Street fighting moves: do you know the difference between a martial art and a martial science?
Do you know the difference between a martial art and a martial science? This is a totally revolutionary concept, understanding it will help you make the best decision on how you train and where you train.
We have all heard of and are familiar with the concept of a martial art, but how many of us have heard of and are familiar with the concept of a martial science? Let’s start with some basic definitions before we examine the differences.
* Martial Art: An ancient concept that encompasses what you know as your traditional martial arts. We are talking about all your old systems like karate, kung fu, taekwondo or hapkido.
* Martial Science – A relatively new concept that essentially encompasses what is called reality-based street fighting.
The key differences between a martial art and a martial science: (for short, we will call martial art, MA and martial science, MS)
Key Difference #1 – MA strives for perfection of execution – With MA, it is more important how you do a technique, i.e. its appearance, its grace, and its beauty than ultimately is it the most effective technique or not .
Key Difference #2 – EM strives for technique efficiency – no matter how pretty or elegant a technique is executed. Ultimately, the most important aspect is how effective or realistic the technique is, i.e. will it work on the streets?
Key Difference #3 – MA is built on what is supposed to work – many of the techniques and approaches are so old, outdated, old and outdated that many of them have no place in self-protection today, however , MA continues to advocate and teach these techniques. They are supposed to work today only because they worked 5000 years ago.
Key Difference #4 – EM relies on what has been validated (proven) to work: EM uses many training methods that involve validation of a technique. For example, an RBF instructor will dip the tip of a plastic knife in red dye (to make it look like blood). If a knife technique is executed and the RBF student is dyed red, guess what, her technique didn’t work. In theory, “it was cut off.” This is called technique validation, very common in RBF training and not common in traditional MA training.
Key Difference #5: MA strives to maintain a style and a tradition. Sometimes MA seems to be obsessed with all of his Grandmasters who lived in ancient China, during the Ming dynasty, and how they lived, trained, ate and dressed.
Key Difference #6 – MS Strives to Maintain Individual Survival – MS does not care about the lore, history, origin, or romance of a fighting technique. At RBF, it’s not about what style, it’s about what works!