Wim Demeere's Blog

Martial Arts, Self Defense and a Whole Lot More.

The effectiveness of traditional Chinese martial arts

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The effectiveness of traditional Chinese martial arts has been questioned a lot, ever since it rose to prominence in the 1970’s when Bruce Lee splashed onto the big screen. We’ve come a long way since then and martial arts/self-defense today are not what they were back then. Many techniques and training methods that were the norm back then are nowadays discarded and considered ineffective. In a larger sense, this is true for many other martial arts and fighting systems as well.

Some teachers have taken it upon themselves to dig into those traditional arts and bring out their value in today’s environment. One of them is Iain Abernathy, who I met a while ago and is a great guy. He teaches a practical approach to Karate. On his website, there was a discussion about teaching traditional Chinese martial arts (in particular forms) in a practical way. You can read up about it here. Iain said some kind words about me (thanks Iain!) so I decided to write this blog post and share some thoughts.

As always, this is nothing but my personal opinion. It isn’t gospel, so feel free to discard it.

 

The current state of traditional Chinese martial arts

As mentioned in the forum discussion, karate gets a lot of bad press for not being effective in a “real fight” and one of the commenters claimed that this isn’t a big issue in Chinese arts. I beg to differ. There is loads and loads of crap out there (there is a lot of good too, but I’m going to focus on the bad in this article.) There are way too many people who really shouldn’t be teaching at all, because they both haven’t done the time to own their art and/or don’t understand it. That may be because their teachers didn’t understand it enough to pass it along correctly or perhaps information got lost along the way, I don’t know. Regardless, I’ve seen more practitioners doing ineffective traditional Chinese martial arts than effective ones.

This seems to be a particular problem in Western countries. You can often see schools teaching what they consider is a traditional style, but without the things that make it effective. Meaning, the things that were originally included in that style before it came to the West. An understanding of the purpose and methodology of practicing forms is a big part of that. Some of the explanations regarding forms and the practical applications they’re supposed to teach you see those teachers demonstrate are nothing more than best guesses or complete falsehoods to avoid exposing their lack of knowledge.

To be clear: maintaining the effectiveness of traditional Chinese martial arts is not just a problem in the West. It is now very hard to find good teachers of traditional styles in China. Young people don’t really feel like going through that kind of harsh training any more, so those teachers have trouble finding students. As a result, those arts are dying out.

All in all, given the number of practitioners out there, I’d say the percentage of them having the “real thing” is pretty low. This isn’t necessarily their fault, but it still leaves them coming up short.

effectiveness of traditional Chinese Martial arts - Shaolin
Me, in Shaolin in 1991

 What happened?

A lot of factors came together to create the current situation and I’ll only touch on some of them here below: [Read more…]

We do that too in our style

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There is a commonly used phrase in martial arts and self-defense circles, one you can hear or read when practitioners from one art see a technique from another art:

We do that too in our style.

It’s right up there with phrases like:

A punch is just a punch.

or

The human body can only move in so many ways.

I disagree with all three of these phrases, but I’ll only talk about the first one here. In essence, it boils down to the “the differences are just as important as the similarities” theme you can find in all of my writing. If you see a technique and all you look at are the similarities, skipping straight ahead to the “we do this too” part, then you miss the opportunity to learn something. I feel that the better response is to focus on the differences and everything else that you don’t know about that art. The main problem is that you can only do so in a qualified manner by actually practicing  that art. Which is what most people don’t do. They just look at the superficial similarities, label that technique as “similar” to one of theirs and move on. That’s a shame.

 

There are two broad categories you can look at when digging for these differences: physical and abstract.

The physical category is things like body mechanics, angles, footwork, distancing, etc. In many ways, this is all relatively easy to spot, except for body mechanics. A technique may look similar to what you do, but feel radically different when you’re on the receiving end of it if the person has different body mechanics than found in your art. This is why it’s often necessary to have somebody use the technique on you before you know what’s going on.

A second trap is understanding camera angles and how you create clear instructional footage. The technique may look a certain way to you, but depending on many factors, you could be completely mistaken. I wrote a three-part series called How to Learn Techniques from Video in which I explain some of them. The main gist of it is this: the camera lies. It doesn’t tell the truth, only one part of it.

 

The abstract category is more difficult to get a hold of. It comprises of all the concepts and choices that are inherent to that specific style. Things like tactics, strategy, basic assumptions, training methodology, goals, etc. All of these, you know nothing about, unless you train in that style. So how can you confidently judge them with a trustworthy measure of accuracy?

I don’t think you can.

Which doesn’t mean you can’t form an opinion on a technique, only that you should realize upfront that your opinion is both uninformed and in need of further research. If you don’t feel the need to look further into it, that’s obviously perfectly fine. But then wouldn’t it be smarter to hold back on your judgement?

Case in point. [Read more…]

Violence is chaos in action

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An instructor once told me that violence is chaos in action and it’s your job to bring order to the chaos. I believe this is an accurate statement and would add “before it kills you” to the end of that sentence. Violence comes in many shapes and sizes and each situation can be radically different from the next, despite starting off with the same or similar parameters. Predicting how the encounter will unfold is difficult and unreliable, to put it mildly. If you’re truly honest about it, you accept this. But that truth is uncomfortable because, in general, humans don’t like chaos.

