what are western martial arts?

does any of the following styles qualify as western martial arts?

western boxing
greco-roman wrestling
kickboxing
freestyle wrestling
savate

capoeira
pankration
cornish wrestling
glimae
mu-tau

 

I don't know what mu-tau is, but everything else fits the bill. So would archery, firearm marksmanship, and the plethora of European armed arts, and the unarmed arts that are subsumed within them.

Best regards,

-Mark

 

Mu Tau is Jim Arvanitis version of Pankration, to put it in simple terms.

 

There's quite a few more too, I'm sure there must be an expert on this somewhere, the highland dancers with their bagpipes for example, the dance was taken from, or used in training for some martial arts, look at dances. Irish jig? Not sure.

 

To me, when I hear "Western Martial Arts," I pretty much think of Historical European Martial Arts. Things like fencing, wrestling, boxing, sambo, etc. which thrive as contemporary combat sports, I register as a different category. I used to fence with some SCA guys, but otherwise, I'm not terribly familiar with HEMA.

I suppose you could include also include martial arts which were adapted from oriental systems by westerners, such as Full Contact Karate (American rules kickboxing), Brazilian Jiujitsu, and most of the kenpo schools I've ever encountered. Given the influence of Judo, you could perhaps put Sambo in this category as well.

I suspect that the strong national definitions of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean martial arts has to do with the recent histories of those countries and the nationalistic uses of martial arts. Take Tang Soo Do and Tae Kwon Do for example; while they are 'Korean' martial arts, they bears an incredibly suspicious resemblance to Japanese Shotokan karate. Having a family of national martial arts gives a sense of Korean identity to them, and allows them to add BS about being thousands of years old and flying kicks being used to knock people off of horses.

You don't have this strong legacy of tying martial arts to national identity in the West. No one seems to be compelled to draw a line between "British Boxing" and "Dutch Boxing" and "American Boxing"; it's become an international martial art. As I recall, the addition of wrestling to the Olympics caused many regional wrestling styles to be subsumed by Olympic Freestyle rules, causing an international style of "wrestling", rather than differentiating between British, French, Portuguese, etc. styles of "wrestling." I believe the same can be said of fencing.

 

Indeed, as did I. However, HEMA and HES are subsets of WMA, to be technically correct. There still are indigenous MA being taught in their countries of origin, but they are hard to find.

Best regards,

-Mark

 

does sambo fall into category of western martial arts? thought it was developed in the soviet union. would that not be an eastern art? my has definition of an western martial art might be a style created in the west that has little or no influence by asian (or eastern) martial arts.

 

For most purposes, the West includes Europe and the Americas, but for some reason, not Africa. So Russia partly in Europe, so it could be considered "Western". Culturally, Russia is certainly more European than Asian. Their royalty intermarried with other European royalty, and the great Russian reform movements (like say, those of Peter the Great and his spiritual successor Catherine the Great) looked to Western Europe for inspiration.

That being said, there's no red line burned into the earth like the prime meridian saying "this is east, and this is west".

Best regards,

-Mark

 

But where does it stop? ISTR that Morris Dancing has foundations in fighting.

 

Life is like that. Full of slippery slopes and shaded meanings. For that matter, where do martial arts stop and combat sports begin? Is there any set line in the sand? Probably not... more like a continuum.

Best regards,

-Mark

 

I think that's a pretty slippery slope since there's plenty of legend that suggests that Chinese MA were heavily influenced by Indian MA and in turn the high possibility that Indian MA were influenced by Greek MA. The wheel turns.

 

The strongest Western Martial Arts are Greenoch, Comhrac Bas, Hikuta, and Llap Goch.

 

by no means is this an effort to bash any other stlye.

have no idea what either greenoch or llap goch are. cannot make any kind of comment on either since i have neither seen or even heard of them.

watched a video of comhrac bas. looked way to much like a blend of jeet kune do and heavy on the muay thai. since muay thai is from asia and many of the jeet kune do material comes from there how is this a western style? seen very little of anything commonly associated with the western arts except maybe some western boxing.

seen advertisements for hikuta although never checked them out. kind of same deal with nobody has seen or heard about hikuta before. only thing everyone had a view on was the nature of claims made in the forementioned ad. we all felt the claims were a little too much to believe.

how do any of these qualify as the strongest western martial arts? they seem to have limited influence and most people know little or nothing about them. even in ky. we have a lot of martial art schools and students. yet none i have met in person or on internet seems to know about any of the styles mentioned.

would it not be fair to say that western boxing and freestyle wrestling are the strongest western styles? everybody knows them and the material for both can be seen in a number of other martial arts.

