Martial arts

[[File:Toyama Kanken.jpg|180px|thumb|Karate is usually one of the first things that comes to mind when people think of martial arts.]]
{{folklore}}
'''Martial arts''' (also superficially known as kung fu fighting, the art of kicking ass, or dancing in white pyjamas whilst feeling other men's [[chi]]) is a common term used to describe formalized systems of fighting.  While many people consider martial artists to be badasses who can whup ass, there is a significant amount of [[woo]] involved, such as claims of "no touch knock outs" and fat old men who claim to be able to take on 30 d3ad1y n1njers sent to kill them. 

The term "martial arts" has become most commonly associated with the various disciplines originating in East [[Asia]], especially systems of armed and unarmed combat such as kung fu, karate and taekwondo. Martial arts is a particularly big money-spinner for the Shaolin Temple in central [[China]]. Its monks travel the world putting on a display of their skills, and many tourists visit the monastery itself.

However, sports and fighting techniques common in the west, such as boxing, wrestling and fencing are also martial arts. As are rifle shooting, grenade throwing and combat engineers' skills. Basically, anything useful for a soldier is a martial art.

==What's a good martial art?==
[[File:Yang-single (restoration).jpg|180px|left|thumb|Tai chi is a classic example of a martial art that's terrible for real world self-defense, but perfectly valid as form of meditative exercise.]]
Depends what it's for. A good martial art is generally considered one that is effective, adaptable, and suitable for the practitioner’s goals. If you're doing it for the "art" rather than the "martial", most of the highly stylised ones are fine for that. Good exercise, fun, self-discipline, something to do after school, and a sense of achievement. If you master some disciplines you could wind up in the Olympic Games, other disciplines might land you [[Chuck Norris|roles]] in Hollywood/Hong Kong movies. In martial arts, "effectiveness" is often measured not only in combat scenarios, but also in physical, mental, and social development. 

===So what style?===
No single martial art is universally the best at everything (though McDojos guarantee you'll get the universally worst). Like said before, consider what you are actually starting martial arts for. Do your homework and choose a martial art that aligns with your objectives, physical abilities, and personal interests.

===Be wary of the McDojos===
Perhaps the most important rule when starting your martial arts journey. Nowadays due to a trend of commercialization (taken to extremes in so-called belt factories aka [[McDojo]]s) it may be difficult to find the right kind of lessons to help you understand the martial art that you are signing up to learn. Very often it does take substantially more than three pounds a lesson, a few gradings on movement routines and a coloured belt to truly learn anything relevant to any of the popular goals people have for practicing.

Even proverbial "proven" martial arts have McDojos souring the art's name. One such example is "Krav Maga" (not to be confused with anything related to [[MAGA]]), which has quite a lot of rubbish taught in its name, which has little to do with the learn-this-or-die stuff taught in the IDF, and Krav can occasionally devolve into "100 ways to rip someone's testicles off", and since there is very little in the way of competitive Krav Maga it is difficult to assess whether an individual dojo is any good or is just "2lethal4thering".<ref>''e.g.'' [http://www.bullshido.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-13414.html]</ref> This is an unfortunate byproduct of Krav Maga's growth in popularity: Krav's still-good reputation gives charlatans a good opportunity to separate insecure Walter Mitty-types from their money.

Again, do your homework before progressing further. Thankfully we here at [[RationalWiki]] have compiled the [[McDojo#Warning_signs_of_McDojos|classic warning signs of a McDojo]] to watch out for.

===Fighting methodology===
If the aim is to acquire practical self-defense skills, then a key feature of a good martial art is its applicability in realistic, high-stress situations. It emphasizes practical techniques that can be used for self-defense, including strikes (punches, kicks, elbows, and knees), grappling (throws, locks, and pins) and defensive strategies (blocks, evasions, and situational awareness). Some martial arts focus primarily on sport or tradition, while others prioritize self-defense in unpredictable situations. Regardless, good martial arts typically provide training across multiple areas of combat and an balanced approach allows practitioners to be versatile in different combat scenarios.

Adaptable martial arts teach principles rather than rigid techniques. Practitioners learn to adjust their techniques based on factors like their own size, strength, and physical capabilities, the environment or situation they encounter and the skill level of opponents. Adaptability is a key factor in real-world effectiveness.

Martial arts contribute to both physical fitness (strength, endurance, coordination, and flexibility) and mental well-being (discipline, patience, situational awareness, self-confidence, and resilience). Many martial arts also incorporate meditation or mindfulness practices to enhance mental focus.

===Teaching methods===
A good martial art also focuses on safety and organized learning. It increases difficulty slowly to fit your skill and experience level. It teaches methods to lower the chance of getting hurt and includes supervised sparring and controlled practice settings.

