Are Traditional Martial Arts Underestimated in MMA?

The boundary between TMA and MMA is like the boundary between erotica and pornography. There's no objectively meaningful distinction that I've ever seen drawn, but there's definitely a different "feel."

EDIT: I don't mean to cast aspersions on either TMA or MMA with that analogy. I don't think either is inherently better or worse, there's just a very "different" feel in my opinion.

 

May be TMA guys use more "head lock", and MMA guys use more "leg/legs shoot".

 

TMA guys discuss existentialism by candle-light with cello music swelling in the background; MMA guys show up at the door with a pizza box and a tool belt?

:hat:

 

- TMA guys call it "reverse head lock". MMA guys call it "guillotine".
- TMA guys call it "sweep". MMA guys also use "sweep" but it's a complete different move.
- Both TMA guys and MMA guys use "overhook" and "underhook" and they mean exactly the same moves (thanks God at least there is no confusion here).

 

After fifty years.
Done some judo=throws/ground pragmatic techniques nothing fancy works in competition.

karate=strikes and kcks

kendo=accuracy and speed

aikido =body movement and unbalancing.

Done some real fights= being alert balancing fear/anger. Bottle to seize the initiative,

SAS= speed aggression and sustain. techniques? whatever wherever as soon as possible.

MMA or Tma...Could not care less.

 

err.... not really. Both have difference balance points to a certain extent based on how their mass is distributed. It's similar but not entirely the same. In fact they're different enough to offer two different forms of training. Technique for both of them might appear similar at first... but it's not.

We've had some guys come down from Beijing and train with us here in HK... where the KB is used in most gyms... and they really thought it was very different. What worked on the stone lock didn't always work on the KB and visa versa.

There's a lot of things that can't be done with a stone lock in a modern gym. Toss one of them down and let it land corner-on into your Zebra mats and see how impressed your gym owner is with you.

In terms of feel they are very different in my experience from KB's. I like the stone locks and wish more places had them.. a very valid way to train and a nice homage to an old-school style of training. But a pretty different creature than KB's - not sure if you've done much training with both but I've taken workshops with Steve Cotter and use KB's everyday for my own training and a wide range of clients... and I didn't find them really all that similar to Stone locks.

To be pedantic... most KB's are made from iron not steel... and a major difference is the shape of KB's is spherical while locks are rectangular with many angles that make handling them very different from KBs. The difference between the grips of the two is pretty big as well.

 

For what it's worth here are some interesting bits on Stone-locks and some clips from YouTube of the guys from Beijing with some traditional training methods using stone locks and a the awesome


https://wwhttp://www.martialartspla...omicathletic.com/articles/detail.asp?ArtID=61


http://www.oldtimestrongman.com/blog/2009/02/chinese-stone-locks.html

Shuaijiao stone locks
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMlVUcNQIhE"]The Stone Lock - YouTube[/ame]

The awesome Ning Ze
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL4PY38ZNvE&feature=related"]The Ningzi - YouTube[/ame]

and of course this is cool a Chinese long bag which is similar in some ways to a Bulgarian bag... not exactly the same but still an ass kicker of a workout.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KJG0tFJe4g&feature=related"]The Long Bag: A Traditional Training Tool - YouTube[/ame]

 

I think I have stated it fairly clearly in my OP and in subsequent posts. It goes without saying that MMA styles are dominated by the big four: MT, Box, Wrestling, BJJ. Any other art not one of those four I just generally lump into TMA.

I'm not trying to rewrite definitions or anything, but instead of writing 'any art not one of the big four' every time I just decided to stick with TMA. I could have just as easily written OMA (Other Martial Arts). So let's not get stuck on this point as it's not totally relevant.

Edit: I also think that Chinese Martial Arts are definitely underestimated and underutilized, I guess this partly has to do with the fact their aren't many Chinese MMA fighters out there.

 

One thing to consider is that someone like Machida has not exactly caused a flood of young men into Shotokan. I think the ship has sailed. You might see MMA gyms picking and choosing some techniques here and there from TMAs, but I think in terms of training the 'big four' will remain the base. And that is okay...

 

That's because they're all doing Sanshou, but few people in the west know about Sanshou, so a lot of people assume that there's nothing like MMA in China. In fact, like rugby and American football, I'd say that there are more similarities than differences between Sanshou and UFC-style MMA (even though there are, of course, definitely some major differences).

 

Ok then. Boxing is hundreds of years old and wrestling is older than speech. BJJ is less than 100 years old while TKD is 60. But if that's the way you want to slice it fine.
Judo is big in mma http://www.judomma.com/. Karate (especially knockdown) is huge in MMA and K1. Most of the MMA guys in China have a Shuai Jiao or San Da base. And there's this guy called Fedor who does this thing called sambo.
MMA is actually much more diverse than you think. The big 4 are really only the big 4 in the states. Like I said before if you think what you do is good, there's nothing stopping you from testing it.

