Should martial arts always keep changing or be kept in traditional ways?

So you're claiming to understand the nuances of why the translator chose the specific words and constructed the sentence translations the way they did? You're claiming to understand the specific contextual nuances of Greek culture? You're claiming to be able to understand specific biomechanics from that limited translation? And all of this without an academic background in Greek history or language? And you don't understand why that doesn't make any sense?

Let's take a simple example. What does the translator mean by "guarding" and why was that chosen as the word in translation? What does the original word he's translating mean in the context of ancient Greek sport? And how do you know these things?

What do you mean by "universal" ? Because that sentence comes off as meaningless.

If you think asking people for evidence is a personal attack you're going to have a hard time in life. Still waiting on you to post your sources.

Some of us have actual lives there bud.

That wasn't the question at hand if you'll recall.

Yes, definitively yes. Just like the numbers have kept improving for sprinters, power lifters, rowers, etc. over the years, in the same vein modern boxing produces a superior athlete for the various reasons I've already outlined. Make a Roman centurion in his prime box with a champion boxer in his prime, Roy Jones Jr., Mayweather, Tyson, Ali, Foreman, Frazier... they are far superior boxers because the technology, training methods, and athlete selection have all improved. Hell put a modern champion like Mayweather against someone in the same weight class from a hundred years ago, say Jackie Fields, and Mayweather would wipe the floor with them.

 

Ugh. Why are you arguing with Encyclopedia Britannica on boxing, Dredd. That's where I got the quotes from the Greek epics as well as everything else I posted, the Roman boxer, the Greek fresco, and everything else. I don't know of a better source than the encyclopedia.

I did my homework on boxing decades ago, I'm pretty confident about my knowledge of modern and historical boxing "biomechanics", your indictment of my knowledge and accusations
of evasion notwithstanding. I'm trying hard to assume good faith here. I don't need the suggestions that I'm uneducated about Greek epics, being evasive, don't understand boxing mechanics, etc. I don't ever accuse people like that, and I think that style of online "debate" is unproductive.

Let's just agree to disagree. You believe boxers today are better and more advanced. I believe this is just the illusion of hindsight, ok?

I will say this though I do believe a modern powerlifter or gym fetishist or even a modern athlete of even epic caliber would basically die at the hands of any 1st century professional solider. I do believe in the faux superiority of latter age intelligentsia, especially the athlete-scholars who have that modern, superiority chip. I have seen a lot of really strong, smart, and athletic folks get a royal smoking at the hands of an old school militant brute who didn't give a damn about modern training or nutrition or training under the best coaches. Humans in 0AD were tougher than you are giving credit for, in my opinion. That's all.

 

1. Encyclopediae are not academic sources.
2. I'm arguing with your lack of qualifications to interpret historical sources related to ancient Greek culture and language, and your clear inability to pick out bio-mechanics from still-images.

You can be confident all you want, it doesn't make you correct. Again, you've provided no evidence of your sources pre-modern punching bio-mechanics....still waiting on that.

Good faith does not mean we should ignore sources, lack of qualifications, inability to see the difference between dissimilar body mechanics, etc.

But you are unless you've an academic backing to prove otherwise. You are being evasive because you're repeatedly ignoring requests for your sources on ancient pugilistic bio-mechanics, I'm guessing because you don't actually have any. You clearly don't understand boxing mechanics because you can't see the differences between the positions shown in the fresco image and the positions you're claiming they represent.
Debate is about a rigorous search for truth. What you're unhappy with is that I'm saying you're wrong and holding you to your sources and lack of qualifications. If you don't like it, tough cookies.

You can choose ignorance if you want. It's not a good choice but you can do it.

And now you're moving the goalposts.

 

I'm not insulting anyone. I'm pointing out that not having a background covering ancient Greek history, culture, and language makes dealing with other people's translations, especially when those translations don't contain commentary, highly problematic. It become even more problematic when trying to use limited snippets of translated text as a justification for claiming that people in that period were boxing in the exact same manner as today's boxers, and that's ignoring all of the other contextual, social, and technological changes which point to that not being the case. Never mind getting into clearly not being able to assess body positions.

For example as I pointed out earlier the use of the word "guarding" is highly problematic. What was the original word? What does it mean within the context of Greek language and combat-sports? Why did the author choose that word in translation? Are they using "guarding" to mean a boxer's guard or simply protecting oneself?

Then we get into the lack of evidence for other claims when there's other evidence which contradicts said claims, and a choice to ignore both of those. Pardon me if I won't accept people's claims on the basis of 'I've done my homework and I'm confident.'

True, but we have to do so with a high degree of academic rigour and a careful eye toward our own biases.

