Traditional Martial Arts
Hummm, definitions mean so many things to so many different people. So I can only tell you how it means to me and what we are doing…you will have to ask Van and George about theirs…
The term TMA is not used in a bad or unprofessional way….When we say traditional martial arts I guess we are talking about the business…..the commercialization of how people are teaching and what they teach. To say that one TMA style is better than another would be based only on a personal opinion and if two people fought in a ring the best style would not win but the best warrior….
At this time there isn’t a committee that authorizes what people teach (except from that style) in the martial arts world, not a nation wide committee to be the voice or reason, or justification for anything they teach….
Each empty hand style or system has been born from others…we see everyone trying to get the credit for how someone else took the time, energy and puts forth the effort to make what they were doing better…this is how I viewed what Bruce Lee tried to do and say within the Marital Arts Community..hey do not get pissed off at them…praise them and take it as a compliment…if you are in this for a ego stroke then stand in front a mirror..but when you stand in front a group of people who are giving you their personal time, their hard earn money and placing their life in your hands, you need to …hell you owe it to them to be the best professional you can be and that is where the additional training for the professional is obligation to his students.
People who are just taking martial arts as a sport, or for recreation purposes, or just because they do not want to workout in the gym then it doesn’t really matter where they go and whom provides that instruction…so this means nothing to them…
However for the person who is being trained for the purpose of saving their life, or the life of others, that is who we are talking to, and I hope they hear us. The survival is 3 fold, in the street, in the courtroom and in the home of your mind when everything is done….as I mentioned before in my other posts..a complete package, not just the a cool bag…
Now in every category there are and will always be the exception to the rule…
…how one interprets this fighting style is often how one teaches it, and the teaching ability of one instructor in most cases are greatly different then others…which in turns affect the fighting style itself!
A true master of ANY style has a lot to offer…culture, religious beliefs, family traditions passed down through the generations all play a vital role of any art…even the art of survival which has taken on many different faces within all of our circles.
With each style offering their own important contributions throughout the years. I think the bast way to define the term TMA would be the way we are doing business. We have more data on how physical encounter happen, each state, nationally has groups on various committees on acts of violence. 50 years ago when martial arts first started to become popular it was taught from a self defense stand point, learning the ways of skills passed down from generations. Then as time pasted techniques became more watered down, taught differently, and in time some lost their original meaning and in some cases their effect.
To say that a punch is a punch, is a punch would be a lie. Physical encounters in today’s society have no rules in which to prepare a person for survival, 50 years ago you could do a ‘Whatever technique,’ in today’s society the types of students we get are vastly different from 50, 30 even 10 years ago.
After reading what I wrote, I am not sure if it answered your question, but it did say what I was thinking and how I felt on the subject. It is hard to write on a forum where their are so many people with their own opinion, thoughts and views.
Dave
