I have done TKD in the past. Some aspects of it are useful, but the patterns, in my opinion, have very little applicability as they are too telegraphed. If it’s the only thing in your area then it’s better than nothing. Just take the stuff that’s useful and scrap the stuff that isn’t. Then when you feel you have learned enough you can look for something else.
[QUOTE=Paulolo McTroal;2768282]snip[/QUOTE]
Ohhh… your first post is a weak necro, pretty useless, and with a style field “My own”. Ouch. That’s three strikes my friend.
Will traditional martial arts die out?
I am new to this site, so I hope I haven’t posted this in the wrong thread…
…anyway, the title speaks for itself, but with the rise in MMA over the last lot of years, do you think traditional arts such as karate, TKD, kung fu etc will become obsolete? I’ve noticed, when I’ve watched martial arts classes in my local sports hall, that there is hardly anyone who even attends these classes, but all the MMA clubs are almost full. In fact, it’s mostly all kids with just a few adults who do traditional arts in my area. I recently quit TKD for MMA because I felt the TKD training was almost useless for self defence.
Nope…
No, because
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among combat sports, their preferred range will make them sought after specialist for MMA experts.
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People/dorks who like classical martial arts but not MMA will continue to be with us.
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Non-sporting arts will continue to market themselves as teaching “Real fighting, not sport fighting” and people will continue to buy and parrot that.
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Some people will consider that weapons are important and will get involved in weapon arts instead of/in addition to MMA.
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Parents will continue to coddle their kids and see MMA as barbaric, and will enroll them in judo or TKD instead, at least until they’re older.
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MMA will create popularity of the arts that make up MMA (muay thai, BJJ etc), and this will probably have a trickle down effect to unrelated martial arts.
Another thing I was thinking, but didn’t want to sound like a bunch of old curmudgeons: this whole MMA thing might be another MA phase. This sentiment is common to martial arts guys who like to think that whatever old school style they do has a timeless quality. They’ll say a timeline that goes something like this: first the masses flocked to judo when GIs brought it back, then karate, then Bruce Lee came along and everybody was kung fu fighting, then the 80s came along and people snorted coke and wore headbands so ninjutsu seemed like a cool idea at the time, then Jackie Chan made Jackie Channing cool, then MMA comes along, and soon enough our fickle culture will be over it and onto something else. And why do they keep making phones smaller when my perfectly good cellular telephone fits in an easy leather belt holster?
I’ve heard this from know-it-alls who were trying to sound timeless and relevant when they were really just behind the times, but the thing is, they’re not exactly wrong with their timeline either. Plus when America is over something, they’re over it. Just ask an American Gladiator.
BJJ and sub-grappling are the big thing right now. Yeah, MMA is what the punters are watching, but as far as taking part, the grappling styles are where people are going.
Way back in the 50/60’s however loads of people who were doing judo - which was closer to BJJ back then - started switching to the more exotic kung-fu styles, or started trying to re-create the supposedly more deadly older jujutsu styles. I think Ed Parker started off in judo, most of the “traditional” jujutsu styles are derived from judo.
I can see something similar happening again. Competition styles become the norm, people get complacent with them and start looking for the deadly. The memory of the bad old days are forgotten, and they see no problem with just training eye-pokes and five finger exploding heart technique.
The first wave of people involved in this have a grounding in some alive style and can apply what they already know - which makes adding in some chop-socky stuff no big problem. Subsequent practitioners, who have no other experience end up learning something that just doesn’t stand up on its own. The guys they are learning from are able to handle themselves though, so it’s easy to convince themselves that if they just train a bit harder, they can learn to do the same. Problem is that they aren’t actually learning what the older guys learned.
Then someone comes along who has been training in a tough competition style and starts calling people out…
No, not “die out”, but they will become even more specialized.
Most TMA will continue to hemorrhage people interested in developing functional personal defense skills. The people who will be left will have the following primary motivations:
-Achievement: they want a black belt, and/or kata championship.
-Self-discipline: parents want little Johnny to behave better.
-Daycare: parents want a fun place for little Johnny to go after school.
-Asian Cultural Studies: people who want to explore what it was like to be a ninja in feudal japan, learn to speak Korean, etc.
There will also be new TMA formed, like Parker formed his, but due to commercialism and the watering down effect they likely will soon lose credibility vis a vis personal defense and also specialize in the above stuff.
in adition to what everyone else said:
When people age out of MMA, they will still want to study something, because fighting gets in your blood. But injuries, and time will make it hard to keep up with MMA training, so they will pick the parts of fighting that they enjoyed the most, and move off to those. Some will go to striking, grappling, or whatever.
Weapons training will always be there on the side for people who have seen the value of them.
Then their will always be martial arts for people who want to train but don’t want to hurt themselves. They don’t care that it is a false sense of security.
[QUOTE=Paulolo McTroal;2769147]I am new to this site, so I hope I haven’t posted this in the wrong thread…
…anyway, the title speaks for itself, but with the rise in MMA over the last lot of years, do you think traditional arts such as karate, TKD, kung fu etc will become obsolete? I’ve noticed, when I’ve watched martial arts classes in my local sports hall, that there is hardly anyone who even attends these classes, but all the MMA clubs are almost full. In fact, it’s mostly all kids with just a few adults who do traditional arts in my area. I recently quit TKD for MMA because I felt the TKD training was almost useless for self defence.[/QUOTE]
Your username is duly noted.
ah jnp, as you often do, you perceive.
But non the less, this is a lot more interesting to me than the recent What style threads (and what’s his name, the new ezerb’s nut riding krav, Judo is dangerous etc etc). There has been some good thinking shown that I enjoyed reading.
