Everybody has their own opinion on the MMA craze. I have my own opinion on this subject but I don't think any two are alike and am curious to see what others think.

No. Much hay is made about how the fighters get their start in "traditional" martial arts.

The ship for "traditional" martial arts is sound because not everyone on the planet is studying martial arts to turn themselves into the ultimate human weapon. I mean, what does MMA mean for kali, fencing, kendo, or tai chi ch'uan? Not much at all. What does MMA have to do with gun fighting? Nada.

No.

But MMA has better marketing.

If you're into martial arts for inner peace and enlightenment, they still have a place. If you're into martial arts so you can be the coolest bad-a$$ on the block, well, traditional martial arts aren't even on the radar of anyone who's seen a UFC fight.

IMHO MMA is the salvation of martial arts, realistic and entertaining, great fun and accessible for combat athletes at all levels. Very good rule set that crosses all ranges of combat and some outstandng role models. Safer than people would have you believe and requiring a high level of fitness with a broad range of skills.

I hope they introduce a popular gi based MMA already, so we Judoka can do better in MMA =)

You mean like being the number one ranked heavyweight in MMA?

More seriously, no one does well in MMA who doesn't cross train. Judoka who cross train do fine. And combat sambo is basically MMA wearing a gi.

I'm not even sure its a craze - its another new sport, like snow boarding and mountain biking. Its still very small compared to the main sports like football, baseball, soccer, basketball, and even boxing is still bigger world wide. I don't think MMA has much effect on traditional martial arts, anymore than boxing ever impacted them - like boxing its hard to do casually.

It is, however, a lot of fun if you're into that kind of sport, and the people in it tend to be a great bunch of guys - there are exceptions, like in any activity (think of some of the recent threads about judo people in trouble), but for the most part its a good atmosphere.

It has not totally ruined traditional martial arts but it has put a hurt on it. If it has ruined something, it's the enrollment at the traditional schools. Anyone who is seriously into learning to fight/defend themselves or however you want to word it, will most likely not attend a traditional martial arts school. By traditional I am referring to the TKD, Karate, Kung Fu variety. You will not find the "tough guys" training at these traditional schools anymore. If you do, it is rare. The quality/toughness of the practitioners at these traditional schools is not, and most likely will never be what it used to.

Do I think this is bad? Yes and no. I started out in the traditional stuff and enjoyed it. Did I learn some good stuff? Yes. I also learned lots of crap but I was able to see that when they were teaching it to me.

I still think that most every style out there has something usefull. You just have to wade through some much junk to learn the usefull stuff and hopefully have training partners that are willing to train realistically.

MMA has been good in that it's brought everyone back to reality. I know it's a sport with rules and there are no rules on the street but it's still much more realistic than practicing against a cooperative partner or dancing around in front of a mirror. MMA fighters are tough in the ring and would be tough on the street.

MMA didn't ruin traditional arts. How could it? Traditional martial artists themselves ruined TMA. They only have themselves to blame.

I do not think it has ruined it

In the USA TMA's were always looked down upon as unrealistic, and the tough guys never did go to TMA dojos

Most tough guys I know learned stuff on the streets, so they thought TMA's, and sports like boxing, and wrestling were a waste of time

But TMA enrollment has been dwindling for a long time even before the TUF came on

I think they need to save themselves by becoming a hybrid TMA, like a judo and karate dojo, or TKD and Judo dojo

Most korean TKD, or japanese karate instructors will probably also know judo because in their countries they are often learned hand-in-hand together

a hybrid TMA dojo combined with movies about ninjas, and cool looking gis, and flashy kicks make it more appealing

Over all its good for their future imo. TMA will have to get their act and standards together if they're to survive since the average person can turn on the TV and see what works. Hopefully 12 month junior TKD ranks and endless hours of kata and 1 step sparring will be gone from Karate schools.

Other arts knew this all along - Judo, Muay Thai, Kyokushin Karate, boxing, wrestling, etc always used training methods that work. Arts that don't adapt may take the same path Aikikai Aikido has, where participants justify their time in the art through claiming its more spiritual and philosophical than other arts, that the moves are too deadly to fully apply, etc. Ah, cognitive dissonance at its best.

