How to “Fix” Martial Arts and Combat Sports?
I got this question from a client and wanted to share the answer:
“I am an instructor in the art of Shaolin Kempo. When I train with my Master he makes it very clear that what we train in Kempo may look pretty at times but is also a good, solid self-defense system. There are a lot of techniques that are utilized in our system, and as instructors we are taught to use pieces of them to deal with real situations.
“However, we don’t do this with students until they reach a certain rank. I want those I teach to be able to use what they learn to really defend themselves. At the same time I don’t want to confuse them or sabotage their training.
“Judging by what I’ve seen on your website I’d very much like to try it out and perhaps incorporate it into my current training for my own benefit before adding any element of TFT to my teaching.
“Do you think it would be beneficial or harmful for me to add TFT to my training?”
[Before I get to your excellent question, a quick note on the title: I purposely chose the most outrageous one possible. I know that’s not what you’re asking (you’re not trying to “fix” Kempo) but I have trained people who admitted that they were looking to do just that, They’re trying to find that ineffable thing they felt was missing in their training and figure out how to get the same results we do.]
The reason the various schools, styles and systems exist at all is because of a focus on technique over results. There’s only one result that is of any use in violence: debilitating injury.
There’s really only one way to get it: body weight in motion, trying to go all the way through one square inch of anatomy that can’t take it. With form following function, videos of successful violence all look the same: one guy “chopping wood” and one guy going down and getting worked.
We can argue all day about stance, movement, and technique; you can’t argue about results. Either you get them or you don’t.
The good news is that anybody, having trained anything, can get that result. Boxers, grapplers, MMA fighters, martial arts stylists, et al., can all drop people and put them in the hospital. (Or worse.)
The unifying aspect here is that when they do get it right, it’s always right for the same reasons — they generated enough kinetic energy to disrupt human tissue and put it through something important.
When looking at your own previous or current training, the only question to ask is:
“Where’s the injury?”
For any given technique, there has to be a likely, repeatable and documented disability. The technique has to break something important.
“Likely” means injury is the expected result of whatever it is you’re doing. “Punching someone in the head” may or may not result in unconsciousness; slamming your mass through one square inch of the side of their neck makes a knockout much more likely.
“Repeatable” means you can get that result every time you do the technique. Not just sometimes, like on people smaller or weaker than you, for example.
“Documented” means you can find that injury independent of the technique (i.e., in sports injury literature) — even better if you can find pictures or video of the injury occurring so you can see exactly how it happens and what injury results.
If what you know is already there (there’s not much more that can be said about plowing your shin through a man’s groin as hard as humanly possible, for example) then you’re good to go.
If injury is in doubt (e.g., not the most likely outcome, can’t get it every time, and can’t find the target broken in sports injury literature) then you either need to “fix” it by bringing it in line with the base principles that drive injury, or ditch it.
Look at breaking a knee. You can find lots of sports videos where people snap a knee. You can also find a bunch where it almost breaks, but not quite. What are the differences between the two? Again, it will come down to body weight (or not) trying to go all the way through (or not) one square inch of isolated targeting (or not).
If there’s no body weight, the knee will lock back and hold. If there’s no follow through, the knee locks and stops again. If the foot slips out, or the force is pushed through the thigh or shin, or across a large surface area, the body displaces instead of taking it all inside the knee.
Knowing all this suggests which techniques would be most likely to break the knee and which would not. It also allows us to “fix” any given knee-break technique by adding the missing elements and/or isolating the knee itself.
This is the process we went through and it meant reluctantly ditching techniques that were cool-looking, fun to practice but ultimately worthless. They were neat movements — crowd-pleasing and impressive — but nothing you could bet your life on.
Since we built TFT on the base principles of injury, you don’t have to ditch your previous or current training, you just need to dial in your targeting and make sure you’re causing injury. Three years of Tae Kwon Do taught me all the coordination I need to throw kicks. I just needed to make sure I had my mass involved and stomp it all the way through (instead of leaning back, away from the kick).
A punch to the nose is a punch to the nose. No one has a patent on it. What I respect is a punch to the nose that breaks it, blinds the man and knocks him down. I don’t care who threw it or where he or she trained. The results always speak for themselves.
What TFT can offer anyone, regardless of previous or current training, is:
Improved targeting.
We show you where to put your efforts for maximum results and give you a training regimen that reinforces surgical precision.
Improved effectiveness.
We show you how to make sure you’re actually breaking something instead of bouncing off. We also give you the medical implications of those injuries — and show you how best to take advantage of them.
The ability to assess your current knowledge base.
When you understand the base principles that drive effective violence — how and why injury occurs — you can look at what you already know in a (positive) critical light.
You’ll know which techniques are already effective and which ones are missing one or more elements. All you have to do is put them back in.
Everybody who trains learns how to punch and kick. The question is are you really breaking things, and are those things important? We can give you the tools to make it so, regardless of school, style or system.