 

Oh my god. I totally want one.

 

Disclaimer; I’ve been out of MA training for due to injuries so this is based on ‘research’. I’m not an expert this is just my humble opinion.

Finding a working definition of TMA’s that the majority of martial artists will agree on is impossible in my opinion… here’s mine though…

A traditional martial arts is one that is practiced and taught from tradition, meaning; there is no ongoing evaluation of the results of the training methodology, and as a result there is no progression. Traditional martial arts also tend to lack [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL05Es8LVAQ"]aliveness in their drills[/ame].

So 2 things make up a traditional art; lack of aliveness, and a training methodology practiced out of blind ‘tradition’.

It is a generalization of course (like all labels), and there are grey areas.

##################

Now onto ‘Why are TMA’s ‘overlooked‘ (or more accurately underrepresented)?’

The fact is that arts like BJJ, wrestling, Muay Thai/Kick boxing and Boxing have produced a high percentage of successful practitioners in interdisciplinary competitions like ADCC, K-1 and MMA, TMA schools can‘t claim that.

Regarding people holding up Machida or Chuck as an example of Shotokan and Kempo - to quote RBSD instructor Mick Coup;

Could Forrest Griffin fight successfully using the [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fUZ8DmmWC0&feature=related"]delivery system[/ame] of Machida Karate? I personally doubt it. Yet he uses the same boxing/Muay Thai/BJJ base of Anderson Silva, and he is able to adapt it into an aggressive, pressure style based around his own attributes. Whereas Anderson Silva has adapted that base into an elusive, precise, counter-striking style based on his own attributes.

IMO ‘the big four’ can be adapted into an MMA style that fits with a wide range of attributes. I personally believe that many TMA styles favour people endowed with incredible reflexes and speed in order to compete successfully in full contact, like Lyoto Machida.

So the reasons why I believe that arts outside of combat sports are ‘overlooked’ is because;

1)The ’big four’ and other combat sports can be adapted to fit a wide range of individual attributes.

2) In interdisciplinary competition practitioners with a base including ‘the big four’ have had a high percentage of success.

3) The implicit aim of combat sports arts is to produce combat efficient individuals.

4) There is a bigger competitive talent pool available in those arts, so people have easier access to competent instructors in those arts, and competent training partners.

To summarise;

Non-traditional combat sports based arts (including Judo, Sambo, Sanda, and Kyokushin) will continue to be the main sources for MMA practitioners because - to quote RBSD instructor Richard Grannon; they offer

P.S. I love threads like these.

 

This depend on the instructor and not the style. If you are a new student in the tradition Taiji system. your Taiji teacher can apply the following teaching method on day one.

- Your teacher get you a training partner.
- Your partner shoots at your leg.
- You step back your leading leg.
- You press down both of your hands on top of your partner's neck (or both elbow joints), and
- pull your partner down right in front of you.

When you go home and you train your move witout partner, you get yourself a "solo drill". After you can use this move against "leg/legs shooting", you teacher then teach you how to "enhance" that move. Your teacher also tell you this is the 1st move of Chang/Yang Taiji "Open Position Stance". After you have learned about 50 such 2 men drills, oneday you have nothing better to do, you try to link all those 50 solo drills together, you have just got yourself a "solo form" (Kata/pattern).

If you train this way, no matter what TMA style that you are training, you will alway have a lot of "aliveness" - 2 men drills -> sparring -> solo drills -> equipment training.

 

As you say, boxing is hundreds of years old, but in that time it has changed radically from the old bare knuckle boxing including back fists, elbows, grappling and some kicks etc to the modern art of fists only. Wrestling I dont know enough to say.
I tend to think of traditional martial arts as having a big focus on looking back at history for inspiration and techniques and using a historical method of training, ie kata, bunkai, kumite (insert other languages words as necessary). Non TMA tend to have heavily modified their skill set to fit sporting challengers ie boxing gloves, judo removing techniques, BJJ heavily focused on ground game to the detriment of other areas etc.

 

I would respectfully assert that your opinion is lacking factual support, so I'd recommend more research.

By the way, love the username.

Completely false. The real myth is that TMAs stay the same over time. Actually, karate has evolved much more in the past 100 years than boxing or wrestling has.

