Your opinion on sport-oriented martial arts.

Many of today's most popular martial arts can be considered as sports and this includes MMA and such related events.

But certain martial arts such as Taekwondo, Karate or Judo have been modified in which the techniques, kumite rules, training or even it's purpose are geared towards the sport aspect instead of the traditional combat / self defense aspect.

This shows in stances and moves.

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Another is the dojo or the organization's purpose where such show pride by the number of medals won, etc.

What is your opinion of such when martial arts has become geared towards sports?

 

As long as they don't sell it as anything else then I am all for it. Most "sport" fighters at the high contact end of the scale will annihilate everyone else anyway

 

The vast majority of martial arts work much better as sports than they do as practical fighting systems. Most of the people I hear talking down to "sport" martial arts are deluded old-timers who still think that punching the air from horse stance is combat training.

I am perfectly happy to call my martial art a sport or a hobby.

 

I think it's fine as long as the sporting aspects results in practicing or improving the key skills of the martial art.

The reason that sport karate gets more flak than sport, say, BJJ is that sport karate tends to modify the techniques and make them less effective in the process of gearing them towards the sport. If you practice just for the sport in disciplines like sport karate, you're often practicing what the traditionalists would consider "incorrect" techniques. That's when it becomes a problem in my opinion.

 

Off the top of my head I'd say that there are two sides to this particular coin. On the one side you've got genuine pressure-testing in the ring/cage/whatever. (e.g. boxing, judo.) The other side of the coin is where you've got a really restrictive sports ruleset that results in tippy-tappy point fighting, which doesn't encourage effective fighting technique.

 

For me, it depends on the rules and the format.

I'm perfectly happy with sports fighting systems where opponents actually use some real muscle, where the stakes are high enough that a moment of carelessness could actually get you really hurt and where you honestly pressure test your training with few limitations. Judo/BJJ/Boxing/Kickboxing/Knockdown Karate I'm all perfectly happy with and support. From what I've seen all of them really allow you to pressure test your training and your knowledge in a hard way and it takes real guts to step into a ring/octagon/tatami against a guy that's probably going to want to hurt you in order to win and to stand your ground.

Point scoring "I tag you and win" competitions like Shiai Kumite for karate - or even the awful, awful stuff that was on display with the Olympic Taekwondo - is hideously damaging to the art and I hate it with a passion. It's fine for kids and hobbyists that don't want to actually learn the MA properly, as long as they understand that they're not really learning to defend themselves or learning the MA.

But I've sparred with my fair share of karateka who have boasted that "if they stopped holding back they would really hurt me" who just can't. The stances are too heavily modified, the punches are pulled badly, the distancing is off, the timing of the attack is often out and quite often those people favour lunges using punches that come only from the lower arm than from the entire body or kicks that come only from the knee down. They never seem to understand that whatever you train for you will become proficient at. Train for light contact sports sparring, you will become good at light contact sparring.

 

Yeh I think it is important to know the difference and to know what you're training in.

In my mid to late teens I studied TKD, before I started I was very flexible and could kick high so it made sense to learn how to do it properly. I was very good at the kicking techniques and could happily, at the time, do any of the kick techniques and stop them an inch from someones head with perfect control.

What I was never told was how to actually kick someone...

But not knowing that I didn't know how to kick some one, for years I thought that with kicks as JCVDingly awesome as mine would get me through any altercation I might've had which would require self defense.

It wasn't until I started Jujitsu and we were practicing kicks and, knowing my background in TKD, my sensei questioned why my kicks werent harder. He got out his MT style kick pads and his big wrap around body protector thing and told me to go to town on him. We soon found that I was naturally pulling all of my kicks - because the muscle memory of years of doing so at TKD still told me to do so.

I have since learnt to put power into a kick =D

But the moral of this story is while I agree with the above statements that there is nothing 'wrong' with the more sport orientated styles, it is important to be told what it is you're learning. And if you want to learn how to defend yourself at the same time (assuming you do a tippy tappy sport art) then you need to get your instructor to teach you how to take your amazing technique and turn it into one that can actualy damage...

 

On reflection, I'd qualify my previous post somewhat by saying that point fighting is bad only if that's the only way you ever train. If you train full-contact but can also do point fighting then you're simply showing great control and precision.

 

Yeah, I was a victim of this with my last karate instructor. He was a former national kumite and kata champ of Namibia for several years and then a couple of years later he became an instructor. Though he claimed he was also trying to mix modern and traditional training styles, most of his training was geared towards karate as a sport than as a TMA.

I was lucky enough to found out for myself while I was still training with him about needing to learn to put power in. I'd been training a little over a year with him and asked if I could borrow his thai pad to practice at home, to which he agreed. Within a week of daily practice for an hour at a time, I went from kicking the pad with no power in my mawashi geri (roundhouse kick) to the point where I knocked down most of a concrete wall in my back yard with my low kicks. Because I realised I simply wasn't putting in enough effort into the kicks and was pulling them too much. Then there was the realization that my attack angle was off...then my distancing changed slightly...you get the idea.