 

You are still arguing with Encyclopedia Britannica, not me per se. You've written a lot about "biomechanics", and I am not taking your bait other than to feed you with encyclopedic facts. Do you really think humans have physically evolved in just 2-3 thousand years with respect to physical hand to hand combat? Or, is it as I've speculated just a commodity now? You don't have to spend your life learning how to fight or box anymore to survive or be a soldier. The average Joe can purchase this in almost any commercial district. In fact, the average Joe in 2019 can purchase no touch KO chi magic attacks if they want.

That's what's changed in 2,000 years. It's easy and more accessible, but it's still basically just pugilistic study of the natural ways of boxing, with are primeval.

But physically? spiritually?????? Come on, I think you are just bored and arguing with the wind.

 

What's really funny about Ben's comments to me is how he is ignoring the clear message of the fresco, the sculpture, and the poems.

Pugilists, if they survived in 0AD were generally better trained than most modern trainees. For you and definitely me, pugilism is a hobby or ammy or maybe if you're the lucky few, pro. But these two people in this fresco were likely great warriors.

And the statue of the Boxer at Rest in Rome (Kevin Spacey photobombed it???did anyone see this today??? ) shows the physique quite clearly. The Illiad and Aenid, as Encyclopedia Britannica connects with some of the earliest written evidence of pugilistic art in the West, also describes the same sort of "two men enter, one man leaves" zone.

Or, how about two women enter? That's definitely a tradition that's changed. Biomechanics, or the spiritual side of boxing? I highly doubt it.

 

No Grond, I'm arguing with you.

In other words your only source is a non-academic one and you refuse to respond to the points I've raised because you're actually unable to.

See those are two different things, the athleticism and the training methods. And again you've moved the goalposts from boxing to 'hand to hand combat.'

As for the athleticism, as I've pointed out before, in other sports where it is easy to quantify athleticism based purely on numbers, the numbers keep improving.
As for the training, modern sport training has been churning out ever more impressive athletes across a variety of sports. We have video evidence of this, and of the changes in boxing over the past century.

You didn't have to box to be a soldier and most people prior to the industrial revolution were farmers who wouldn't have had the time or money to box.

First thing you've said that I agree with. The result of having more people able to box compared to 150 years ago is that you have a higher volume of people to work out what is most efficient, to be athletically capable, and to push peak performance. 50 monkeys with typewrites will produce Shakespeare eventually, but not as quickly as 100 will.

It's not "natural." It's explicitly unnatural, otherwise you wouldn't have to teach people.

Physically, yes it's changed. Spiritually, that's adding a new subject to this discussion but that comes down more to comparative changes in human cognitive function and language over the past several millennia.[/QUOTE]

What's really funny to me is that you think you can interpret them when you clearly can't.

We have clear evidence of improved skill and physical conditioning of boxers and other athletes compared to 100 years ago, so what evidence do you have for your assertion that athletes 2000 years ago were better trained than modern athletes?

Lucky few? The top estimate for the total human population around 1 AD is 400 million according to census.gov and we now have an estimated 7.7 billion people with a far greater percentage having leisure time, and more of it, and a significantly greater portion of the population able to engage in what would previously be hobbyist behaviour as a professional pursuit due to paid viewing of TV and moreso the internet age.

Likely... in other words you have no idea because again the aforementioned poor sources and lack of background qualifications.

What this tells me is you've never viewed earlier boxing matches and seen the changes over the decades, and that you're unfamiliar with the technical changes from bareknuckle to gloved boxing which icefield described earlier.

 

No, you're still arguing with the Ghost of the Encyclopedia Britannica and 2,000 year old artistic representations of pugilism. You are an army of one against the wealth of human knowledge. I am merely pointing it out.

 

No Grond, I'm arguing with you. You apparently don't understand the difference between arguments about source material, and an individual's ability to interpret said source material.

 

And so far, I'm not impressed with your ability to interpret said source material that I source materialed, as you kept demanding sources and I materialized sources.

Is it then your argument that 21st century martial artists are superior to 1st century martial artists? If so, I laugh at thee.

 

I thought this was a funny afterthought. Forgive me.

 

Except you didn't. You put up the snippets from the Encyclopedia before I responded to you. I've already pointed out that is not an academic source and there are big problems with your ability to interpret it.

I then asked you for evidence for where you're drawing your assertions on the continuity of bio-mechanics which you've ignored repeatedly and not produced.

"Superior" is dependent upon the context you're choosing for your assessment, so in some instances like HEMA the training technology and methods are essentially unchanged. But again let's take the example of Muay Thai and its adoption of western training equipment; gloves, pads, headgear, etc. They are able to train with more safety and under greater pressure. Consequently you could pit your average Thai boxer against someone who does any of the martial arts in East or South-East Asia which didn't adopt the Western training gear when it became available and they'll spank them with regularity.

