Why I hate the western martial arts community

[Don Coyote]

Half brick in a sock-fu.  Failing that, use secret technique: fist of the "avert gaze and run away".

[Jasper]

If you can take the hot linked enema, then you can cast the first image macro.

[translation:  no image]

[Kai]

ECH wins.

You can't lose the fight you never get into.

And that reminds me of another beef.

People who for some reason think they are going to at any moment need to use their epic sword fighting prowess in a real life or death fight. And then they use that a reasoning to move into sparring way before they are ready. "Ya um dude, chill out wait like a year of drilling and then maybe we will start free play" "No fuck you dude, I want to fight now. I am going to find someone else that really does the real shit not some fucking poser with some made of kata" "You do know that we haven't used swords in combat for over 2 centuries right?" 'fuck you dude. I want to learn the real stuff and I want it now. I have to defend my castle from invaders."

Basically, they want to spar as soon as possible because they want to fight swords, and then they end up making up techniques that only work under the controlled conditions of their sparring, instead of bothering to focus on what we know.
"Dude I just discovered a secret move?" "Oh really?" "ya one that wasn't in any of your books" "Go on" "You know just because they didn't say do this in that situation doesn't mean that they didn't" "I bet you also think that there are still WMDs in Iraq" "Fuck you dude, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"

When I was taking martial arts they always taught you not to fight, and that what you were learning was defensive. I never fully subscribed, sometimes there is no other choice, but the princpile seems to have been replaced/lost with competition dojos.

This is one of the reasons I really liked Tai Chi Chuan. I was instructed to avoid a fight if at all possible, to remove oneself from danger, to keep a fight from happening in the first place. I was also taught that if it came to a fight, go straight for the neck, the eyes, the solar plexus, the groin, and any other easily damaged part. End it as soon as possible, break an elbow if needed, but end it. Tai Chi is /dirty/ fighting, and dirty fighting is the only way to fight if you have to.

I'd be careful with that advice, actually knowing how to fight is a good way to get 'self defense' thrown out by the judge (this actually happened to me, and I didn't even cause any lasting damage).

Who's gonna believe that little scrawny me would pick a fight?

[Kai]

ECH wins.

You can't lose the fight you never get into.

And that reminds me of another beef.

People who for some reason think they are going to at any moment need to use their epic sword fighting prowess in a real life or death fight. And then they use that a reasoning to move into sparring way before they are ready. "Ya um dude, chill out wait like a year of drilling and then maybe we will start free play" "No fuck you dude, I want to fight now. I am going to find someone else that really does the real shit not some fucking poser with some made of kata" "You do know that we haven't used swords in combat for over 2 centuries right?" 'fuck you dude. I want to learn the real stuff and I want it now. I have to defend my castle from invaders."

Basically, they want to spar as soon as possible because they want to fight swords, and then they end up making up techniques that only work under the controlled conditions of their sparring, instead of bothering to focus on what we know.
"Dude I just discovered a secret move?" "Oh really?" "ya one that wasn't in any of your books" "Go on" "You know just because they didn't say do this in that situation doesn't mean that they didn't" "I bet you also think that there are still WMDs in Iraq" "Fuck you dude, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"

When I was taking martial arts they always taught you not to fight, and that what you were learning was defensive. I never fully subscribed, sometimes there is no other choice, but the princpile seems to have been replaced/lost with competition dojos.

This is one of the reasons I really liked Tai Chi Chuan. I was instructed to avoid a fight if at all possible, to remove oneself from danger, to keep a fight from happening in the first place. I was also taught that if it came to a fight, go straight for the neck, the eyes, the solar plexus, the groin, and any other easily damaged part. End it as soon as possible, break an elbow if needed, but end it. Tai Chi is /dirty/ fighting, and dirty fighting is the only way to fight if you have to.

That's how I feel about it. I've gained an erroneous reputation for being able to kick anyone's ass, when the reality is that I'm just really good at NOT getting my ass kicked (also at looking scary enough to prevent a confrontation in the first place, which is an incredibly effective technique if you can pull it off). Why throw a punch when a wristlock or armbar is infinitely more effective? And if I do have to strike, I'm going for the instep, knee, or clavicle first. I want the advantage of having more usable limbs than the other guy. A fight that devolves into a swinging melee is a good way to get hurt.

Right, instep and knee are two other good ones. Especially if the knee is unbent and not braced. It's not meant to go that direction so it's pretty weak if pushed that way. Same with the elbow. I want that person incapacitated long enough for other people to jump in and help or for me to get away.

At some point, somebody got the idea that fighting was a way of looking cool rather than a way of incapacitating or killing someone who is trying to incapacitate or kill you as quickly as possible.

[Don Coyote]

At some point, somebody got the idea that fighting was a way of looking cool rather than a way of incapacitating or killing someone who is trying to incapacitate or kill you as quickly as possible.

As long as naked apes have been fighting, there have been naked apes making up stuff that looks cool to impress other naked apes.

