Thousands upon thousands of people all over the world can be found learning, or teaching, the various martial arts these days. Arguably the most popular of all these martial arts tends to be the striking arts, that mainly involves hand to hand combat, but is the true effectiveness of this area of the combat arts still being learned or taught to the required original standards anymore?
It goes without saying that learning the martial arts still needs to cover all the various aspects involved, that range from slow technique application study through to simple self-defence and the study of set forms for example, but has the hard combat skills and the much needed physical contact side of it all these days been forgotten about and replaced by fancy flowery moves and poses, or limited, to soft and slow moves only and nothing more? Learning fancy moves, or demonstrating somewhat impressive but complex techniques in front of students, is all well and good when done at a slow, or at best a medium level speed, but often totally useless when done at real speed and up against someone using hard physical contact when attacking. So this for sure raises the question - is learning the martial arts these days still truly effective like it used to be back in the old days? Are some, if not all of course, teaching the combat arts and awarding black belt grade ranks to students who are totally unprepared when it comes to a real hard bone on bone street fight situation? Being awarded a black belt is not just a simple case of being technically skillful, fast and strong but also being able to resist hard contact impacts in addition. So that being the case is body conditioning being neglected far more than it should be? There are various keep fit and body conditioning exercises available within the martial arts that range from 'on the fists' knuckle push ups to various forms of stamina training but if these tried and tested physical development exercises are neglected then for sure true combat skills alone may not be enough when facing a hard and brutal situation. Is unarmed combat now a lost art in favour of clever looking moves these days, or worse still, are martial art clubs being run by idle minded instructors who do not like doing such things? For a related article click >HERE< Comments are closed.
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