You have consistent regular improvement in athletics where you can easily compare numbers; sprinting, lifting, etc. Technology has improved allowing for better training in striking. You have a greater pool of athletes and a much greater pool of professionals. You have video evidence that boxers today are better than boxers 150 years ago because they've have time to adapt to the rule-set and technology.

So in terms of grappling you cannot make a definitive conclusion but best evidence would suggest that wrestlers are athletically better though technically it has remained relatively unchanged. So for grappling...marginally because the technological advances have come only in athletics.

In striking however the technological advances have come in both athletics and technology which has allowed technical improvement. Athletes have gotten better. We have evidence for that. Boxers today are better boxers than boxers even 100 years ago. We have evidence for that. People training under pressure with protective equipment do better than those who don't. We have evidence for that. Yes, striking has improved markedly over the past 150 years.[/QUOTE]

 

If anyone is using that fresco as evidence of what boxing/pugilism is/was like then (one way or the other) you can equally argue that the fresco also shows that people in those days had eyes on the side of their skulls like gazelles!
Of course people in those days had eyes on the front just like we do so the ONLY thing we can confidently say from that fresco is that artists routinely got things wrong in pictures.
Artists got the motion of horses running wrong for centuries and only understood how they really ran with the advent of photography and people like Edward Maybridge.
Imho without some descriptive text ans other context there's absolutely no way you can draw inference about body mechanics, technique or anything about physical motion from flawed historical art.
Hell..It's hard to draw such inferences from modern photographs of modern boxing. Sometimes it's pretty clear what's happening but often it's a static image of bodies in motion and it's hard to work who's moving where and how their limbs ended up where they are.
You can see a picture of someone slipping inside a straight punch and someone else covering against a haymaker and for certain places in time without seeing the preceding and/or following motions (context) they look the same.

What we can do is watch someone like Jack Johnson boxing (lots of grappling, wrestling, bicep control, static footwork, etc) and boxers that came later that fought or fight completely differently to that (very little grappling, fluid footwork, evasive movement, etc) to know that stylistically boxing has changed markedly in the 20th century alone (individual personal stylistic differences aside).
We also have documented evidence of how certain boxers like Mendoza and Jim corbett shook up and changed boxing by being stylistically different to their contemporaries.

How anyone can say that boxing in Roman times is basically the same as boxing now is beyond me.

 

Another aspect touched on is simply 'the modern world'; the commercial and business side driving performance can't be underestimated. There has never been such a big pool, such big incentive and motivation. Technology and knowledge growth, sheer numbers and competition. Proffesionalism in sport is a huge deal, that means something a lot different today than at any time in history that we can really point to. You might conclude it's not even a fair comparison. We know that success is often measured in inches or less, at elite levels the difference in winning and losing can be tiny, even if we say today athletes are 10-15% better off physically overall/on average than say 2-3,000 years ago. That's huge, 2-3% edge would probably start to be be very significant in organised competition.

Please note, none of this is based on research and academic knowledge; just my own idle speculation.
Just kinda wanted to stress that point.

 

also
we have steroids!

 

Technically and athletically were better then we ever have been, but fighting takes more then just that, people back in the day had generally very hard, and short lives, so the ones that were successfull were very hard people used to violence.

 

That's debatable. Better than ever, really???

 

The top of bell curve is athletically, overall as a average population probably not too much, for every Jon Jones, there's 100 obese people on blood thinners.

But then again that's because back in the day they'd already be dead.

 

Bell curves? Show me your degree in statistics before you make such statements, you rogue. I kid, I kid...seriously every time I revisit this thread I think of the whole plot to Rocky IV, and the "man in the woods" vs. Soviet cyberwarrior. The idea that even though we have advanced technology for PE and all that the human animal itself hasn't changed much in less than 100,000 years, so how much could human vs. human fighting, really change, even "biomechanically"?\

Traditions by their nature are artifacts of the past transmitted forward through time, and even the pro boxing of 2019 has the DNA of the boxing of 0 AD (again my source is the humble encyclopedia). Putting on a pair of gloves and duking it out in a ring, square, mat, and so on is really older than almost anything in recorded history. It's got to be, because apes fight and when they do, it looks like this. Watch from about 15s in...these aren't some dumb animals flailing around. Each one has his own style, skill, and experience. Am I making the argument that boxing predates Homo Sapiens? Yes, I am. Pugilism, though, is a profession or hobby. So, I am also making the argument boxing is a lot older than pugilism.

Kangaroos and Apes box. Apes use HAMMER FISTS!!!! But only Humans are pugilists. And that is because of boxing traditions.