You started out at the start of the 20th century with old-school Okinawan training, then some of those Okinawan karateka went off and completely changed the art into Shotokan, which quickly split into the JKA (supports sport sparring) and the Shotokai (does not), and each has evolved decade-to-decade and country-to-country, to the point where Shotokan in the States in 2010 and Shotokan in Japan in the 1980s and Shotokan in the UK in the 1960s are all pretty different beasts. And even more "TMAs" spiraled off of Shotokan, most notably Taekwondo, which has evolved in the past 50 years at a truly unprecedented rate, giving rise to everything from self-defense-oriented no-sport training (old-school ITF TKD) to full-contact continuous sport sparring as grueling as any kickboxing sparring I've ever seen (ITF-Pro) to the soccer/football of martial arts, Olympic (WTF) TKD. And those are just a couple of examples.

Depends completely on the art. You can't compare a physical-therapy-oriented Yang Taijiquan studio to a "pain is weakness leaving the body" Kyokushin dojo to a "getting contenders into the Olympics is priority #1" WTF Taekwondo dojang. You're actually going to have a ton of aliveness at the latter two.

Kyokushin karateka have had great success in K-1. Have you never heard of Andy Hug? Francisco Filho? Etc. EDIT: I saw that you do not classify Kyokushin as a TMA. Why not? It's got kata (largely taken from Goju-Ryu Karate), Japanese/Okinawan ethnic trappings to the training, the style doesn't host tournaments with cash prizes, etc. Sounds like a TMA to me. With all due respect, it sounds to me like you may inadvertently be using a no-true-Scotsman fallacy, where any art that has had widespread success in K-1 or MMA is not a TMA to begin with in your mind.

Also, just because most westerners don't follow Sanda/Sanshou tournaments doesn't mean they don't exist. My understanding is that a lot of people with traditional CMA backgrounds have done quite well in those full-contact interdisciplinary competitions.

Forrest Griffin blocks with his face, so he would never succeed with any fighting style that emphasized footwork and evasiveness, "traditional" or otherwise. He wins simply because he's too dumb to realize he's been turned into hamburger and that he's supposed to fall over defeated. (Not bashing the guy, I actually like him, just trying to be straightforward).

I think a fighter who is naturally prone to be a counterstriker could succeed really well if they wanted to dabble in Shotokan and trained at the right dojo. Cro Cop springs to mind first and foremost.

 

No, I made an attempt at defining a traditional martial art. (What's your definition?). The TMA really hasn't been defined by us in the thread, maybe we should be debating what is meant by traditional.

Also I wrote previously;

Kyokushin is in the grey area for many IMO (I don't consider it traditional personally, they seem to be progressive). Kata is a great form of calisthenics - I know that from doing Silat Djurus - I'd keep them too if I saw results.

I think you missed the point, Forrest can use the delivery system of boxing and Muay Thai to fight his way successfully. Forrest wins mainly through having an aggressive, brawling style using his Boxing/Muay Thai/BJJ base, could he be a successful aggressive brawler using Shotokan?

Shotokan (from my limited viewing of it) seems to be based around counter striking and quick reflexes, not good for people like Forrest and myself who don't have the natural speed, reflexes or agility to use the [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkGP0AM14F0"]Shotokan Model[/ame]. Maybe 'the big four's' adaptablity is part of the reason why it is so popular in MMA?

 

Could you provide a video of that working against a resisting opponent who isn't a fellow student of the same school? I'm genuinely curious.

The Sprawl seems to be the universal counter to a proper shoot, are you talking about a untrained tackle and not a properly trained shoot?

I agree that some instructors of arts labelled Traditional do teach with aliveness, and are progressive. However not every 2 man drill is 'alive', aliveness means it has to have realistic timing, energy and motion, when I trained Silat we would do 2 man drills for hours yet the motion and timing of the drill was unrealistic and cherographed.

 

See my posts #41 and #43.

More seriously, I would define a traditional martial art as one where both of the following is true: (1) sport competition is not the sole focus of training, although it may be part of the curriculum, and (2) ethnic traditions are incorporated into training (this can be anything from wearing a gi to practicing the wai kru to cooling down with qigong).

Shotokan is a long-range sniping/counterstriking style. Nobody who prefers close-quarters brawling, TMA or MMA, is going to do well with it. But that doesn't mean you have to be superhuman to use it. It just takes a certain set of attributes (a calm, patient mind in a fight helps, as do long limbs). But I think that a start-of-his-career Forrest Griffin could be well-served by training in Goju-Ryu karate, or Wing Chun, or other close-range-oriented styles. I don't think that boxing is the ONLY way for someone who is naturally inclined to close-range brawling to learn how to strike effectively.

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7360397892170796596#

I'm sure there are better examples out there, but this is what I found in 20 second of google-fu.

EDIT: Just realized you were asking for a video of a specific combo, not just looking for a video of taiji folks in general engaging in "alive" training. My bad.