Sport or Self Defense?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with practicing martial arts for sport. It's a great way to stay in shape, and it's definitely fun. Where else is it legal to throw someone over your shoulder? What is important to know from a critical thinking perspective is the difference between the sport side and the martial arts side. The line is fuzzy and hard to see sometimes, but with a little thought it is easy to differentiate the two.

Any style that is practiced solely as a sport is no longer a martial art. It is a sport that uses moves and techniques from the martial arts. It may be a great sport, but it is no longer a military art, and does not (nor should it) have the same goals. The martial arts were originated as styles of warfare that evolved into styles of self-defense. This means that the focus has moved toward defense as opposed to offense, but essentially the concepts within them have not changed. In almost all styles, given an attack, the goal is to neutralize the attacker(s). Neutralize means either hurt them or restrain them. "Hard" styles like Karate and Tae Kwon Do use punches and kicks to hurt the opponent. "Soft" styles like Aikido use wrist locks and throws, and Jui Jitsu uses grappling and ground-fighting techniques. Bottom line, these are serious arts that can hurt people.

A sport, on the other hand, is defined by the Encarta World English dictionary as:

Essentially, unless someone is doing it professionally, a sport is a recreational activity. I personally think studying martial arts is very enjoyable, but I don't think of it as a sport the way I (or most instructors in most styles) teach it. A sport has rules and is played in a formalized atmosphere, where both the competitors are willing agents freely subjecting themselves to the match. Anyone who practices solely the sport will know only the techniques and moves as they fit within the framework of the sport. For instance, though Tae Kwon Do has as many hand techniques (punches, palm strikes, etc.) as kicks, it is widely regarded as a kicking-only art. This is partially due to the fact that many of the sport styles only allow kicks to the head, and not punches. They also wear a lot of padding, which pretty well neutralizes the hand techniques anyway. Therefore, the Tae Kwon Do sports practitioner is at a disadvantage when it comes to fighting bare-knuckled against an experienced puncher. If you're thinking that while the sports practitioner may not legally punch to the head, he may be skilled at it because he practices it anyway, then he is studying the martial art and not the sport.

Why is this important, and what does it have to do with critical thinking? Consider a scenario where our Tae Kwon Do sports practitioner gets into a confrontation. Someone who practices a sport exclusively will more than likely not be prepared for the emotional content of a dangerous situation. Depending on how the confrontation started, it is virtually guaranteed that the emotion will be more intense than the nervousness he would have felt before a normal match. He could be angry from an argument, or scared because an assailant jumped him at night. Strong emotions cloud judgment. When terrified or angry, the mind does not process things in the same logical, orderly fashion. It's difficult to prevent yourself from experiencing these intense emotions, but it is much easier to deal with them if you have prepared yourself beforehand. The only way to prepare yourself is to train in similar situations. Almost all martial arts styles have self-defense techniques that basically present the martial artist with numerous potential assaults, and ways of dealing with it. Knowing these techniques (i.e. what do to) is one way to be prepared. The other way is to simply imagine yourself in these situations, and have a mental response already prepared. This is similar to the training that soldiers do before they are sent into combat. Just like the soldiers, the martial artist will do this a lot. This is not a guarantee, however. You can at best increase the probability for a response, but exactly how you react will only be known for sure if the real thing happens.

If the sports practitioner gets past the emotional hurdle, he now faces his opponent in imminent physical contact. This is where the rules and the limits placed on the sport will be a liability. If he always practices with his guards (hands) down low, then he will probably not bring them up to protect the face. The unskilled assailant will almost always throw a punch to the head first. Even if the martial artist has a great roundhouse kick, getting surprised by a powerful swinging punch to the head will quickly neutralize it.