We like things to make sense.

We like black or white answers.

We want it to be easy and simple.

It rarely is.

As a result, there is a need to analyze, scrutinize and study violence to put together a system that allows you to handle it when it comes your way. Martial arts and self-defense systems are a part of that. Studying human psychology, the legal system, physics, avoidance and prevention, etc. are also part of the solution. All those together make it difficult again and we typically don’t like that. A commonly used quick solution is to make assumptions by willfully omitting factors you don’t have an answer for or relying on “common knowledge”. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. That is why I always harp on Randy’s quote of “The differences are just as important as the similarities.”

You can take a violent situation and look at the similarities to come to certain conclusions. These conclusions can be completely accurate or completely false, depending on certain parameters you won’t know up front will be present. I covered this dynamic in the first article in my newsletter series, but when I saw these two videos, I found them to be prefect illustrations for it.

Both videos feature a man armed with a gun facing an unarmed man. These are the similarities. My point is that the differences are just as important and the chaos of violence makes it unpredictable what the outcome will be. Let’s take a look. [Read more…]

Motivation in martial arts training

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Earlier today,  I was chatting with a friend of mine. He had bought the Combat Bundle I provided one of my books for (the deal ends today so you better hurry if you want to get it) and was having some trouble downloading the files. We were talking and he mentioned one of the problems he faces is getting off his butt and actually train. He thought this would be hard for me (as a personal trainer) to understand. We talked some more and this (along with my first training session in a month) got me thinking.

This post is the result.

 

Starting over

As I explained previously, I had surgery one month ago. Today is the first time I worked out since then. I took it slow and easy, was careful not to rip open the wounds, paid special attention to everything the physical therapist had told me, etc.  As I was warming up, I thought about the two ways I could view this first session:

  • The negative. I was bound to suck. After such a long time off and having to be careful to avoid additional injuries, there is no way I would be able to train hard.
  • The positive. I would get to move again! After such a long time of inactivity, I could train again. That is awesome!

I chose to focus on the latter. Sure, it was nowhere the intensity I normally like to train, but it was the first step towards that goal. I know there will be many more steps along the way, but that’s OK. I know where I’m going and I’m going to enjoy the journey getting there. I lost years of training time because they couldn’t diagnose me correctly. I won’t get those years back, along with the skill and conditioning I lost in the mean time and that sucks. But the one good thing to come out of this whole ordeal is that I am a lot more grateful for every good day I have. I no longer take my training for granted, because I now know how quickly it can be taken away from me when my body refuses to let me.

So I focus on the positive, on what I can do. Even if it isn’t what I used to be able to do. Even if the goal I’m training for is still a long way off. I don’t care. I’m going to enjoy each training session. Right now, that’s what keeps me motivated.

But it isn’t always like that.

Motivation in martial arts training
Leaving the hospital the day after my surgery. Tried walking without the crutches and managed to do so (slowly.)

Motivation in martial arts training

I’ve been training in the martial arts for about thirty years now and finding the motivation to keep going has been an ongoing process. Sometimes it was easy, other times not so much. I am fortunate that I can teach professionally, which means I am training every day at least a little bit with clients, but that’s not the same as making sure I have my own progress in the arts. Which brings us to the question I think is key to have long-term motivation to continue in the martial arts: [Read more…]

Chronic exertional compartment syndrome in martial arts

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UPDATE: Here’s a follow-up article I did two years after writing this.

Last week,  I received an email from somebody who follows my Youtube Channel. He asked why I wasn’t regularly uploading videos like I used to in the past. That’s a good question and it deserves an answer:

I don’t like making crappy videos in which my performance sucks.

The next question would then be: why would my performance suck?

The answer to that one is something I debated if I would explain it or not. On the one hand, my personal life and health is nobody’s business but my own. I also don’t feel like sharing everything that goes on in my life with the entire world. I believe I already give more than enough access to my thoughts and life experiences. Finally, I don’t like people who whine each time they get a little bit injured and would rather not be seen as one of those.

On the other hand, I very much hate the macho-attitude that is rampant in martial arts and combat sports. You know what I mean; the guys who pretend like they can take everything that comes their way, they’re never hurt, they cannot be beaten, etc. I loathe that kind of immature showboating because it is both stupid and pointless. Fighting hurts. If you train to fight and/or fight a lot, you’ll get hurt regularly. If you’re unlucky, you’ll get injured and if you really push it, you’ll get chronic injuries. Pretending that this doesn’t happen is one of the biggest lies macho martial artists perpetrate.

A second aspect is the years I lived with pain and had no cure for it. If by sharing my story I can spare just one person going through that same ordeal, then it’ll be worth it.

Here goes.

 

Prelude

A bit over two years ago, I felt like crap. I was tired, weak and always in pain, in particular in my back and legs. Then all of a sudden the symptoms got worse and it felt like I had aged ten years in a month. So  I went to my MD and he did a basic examination. Not much to be found except that I scored zero on the patellar reflex test. Meaning, he hit me with the hammer and nothing happened. My legs didn’t even twitch. Then started a long downward spiral that lasted until a few weeks ago… [Read more…]

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