Now I still practice some control kicking as its' great for developing speed and control (empty bottle of squash on a washing line works well), but at least three times a week outside the dojo I go thai pad/makiwara training to make sure I'm still working on my power. The result is that a couple of months after I tore the ligaments in my lower leg and ankle of my right leg, I was still throwing gentle mawashi geri's that were still "hurting" people holding the pad for me

 

IMHO, I see sport modifying martial arts in two ways primarily: Watering down of technique and specialization.

1) Watering down of technique:
Pros: Martial arts can be practiced and tested at higher intensities with less chance of injury. Because of the higher intensities, martial artists can gain valuable experience in simulated combat that carries over from sport to self-defense. Watered down does not mean that a technique is not good or does not work, many watered down techniques are very practical and effective... think of Judo, for example.

Cons: Watering down of technique can lead to bad habits. For example, pulling punches when you do not intend to. Or punching too hard bare knuckle because you are used to hitting with gloves and wraps. One of the biggest examples of watered down technique came when UFC first was introduced... basically, striking arts were shown to have become watered down... some of the grapplers were shown to be better strikers in close quarters (targeting and using techniques that hit vital and pressure point areas considered illegal by many strikers) compared to most of the strikers who competed.

Lesson learned: Many of the things considered "dirty tricks" in sport are actually valid "add ons" to fundamentals that could be very useful in self-defense and real situations.

2) Specialization
Pros: Can get really good at something at very in depth level. Also, with specialization you get a lot of conditioning (many who do not specialize enough, end up neglecting the conditioning and repetition needed to get something to work reliably and at an intuitive level, IME).

Cons: Ending up like a fish out of water when the "rules" and environment changes from what you are used to.

Lesson learned: Cross training is important.

 

I agree with this. Although I make the distinction between point fighting and harder contact by using the term "combat sport". Combat sport refers to arts that are trained at medium to full contact levels.

It is my opinion that if you want to learn how to fight, you need to train in a non-scripted sparring environment along with the standard drilling phase when learning or practicing techniques.

Many martial artists that do not spar in a sport oriented manner seem to forget that sport martial artists are free to use the same dirty tricks as they are. The sportive individual will just be better at getting to a position to use said dirty tactics due to their familiarity with the chaos of sport sparring.

The statement about specialization sometimes taking away from an art's efficacy is also true however. See BJJ's upside down guard for reference.

 

I would even say that in many cases it is martial artists that do not spar in a sport oriented manner that never learn the dirty tricks. It is the sport martial artists that are passing this knowledge on to others.

Just a bit of me ranting here... Non-sport martial arts can be very visual (what you see is what you learn). If you don't see it, you may never learn it... or even if you learn it, you might forget to use it and then the next guy never learns it. IMHO, dirty tricks are very subtle... a blatant eye gough is not a dirty trick, it is very obvious what it is. The dirty trick might be how you get an eye gough off a perfectly normal looking open hand strike. (I'm not saying eye gough is a good thing, only that the dirty trick is how to get one in a subtle manner). Maybe more appropriate is landing your elbow into the ribs off a normal looking throw or that elbow off a normal looking hook punch.

Edit: I'm also not trying to say it is okay to break the established rules of engagement. I'm only saying that IMHO, the transfer of knowledge for things like dirty tricks is more so through "old-timers" who have trained in a sport environment.

 

You have to know the rules to break the rules.

 

It's much more fun to be able to actually compete against each other in a sport-like fashion. It's also good for becoming experienced with other people trying to punch you.

Like someone else in this thread said, punching the air with bad intentions does not teach you anything about real combat situations. At least in a competition you augment your reflexes and you learn about anticipating incoming attacks by watching the "turbines" (<--thanks Simon).

Of course doing full contact sparring and fighting, you will be even better prepared for actual combat situations. But for some people like myself, full contact is just no fun. Getting hit hard or hitting hard, I say no thanks to both.

 

Would you think it's necessarily level of contact, or something closer to... I dunno, authenticity in rulesets? Olympic TKD looks like it's harder contact than BJJ, but I'd recommend the latter over the former.

Come to the dark side and spend your time vigorously hugging people.

 

haha not today darth

I actually wanted to take up BJJ not too long ago, until I learned about cauliflower ears. So yeah, no thanks to that neither.

 

Ear guards nullify that

 

It'll make your wrists thicker

 

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You mean this?

Yeah uhm, I'm not wearing that.

I think I'll get my butt kicked after class if I came in looking like that.

Just kidding, even though I'd look ridiculous it's actually making me consider it.

We'll see.