Read Darkpaladin's (love the avatar) close encounter story with interest and it reminded me of my last close encounter.
I was checking out a new gym to join and was being shown round by one of the staff. During the general chit-chat it was brought up that I did martial arts. We were in the aerobics room which had a heavybag and he let loose a few backfists to the bag. I asked what he did and he said "tae ki do". I'd never heard of it so I assumed it was some sort of sillyness, especially as it seemed to be made up of the words "tae kwon do" and "aikido". I asked what it was and he said it was created by guys who wanted a harder form of tae kwon do. I mentioned that I had been getting into Brazilian jujitsu, and he said that jujitsu was great stuff because you can just tap someone on the back and make them fall over, which looks good on the security cameras if you happen to get caught on one. I realised that he must have believed that jujitsu was some sort of Steven Segal magic.
He talked about some of his sparring matches and I asked what safety equipment he used, he said "nothing". I looked surprised and asked if he sparred bare knuckle and he said that they pulled thier punches inches before contact. Point sparring. We talked about other things and I mentioned that some schools of martial arts believe that you need years of kata before you can spar and he said that such is required so you have enough "control" (ie; you know how to miss a person during point sparring).
It occured to me that when you hang on bullshido you forget that many (most?) people out there don't know about aliveness, MMA, BJJ, mixing striking with clinch and groundfighting, UFC and so on. Even fewer have ever sampled any of this type, of training. Whenever I touched on these subjects he kind of ignored it and kept talking about his taikido stuff.
For most of recent martial arts history, kata, repetition, point sparring, tapping people and launching them across the room aikido style and more kata was the hegemony. A lot of people aren't deliberatly bullshido, they just aren't aware of the latest developments in martial arts.
I was checking out a new gym to join and was being shown round by one of the staff. During the general chit-chat it was brought up that I did martial arts. We were in the aerobics room which had a heavybag and he let loose a few backfists to the bag. I asked what he did and he said "tae ki do". I'd never heard of it so I assumed it was some sort of sillyness, especially as it seemed to be made up of the words "tae kwon do" and "aikido". I asked what it was and he said it was created by guys who wanted a harder form of tae kwon do. I mentioned that I had been getting into Brazilian jujitsu, and he said that jujitsu was great stuff because you can just tap someone on the back and make them fall over, which looks good on the security cameras if you happen to get caught on one. I realised that he must have believed that jujitsu was some sort of Steven Segal magic.
He talked about some of his sparring matches and I asked what safety equipment he used, he said "nothing". I looked surprised and asked if he sparred bare knuckle and he said that they pulled thier punches inches before contact. Point sparring. We talked about other things and I mentioned that some schools of martial arts believe that you need years of kata before you can spar and he said that such is required so you have enough "control" (ie; you know how to miss a person during point sparring).
It occured to me that when you hang on bullshido you forget that many (most?) people out there don't know about aliveness, MMA, BJJ, mixing striking with clinch and groundfighting, UFC and so on. Even fewer have ever sampled any of this type, of training. Whenever I touched on these subjects he kind of ignored it and kept talking about his taikido stuff.
For most of recent martial arts history, kata, repetition, point sparring, tapping people and launching them across the room aikido style and more kata was the hegemony. A lot of people aren't deliberatly bullshido, they just aren't aware of the latest developments in martial arts.
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