Community and culture is also a important factor, since the culture around a martial art can greatly affect how a practitioner thinks and feels. Good things include having supportive instructors and a friendly group of people. It also teaches things like respect, humility, and self-control. There are also deeper ideas that help you grow as a person, not just improve your fighting skills.

===But what if I need to fight beyond "practical self-defense skills"?===
In that case, consider joining the army -- since that's where the ''real'' martial skills (by very definition of the word "martial") are being taught at.

==The problem with stylised martial arts==
[[File:Yoshimitsu Yamada Sensei.jpg|180px|thumb|Aikido]]
{{cquote|When the UFC debuted in 1993, we all learned the most effective martial arts were wrapping yourself around your enemy's neck and/or being much bigger than them and ravaging them like a rival chimpanzee. Watching the tens of hours of our kung fu practice rendered obsolete before our eyes was disappointing, but we held out hope that word of this new fighting challenge would reach an ancient temple filled with kumite monks. We kept expecting one of them, any day now, to descend from a mountain and defeat Mark Coleman and Oleg Taktarov with a forbidden shadowless kick, or maybe just dodge punches until everyone agreed that love could be the only real winner. |||{{wpl|Seanbaby}}<ref>{{cite web |last= |first= |date= |title=5 Violently Debunked Martial Arts Myths |url=https://www.cracked.com/blog/5-violently-debunked-martial-arts-myths |website=Cracked |url-status= alive|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180707040220/https://www.cracked.com/blog/5-violently-debunked-martial-arts-myths |archive-date= July 8, 2018|access-date=December 12, 2025}}</ref>}}
In terms of combat, the trouble with stylised martial arts in the civilized age is that it has become detached from the harsh feedback of reality. You can learn fighting techniques, but almost no-one doing so is actually having to use their skills in real life on a daily basis. There are endless tales of martial artists of relatively high rank getting their asses handed to them when attacked in the streets because they basically learned a stylised form rather than anything still connected to actual fighting.<ref>http://www.survivopedia.com/martial-arts-myths-debunked/</ref> Note that there are also numerous stories of martial artists beating the snot out of people in fights.

Some of this is because ideas that were meant less as actual techniques, and more as conditioning, are taught as if you'll actually use them in a fight.<ref>Several well respected martial artists have written articles hypothesizing that techniques like "jumping" or "flying" kicks were meant to train the legs, not to be actually used.{{fact}}</ref><ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuofZY3q6Tg Martial Street Art: Push Hands: Introduction] - gives a good idea of how forms and routines are said to be helpful, supposedly even for combat training.</ref> Some prominent martial artists like Bruce Lee have spoken out against stylism in martial arts due to its effect of stagnating self-expression and impeding critical reasoning about what works in a fight.

One interesting counterforce to the woo in martial arts is mixed martial arts, in which the various schools and forms supposedly get tested against each other to various degrees (although there has in the last ten years or so been an emphasis on a specific mixture of Muay Thai, Wrestling, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu). There appears to be at least some opportunity for bullshit to walk (or not, if it gets its leg broken), but the fight is still highly stylised.

It's worth remembering as well that many people who take up martial arts in modern times aren't looking to learn how to fight or defend themselves, but are looking for some kind of exercise program. Adding to that, martial arts often does come with a philosophy of self-improvement, whether it be growth as a fighter, growth as an athlete or more general personal growth. Often times what you get out of it depends heavily on the quality of your teacher. Furthermore, martial arts, like all arts, is ultimately also a way of expressing yourself.

==Mixed Martial Arts==
{{Update section}}
While various sports comparable to MMA have existed on and off since the dawn of time, the first UFC Pay-Per-View did more to dispel people's misconceptions about martial arts than any other event in world history.<ref>http://fightland.vice.com/blog/a-look-back-at-ufc-1---part-1</ref><ref>http://fightland.vice.com/blog/a-look-back-at-ufc-1---part-2</ref><ref>http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2012/3/26/2890710/mma-origins-ufc-1-MMA-History</ref> Originally starting off as an infomercial for Gracie Jiu Jitsu, most average Americans ordering the show had no idea that while kicks and punches looked cool, they were useless in the face of grappling moves.

There are still many misconceptions on MMA and martial arts in general that persist to this day, and since mastering martial arts takes significantly more work than just dancing around in your underwear, this'll likely always be the case. No matter what, the sport's rise to the popular consciousness is a victory for reason that's reached millions of minds.

Over the history of MMA, the most popular combination of styles that have emerged dominant typically involve Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, Thai/Western/"Dirty" Boxing, and Wrestling. There is not a single elite MMA fighter who isn't world class in at least one of those disciplines, and with the exception of the very early days in MMA, all elite MMA fighters are at least pretty good in all of those disciplines.

