Cullion
05-04-2007, 05:26 PM
It's just a cop-out, really. The entire phrase "I'm not doing this to become a cage fighter" or "I have a day job", while true for 95% of the martial arts-training population, is used almost exclusively by pussies trying to justify putting the bare minimum of effort into their training. How many times have you heard "I'm not trying to become a 300-pound steroid monster" by the asshole that chats on his cell phone in the gym?
Under normal circumstances and in a normal hobby, I would say that if these people want to short-change themselves, so be it. It's not my problem and in no way affects my training. Except...it does. The naturally violent nature of martial arts lends itself to a certain backlash, an inherent (and oftentimes justified) fear of training too hard for fear of injury. This fear splinters off into the myraid issues the martial arts face today, virtually all of which have been addressed at this site eleventy billion times.
If you have one fifty-year old accountant with a bad knee sitting out of sparring at the end of class, he's not hurting anyone. But what if he doesn't have a bad knee and just wants to pretend "being fifty" is an injury? What happens if that accountant is middle-aged and starts saying "Oh, I'm just here to have fun and increase my flexibility! ;)"? Now what if you've got several middle-aged accountants that signed up for a glorified yoga class? And they're talking, unionizing, spreading ideas and feeding a self-perpetuating cycle of victimhood and self pity founded on the delusional belief that only professionals should take pride in their work? Now the school's owner, facing a large group of students disinterested in any form of challenge, has to alter his curriculum to accomodate them.
It's a frightening scenario, and as outlandish as it sounds, it's been happening all over the country. Of course most people do not train to be a cage fighter, and most people do work 9-5 jobs and can't afford to be injured. But using those ideas are crutches instead of realities leads to half-assed training, which in the end, benefits no one.
Good. Now get back into the main forum and start making this point to everybody who goes to a BJJ class, rolls around on the floor with rules like 'don't slam me on the floor' or 'don't punch me in the face' but thinks they are part of one big familly of aliveness with their favourite partially BJJ-trained MMA fighter who gets kneed in the face for a living.
Replace 'middle aged accountant' in your example with 'middle class college kid who watches MMA on TV but doesn't _really_ want to get punched in the face hard'.
You do realise that 'hobbyist MMA' as expressed in the popularity of low-impact floor grappling is another, cleverly insidious, example of this trend, don't you ?
Under normal circumstances and in a normal hobby, I would say that if these people want to short-change themselves, so be it. It's not my problem and in no way affects my training. Except...it does. The naturally violent nature of martial arts lends itself to a certain backlash, an inherent (and oftentimes justified) fear of training too hard for fear of injury. This fear splinters off into the myraid issues the martial arts face today, virtually all of which have been addressed at this site eleventy billion times.
If you have one fifty-year old accountant with a bad knee sitting out of sparring at the end of class, he's not hurting anyone. But what if he doesn't have a bad knee and just wants to pretend "being fifty" is an injury? What happens if that accountant is middle-aged and starts saying "Oh, I'm just here to have fun and increase my flexibility! ;)"? Now what if you've got several middle-aged accountants that signed up for a glorified yoga class? And they're talking, unionizing, spreading ideas and feeding a self-perpetuating cycle of victimhood and self pity founded on the delusional belief that only professionals should take pride in their work? Now the school's owner, facing a large group of students disinterested in any form of challenge, has to alter his curriculum to accomodate them.
It's a frightening scenario, and as outlandish as it sounds, it's been happening all over the country. Of course most people do not train to be a cage fighter, and most people do work 9-5 jobs and can't afford to be injured. But using those ideas are crutches instead of realities leads to half-assed training, which in the end, benefits no one.
Good. Now get back into the main forum and start making this point to everybody who goes to a BJJ class, rolls around on the floor with rules like 'don't slam me on the floor' or 'don't punch me in the face' but thinks they are part of one big familly of aliveness with their favourite partially BJJ-trained MMA fighter who gets kneed in the face for a living.
Replace 'middle aged accountant' in your example with 'middle class college kid who watches MMA on TV but doesn't _really_ want to get punched in the face hard'.
You do realise that 'hobbyist MMA' as expressed in the popularity of low-impact floor grappling is another, cleverly insidious, example of this trend, don't you ?
