My Ideal Martial Arts (Pt 2)

 On further reflection (following on from the last post), I think this is what I'm looking for (even if it isn't 100% fitting my "ideal" martial arts):

I want something that's essentially the martial arts (or rather, "defensive arts") equivalent of yoga.

Yoga is an effective physical practice that can also be an effective spiritual practice. You can do it in a class under the instruction of a more experienced teacher, and then you can take that knowledge home with you and have a personal practice that's just you and your breath and the moving meditation.

In all of the yoga classes I've been to, the assumption is not that the students are empty vessels who need to learn from the much superior master, but rather that we are yogis in our own right who are working towards our own goals in our own time. You can have a wide range of abilities in the one classroom, and they all have the invitation made to them to "do what serves you" - take the movements and forms to the edge of your ability so that it pushes you exactly as much as you need to be pushed today and no further. 

When it works well, it calms and centres you, but leaves you feeling like you've had a proper work out.

I'm looking for something like that, that will also let me walk through a dark carpark safe in the knowledge that I can take on anything/anyone that might come at me.

The other stuff would be the icing on the cake, really.

My Ideal Martial Arts (Pt 1)

 I'm keen to take up some kind of martial arts but, from what I've seen, most of the popular martial arts that are available (especially in my regional town) are a bit... well...

Some of them seem to be an avenue for disenfranchised men to feel like they're good at something. Which is good, I suppose - disenfranchised men do need to feel like they're good at something. It's just that they take the short side of forever to stop being "boys with something to prove in need of an outlet" and turn into "mature grown-ups who want to develop skills" - and they make everything painful in the process. I'd rather find something that disenfranchised men find boring and not "manly" enough, so they go off and franchise themselves somewhere else and come back to this after they've moved on in life (if you you what I mean?).

Others are less stressy in that regard, but they've become too much of a Western sport, and aren't really a "this will help you on your journey... and protect you from the mugger in the carpark" kind of martial art. I like the meditative, spiritual side of things, and don't want to just come to the dojo and bout while I train for a competition. And I want something that has practical self-defense applications

What I'd like is something like this:

1. I want something that is largely non-aggressive - almost a non-combative martial art. It's first and foremost a defensive system, designed to side-step an attack and encourage your attacker to send himself head-first into the floor. It won't attract the kind of people who want to be Bruce Lee, because it's a fairly rubbish fighting system (being designed to get you out and away from the fight as soon as possible), but on the other hand, if you're good at it, no one will be able to land a punch on you. And if you're not that good at it, you'll be able to take a punch with such equanimity and circumspection that no one will be able to land a second punch.

2. I want something that has a meditative element to it. Like Tai Chi, it has a series of solo flow drills that you could do for 20 minutes in the morning all by yourself to get the day going. But in terms of the actual workout you get from this flow, I want something closer to yoga than Tai Chi - a bit like vinyasa yoga and Tai Chi had a baby. On your own, you move through a graceful sequence of movement that improves your strength and flexibility but is like poetry in motion. Then, you go to the dojo and practise with others to work on how any one of those beautiful moves, applied quickly and decisively, could actually disarm an attacker and throw them into a wall (while you run like the dickens to get the hell away from there).

3. I want something that's not a boys' club that one or two girls have invaded. I know this is terribly sexist, but whenever I look at the website of a club and I see that all of the instructors are men and 80% of the students are male, I immediately think it's going to be a drag. I want something where there's a good gender balance in the instructors and participants (or even a tendency to have more women than men). In my experience, any sporting group where female participation is at a bare minimum is one where... well... disenfranchised men feel the need to prove something. Women and girls usually get really involved with groups and organisations if they feel encouraged to engage (and by that I mean not discouraged). If they aren't there in good numbers, it's often because they are being sidelined or treated like idiots.

