo wrestler Koji Kitao in UFC, who pretty much had him cornered and he broke the guys nose, causing ref stoppage. Keith Hackney - allmost same story, except he's a master instructor in the Kenpo style. The Juric fellow from Poland has fought in European Free Fight matches with success (allthough he has cross trained in grappling).

All of these guys proved without a doubt that they can put the hurt down against somone with some skill or size. They may not be able to beat top professional fighters, but they could hold their own against mediocre fighters.

[JasonE]

Can it happen?

As an MMA practitioner, what would attract you to the traditional martial arts?

Would such TMA classes have to spend more time rolling or sparring?

Can you spar with knife hand strikes, palm heels and spear fingers using adequate head gear?

Don't need to go back to any of that. The new cross-breeds of concepts and training methods are developing their own followings, and will become the next generation of TMA.

TMA attack new progressive approaches to combat while forgetting that at one time they too were new progressive approaches attacked by older traditions. Hell, TKD is barely 60 years old... what does it mean that they have thousands of "grandmasters" when something like BJJ is equally old and has very very few. Better marketing or lower standards, or some combination of the two. "But wait, TKD is based on tae kyon and karate and kempo and other older arts and can therefore claim an old lineage," some protest.

"Based on older stuff" is not the same as "is old stuff," no matter how you twist those facts. I'll leave TKD alone now, they're just one example of many. The question really is, what does it take for an art or school of thought to become "traditional"?

Let's look at a few more examples:
Japanese Karate: Basically introduced to Japan from Okinawa by Gichin Funakoshi in 1917, all styles of Japanese karate developed from his influence, making all of them less than 100 years old. Hmm.

Judo: Developed from an amalgam of much older styles of jujutsu, Jigoro Kano changed the name of his style to Judo in 1868. As a ranking official in the Japanese education system, he used his influence to make the study of it compulsory as phy-ed. That makes this art less than 140 years old.

Western Boxing: Boxing matches are recorded back to the days of early Greece. That gives it a tradition that's roughly 3000 years old, give or take some centuries. Boxing is considered pretty effective, but not traditional.

Western Wrestling: Wrestling matches go back at least as far as boxing. It is considered effective, but not traditional.

Tai Chi: Chen Tai Chi has a history reputed to go back over a thousand years, and has spawned many many offspring that became other TMA.

BJJ: Started as lessons from Mitsuo Maeda in the 1930s. Primarily known for his judo skill, Maeda called what he taught jiu-jitsu. Since judo was still known to many as "Kano Jiu-Jitsu" at the time, this is understandable. (Kano was still teaching extensive striking skills when Maeda learned it.) In any case, the art is only slightly older than TKD, and is considered TMA but with less stigma than some other arts.

The point of these examples is that age seems to have little to do with whether a "martial art" is considered TMA or not.

IMO, the deciding factor seems to be the extent to which an art tries to revere its founders and maintain specific training preferences. The more the art resists change in order to preserve some aspects of the founder's teachings, the more TMA it is. That's pretty much it.

From that perspective, training in TMA means choosing to train to preserve the past. When someone digresses from the traditions and others start training to preserve the point of that digression, a new TMA is born. We've seen some of this mentality pop up around MMA fighters. When they start training others, suddenly you have hard-core Miletich guys, the Lions Den, the Shark Tank and so forth. These groups walk the edge between remaining competitively viable and becoming TMA.

[JasonE]

To the top!!!

[Bjjexpertise@be]

Personally, as far as attracting me to TMAs, is the history and the philosophical aspect of the TMA. Like why was it created and what its principles are. You probably won't find me doing any TMA's any time soon but I'd always still be interested in things such as Taichi, Bagua, and so forth.

[bodhisattva]

Can it happen?

As an MMA practitioner, what would attract you to the traditional martial arts?

Would such TMA classes have to spend more time rolling or sparring?

Can you spar with knife hand strikes, palm heels and spear fingers using adequate head gear?

I'd say, to attract me to the traditional martial arts, they'd have to cease being traditional, and start being more functional?

[bodhisattva]

All of these guys proved without a doubt that they can put the hurt down against somone with some skill or size. They may not be able to beat top professional fighters, but they could hold their own against mediocre fighters.

"I have practiced my martial art for years with discipline, and can finally claim I am capable of holding my own against a mediocre fighter."

Who on Earth trains in martial arts with the goal of being able to finally defeat someone mediocre.??

[npk9]

"I have practiced my martial art for years with discipline, and can finally claim I am capable of holding my own against a mediocre fighter."

Who on Earth trains in martial arts with the goal of being able to finally defeat someone mediocre.??

Mediocre martial artists thats who. LOL - joking aside. I really do think that the problem with todays TMA is that it has been watered down by instructors with no experience in full contact fighting or self defence situations. This phenomenon has been done over the course of serveral generations(generations being that the instructor teaches a student then the student becomes an instructor and teaches newer students). You can go through a potential of 3-5 generations withing a 15 year timeline according to some schools and you can see the lasting effects.

Teaching theory is all good and dandy but how much of it will really help. I don't know if BJJ has forms but imagine if they did and that an instrutor just taught BJJ forms with no contact or little to no contact. Then his students would become teachers and do the samething. This happens all the time in styles like Kung-fu, TKD, Karate, etc.

A more universal example would be teaching how to ride a bike. I can show you all these exercises to keep your balance, have the right posture, increase your leg strength and speed - but that goes out the door once you sit on that bike (w/o trainning wheels of course) and you start tipping left and right trying to keep from falling.

[fenwick99]

re

I currently train in tae kwon do. It is an inexpensive class and it gives me access to some focus mitts and target pads. Needless to say I only work my kicks seriously; I throw no punch for real, and I never let anyone see me work on the floating punch or the drop step or the golden hammer, or anything that would reveal past training in jkdc or twc. I enjoy the the class, and the coach is a policeman who does the class for free to contribute to the community, a real cool guy. At this stage of my life, training is training, no matter what cultural or scholastic affiliations accrue.

[Shoot]

Yes and no. I have an interest in TMA but my ego just doesn't seem to want me to sport a white belt. I just can't bring myself to "start over" doing corkscrew punches and kata even though I could defend these practices in an argument. For somebody like me that has spent so many years doing westernized martial arts with no belts, it's a hard pill swallow. I guess if it was that important to me I'd do it. I had no problem wearing a white belt in BJJ--but that's different. I guess it boils down to some respect issue. I don't think traditional striking arts are better than the non-belt westernized training that I have (e.g. boxing, kickboxing etc...).