Or maybe some TMA will follow the same path the Chinese did with Kung Fu by creating Sanda. There was nothing wrong with various Kung Fu techniques per say - they just needed the garbage removed and effective training methods used. Kinda the opposite of what happened with TKD, but the South Korean military program certainly has effective TKD. Funny thing is once all the BS is removed from striking arts how much they all begin to look like Burmese Boxing, Muay Thai, Kyokushin Karate, etc. Grappling arts thankfully never had this problem so its really no secret that Judo, BJJ, SAMBO, SJ, and various forms of wrestling all use the same basic methods and movements.

Actually just introducing full contact sparring (in either striking or grappling, depending upon the art) is enough to straighten out any style. In any science there's a constant interplay between theory and experiment ... in fighting, full contact is the experiment which determines which theories work. Without it martial arts turn into a kind of dance or aerobics. I've seen this with the few aikido practioner's I've worked out with - one was from a club that did aikido randori (meaning unscripted and fully competitive aikido ... just like judo randori) and was quite good at applying it. Several others never sparred in aikido, and they were not only unable to apply anything, but their style was much fancier - he was able to complete many of his techniques, they could never even get started on theirs, though admittedly they looked better than he did with co-operating partners.

I suspect that in past centuries the testing happened automatically - students of a style would regularly fight. Now-a-days they often either don't fight at all, or do things like point fighting ... ie they lose the test of what works and what doesn't.

I think MMA has ruined the business of traditional martial arts. MMA didn't ruin the arts themselves.

To be honest if mma ruined something for the tma's this happened in the US, most parts of europe from what i can tell still call mma "vale tudo" or prefer k-1 and striking arts over grappling and dont understand, cant relate to the concept of ground fighting. Even in japan i dont think you see people flocking out of some tma school to go to an mma dojo or something like that.

In my personal opinion "honest" tma schools have nothing to fear from mma, they will still teach skills that any martial artist needs and if a praticioner is dedicated and hardworking enough he will be able to aplly is martial arts for self defense or in the ring\cage just has well has any other, in fact i think that we will see something like a "back to basics" when traditional martial artists (good ones) decide to try their hand at mma and are somewhat sucessfull because these days mma is to structered and rigid, people stick to what has worked and dont inovate anymore, they dont search for what could be the breacktrough, and that will eventually cause a search for what works diferently from the norm.

Yes!

Train Hard, Stay Safe,
Good Luck

What's the full working definition everyone's using for TMAs?

Judo? Boxing? Wrestling? "Krotty?" Tai Chi?

And how are they ruined? Declining membership?

In the contrary . Traditional MA are about body and mind , MMA is only about the body . Only waza , no kokoro....

Perhaps, though having done judo, boxing and now MMA I can't say I've noticed any difference in the quality of mind in any of the above. Considering some of the recent threads about high USA judo officials and judo Olympians I'd argue the perception is not just my own ... there's probably no evidence that traditional martial arts creates better people than sports like boxing or MMA (or tennis for that matter). Anyone who's had to deal with judo politics will know what I mean - and consider that this usually invovles high ranking individuals, the beneficiary's of years of such enlightening training. The same is true in boxing btw, most club coaches are great guys, the folks at the top are often a-holes (think Don King). I've met some wonderfully enlightened individuals in judo - but also in boxing, and the coach who made the biggest change in my life (as a somewhat troubled youth) was in fact a hockey coach/RCMP officer. Go figure.

Funnily enough the same seems to be true for academic study. If you talk to graduate students from various disciplines, you'll find that professors in the humanities, despite the soul enriching focus of their studies, are often the worst supervisors (in the sense of arrogant, unhelpful and elitist), whereas professors in engineering and the sciences are often the most egalitarian and helpful (possibly because in general graduate students are vital for the sciences - cheap lab assistants as it were ). However, departmental secretaries will in fact often tell you the same thing ...

In fact, I've learned to be wary of groups who claim that what they do or teach makes them a better person

Arts that do not have sparring cannot be called a martial art. It would be a dilution and distortion created by inept students professing to be teachers. In reality, can any martial art that expected to be used in real situations never had come up with the concept of sparring?

Sparring is nothing special nor secret, it's just that today there is too much BS.

Too much sparring is negative as well, as you can even see in Judo, where few practitioners reach a high level. Sure they can win a few matches or fights, but few learn the principles.