4. I want something that doesn't take itself too seriously. Some people might want to be masters, and that's nice. Some people might just want something to do to keep themselves mentally and physically active. If someone isn't getting more advanced, maybe it's because they don't particularly want to - and that's okay. Like yoga, everyone is on their own path and there's no pressure to move up a level. I not here to win, I'm here to train, and I need to know the trainers are going to respect that. (This is, oddly, connected to the point above. Clubs that are 80% male, and in which all of the instructors are male, tend to get really antsy when someone just wants to poodle along at their own pace - especially when that someone happens to be female). 

5. I want something that actually is effective against the average mugger in the carpark. Don't give me one of those martial arts where everyone is wearing a kimono and half the moves involve grabbing their lapel and sleeve and almost all of the moves require both participants to be students of the same martial art. Give me something that will work when I'm suddenly accosted by a guy in a T-shirt who only knows how to brawl.

I expect bits of what I've just said can be found in a variety of different martial arts (Tai Chi, Aikido, etc), and I don't want to be too Benedick about this ("Til all graces be in one martial art, one martial art shall never be in my grace"), but if anyone knows of an existing martial art that ticks most of these boxes, can you let me know?

Edit: In a later post, I distilled this idea even further.

Baby Bear Steps

Regular readers of this blog may recall that I came back from a trip to Brisbane late last year having made the (admittedly, rather obvious) observation that fencing – while one of the most inherently awesome sports on the planet – is the least useful martial art in the history of martial arts.

It is so useless as a martial art that I think we can safely say it isn’t a martial art at all – even if books about fencing are filed in the same place as books about karate and tae-kwan-do in most public libraries.

It is so useless that I actually think the cross-country running component of a pentathlon offers a better set of skills for surviving dangerous situations.

It is so useless, in terms of fostering real combative skills, that in a truly combative, life-or-death situation, I would not put money on a fencer to win a sword fight.

If you were actually faced with another human being wielding a sword and intending to do you harm, almost everything you learn in fencing would get you killed within seconds.

I was standing in a poorly lit, sparsely populate train-station car park one night, waiting for a lift, when this observation occurred to me.  I was not, thankfully, attacked – but if someone had tried to attack me I would've been, well, attacked.  All I have is the ability to run away – which is a good ability to have.  I’m now at the stage where I could run flat-chat for 30 seconds and then keep up a steady (if slower) pace for 10 minutes.  If they wanted an easy target, that would hopefully give me an advantage.

However, I realised my ability to survive long enough to run away would be greatly increased if I had the ability to incapacitate any attacker first – and this is not part of my current skill set.

I decided that I needed to pick up a proper martial art – one that would enable me to be the most dangerous person in any given car park.  As I said back in October, the best way to protect yourself against bears is to be scarier than the bear.

I started trying out a few things.  I went along to a karate class, a kung fu class, a goshin-something-or-other-actually-I-don’-t-even-know-what-that-was class…  One thing led to another and I joined a softball team.

That doesn’t make any sense to me, either.

Anyway, my studies kicked up a few notches and I had to stop playing softball.  Quite frankly I don’t have time to fit in more than one sport.

Which is why I’m still not sure how, this week, I managed to start two new sports. 

I’ve taken up Tai Chi.  This was actually so I could convince my mother to take up Tai Chi.  I’ve been trying to convince her that some sort of exercise would be good for her arthritis.  It’s been an uphill battle, but I managed to talk her into coming along to a slow, gentle movement based activity with me.  At our first session, last week, the instructor pointed out that Tai Chi was a martial art. 

I had to keep a straight face while trying to envision the circumstances under which Tai Chi would be your best form of self-defence.  Perhaps if you were attacked by a low-flying tortoise.  Or an 80-year-old with poor health.

I think it was some sort of subconscious psychological response that drove me to go back to trawling the internet for real martial arts classes the next day – and I discovered something that I hadn’t noticed last time.  The PCYC I never remember exists (we have three PCYCs in town, one of which I attend regularly, one of which I used to attend as a child, and one which I’ve driven past once and never remember) has Japanese ju jitsu classes on Wednesday and Friday nights.