 

Irony is a wonderful thing
perhaps this will help you Llap Goch

 

that was really funny! since i have actually heard of both comhrac bas and hikuta thought llap goch might be a real stlye as well. there are so many styles out there. recently i read about glimae. never knew it existed. apparently the icelandics did and have practiced as much for a long time.

 

Just because it looks like something Asian doesn't mean that it is something Asian. There are only so many ways for a human body to move. Just because Jiu-Jutsu looks like medieval German Ringen doesn't mean Jiu-Jutsu is based on Ringen, does it? That being said, there's a lot of BS in Martial Arts. If you're interested in a style, do your research and find out what's what and who's who, and you're good to go.

Not sure by what you mean about "strongest". Certainly the most popular and well known, but Historical European Swordsmanship is making huge gains year by year. And Savate is widely practiced as well.

Best regards,

-Mark

 

the definition i have for strongest is most influencial and considered the most effective western styles. both western boxing and freestyle wrestling seem to be at the core of most mma these days. the same holds true with stlyes designed for other reasons.

there always will be similarities between some of the eastern and western arts. yet would it not be fair to say that some techniques are entirely different? have never seen animal imitations in western styles. nor the range of grappling skill found in western styles in eastern arts.

let me clarify that last remark. there is both judo and ju-jitsu. both have a wide range of techniques. then arts like aikido which seem to specialize in one area or two. what about all the takedowns,reversals,holds and the like found in greco-roman wrestling? or brazilian ju-jutsu? seem to include a far wider spectrum of skills.

 

Most effective for those specific applications. MMA is not the be-all end all, as much as I enjoy it.

Animal imitations in WMA are mental templates, such as those some Italian sowrdsmanship manuals, likening the right hand to a dragon, the feet to an elephant with howdah (for stability), the left shoulder to a ram, etc. Marital Arts are cultural artifacts, and despite universal principles certain areas focus on what is most useful maritally to them.

Could be. In HES, there is such a wide range of techniques because the European Masters of Defence taught integrated arts. There was no artificial separation in application and conception between swordsmanship, wrestling, knife fighting, what have you.

Also, due to the manuals, the reconstructed arts are frozen in time at their peak of use. Thus techniques that may not have survived the passage of time as an MA fades into history are preserved in spite of disuse by subsequent masters. In that way, the true diverstiy of combat arts can be seen by those who care to look. I'm sure that many arts that are specialized today were broader in outlook during their heyday of widespread use.

Best regards,

-Mark

 

Hmm... not so sure about this.

I've never found Western Europe all that keen to embrace the Slavic peoples.
If I'm not mistaken much of the problems from both world wars stem from the perception of Slavic peoples as not western people.... or maybe not as western as Western Europeans like the Germans and Austrians.

Though... hmm... I dunno... they've been in Europe for a very long time. And there are several types of Slavic peoples... Western Slavic (including Czechs, Poles and Slovaks), Eastern Slavic (including Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians) and Southern Slav's (including Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenians).

Then on top of that they are considered ethnically and linguistically Indo-European peoples. So perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree entirely.

Thoughts anyone?

 

In Norway, we learn that the Ural mountain-chain and the bosporous-strait mark the geographical borders of Europe, thus russia and turkey have one foot in asia and europe respecively. As for cultural differences; yes there are some, but to me the slavic peoples have allways been asumed part of the "European family". I've never met someone who considered the slavs as asians.

And as Slipthejab sais; slavic is one of the main branches of the huge indo-european language-tree (that basically consists of the following branches: The Latin-branch; today spoken in italy, romania, spain, portugal, some of the ex-yugoslavic states and france, the Germanic branch, today represented by English, German, Duch and Scandinavian, the Arian group, mainly spoken in some areas of India, the Celtic branch, today only spoken in some parts of france and on the british isles, and finally Slavic that is spoken in most eastern-european countries; except in Hungary, Estonia and Finland, that belong to another language-group than the Indo-european, that is called "Finnish-Ugrian". Finally, we have the Bask-language in northern Spain, that is a language that is totally different from anything else on this planet, somthing that makes the linguists speculate if that's the original european language from when the Cro Magnon-people migrated into Europe some 60.000 years ago.)

I and Langenschwert seems to have similar wiews on WMA and HEMA

To me WMA is any manual, system, or combat style that can be traced to Europe. As many europeans migrated to america, american styles is allso often included. Capoera is perhaps on the fringes of what I'd call WMA, as it perhaps is a mix between african and european systems?


Just a personal comment from me at the end of my little post:
I hate discussions on who influenced who. There's been found spears that are 70.000 years old, so trying to trace what people invented a punch to the face, a block, or a sidestep for the first time is kind of totally fruitless and uninterresting :woo:

(Provided you do believe in evolution; even amebes knows how to dodge...)