I think the problem isn't too much sparring (very few people can spar more than a couple of hours a day because of the wear and tear on the body), but not enough time on drills getting the mechanics and principles down. The theory becomes important later on when you coach yourself.

I'd actually question the assumption you make here.

I have one foot in the Chinese arts. I can tell you there are an awful lot of people that are going the exact opposite route of what you've laid out here. The more MMA becomes popular, the more these people retreat into abject nonsense. More "qi," more flashy uniforms, more BS about "masters," etc. Call it the "contrarian effect."

There will always be a market for people wanting to take a shortcut and/or buy into fantasy MA.

Before MMA became popular, the best "fighters" in the TMA schools were generally guys that were already tough, athletic, fighter mentality. By TMA schools, I'm talking about the karate, kung fu, TKD variety. The ones that practice their moves against cooperating partners, do flashy kata, point sparring. Every school had these guys and everyone knew who they were. Guys that were tough and adding martial arts techniques made them even scarier.

The enrollment of these guys has fallen off drastically in the TMA schools. I'm sure there are a few out there but not like the old days. These guys now sign up at BJJ, Judo, Muay Thai, MMA schools. The majority of the TMA shcools I refer to are catering to children (after school day care) for the most part and the adult classes are made up of adults who either don't want or cant handle the rigors of real combat training. This creates "fantasy warriors."

It also doesnt help that many of the school owners of the TMA schools I refer to have never fought themselves. One of my old instructors said to learn from fighters. Has the person your looking to sign up with ever fought, had to use their skill for real? If not, look elsewhere.

You're still losin' me man. Judo, Muay Thai, and Kyokushin Karate *are* traditional martial arts. Should I take people saying TMA to mean "martial arts without a significant live training component?"

On the other hand, if it makes schools like Oom Yung Doe, the Scientology of martial arts go away, I'm ok with that.

Actually, that is dead right. Social psychology has a concept called 'cognitive dissonance'. Basically, anytime we face something that contradicts a belief we have one of several things can happen. One of the choices is exactly this - vehemently supporting something solely on the notion of having the right to do so. Essentially these people know on some level what they're doing is ineffective.

MMA or something similar comes along (Judo seems to have this effect among some Aikido guys) and creates the dissonance when practitioners of an art see what they're doing is truly ineffective - assuming their goal was to train an effective art. At this point they're left to adjust their behavior to suit their goals (e.g., training an effective art) or formulate some type of reactionary stance to justify their behavior because realizing they wasted the last 10 years is uncomfortable to think about. This is where you see stuff like claiming their art is more refined, spiritual, and philosophical (frequent among Aikido guys), too deadly for sports competition ("ninjas" and the typical poorly training self-defense knuckleheads), or going into chi-over drive as you already mentioned.

The third set of people have no need to adjust their behavior because none of the above applied to them. In a typical Bullshido Aikido bashing thread some time ago a MMA/BJJ/or some such guy wrote about visiting an Aikido school to show them whats what. After participating in a class and showing them clown he was, which is another way to say he challenged them in various way, the instructor pulled him aside and said something along the lines of "look, we know what we're doing isn't very martial, but truth is we train Aikido because we like it." And ya know what? Nothing is wrong with that.

I don't mean to single out Aikido here, but its one of the stereotypical examples of this kind of behavior. Practitioners of every do this to some degree.

This happens in other areas of life and should be expected here too. A typical case of behavioral or cognitive changes due to cognitive dissonance among smokers is to either quit smoking, deny that smoking causes lung cancer, justify smoking because it "helps me relax," or come up with other unrelated excuses like "well I smoke, but at least I'm good at math." Its pretty easy to see how all of the above martial arts examples can be substituted into the smoking example.

I think these usually get purposely excluded from the TMA label for exactly that reason. Other reasons could be that all 3 are relatively newer forms of their parent arts - KK was formed in the 1960s and Muay Thai somewhere around 1940-1950s. Judo was obviously created well before those, but it was a result of the same type of refinement.

Well, I guess in the case of Muay Thai we certainly can't say it was made more effective as Muay Boran was straight up savage. But much like Judo, it was made far safer to practice.

In a sense Judo, Muay Thai, and Kyokushin Karate are all more modern versions of their more typical TMA parents. I still have to laugh at Muay Boran being placed in the same general category as say White Crane Kung Fu.

