Does your martial art cover the deadly dozen?

The 12 main areas of martial arts training?

There are hundreds, possibly thousands of different martial arts being practiced in the world today. Some of them are very similar but there are also vast differences to be found between most of them and even differences between the teachings of one school and another even of the same style. These differences can be so large that to say you do a martial art is a bit like saying you play a ball game and that could mean anything from Rugby Union to Table Tennis (ping pong).

Because there is such an enormous range of martial art skills nobody can master them all in one lifetime. Generally, most martial arts tend to focus on certain aspects of martial arts training and aim to progress as far as they can while focusing only on those parts of the martial whole. The main problem here is that they tend to test themselves only against others who also specialise in that particilar part of the pie but rarely get the opportunity to train against others from different martial backgrounds.

Most martial artists never try out their skills on martial artists from different styles

For example Judoka only fight other judoka following the same rules, principles and techniques. How would a Judoka fare against someone trained in Capoeira for example? Tae Kwon Do is primarily a kicking art so how would they fare against someone who could get in close and throw them to the ground?

These kind of questions are often posed though it’s generally recognised that you can never compare arts directly as so much depends on the skill of the individual practitioners concerned. Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) was developed to try to answer these questions – to take people from different disciplines and put them together in an arena to see which arts, fighters and techniques worked and which didn’t. However, this can still never answer the question as there are still aspects of the martial arts that aren’t addressed in an MMA contest. The main two of these would be firstly the use of weapons – there are over a hundred different weapons that have been developed by martial artists over the centuries, and secondly one man or many against multiple attackers which is an extremely common scenario in real life.

This is a very important point. It is rare that one person on their own will start a fight unless under the influence of something or other. In most conflicts the aggressor is backed up by several ‘mates’ or buddies who may or may not join in to help. In an MMA contest all your focus is on defeating the man in front of you, however, in a real life conflict you cannot afford to focus all on one man. You must learn to be alive to what is going on around you, be aware of your environment and be prepared to adapt at a moment’s notice anything and everything that you’ve been taught. So remember that MMA like so many other martial arts has, in fact, been adapted to become a sport and as such has lost a certain amount of it’s ability to realistically perform in real life situations.

Why study martial arts?

Different people study the martial arts for different reasons. Each school will offer some, most or if you’re very lucky, all of the following:

General body conditioning Specific conditioning to develop particular skills Striking and kicking skills of various levels of advancement Grappling skills (locks, holds and throws) Pressure point knowledge Knowledge of biomechanical alignments to make each movement efficient and powerful rather than just decorative Weapons training Sparring practices Developing the body from the inside eg qigong and other breathing and slow mo efficiency drills. Developing the mind through different types of meditation A coherent philosophy that underpins everything that’s taught

Any one of the above could take many decades to fully master so don’t expect that your school will be able to teach all of these to a high level. For example there are hundreds of pressure points and each one requires different amounts of pressure and to be attacked from the right angle. Some of them won’t work at all unless a joint is held at a certain angle and some people seem relatively immune to any and all of them. It’s a lot to learn. Similarly there are many weapons and most masters will only be proficient at a handful of them. What’s important to you may not be so important to someone else so if you’re looking for a good martial arts school take the above list and put them in your order of preference then go and talk to the local instructors and their senior students to see how well they could fit in with your needs and wishes.

A complete martial art

Any martial arts that ticks all the boxes above could be described as a complete martial art. To study a complete martial art means you must be able to deal with a huge range of different attack/defence scenarios. You must be comfortable at all ranges and from all directions. You should know how to deal with long, medium and short range weapons and be able to use them yourself. You should understand how different martial arts develop power and be able to deal with that. And all of these things must be done while the mind and body remain calm and free of tension.

Obviously the study of such an art takes a verylong time (usually the whole of your life) but it is time that you are spending on developing yourself in so many ways. You start to understand the forces that can act upon you and the most efficient ways for you to balance and control those forces, you develop a sense of the environment and tactics, you gain speed and decisiveness of thought and you also learn the most important lesson of all – that the only opponent in life you need to deal with is yourself. If you are attacked in the street your opponent is giving you a set of tactics and forces to deal with. Will the various parts of yourself come together to deal with that scenario successfully or won’t they? Study enough, train enough and they will.

Having spent the last 30 years training and 12+ years teaching a complete martial art that ticks all of the above boxes I have seen many students come from a wide variety of martial arts schools that seem to be lacking in so many fundamental areas.

Their movements lack any coordinated power, they have been taught to place themselves in vulnerable positions such as one hand being kept on the back hip where it is of no use whatsoever, they try to use dangerous movements that lead them wide open to simple counters and so on. I teach a well formed structure that uses the whole body to control and manipulate the space all around you with balanced power and not to focus all your attention on the one attacker but to stay alive to the whole situation around you.

Never focus on just your opponent, always be aware of yourself and your environment

There is so much more to martial arts training than most people, even experienced martial artists, realise. We are fortunate in this day and age to have access to books, DVDs and videos of other styles and practitioners and to be able to use these to widen our own knowledge base and see where our weaknesses lie. This site aims to teach sound kung fu practices and principles to help those who may have been taught dangerous or ineffective practices elsewhere. The site is growing and will include aspects of all 12 elements of good martial arts training.