Misleading Musings of the Martial Arts

Many people take up learning a martial art or a self-defense system in the belief that by learning techniques and solutions to violence, and by developing skills, they will be able to make up for a lack of athletic and physical prowess i.e., a smaller, weaker individual will be able to overcome a larger, more powerful aggressor etc. That was certainly my belief and motivation when I first started training. At the time I thought everything came down to technical proficiency, and it was only through training, that I began to understand a certain level of strength, fitness and aggression was needed in order to become technically proficient. There will be of course martial arts purists who will argue against this, and state that the art alone, once mastered is enough, and that if you need a certain level of fitness and aggression to get your system to work in real-life than it is a failing of your system; with the implied argument that maybe you should quit training in whatever martial art you are practicing, and recognize that their way is the correct way, and start training in their style.

Experience by its own nature is a limited thing, but from my own experiences working in security, I’ve never worked with such purists, everyone I’ve worked with has acknowledged the role that fitness, strength and aggression play in dealing with real-life violence, and that technical ability is simply another factor/component. In this article I want to examine some of the memes and “martial arts proverbs” that simplify dealing with violence, and possibly divert our focus away from other aspects of our training that we should be working on. Some of these are simply truisms, which actually aren’t particularly helpful, and others are trite, meaningless quotes which when examined don’t really contain any meaningful substance.

I grew up in the seventies, and one of the TV shows I avidly watched was Kung Fu, starring David Carradine, as an ex-Buddhist monk, wandering around 19th century America, kicking ass, and delivering life lessons via esoteric quotes that could be unraveled and interpreted in numerous “meaningful” ways. As a child, although I knew this was all fictional, I didn’t quite understand that it was a scriptwriter in LA who was coming up with these proverbs and believed that what I was listening to was ancient wisdom that had been kept secret from the world, until Carradine opened his lips and spoke it. As a kid who was bullied and dealt with violence on a near-daily basis, I believed that if I could discover the truth and the meaning in these quotes then they would provide me with a solution to my problems e.g., if I could understand how my enemy’s strength was also their greatest weakness, then I might have an advantage that I could exploit etc. However, as much “meaning” as a quote or proverb might contain, it doesn’t change a reality. A quote doesn’t reduce the size, strength, or numbers of the threat/danger you are facing/dealing with. Learning, from Carradine or someone else that multiple attackers will end up getting in the way of each other, doesn’t mean that dealing with two people is easier than one etc. However, this is the implication: to make a seemingly difficult situation, something that is easy to deal with. By reducing something that is complex and difficult, to something that is simple and easy is misleading, and usually results in us not taking a problem as seriously as we should.

Some quotes and sayings are true but unhelpful. Growing up, training in Judo, one that used to get bandied about a lot was, “the bigger they are the harder they fall.” I don’t disagree with this but how does it help me i.e., I’ve still got to make them initially fall, and they are still bigger than me. Yes, bigger people, especially those who are top heavy, may have a harder time regaining their balance than smaller, lighter people etc. but the same problem remains: how do you get a larger person to fall? The saying doesn’t change the problem. The world of real-world self-defense is also full of meaningless, dismissive and extremely lazy quotes. One of the most common ones I see on social media is, “good way to get yourself killed”, usually in response to someone showing a video of a technique etc. A better way to get yourself killed when attacked is to do nothing; to be completely untrained. I’m not convinced that an individual who makes such a statement has undergone a thorough scientific evaluation of all the possible techniques, solutions and responses to a particular threat or attack, and is in a position to turn around and rank them on a scale of “how to get killed”. I have and teach techniques and solutions I “prefer” but I also recognize context is a major factor, in evaluating the effectiveness of solutions to violence, and understand that it is easy to judge something without understanding/recognizing the situation that the person demonstrating is envisaging etc. The problem with lazy sayings like “good way to get yourself killed”, is that they preclude discussion. They are not about seeking a “truth” but about being right, which is basically bad science. Part of the scientific process is to publish research in order for peers to review it. Just as esoteric mumblings that don’t really say anything, sayings that judge without inquiry and discussion aren’t useful either; if someone is not prepared to engage in that process then it is probably better to say nothing.

I am not saying that all martial arts/self-defense quotes, sayings, and proverbs are meaningless, however when they are used to simplify dealing with violence, then they are misleading and can cause us to neglect areas of our training that we should be working on. It was Einstein who said that “if you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” If you ask someone a question about dealing with violence and they give you an answer like, “there are many colors of the cherry blossom” etc., you are probably dealing with someone who doesn’t understand your question or have a proper answer to it.