I blew off fencing that night and drove over to check it out.

There were various reasons why I didn’t take up any of the other classes.  Some were too awkward to attend regularly.  Some were too expensive.  Some were taught by wankers.  This one doesn’t seem too wankery and, if I alternate between fencing and ju jitsu, I can still make sure Friday is my only night for sporting things.  Most importantly, classes are $4 a pop.  That is unspeakably cheap.

So, (in addition to doing Tai Chi until my mother is ready to fly solo) I’m going to trial doing that for a while:  alternating between fencing and ju jitsu on Friday nights, and possibly (if study time permits) throwing in an extra Tuesday night session for fencing or Wednesday night session for ju jitsu once a month.

Baby steps, but I might end up being scarier than the bear after all.

And, unless I’m very much mistaken, I think my Friday nights just went up a level of awesome.

Scarier than the bear

I've read in a few places that an "appropriate" method to fend off bear attacks is to run at the bear.

Apparently, generally speaking, bears do not regard humans as proper food and will avoid them if they make enough noise ("Hey, Bear!"), but sometimes they are particularly hungry and will actually run towards the noisy humans for the express purpose of eating them.

Climbing a tree really only works if the bear in question is not a tree climber itself, and running away is really only a good option if you happen to be travelling with someone who is a slower runner than you are.

Running *at* the bear is, supposedly, more effective than running *away* from the bear.

I think this works on the principle of appearing to be scarier than the bear.

Surely, anyone running towards the bear must be dangerous and scary, and perhaps the bear will think "Oh, dear, I am frightened by this attacker!" and run away from you.

Of course, the best way to appear to be scarier than the bear is actually *be* scarier than the bear.  Wielding a bat'leth, or something, might help with that (especially if you could actually use a bat'leth).

I've been thinking a bit about being scarier than the bear, lately.  Not in the woods, though - in the car parks.  And not actual bears; I'm being metaphorical here.

I don't know why I've been thinking about this lately.  I've always blithely walked through situations girls aren't supposed to blithely walk through without really giving a thought to what danger I might be in.

I've never felt threatened - and, I guess, part of me has always assumed this is because I don't look much like a girl.  I have previously commented about how useful a bit of androgyny can be when it comes to travelling the world alone.  The fact that I still get mistaken for a man (depending on what I'm wearing and how short my hair is) has lead me to be a bit careless about things like this.  I instinctively assume people look at me and think "some random guy", which renders me invisible and unlikely to be a target.

But at some point this year, while walking through a car park late at night, the thought occurred to me that being ugly is not a suitable defense.  Should someone with a mind to attack solitary women actually register "hey, it's a girl!" rather than glance over "some random guy", what could I do about it?

Sure, I can project an image of being scarier than the bear, but unless I can back that up, what happens if someone calls me out on it?

A recent trip to Brisbane involved more hanging around train stations after dark than is normally part of my week and, even though I was never threatened, I still felt as though it was a slightly dangerous place to be.

I've come to the conclusion that I need to make an effort to actually *be* scarier than the bear.

I've been fencing for the better part of two years, but really - what good is that in a dark alley?  Especially since I don't walk around armed with a sword?  I did a bit of judo when I was a kid, but I don't particularly want to go back to that well.  It's too gentle.  I don't want to taunt an attacker by continually throwing him using his own momentum.  I want to incapacitate him and run away very fast.

So I've decided to take up something more violent.  I'm trying out kung fu and ju jitsu this week.  Later, I might give krav maga and karate a go.  I suspect there will be bruises involved but, heck, I've spent the last couple of years coming to work with bruises down my side from being attacked with a sword - so, nothing new there.

Hopefully I'll be able to find something that's both a fun sport to play and also equips me to be the scariest person in the car park.

Rahr.