I've definitely seen what you're talking about, but there's always different groups pulling in different directions. We've had an aikido black belt show up at MMA from time to time who's club practices aikido randori (from what he's said its pretty similar to judo randori actually), and he's pretty good at applying his moves (not in the pure sense of only doing aikido when sparring, but in including aikido techniques among the elements of MMA). From what he said his club is pretty rare among the region's aikido dojo's, but not unique, and some others are starting to experiment with it as well. However he says that most are, as you say, if anything moving further from free sparring, if anything criticizing his club for their lack of purity and spirit ... he says he takes that as a compliment considering the source

Martial arts without a significant live training component is what I'm talknig about.

Honestly, the phrase "TMA" is completely arbitrary and undefined. It can mean different things to different people. I've heard some people define TMA by age. I've heard others define it by Kata practice. Still others have defined it by pacifist philosophy. Some just draw the line at Live training, or sport application of the art.

I try to avoid the phrase, whenever possible. I prefer to talk about specific arts, training methods, or regional origins when discussing MA's-- I find there is less confusion and generalization, that way.

--Joe

Not to mention many of the MMA fighters absolutely love Judo.

no judo and kyokushinkai are TMA's

muay thai, boxing, wrestling, bjj, sambo are not

sambo, MT, and bjj are not considered TMA because they are the new kids on the block

boxing and wrestling were just seem as sports, not martial arts

judo, karate, kung fu, Japanese jujitsu, TKD were the original martial arts of east asia

Judo is only 40 years older than BJJ and sambo ... it was started in 1882. Not exactly a long tradition as these things go. Is there an age cutoff for TMA?

Judo is 126 years old, BJJ and sambo roughly 80. I'm not sure that TKD is even much older, or karate for that matter. On the other hand, kung-fu and Japanese ju jitsu are many centuries old - I would call those two TMA's, the others are modern.

And though boxing and wrestling aren't eastern martial arts, they've always been called martial arts, at least around where I live.

Even if we accept the absurd notion that boxing and wrestling aren't martial arts (not 'eastern' enough?), Muay Thai has a verified history that hugely pre-dates Judo, most of the extant koryu and almost all of the currently practised kung fu styles (which mostly arose in the early 20th century). Even BJJ is older than Shotokan by more than a decade and everything is older than TKD, which was invented in the 1950s.

What is, or isn't, the 'new kid on the block' to strip mall schools in the American Mid-West is hardly a solid basis for classifying fighting systems.

BJJ is older than Shotokan?! You certain about that?

Funakoshi opened the Shotokan in 1936, Carlos Gracie opened his first academy in 1925.

no cutoff date or anything

it just is what it is

TMA means all karate, judo, kung fu, TKD, japanese jujitsu, aikido, hapkido

Whatever was around in the USA, and western europe during the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s

Boxing and wrestling were considered sports and not martial arts to most ordinary folks until TUF came out

MT was an exotic art but it was not really around back then in USA, and western Euro

No MMA has helped it has just given everyone a reality check and made people who want to learn self defence question what are they going to get out of a particular art. For the tough guys it has saved years of frustration going up and down in lines at the karate class and cut straight to the mustard so to speak.
Their will always be room for the tma/ classical arts as some people are gunuinely intrested in the do and not at all with real fighting.
TMA.s can be practiced well into old age, but not sure what its gonna look like in another fifty years when 60-70 year olds are hanging on the cage at the mma club waitin for thier turn to spar lol.
The sheer number of injuries that you pick up while practicing a full contact art does limit your practice as you age and it becomes inevitable that a time comes when you have to stop.

leaving aside your bizarre definition of "TMA" as asian martial arts as practiced in the US...

