Dumbass Martial Arts? Maybe...

There's a facebook group called Dumbass Martial Arts (I won't link to it, though I'm sure you can find it if so inclined) that shares videos of martial arts things that are, to varying degrees, ridiculous.

Just to be clear, I have nothing against this in principle. Many martial artists deserve to be ridiculed - especially the ones who make unjustified claims about the self defense applications of their bullshit arts (you know who you are). And I understand the urge to laugh at the expense of those less knowledgeable than you are. It's fun to be in a club (traditional martial artists! Real martial artists!) that other people either don't know about or think they're in but aren't..

And you can imagine the kind of  videos they share - if you can't, go to Jack Slack's pages in Fightland and watch everything titled Wushu Watch. Fake techniques, partners that throw themselves around the room, all kinds of bullshit and craziness.

The other day there was a post in this group of a woman doing a kata in some kind of competition, with a #bullshit tag on the post.

I won't link to the video here, but the woman in question was doing a traditional kata but with a kind of XMA presentation. If you're not sure what that means, do some youtube searches around xma kata competition and see what you find. Her ibuki was a long, drawn out scream, many seconds in length. Her stances were so deep that they were obviously completely ineffective. When she kiai'ed it took minutes to end. Every kick was at least head high. It looked like kata designed to look cool to people who know nothing about martial arts.

In short, to a traditional stylist, it was somewhat painful to watch.

The comments were pretty much what you'd think - people were brutal. They said how awful she was, how she was disrespecting the art of karate, how the judges should have walked out, and so on and so on.

And, to be honest, I'm not a fan of the presentation either. It's not the way I practice karate, it's not how I want to practice karate. If I had to choose between watching that sort of kata and kata as practiced by an old school karate practitioner, with short, effective movements, realistic stances, and functional breathing, I'd prefer the latter.

However, I really dislike the level of disdain people showed this young lady.

There are two levels on which I'd defend her:

1. She might not know better - she might have a teacher who has convinced her that what she is doing is either good traditional martial arts or effective martial arts in a self defense context, and she believed that instructor, in which case the fault is her instructor's, not hers; or
2. She likes what she does, and while she knows that it  is neither traditional nor effective for self defense, it brings her joy.

I don't know the woman from the video, or what she thinks of her own performance. But when I watch it, I see something that isn't traditional karate, and doesn't seem very practical for self defense, but which:

• clearly demonstrates a high level of athleticism;
• clearly demonstrates a high degree of commitment - she clearly practiced that kata for many hours, with great focus and determination;
• clearly contributes to her fitness and health - nobody can do kata in an XMA style and not be reasonably strong, flexible, and fit;

This reminds me of my thoughts when I first read a few articles about tricking. If you're not familiar, tricking is a practice where people work on high difficulty martial arts techniques, like jumping spinning kicks, cartwheel kicks, etc. - the kinds of pseudo-gymnastics moves that look cool but that represent only a tiny portion of traditional karate (largely because they're mostly useless in 'actual' fighting). At first I scoffed, but most guys who practice tricking don't think they're learning to defend themselves, nor do they think they're really learning traditional martial arts. They are fully aware that they're just mastering a set of skills that they think are cool, and who are we to argue with that?

I think we should ridicule or scoff at martial artists who do these XMA style or alternative (any style that doesn't seem effective) performances in two situations:

1. If they themselves claim that what they're doing is highly effective for self defense (this puts their students in actual danger, which isn't cool);
2. If what they're doing is orthopedically dangerous - explosive movements are inherently higher in risk, but there are correct and incorrect ways to do them, and if a particular practitioner is moving in a way that is exceptionally dangerous to practice then we should scorn them.

So for the folks over at Dumbass Martial Arts, in my humble opinion, you should lay off anyone doing kata in some crazy over the top style, UNLESS they're claiming that such a performance is better for self defense OR they're doing things that will obviously hurt them to practice. Otherwise, acknowledge that they're doing something they think is cool, even if you disagree, and either ignore them or try to enjoy their performance for what it is.

My two cents.

Osu.