I would probably chalk up a lot of what redangel is saying to a combination of potentially valid points and a lack of perspective based on inexperience. What that means for us is that we have to sort through what he’s saying, all the vague blanket statements and just plain rants, to find what may be a point worth considering. Now I’ll admit that when I see a claim of only 2 years experience, it usually makes me too lazy to do all that sorting since the valid points are usually things I’ve heard before a million times or conclusions I came to myself years ago.
I am a crosstrainer with 27 years of experience in the martial arts. Early on, I was a dabbler, not by design, but by necessity due to the fact that I didn’t know much about the world of martial arts and was still searching for what I wanted/needed. On the one hand, I certainly learned that an inexperienced kid can’t legitimately evaluate a given art in its entirety and that an art can often have information that is only yielded up through time, experience and perspective.
On the other hand, I also learned that, despite the hype and politically correct viewpoint, that a given art really CAN have weaknesses and that it DOESN’T always mean one simply hasn’t spent enough time in the art or delved into it deeply enough. Martial arts are human constructs and are therefore open to imperfection. The fact that some spiritually-deep total bad-ass found a method of fighting that worked for him, organized it, and taught it to others doesn’t mean that method is completely perfect nor that it is optimal for handling any and all possible fighting situations for all people…no matter how long ago it was invented or how many generations of people have practiced it since. Just like other phenomena in natural selection, just because a system has become stable over time doesn’t mean it is optimally adapted to all environments/circumstances everywhere. It simply means that it is reasonably suited to the environment/circumstances in which it is practiced.
For illustration and to hopefully provide some balanced perspective, I’ll give a couple of examples. Western pugilism, for instance, has been practiced for many hundreds of years in a roughly stable configuration. That is, it didn’t change much over time. Its advocates might claim that means it has proven that it works. Fair enough. However, put a champion pugilist against a modern Western boxer and he’ll be destroyed rather quickly, all else being equal. Or, put him on the ground with a champion wrestler, Shuai Jiao practitioner, or BJJ man and he’ll be similarly squashed. For that matter, if he can’t close distance against a skilled TKD or Muay Thai man, he’ll again be demolished.
For another example, I’ll put up Taijiquan. Modern Westerners especially don’t seem willing to put in the time to really understand and be able to correctly use this art or any of the other internal arts on average. As a result, they look at their 1 or 2 years spent doing it and conclude that it doesn’t work in a real fight and move on to something with a much shorter learning curve. This is too bad, since skilled Taiji guys can sometimes make someone with years of more common martial arts skill look like raw beginners. Now so far, this example would seem to support the point that redangel is trying to make, and it does to a certain extent. However, you’ll find Taiji guys who will claim that it has everything and that if it appears to have a weakness, you simply haven’t explored it enough. Sorry guys, but Taiji simply doesn’t have groundfighting skills, plain and simple. As much as they’d like to whine otherwise, any of these skilled Taiji guys, recognized masters included, would find themselves completely embarrassed if they ended up groundfighting with a skilled modern BJJ, Sambo, wrestling, or Judo practitioner.
To carry the illustration further, any of the aforementioned grappling specialists would find their skills nearly irrelevant if they found themselves facing a skilled Kali or Silat man armed with a blade. The whole thing begins to resemble the old Chinese analogy of rock/paper/scissors. It’s a matter of having the right tool for the job. The best hammer, no matter how refined and proven it has become through centuries of field-tested use by highly skilled carpenters, still makes a lousy screwdriver.