SteveM’s post was good, but “Most TMA will continue to hemorrhage people interested in developing functional personal defense skills,” I must take issue. If you mean kiddie kahrahtey strip mall bs, that really isn’t Kyokushin, Judo, or even trad TKD. (and thee is the "Is BJJ TMA etc) And I sure don’t see the shittier classes around here, the mall TKD, the cultish WC, and such, fading away soon, though perhaps they are losing serious students to “fighting” arts. Many of us have earned belts in TKD! And like Ke?po, there are good schools out there somewhere…
Hmmm, reminds me of the throwdown where everyone did their katas. And I gotta look up KK kata 'cause my new school in Hawaii wants to see them and for me to teach them and I can’t remember some of them - I can fake it OK, no one there knows the sequences.
There will always be demand for an easier way. Overly marketed and downright bullshido TMA clubs will keep going on forever as long as people view a piece of cloth as more important than the skills one should master.
Here in Quebec, TMAs are still very much alive. I rememeber at my first BJJ class the teacher told me “we always have big groups like these” and we were barely 10, if even that. Meanwhile karate/TKD clubs are full to the brim and even in my judo club, bigger groups than that were not at all uncommon. There are a lot of appealing reasons to take a TMA that MMA cannot compete with. The cultural angle is one of many.
BJJ and MMA have horrid attrition rates. Loads of people perhaps are motivated enough to exercice and do something that looks like a martial art, but not enough to put in all the hours of pain MMA requires.
I don’t think they will ever die out completely, but they are certainly going through a phase of unpopularity. Honestly, I think that this phase could end up being good for traditional martial arts, in the long run, provided the TMA community responds to it properly. Over the past 20 years, or so, there has been a push to take traditional arts back to their roots–function over form, effectiveness over entertainment value, and practicality over theory. Obviously, there will be exceptions to every rule, and there will still be terrible schools and instructors no matter what route is taken, but I’d like to look on the bright side.
One other thing that tends to get overlooked is that TMA styles tend to be very specialized, and so they have a lot of things that can add to the MMA game, which tends to be a little more generalized. I’ve noticed more techniques and tactics from traditional arts making appearances in MMA fights over the past couple of years, and I think that as the quality of fighters increases, the more they will branch out to expand and improve their striking. As has been mentioned, grappling arts are the “in thing” right now, but everything goes in cycles.
Of course, I could be completely wrong and it may end up just being me and a few other martial artists around the world teaching our family members, but even then TMA wouldn’t be COMPLETELY dead.
tl;dr - No, they may actually gain popularity again down the road.
[QUOTE=patfromlogan;2769286]Hmmm, reminds me of the throwdown where everyone did their katas. And I gotta look up KK kata 'cause my new school in Hawaii wants to see them and for me to teach them and I can’t remember some of them - I can fake it OK, no one there knows the sequences.[/QUOTE]
Just go with one KK kata for a start (I’d start with Saiha, but your choice might well be different), and don’t just go over the form. Drill the hell out of the bunkai from the kata: first, participants practise against air, then against a compliant opponent, then against increasing levels of resistance from the partner, finally in a full-contact sparring context.
Even if they do die, with the volume of literature available about them, someone will pick probably them up again in a few hundred years. . .
[QUOTE=kikoolol;2769287]BJJ and MMA have horrid attrition rates. Loads of people perhaps are motivated enough to exercice and do something that looks like a martial art, but not enough to put in all the hours of pain MMA requires.[/QUOTE]
LOL! Shotokan - we’re doing pushups with a tough ex-marine instructor. A wimpy fellow collapses and instructor is a bit astonished. “Why aren’t you doing pushups?” he asks. “I’m tired.” whines the skinny wuss. Instructor resumes his count, ich, ni, san, shi, and keeps the beat with front kicks to wimp’s ribs. Wimp starts knocking off pushups. Instructor says, “See, you’re not tired!”
He of course never showed up again and it’s a shame because he could have learned the lesson that he wasn’t really that tired and that he WAS capable of exceeding his “limits.”
I’ve heard for years that the attrition rate in karate is 93%. Soon as they figure out it’s a lot of hard repetitious drills they fade away. But then again that goes with the Bullshido’zation of the art$.
I don’t care what the filthy unwashed masses will consider popular in the future. The purpose of MMA competition has already been fulfilled. That purpose was to help me figure out where to send my offspring to train in order to turn them into the scourge of the east coast in general and the Tarheel State in particular.
The fewer people that figure out what the deal is, the better my chances of raping the Earth with my progeny. My first martial arts influence was Ralph Macchio. My childrens’ first martial arts influence was Fedor Emelianenko. 'Nuff said.
[QUOTE=Devil;2769336]I don’t care what the filthy unwashed masses will consider popular in the future. The purpose of MMA competition has already been fulfilled. That purpose was to help me figure out where to send my offspring to train in order to turn them into the scourge of the east coast in general and the Tarheel State in particular.
The fewer people that figure out what the deal is, the better my chances of raping the Earth with my progeny. My first martial arts influence was Ralph Macchio. My childrens’ first martial arts influence was Fedor Emelianenko. 'Nuff said.[/QUOTE]Gung sau 'tween my BB kids (karate w/some JJ and karate w/some Judo)?
[QUOTE=patfromlogan;2769340]Gung sau 'tween my BB kids (karate w/some JJ and karate w/some Judo)?[/QUOTE]
Perhaps. Or maybe an evil partnership instead. I know you’re fond of conspiracies.
Many TMAs are also cultural practices, and will remain popular as a cultural index. Everyone in the shuai-chiao school (live sparring, sportive, involved in the tournament scene) I go to is Chinese-American, Chinese, or mixed-race Chinese but me, as is everyone in my taiji school (hard-for-taiji push hands, non-sportive, disinterested in tournaments).