This is probably where the majority of those reading will simply assume that this guy, like the reader, would have thought about this problem and protected himself at the appropriate time, preventing the punch. No, I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. One of my favorite sayings is "Train like you fight, for you fight like you train." Translated, this means that you will act exactly like you train. No matter of fact assumption can prepare you for a real situation. If you throw weak punches during class, you will throw weak punches when you get into a confrontation. The thing to keep in mind is that when something happens, there is no time to think. Even if you have a few seconds, it will be clouded by your emotional content and most likely a good bit of adrenaline as well. Whatever you do has to come instinctively. This is where training all those long and hard hours comes into play. Someone who trains to defend himself should also keep the ultimate goal (his life!) in mind. If you can run away, then run away!

I have an exercise I do with my students called "real time" self-defense. It involves a random attack that the students need to defend against, and it makes the student react instinctively while adjusting to a dynamic "hostile" opponent. It's just about as realistic as you can get while still maintaining enough safety to keep both parties from getting hurt (most of the time.) From this, there are a few conclusions that become obvious. First, the only way to be able to react rapidly and effectively to a quickly evolving confrontational situation is to do it. No one starts out just knowing how. Second, even if the inexperienced students knew I was going to punch at their head (and actually I use an open palm technique), without practice, I was virtually guaranteed to land that punch. You really have to practice it, or you won't be able to perform it when you need to.

For our sports practitioner, this means that a fight with no rules will not come naturally. Within the limits of safety, you have to practice for real situations. It is true that many people who practice a martial art as sport also study the art as a self-defense style as well. A good example of this would be one of the mixed martial arts fighters that inhabits the various fighting organizations. He may study the martial arts formally and also work specifically on what he needs to know to win in the ring (or cage, or whatever). If good, this guy could probably make short work of most any opponent in such fine establishments that such activities also take place (i.e. a bar.) Where he could get into trouble, though, is to blur the line between his sports knowledge and his martial arts knowledge. If confronted, he may decide to take his opponent to the ground and perform a nasty triangle choke. Given his skills in the ring, there is little doubt he will make short work of his opponent. But that assumes that the guy he's choking doesn't have a friend. If he goes to the ground, something natural from his sport fights, he risks getting kicked in the head from behind by someone he didn't see. That could be it for him. Ground fighting techniques like those used in Jui Jitsu are great for mano-a-mano fights in a ring, but they are inherently one on one. That's why Jui Jitsu isn't a purely ground-based art, and those that practice it will recommend that you do not go to the ground in a real fight.

Likewise, people that "practice" martial arts as a form of aerobic exercise should not be under the illusion that they are learning self-defense. At best, it can get the person in shape. It would be a problem, however, if this person assumed that they knew how to throw a kick because they do it all the time during the exercise, but did not know a few subtle but important facts. The foot is not simply a battering ram; used improperly it is just as likely to hurt the person kicking as the target. If you hit with the wrong part of your foot, you could break bones or tear ligaments. In a self-defense situation, this would not be good (it would eliminate the defender's chance of running away, and negating the advantage he or she had with being in shape.) Simply put, this would be a case where partial knowledge turned out to be more harmful than no knowledge at all. This is why it is so important to know the difference between the sports side and the martial arts side. While you may be better off than if you didn't know anything, then again, you may not be.

When you practice martial arts as a sport, take some time to think through the differences. To use common sense, know that there are differences, and what these are. Self-defense has no rules, while a match does. Most people are blissfully unaware of how vulnerable they are to a wild, swinging roundhouse punch until they actually get hit. Below is a list of things I consider "common sense", given what you know about sports and martial arts.

There is certainly nothing wrong with practicing a sport, but sports are artificial contests. In self-defense, you have an entirely different set of rules. In some cases, such as in item 6, these rules are much more serious and have overwhelmingly higher consequences. In the sport, the rules are usually given to you. If you practice it a lot, you will know how to win and what rules you can follow and what rules you can bend. The rules of self-defense are much different. Some of the sport's rules apply, but some will not and can be very disadvantageous in self-defense. Just knowing the difference is very helpful, and even that can give you an advantage in a real confrontation.