“Parts of Arts.” “Sorts of Sports.”
I spent most of my martial arts and military and police defensive tactics career, decades, looking for “The Next Best Thing.” This path took me through many martial arts and martial sports. All the while I knew I wanted and needed:
* clean, swift, hand, stick, knife, gun methods,
* standing through floor-ground,
* in all environments, rural, suburban, urban, in-out of buildings,
* legally defensible,
* from verbal skills through lethal force,
* for crime-fighting and war fighting.
You know what? I never found one and after many frustrating years, dared to build one out of frustration, for the citizen, the cop, the soldier. For me. And for you.
This meant a few certain mindset tricks-goals I organized through the Army and policework. And by fate I had a great JKD martial trainer named Ray Medina back in the 1980s-1990s and we went everywhere. Arts, seminars and classes galore. Our trick-goal-mission was always,
“How do I defeat this?”
Not…”how do I become this.”
Not, “oh I love this.”
Not, “this is great exercise.”
Not, “I really like this great group of people”
Not “etc., etc.”
To paraphrase Bruce Lee, “all arts are traps.” Sports too. You get trapped in a dimension. Your mind, clothing, ways and means, lingo, hero and system worship, methods get trapped in mental and physical “one dimensions.” It’s a slow boil, and without the proper Martial I.Q., you don’t even know it.
Back in my police work years, I finally realized, “I can’t waste my time fooling around with all this extraneous stuff.” I had to reduce the abstract. As an aide I developed this sort of sing-song motto in my head. “Parts of arts,” because some parts are fantastic. “Sorts of sports,” because some sorts of combat sports offer fantastic material. Sort out and through the sports. (I can almost hear Neil Damond sing it.)
Just as an example, I have long held two golden rules in terms of deducing unarmed fighting:
Rule 1: “Have I seen this move done in the UFC, where people do clean, generic battle.
Rule 2: “Should I even be using the UFC on this move. (MMA, with it’s ground n’ pound, today is the closest one is going to get to the real deal but it’s not crime and war centric.)
This deduction mindset holds over to the stick, knife, gun world. Just change the nouns! Here are just SOME examples…
Rule 1: Stick noun change example – have I seen-researched this move done in stick dueling?
Rule 2: Stick noun change example – how rare is two-stick dueling in real life anyway?
Rule 1: Knife noun change example – have I seen this move done in knife dueling?
Rule 2: Knife noun change example – how rare is knife dueling in real life anyway? (In some arts there might be too much knife dueling in lieu of what we see in crime and war.)
Rule 1: Gun noun change example – have I seen this move done in pistol or long gun combat?
Rule 2: Gun noun change example – should I be spending 99% of my time shooting at paper targets?
This goes on and on in big and small subjects, but I (and you) need some kind of analysis rule of thumb, motto – How much “parts of arts?” How much “sorts of sports?”
With this obsession (it is unhealthy and distracting to normal life, I confess) I still after 50 years, STILL have these “keep-don’t keep-change-this” epiphanies. STILL! It will never end. It shouldn’t. It can’t. How much arts and sports are “HOW questions” in the who, what, where, when, how and why, semi-bible of my life. How much? Well parts and sorts. Some. The search will never be done. I, you will never make the perfect system. It’s really all about the trying to.
Anyway, most martial arts we see today, no matter how old they seem to be, are parts of other arts puzzled together. This idea is not new.
How free are you to pursue what you want? How much have you thought about this? How free are you to instantly evolve? How happy are you where you are, (because if you are happy doing arts and sports, and you know where it fits in reality, then keep on. I am happy for you if you are happy for you. Me? I am never happy.)
How. How. How?
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