The reason for this breadth is straightforward. Pure striking arts are essentially helpless when rules allow grappling and if the rules allow kicks, you need to be able to do and defend those. Woo, rigid "form" arts and street brawling were weeded out in the early going.

Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is extremely popular and probably the most successful in MMA because it allows for beginner friendly, frequent and (relative) low-risk full contact training because there is no striking and less focus on takedowns than in wrestling. The minimum required athleticism to be proficient at BJJ is also extremely low. It also enjoyed early success because defending and preventing many submission holds in BJJ is not very intuitive if you are not familiar with submission grappling styles. For someone completely unfamiliar with martial arts but wishing to learn how to fight, BJJ would generally be the best starting point. A final upside is that because BJJ is a young sport, and the lineage of all Black Belts is pretty well known and Black Belts are extremely difficult to earn, typically 12-20 years, it's prohibitive and risky for most con artists to lie about their BJJ credentials, lest they be discovered by people actually ranked in BJJ  a la James Paredes. However, even in the BJJ world, frauds do exist.

==Bullshido==
{{cquote|There are lots of guys around the world that are lazy. They have big fat guts. They talk about chi power and things they can do, but don't believe it. |||{{wpl|Bruce Lee}}<ref>{{cite book |last= Thomas|first=Bruce |date= 2012|title= Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit |publisher= Pan Macmillan|page=82 |isbn= 9780283070815}}</ref>}}
The martial arts have inspired all sorts of wootastic claims — termed "[[Bullshit|bullshido]]" by some, notably the skeptics community operating at Bullshido.net where the term was coined as a portmanteau of the Japanese martial arts term "Bushido", and of course, "Bullshit". Many make lame attempts to follow concepts they know nothing about, such as [[taoism]], claiming that it gives them all sorts of funky insights. Others make ridiculous claims about [[chi]], stating that it can do such things as give them rapid healing powers, [[ESP]], bulletproofing, or superhuman strength. 

Oftentimes, these claims are disproven outright (such as the claims of no-touch knockout). Others are based simply on a misunderstanding of science or using spiritual ideas as a placeholder for science that they don't understand. Many iron hand practitioners think chi is what makes their hand like iron, rather than the progressive microtrauma that causes the bones to grow back thicker, a phenomenon known as Wolff's Law.

A typical claim about martial arts is that they teach you how to "use your opponent's strength against them" and other fancy phrasings like that.  Anybody who has actually practiced any martial art will be able to tell you that big strong opponents are a lot tougher than tiny ones, though this claim is most likely what martial arts schools teach to teach someone how to ''overcome'' size differences. So really, it's just a fancy phrasing for application of basic physics like reducing the surface area acted upon by a force or outright evasion, withstanding force by distributing it via structure or manipulating momentum via levers. Sometimes movements that are taught aren't even demonstrably applicable anywhere outside of the specific setups used to train them, though practitioners like to think otherwise.

===Famous martial arts frauds===
When it comes to martial arts, there are great many frauds who claim mastery, lineage, or extraordinary skills -- only to be exposed as exaggerating and/or full-on bullshit artist. Here are some of the most infamous figures often discussed in martial arts circles:
* '''{{wpl|Count Dante|| (John Keehan)}}''': a notorious martial arts promoter from the 1960s/70s in the U.S., Count Dante proclaimed had dangerous skills - like the "death touch" - and organized staged fights. A lot of his matches and tricks were showy -- bragging about being "unbeatable".
* '''{{wpl|Frank Dux}}''': aka ''the {{wpl|Bloodsport (film)|Bloodsport}} guy'', with the movie being based on the alleged super-secret "Kumite tournament" that he participated in ''[[PIDOOMA|whatever location depending on when you ask him]]''. Investigations found no evidence of the tournament ever existing, and his military records and fighting credentials have been widely debunked. Many consider him the quintessential martial arts fraud.<ref>{{cite web |last= Johnson|first=John |date= May 1, 1988|title=NINJA: Hero or Master Fake? : Others Kick Holes in Fabled Past of Woodland Hills Martial Arts Teacher |url= https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-05-01-me-3111-story.html|website= Los Angeles Times |access-date=December 14, 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last= Figueroa|first= Dariel|date= October 21, 2015|title=Lies, Litigation, And Jean-Claude Van Damme: An Exploration Into The Reality Behind ‘Bloodsport’ |website=UPROXX |url= https://uproxx.com/movies/bloodsport-jean-claude-van-damme-frank-dux/|access-date=December 14, 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |author=Martial Arts Entertainment |date=April 7, 2021 |title=The NOT So REAL Frank Dux |url=https://www.martialartsentertainment.com/frank-dux/ |website= Martial Arts Entertainment|access-date=December 14, 2025}}</ref>
*  '''Ashida Kim (Radford William Davis)''':  said to be a superhuman martial arts expert, trained by mysterious secret teachers, and claimed to have amazing powers such as jumping over tall buildings or walking on water. Besides his over-the-top demonstrations, he built a ecosystem of self-reinforcing belief, with his followers establishing a tough-to-crack fraud dynamic shielding him from direct scrutiny.
* '''{{wpl|George Dillman}}''': controversial American martial arts instructor who is a major figure in "pressure-point mysticism" debates. Claiming mastery over no-touch knockouts via pressure points and chi; he was exposed when a demonstration of his techniques failed on a resisting opponent. Color us surprised.
* '''Erle Montaigue''': master of “Combat Tai Chi” that's capable of lethal force. Often cited in internal-arts skepticism circles due to his emphasis on theoretical lethality with no live-testing evidence.
* '''[[Steven Seagal]]''': although Seagal has a legit background in Aikido, he is a total [[asshole]] as a person. Firstly, he's expert in ''Aikido'', which is a very non-violent and elegant art, yet Seagal tries to [[delusion|play it off]] as being more [[machismo]] than it actually is. And like all martial arts frauds, he grossly exaggerates his abilities and contributions, habitually mythologizing himself over non-existent achievements.

