How Martial Arts Can Supercharge Your Man Spirit

Upon searching for articles about the general benefits of practicing martial arts I found this. Quite a humorous title but it makes some good points.

I certainly feel loads better, and more confident, after a good BJJ training session.

How Martial Arts Can Supercharge Your Man Spirit

 

i think it's pretty sad when people put it on themselves to define what a man does, or how manly something is.

 

I read it more with a sense of 'people' interacting with each other as opposed to just men.

I never said that women don't get the same from training and that's certainly not a point I was making.

 

Yes, let's also drum and recite poetry about rejecting our mothers.

 

I don't think you feeling that as a female MA'ist in any way impacts or affects an article from a male MA'ist perspective anymore than advocating "womens rights" means you denegrate "male rights"


.....also any article form a site called "Art of Manliness" is hardly likely to be the most scholarly endeavour

 

Some people are highly qualified in this area though:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OFXDRIXh5M"]Parks and Recreation - Ron Swanson's Troop Rangers Handbook - YouTube[/ame]

 

The author is Rodney king. Creator of CMD and someone who has struggled with machismo and socialised masculine identity a fair bit judging by his interviews ( being a bouncer and gym 'enforcer'). I think the article makes some good points. I also don't believe any of the benefits he lists are exclusive to men or that society should be too concerned with defining gender in terms of socialised behaviours and ideologies. I think he's writing for men who feel disconnected from a certain paradigm of masculinity and who feel emasculated by the modern world (by their own standards) and that in itself is fine.

 

Needs more mead and swords for my taste....and axes

 

yeah, the site as a whole is pretty nonsensical.

i trained in bjj yesterday morning. you know what i did when i went home last night? make a lovely gruyere souffle for me and my wife. it was so delicate and just scrumptious. am i less of a man because i like to cook?

when i was a kid i wrestled. for a time in middle school while wrestling, i also liked to knit. no really. i didn't tell my wrestling buddies because i knew what they would think of that activity. but it was fun. i made myself a nice warm scarf.

 

Cooking and knitting are safely manly as they are valued survival skills

 

lol, ok.

i think part of my problem is this foisting of roles on the sexes, which frankly, is not true, but tries to make some sociological point in the modern times based on faulty premises.

let's go back to the hunter/gatherin' time. i would find it extraordinarily hard to believe that a woman never hunted for the family. i would go even farther and say that in many instances, it was women that hunted for food because the man either died or was shacking up with some other lady (or man). there's no way we can prove that either way, but it's taken as a statement of fact in the article: men hunted, gathered and bonded, and they can't do that anymore.

what phooey.

 

Phooey indeed.

And tosh!

"for men the warrior spirit was “hard wired.”[sic]"

What percentage of martial arts students have any resemblance to a "warrior"?

"While most of us in the Western world no longer traverse the plains of the Savannah’s, the primitive responses of flight and fight of our male hunter-gatherer counterparts have not left use. The problem we find today is that many men have lost their ability to express the evolutionary adaptation of their fight and fight response in appropriate ways."

Go be a crack dealer in the 'hood if you want a taste of life-on-the-edge. Or do flying kicks in pyjamas like the photo at the head of the article... which one is closer to life on the savannah? What a moron.

"Men seem to be losing their way. We have lost connection to one another and a sense of brotherhood. Not too long ago in our distant past, as we ran freely on the Savannahs, we would be together as men. A band of brothers. Together we would hunt, give each other courage, and inspire each other to overcome our inner shadows. In doing so, we would learn to trust each other. We would have the opportunity to express the positive masculine energies of valor, honor, and courage. At night we would sit around a campfire, retelling the stories of the hunt, playing drums, and symbolically reenacting the day. When called upon to protect the tribe, we would do so without hesitation, rising up as warriors in the service of something greater than ourselves."

What about the "brothers" from the next tribe who wanted to cave our skull in with a club? You think "brothers" never fought each other? It was all great and men were men in them olden' days?

"Wild man"... utter rubbish.

My martial mascots are Tanit and Kali. Bloodthirsty godesses who adorn themselves with human parts.

Look to your inner woman if you want to be a warrior!

 

This guy right here. He oozes "warrior" to me.

 

Mind mind is changed!

...and blown!

 

I wouldn't worry about it, to be honest. I think there's always occasions where people will read something into a piece or a comment that isn't actually said & will then come to a faulty conclusion in spite of what has been said based off their own perceptions. I don't believe anyone was suggesting you were genuinely saying those things in the way they responded to, just that they don't agree with the article & it's framework.

Honestly, whilst I think most of the article is a lot of fluff and nonsense, the author makes some fair points about the nature of martial arts being a bonding process between people (in this case, men). The author's not wrong to point out that rough & tumble can facilitate a bonding process & help development in young people, even with men who can be surprisingly socially and emotionally inhibited.

But the vast majority of it was just ridiculous nonsense hammed up to be something it isn't. Warrior spirit my backside.

 

That was my focus to be honest but my OP didn't make that very clear.

I work for myself and spend most week days during working hours with no face to face contact unless I have client meetings. This was my main catalyst for starting BJJ. On days when I've trained and have had that contact I notice a difference.

 

I'm sitting in my shorts and vest. Sipping Pandan tea wondering if my bread in the oven will rise.



That's manly..right?



Guys?




The vest is from TapouT...