Bad Moves
Do techniques that make people hate you still have a place in martial arts?
A lot of bad martial arts hide behind the excuse that their moves are “too deadly to use”. The socially awkward, martial artist claiming he could “just eye gouge” a mere sport fighter is a popular culture cliche. We’ve all seen the videos of these guys getting their asses ripped off and handed to them, or just giving up after one punch to the face. “Too deadly to use” is nonsense, but “too mean to practice”, is a legitimate phenomenon within martial arts.
The fantasy martial arts don’t work because they don’t include any live practice. A fighter can learn multiple techniques on a single day, and exercise pays off on a monthly schedule. The sense of timing, balance, and coordination required to apply techniques in a live situation, takes years to develop and the only short-cut seems to be playing little league hockey. Any apparently magical power a martial artist may have comes from the long term adaptation the nervous system undergoes during live training. It’s the reason why mat time, ring time, and combat experience take on a sacred significance for most fighters.
The importance of live training creates a paradox: The more dangerous the move, the harder it is to practice. Therefore, it is impossible to become skillful in techniques which exceed a certain danger threshold. Prediction: Skeet Surfing technique will never reach the same level as archery.
Likewise, some techniques have been forgotten by modern martial arts because they make people unpopular with their training partners. Some techniques, like eye gouges, just aren’t worth it. Other techniques make a comeback when someone finds a way to practice them effectively.
In striking, the examples that come to mind are turning kicks to the lower leg and straight kicks to the knee. These moves are a staple of traditional martial arts but they tend to cause injuries that keep people out of training. In the 90’s and 00’s being an ankle kick specialist was a good way to get kicked out of a gym. In the last year they’ve become a UFC, staple and played a pivotal role in several fights on the last card.
I came in with a really bad ankle injury where I couldn’t run and get my cardio because I really didn’t have a sparring partner, I had to hire sparring partners back then and I hired this clown who would when I come to punch him he would throw low ankle kicks and dislocated my ankle. And I’m paying the guy, I’m paying the guy to hurt me. I fired him and never used him again.- Rampage Jackson
Straight kicks to the knee, hyper extend the knee and damage ligaments. These kicks are effective fighting tools because they intimidate an opponent and harm his or her mobility even when they miss. They are toxic to a training environment because the repetitive stress of constant knee kicks would damage every other aspect of training and lower the overall caliber of the gym’s athletes. It’s clear to me that Jon Jone’s success with these moves is a combination of his limb length, their unique effectiveness, and the fact that he is a psychopathic narcissist who doesn’t care how many people he has to cripple in order to prove his personal superiority.
In the grappling world, I submit that the no-arm north south choke and many leg locks failed to reach their full potential because nobody could figure out how to get good at them without being ostracized for hurting training partners. It’s no coincidence that the leg lock game improved after arthroscopic knee surgery became widely available, and I strongly suspect that toeholds have failed to reach their full potential because they lead to a disproportionate number of injuries among beginners.
In martial arts the question “how can I get better”, is equivalent to the question “how do I innovate.” If you’re looking for a way to expand the scope of martial arts, look at techniques that are dangerous to practice live and find ways to make them safer. Perhaps you can find a wrist lock that comes on slowly enough that your partner has time to tap or a legal method of attacking the trachea under unified MMA rules?
