Uniting The Arts

[DIALOGUE] posts represent the interactions I have with other people in the Internet

A student at a dojo called Degerberg Academy and contemplates the meaning of martial arts. This fellow pupil brings up some good points about what “art” means in definition but does not make a solid connection to why a person would start participating in martial arts. It was a bit confusing as to whether the person was trying to present the fact that people would join martial arts more for self-defense. Here is my response:

The definitions you provide are very specific and the views are very specific. Is your idea here to identify what would drive a beginner to START martial arts? I can guarantee you there are more reasons people participate in martial arts. Self-defense is only one of the number of reasons – you elude to one of them – competition. Self-defense would be secondary for someone training for the Olympics.

You bring up good points; however, even in competition, is not the correct context to test self-defense. Where to do that off the street? That’s up to the dojo to take those measure of mimicking urban or “real-world” (non-competition) tests. I know that styles like Krav Maga provide these types of tests and may be more suitable for those interested.

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