Sport or Martial Art?

That's enough, Tout.

 

That's a good point, but as we discessed recently, end result plays a key part, someone training in Judo isn't learning throws to damage someone with no training, they are training to throw someone experienced on their back - does the fact it can be used to hurt someone make it martial?

I like baseball, have a pretty good swing, I could take someones head off with that swing, does that make baseball martial - see where I'm getting?

 

It is "a Martial art with a sporting aspect"!

Although primarily trained for competition, the end result if done on concrete is devastating!

Perhaps a more useful distinction would be "competitive or non-competitive" martial arts....although even this opens up grey areas. Take FMA - competitively it loses a lot of its "edge" (pun intended) but without a live "test" can it truly be called functional for the individual? The compromise is a group like the "Dog brothers" ( a group who influenced me tremendously in my own FMA training) where there is a pre-arranged clash that has very few restrictions but has no ref, trophy or scores

Tricky isn't it?

 

Wow, what a response....

It was a request, no one said they would do anything, what can we do on an internet forum??

No one needs to do anything, you're doing it all yourself!!


Isn't there an anti-troll policy in place here??

 

These things always get derailed. And a certain amount of it is absolutely necessary and not really derailment at all. Debate generates strong feelings. Just part and parcel.

Anyway, it wasn't a criticism or anything. Just curiosity. Clearly, I disagree with your initial premise. But it seems to me that we do actually have a good discussion going here. So, on balance, that's a good thing.

 

Very, which is why I thought it would be a good topic for debate!

 

Let this one go. The mods are dealing with it. I need one of you (and I don't especially care which one) to stop hitting the ball back.

 

Oh it's a land of grey alright. It's certainly not a dichotomy. Dog bros is one of my favourite martial arts orgs but I do have a soft spot for weapons.

On an off topic note I'd love to see boxing done with 4oz gloves to make more realistic.

 

I think part of the problem is that these have cropped up so many times over the years we...specifically "I"....tend to get "compassion fatigue" with the initial posters and default to a "trolling or agenda" assumption

Sorry about that

We seem to have crested that ridge though so yay!

 

My lips, or more accurately fingers, are sealed!!

 

Right, but in judo, you're working at unbalancing someone who's actively trying to avoid being unbalanced. In baseball, you're obviously not training on someone's head. There's a much bigger degree of separation there. And it can be taken to as ludicrous an extreme as we'd like. Move far enough along that line of reasoning and the cook at the IHOP becomes a warrior scholar because of his prowess with a knife.

It's not the fact that it could hurt someone that makes it martial. Driving a car would be martial by that standard. And driving drunk would make you a warlord.

So, clearly, there's something else to it. I started to write up something about imposing your will, physically, on someone else. But then I realized that that definition excluded things like archery. So it's not as cut-and-dry as all that. I don't have a crystal clear distinction here. Perhaps none of us do.

 

Have you seen the cooks in IHOP!!!

I guess the difference is where the practice derived from, Judo while more sport oriented originated with martial practices, baseball, cooking, driving, etc didnt

 

Permission to sig?

 

Slight derail but I am looking at doing the 2014 pack gathering with my compadre in Kali!

 

Well if all goes as planned and I am finished university by then hopefully I'll be able to take a road trip out to join you! Hopefully by then I'll be through the wing chun curriculum but I don't think the the luk dim boon kwan would translate too well into sparring. The baat jaam do might.

 

Granted, soldier

 

It won't fit in my sig without getting rig of the tiny image I have... First world problems.

 

Sadly, not in some time. Loves me some breakfast food.

I feel like that's still a useful distinction, yes. That the intended focus of the practice, no matter how abstracted the training now seems, is to address the idea of interpersonal combat. Of course, that still leaves acres of grey area. Is hand gunning a martial art? What about parkour? (It did, after all, trace its origins back to French soldiers trying very hard not to get shot dead in wartime.) I'm not clear on where you draw the line. Or even that a clear line is especially useful. I'm more comfortable with a sliding scale. Baseball is an easy call (for me). Archery a bit harder. Boxing I have absolutely no reservations about labeling it a martial art. But that's a very personal decision. I'm not sure any of us could devise a watertight system of categorization.

 

LOL Well said

 

So perhaps we should discuss Marital Arts ;]