Boxing and wrestling have been considered martial arts and means of self-defense for as long as they've been around, and certainly much longer than any asian martial art in Britain and the US. I mean.. that's what they started out as?

see http://stores.lulu.com/lawson

he has amassed a large amount of historical wrestling, boxing, and other western martial art tomes and offers most of them for free download.

by boxing and wrestling I was referring folkstyle, freestyle, greco-roman, marquis of queensberry rules

Those were the types of boxing, and wrestling practiced during this last century by non-communist white folk, and they were just considered sports first and foremost by most ordinary people during that time

It is not my definition of anything

It is just the way it is, I had nothing to do with it

TMAs mean all karate, kung fu, judo, JJ, TKD, hapkido, aikido, ninjitsu and the like

the lay-man only started calling boxing and wrestling martial arts around the time UFC started getting popular

Maybe during the 1800 or 1700 they were considered martial arts, but it doesnt matter

TMAs are defined the way I have stated

This is the new definition for people who came of age during the MMA/BJJ revolution. During the previous century the term Traditional Martial Art largely referred to koryu bujutsu -- the martial arts that preceded gendai budo. Judo, karate, and aikido are examples of the modern martial arts, while kenjutsu and jujutsu are examples of TMA. In the US now many people have the same view that you do -- Asian martial arts are TMA, and western fighting arts are non-traditional. As you mentioned, boxing and wrestling only recently became included in the term martial arts for most people. The definition of TMA has changed and meant different things to different people. Among martial artists you won't find the consensus that you seem to think.

Well, Matt_Werk's impressive array of sources combined with airtight logical argument have certainly convinced me.

They'll be rolling without strikes (either in or out of the gi), it's about the safest fighting practice there is.

We have a 62 year old who has been in our MMA club (he's also a shodan in our judo club) for the last couple of years. He spars lighter (ie when you box with him you dial down the intensity), we're a bit more careful with throws, and do a fair amount of ground work with him (the GnP again is dialed down). He's a great guy, everyone is happy to work out with him, and he seems to love it. Though its possible that by age 80 he'll have to find something else ...



Possibly that's an American definition - like a lot of things its quite possible that the definition varies around the world (talking about your car trunk means different things in England and in the US). In Canada any form of fighting was called a martial art. Boxing and wrestling were just boxing and wrestling, judo just judo - but if you wanted to classify things, boxing and wrestling were always called western martial arts, judo a modern martial art (ie until the 80's it wasn't even a century old, didn't make much sense to call it traditional). Traditional martial arts were things like kung-fu and ju jitsu.

Though for most people, until recently, martial arts meant almost nothing - if you told someone you studied martial arts they'd ask if you were in the military ... or thinking you mispronouncing marital arts

we are going way off topic, final word

the term TMAs is not gonna be defined by some writer of some instructional book, or some martial arts historian

TMA is defined by whatever is the "word on the street"

You cannot pinpoint the source of that

It does not start with one person, or book, or website

The definition I have given is the consensus definition

.....and for my next question. What is your definition of a traditional martial art? lol

Perhaps where you live

Though I expect if I went onto the street here and asked people what a "traditional martial art" was, I'd just get blank stare ... a quick sample poll of co-workers would suggest the consensus answer is "Huh? No idea."

One guy guessed it might have something to do with first nations (or native Americans) warfare, as they often speak in terms of traditional rights and lands. The thing is, most people have no idea of what the difference between judo, cage fighting, wrestling, BJJ, karate and so forth is to begin with ... it all more or less looks to be the same thing to them. Making distinctions between different groupings of martial arts isn't exactly street level knowledge where I live, and I'm surprised it is where you live.

Just because you assume it to be the consensus definition doesn't make it so. You might try presenting evidence to support your claim-- tends to make bold generalizations (like this one) go over better, in your argument.

Heck, the average Joe Schmo doesn't even realize that Judo isn't a striking art, or that there's a difference between Kung-Fu and Karate. When I describe my martial arts training to regualr people, I have to tell them that it's a lot like High School wrestling-- otherwise, they just can't understand how you can have a martial art without kicking and punching.


The truth is, there is no "consensus definition" of TMA's. Everybody tends to have their own idea of what the phrase means. At best, the phrase is a misnomer. At worst, it's completely inaccurate.

--Joe

Best answer yet

This is always the best question...

If that were true we wouldn't be discussing it still.

It is always dangerous to assume your viewpoint is the "consensus" viewpoint.



Judo isn't a striking art? Someone better tell Kano that. He seems to have been confused and thought Atemi was part of Judo.

I think it is good that most people are crazed about MMA. It could be a blessing in disguise. Only the true martial arts people will stay with Karate and Judo, while the young people get into MMA and sportfighting (kickboxing and grappling).

Self Defense has not changed. What has changed is people's perception of what martial arts are. Perceptions and beliefs go in and out of style. Karate and Judo will always be around.