[President Television]

I know a guy who got his ideas about fighting from Japanese RPGs. He tried to fight me once. I didn't really fight back, and I had my hands in my pockets, but he still didn't manage to hurt me. At all.
He likes to brag about his fighting skills.

[Don Coyote]

I know a guy who got his ideas about fighting from Japanese RPGs. He tried to fight me once. I didn't really fight back, and I had my hands in my pockets, but he still didn't manage to hurt me. At all.
He likes to brag about his fighting skills.

I got a cousin who out ranks me in a style of TKD. Like massively outranks me. As in I got to orange belt and realized how bullshit it was and she has a red belt with a black-strip or something like that. She want to touch spar. She didn't want to ever again after that. This was in 03 I think. I think it might have been rather unpleasant for her to not even be able to get close enough to tag me.

[Adios]

I know a guy who got his ideas about fighting from Japanese RPGs. He tried to fight me once. I didn't really fight back, and I had my hands in my pockets, but he still didn't manage to hurt me. At all.
He likes to brag about his fighting skills.

I got a cousin who out ranks me in a style of TKD. Like massively outranks me. As in I got to orange belt and realized how bullshit it was and she has a red belt with a black-strip or something like that. She want to touch spar. She didn't want to ever again after that. This was in 03 I think. I think it might have been rather unpleasant for her to not even be able to get close enough to tag me.

Meh. Belt degrees mean you know patterns.

[Don Coyote]

Meh. Belt degrees mean you know patterns.

Yup, specially with that particular style.

[Adios]

Meh. Belt degrees mean you know patterns.

Yup, specially with that particular style.

I refused to test, but was only allowed to spar with high red or above. I remained a white belt because I am so innocent.

[Requia ☣]

.

Meh. Belt degrees mean you know patterns.

Colored belt degrees just means you showed up when I did TKD, the only belts they did real testing for were black belts (which is why you see so many black stripes)

[Kai]

One of the other things I liked about Tai Chi Chuan is there was none of these silly belts and grades. Sure, people were positioned on the floor for warmups by age and experience, but there was really only two ranks, master and student. The master was marked by his uniform, not because he had purchased anything special, but because all the dirtying and subsequent washing over the years had turned it to a silver gray. He was also marked by that quality that demands attention, and close listening. Not that he ever spoke loudly. In fact, he was quiet mannered, and about 5 feet tall; I think he was 65 or older.


He could also knock a long time student off his feet with a twist of his arm, even when this big burly guy was coming at him hard. I was impressed, he was impressive by that same quality that made people listen closely. A person would know when they became a master, because their uniform would be just as gray from use. No need for belts.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

This is why instead of joining a Dojo I joined a gun club.

[Suu]

The best part about studying a Western martial art is the realization that you'll never know it all anyway. The texts that we study from are treatises, not manuals, if you will, for the system of that master, Talhoffer, Fiore, Marozzo, et al. There was tons of information left out, and you can only learn so much from pictures and descriptions translated from medieval dialects or ecclesiastical Latin. Much like martial arts schools of today, they wanted your money and wanted you to study with them to learn.

They didn't have the tradition of passing down the information as in the East, and any that there was was destroyed once the firearm became common. One can only look at the treatises and fechtbuchen for so long and interpret what they can, but in the end, we know they're flawed, but they're still useful, especially when fighting sassy SCA fencers who think they're still using epee or foil. They definitely don't like anything from the 1.33 Walpurgis manuscript, in fact, GS and I were asked to STOP drilling from it when we were visiting a different academy in the area. They also really don't like Talhoffer halfswording...

[Cain]

I was primarily referring to the ninnies that focus exclusively on the sword, out of armor, and still look like a bunch of spastic retarded pussies. Because it's not like there were grappling arts that went along with that 'fancy' sword work, oh shit there are. But no one wants to do the wrestling, sword fighting is so much cooler.

That's insane.  I admit I'm nowhere near an expert on swordfighting, but as I understand it, with the rapier and cut-and-thrust blades, a surprisingly high degree of the actual fighting involved grappling and wrestling while trying to stab the other dude in the kidney (or throat, or whatever).  It's why certain rapiers were designed to be brittle, so they could be broken on the ground and shoved into someone's vitals. 

I would imagine even with larger and heavier weapons such as the longsword, using one's shield and the heavy weight of one's armour would be a key part of combat.  And given people would've been wearing heavy armour back then (admittedly, armour they had trained for years to use and so could be surprisingly fast and dangerous in), falling down would be a pretty common problem, especially on a battlefield, which were hardly ideal conditions for fighting in, what with the mud, the blood, the piss, the dying people around you etc.  If you couldn't manouver while on the ground, some peasant bastard was liable to slit your throat.  And on top of that, wrestling and hunting were the two major activities undertaken by nobles in preparation for weapons training, so the idea they wouldn't recall or rely upon some of that in a fight is insanely ahistorical.

If you're going to historically reconstruct fighting methods, you need to go the full nine yards.