==Common myths and misconceptions about martial arts==

{|class="wikitable sortable" style="width:100%;"
|-
!style="width:20%"|Claim
!style="width:80%"|Reality
|-
| Martial arts make you invincible
| Martial arts improve self-defense, reflexes, and fitness, but they don’t make you immune to injury or defeat. Real-world fights are unpredictable, chaotic, and dangerous. Overconfidence can be risky.
|-
| Higher belt = unbeatable fighter
| Belt ranks measure progression, knowledge, and often time spent in training -- not necessarily real-world fighting skill. Some lower-ranked practitioners may be more effective due to natural ability, experience, or sparring practice.
|-
| Martial arts are only for fighting
| Most martial arts emphasize discipline, focus, mental growth, physical fitness, and self-control. Self-defense is only one aspect. Some styles are more sport-oriented or meditative (e.g., Tai Chi, Aikido).
|-
| Martial arts techniques ''always'' work in real fights
| Techniques practiced in controlled environments often fail under adrenaline, stress, or against multiple attackers. Reality is messier than the dojo; adaptation and strategy are crucial.
|-
| You can learn to fight effectively in a few months
| Martial arts skills take years to develop. Short-term courses can teach awareness, basic defense, and confidence, but mastery is long-term.
|-
|Martial artists can break anything
|Demonstrations like breaking boards, bricks, or concrete are more about precision, technique, and physics than sheer strength. Real objects like walls, metal, or bones won’t give way like in demonstrations. Also - like Bruce Lee said - "boards don't hit back".
|-
|Martial arts are outdated
|While traditional martial arts have roots in historical combat, many remain relevant for fitness, self-defense, and discipline. Some have modernized with sport and street-defense techniques.
|-
|Martial arts are inherently violent
|Most arts teach control, restraint, and non-aggression. Violence is not glorified; the emphasis is on defense, respect, and mental development.
|-
|Martial arts guarantee self-defense against weapons
|Unarmed defense against knives or guns is extremely difficult. Martial arts can improve awareness and reaction time, but there are no guarantees in uncontrolled situations. Realistic training with weapons is very different from choreographed drills.
|-
|Only young or physically strong people can train
|Martial arts can be adapted to all ages, sizes, and fitness levels. Styles like Tai Chi, Judo, and some forms of Kung Fu are particularly suitable for older adults or those with limited mobility.
|-
|Martial arts = street fighting
|Training emphasizes discipline, controlled sparring, and learning outcomes. Martial arts is structured and methodical, unlike chaotic street fights.
|-
|Certain martial arts styles are strictly superior to others
|There is no universally “best” martial art. Effectiveness depends on the context, practitioner skill, physical attributes, and mindset. "Style wars" are mostly cultural or media-driven myths.
|-
|Movies show realistic martial arts
|Movies exaggerate abilities for dramatic effect (like flying kicks, jumping multiple opponents, or breaking through walls) -- real martial arts are more grounded and technical.
|-
|You need to be [[Machismo|aggressive]] to be skilled
|Many effective martial artists rely on patience, observation, and strategy rather than brute force. Aggression can be a liability in real situations.
|}

==See also==
*[[Mall ninja]]
*[[McDojo]]
*''[[Black Belt Magazine]]''

==External links==
*[http://www.bullshido.net Bullshido - The Art of Fighting BS]
*[http://www.hiyaapodcast.com/ Hiyaa Podcast]. A sort of skeptic martial arts podcast.

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Sport]]
[[Category:Orientalist woo]]

Categories: Sport, Orientalist woo