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A lot of martial arts are wildly impractical in 99.99% of everyday circumstances. The list includes almost all martial arts involving bladed weaponry, most mart
by jonnathanson 12y ago
A lot of martial arts are wildly impractical in 99.99% of everyday circumstances. The list includes almost all martial arts involving bladed weaponry, most martial arts involving canes or blunt instruments, and most of the classical, unarmed arts that a layperson would recognize.
This is one of the major reasons why "practical" martial arts, such as Krav Maga, have become so popular in recent years. It doesn't mean the less practical arts are not "arts," or are somehow not "martial." The history of martial arts is a history of the militaries, weapons, circumstances, etc., that have given rise to the need for formalized combat styles throughout the world. In feudal Japan, for instance, it was probably a very helpful and practical thing to be well-versed in the art of the samurai sword. In present-day Japan, a bit less so.
Some martial arts are practical in 2015. Some martial arts were practical in 1915, and some were practical in 1515. Circumstances change. The stuff people wear, or carry around with them everyday, or bring into a combat zone, change pretty quickly and dramatically. And of course, some martial arts have never really been practical at all, being used mainly for ceremony, discipline, and lifestyle.
- bluedino 12y agoAhhh, Krava Maga. You can't even practice it at anywhere near 100% like you an other martial arts. If you can't practice something to the fullest extent you can never perform it that way when the situation is required.
- ensignavenger 12y ago"wildly impractical in 99.99% of everyday circumstances" I would hope so! If an average, everyday person needed to deploy martial in more than 1 out of every 10,000 of their normal, everyday circumstances, it would be a very sad state for humanity :)
- jonnathanson 12y agoWell, of course. :) Putting aside the obvious, though, let's extend that 99.99% of "everyday circumstances" into what we'd call "highly unusual circumstances." A bar fight, for instance, or a mugging at knifepoint, or worse. Obviously, your best move in these circumstances is to avoid the fight altogether. But if you have no choice, then your knowledge of——even mastery of——many of the more prominent martial arts won't help you. There are many reasons why this is the case. I'll go over two or three of them. First, many of these martial arts were developed a very long while ago, in very different eras, with very different combatants in mind. Second, many of these martial arts are actually "staged" versions of real combat. If you're a karate master, for instance, you are mostly trained on how to fight combatants also using karate, who've been taught the same moves, the same stances, and the same patterns. Or, at least, you assume they've learned similar variants. Now, in a bar fight with a drunk, who's maybe got a few pounds on you, and is going to come out fighting irrationally and unpredictably, all of your karate staging, and your karate timing, and your karate pattern-seeking flies right out the window. Your mind will be addled by adrenaline. Your reflexes will be clumsy and jittery. You won't have time to think. If you've received very formal training, you may well panic and forget it. Modern arts are a lot less formal, because many of them were designed with modern fights in mind——be it a close grapple with an enemy soldier on a battlefield, or a standoff against an aggressive assailant in a dark alley. Full disclosure: I'm a 99-pound pencilneck who couldn't take your grandmother in a fist fight. I trained in karate to a fairly high level as a young teenager. To this day, I harbor no illusions that my karate will do anything for me, other than earn the occasional Daniel LaRusso joke.
- ensignavenger 12y agoYeah, I agree with you 100% :) I have some experience and familiarity in this field. Thanks for the informative reply.