A Speculation on Martial Arts
Ian Durie March 2004
Why do we
martial artists bother, we spend or hard earned money on taking lessons in our
combat sport discipline, taking knocks and bruising to eventually become good
enough to teach, then we are ridiculed by our work mates; demonised by
journalists and politicians, we are either 'teaching people to kill
"brainwashing the younger generation into becoming weird mystics with oriental
religious overtones." If I had a pound for overtime a person learns I do a
martial art their eyes glaze over they take up what they think is a karate
stance wave their hands about like a windmill and let out some demented scream.
I ask you, have you had a similar occurrence or maybe it is only me that
attracts these individuals.
Everything changes, what was a la mode last week is now
passé. Martial arts are similar, judo replaced western boxing in schools, then
the educationalists discovered political correctness, there cannot be a winner
and loser so school judo was dropped. I remember with perhaps the rose tinted
glasses of old age the karate classes in the mid nineteen seventies, when
everyone was learning "kung fu "classes were learning karate or being taught
something learned from a book by an enterprising Chinese waiter who was asked to
teach his family secret fighting art for large sums of money; we did not know
that not every Chinese knows kung fu and those who do almost never taught
westerners at that time. The cycle of life has turned and now grappling has
become the in thing-Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, really Kozan judo a subset of the
Kodokan set up by Kano (founder of judo ) to study groundwork, the Gracie's
popularised these methods by the same methods as judo did in the early nineteen
hundreds the challenge match Yoko Tani was doing these in the musical halls
every night as well as western catch wrestlers, so nothing is unique .
So after going off the tract let me speculate where martial
arts are going, as I see it there are now two distinct growth areas in the
martial arts the first is the fitness route, Taebo, Cardio kickboxing, Boxercise
and Body combat, these exercise systems are followed by female students in the
majority of cases, it provides a good work out system with the added bonus that
they can fool themselves that they are learning to defend themselves at the same
time; the second route is the so called reality martial arts, Mixed martial
arts, military systems whether it be Defendo, Combato , Krav Maga, Sombo or Pit
Fighting, they all claim that in the minimum length of time using their system
you can never loose on the street. Please, I have been looking for the secret
'Vulcan "neck pinch made famous by the actor Leonard Nimoy playing his screen
persona of Mr Spock, I am still looking after thirty years!
Yours in budo
Ian " Lurch " Durie.