Secrets of the Martial Arts

I like this guy most for his no BS presentation and down to earth view of things. I also like his crazy rambling, just regular guy not trying to be some fancy writer type of book writing style. Fun to read and lots of wisdom.

What I don't like about what he says is...let me scratch my $%^$^ and remember here..

Oh yeah, what I don't like is the whole "you learn so much by fighting" deal. I disagree strongly. I also had a wing chun teacher once that told me, your here to wing chun, if you want to fight, go hang out in the bar. What?!!

I have not been in too many fights... which I would say makes me an even higher master of the martial arts than someone who fights alot... The art of fighting without fighting... If you are getting in alot of fights you need to fricking move or adjust your attitude. You don't fight if you don't have to and if you do fight, you make sure you win. Yeah, yeah I grew up in the suburbs and went to a nice college, etc., but I also wobbled drunk down the late night streets of Mexico City in the tough neighborhoods too. There wasn't a fight there unless you didn't have a brain figure your way out. And when you didn't have a brain you just fight.

Anyway, I got sidetracked. Anyway, the way to learn how to fight isn't fighting. Or let's say it is overrated by many people. Being in alot of fights doesn't make you a great fighter.

I've been in few fights really but what I learned from the fights was very, very little. Each fight was so totally different in so many ways that you can take away very few lessons to better yourself for the next fight. You are always preparing to win the last war, not the next one.

Anyway, the one thing I did learn from the fights I was in was that in the fight, I did EXACTLY whatever I had been training to do in whatever martial art I was taking.

So I think you don't so much learn from fighting, but you end up fighting how you train.

So I guess my theory is that you just need to make sure you are training in something tried and true and that it will be appropriate for what you might encounter in a fight. There is no time to think in a fight, you just react and that reaction will be whatever you have been taught to do in training, for good or for bad.

Some of these martial arts have been developed over hundreds of years and many men fought and many died to make the martial art what it is. You can't just get into a bunch of fights in a bar and think you've even come close to learning something compared to a system that has been developed, nurtured, tried and tested, and many lives lost over many years to perfect. It is ridiculous.

You might do better not learning any martial art though. So many martial arts are so pathetically esoteric, detached from application, with such poor training methods and such sport oriented technique that you actually might be better not learning a martial art and just being a natural human being in fighting mode when a fight come though. That is sad.

Like I said though, you will do whatever you have been trained to do or have practiced doing. Even if that was just wrassling with your brother or watching people give those big wide punches like on TV.

So don't fight, train. Training will prepare and program you for the fight. It isn't a learning aid as the possible consequences are too high. Plus you are not in learning mode, you are in instinctual or ingrained reaction mode.

Was Muhamed Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Bruce Lee or Mas Oyama, or Mushashi great fighters because they got into alot of fights or because they trained for fighting? Fighting can be a good feedback loop, but at a great cost and the real value of a fight is to put your training to the test. You don't learn how to fight in a fight, you find out how effective your training has been.

Anyway, it is of some use, but training,--if it is good, relevant training has WAY more value add than fighting.

There are some other things about Marc I want to talk about but I can't remember them right now. Something about his "knife fighting" views and a few other things. That later. But overall I like him because he is the guy who looks at the karate tournament and says, "hey, that's a joke, your gonna get your @$% kicked doing silly stuff like that."(not a direct quote) He is just a voice of reason above the bullshido. Gonna put a link to the book of his I have read and re-read here soon.