MMA vs TMA

For some reason people involved in MMA training have the need to talk derogatory about traditional martial arts, kung fu in particular. All kind of things are said about kung fu and of course there are no boundaries when these people brag about their fighting skills and abilities. There is even a guy who suppose to be MMA coach who dedicated his Youtube channel to talk all kinds of bad things about traditional martial arts. I watched several videos and I noticed few important things, first he is talking in a way that suggest serious head injury and I hope that he keeps his health under control and he is not damaged beyond help. Second he completely doesn't understand traditional martial arts so he is completely missing a point. Third, underlining values that he is spreading through his videos are completely negative and insulting for a human being and he is not the only one doing that, vast majority of MMA practitioners share similar moral values. So,let's analyze those claims and see is there any truth in them.

First we have to know what kung fu and traditional martial arts in general actually are. Kung fu stopped to be exclusively fighting art (arts) more than a century ago and became much, much more than that. Majority of the people do not practice kung fu because they want to fight or they feel they are in danger. In Asia vast majority of people practice martial arts because they are part of their culture and everyday life for centuries. Kung fu is involved in Chinese culture on so many levels and it has significant part in religious ceremonies, folklore, all kinds of celebrations festivities ect. Many Asian people who live all around the world practice their traditional martial arts for same reasons, to keep their culture and historical heritage alive, they do not care nor they even think about fighting. Many westerners drawn by the beauty and depth of far eastern cultures and religions practice traditional martial arts for the same reasons, they want to experience and participate in those cultures.

On the other hand, MMA is not a part of any traditional culture, it is simply a sport, an approach in training for combat sports without any cultural,historical or social value. Talking how ineffective traditional martial arts for these groups of people is completely missing the point, they do not care about fighting and they do not practice for fighting. Saying to someone who is keeping some kung fu style in the family for centuries how his martial art is useless is utterly stupid, it is just like saying someones marriage ceremony or holidays are useless. 

 Second reason why so many people practice kung fu is to maintain health. Literary millions of people practice Tai Chi, Ba Gua or other traditional arts for the health reasons. Heath benefits of traditional martial arts, physical as well as psychological are scientifically proven facts. Even more, a lot of people in fairly old age actively exercise on daily basis. 

Here are links to several research papers on different health benefits of traditional martial arts.

wikipedia article underlines importance of traditional martial arts practiced in purely medical context which is opposite to modern combat sports approach which cannot me used in martial arts therapy  

Research paper 1        Research paper 5       Research paper 9

Research paper 2        Research paper 6        Research paper 10

Research paper 3        Research paper 7

Research paper 4        Research paper 8

These are randomly picked 10 research papers that cover different benefits form traditional martial arts.

On the other hand medical science has totally opposite view on MMA type of training and competitions.  For example American Academy of Pediatricians in its research paper from 1997 strongly opposes to participation of children under the age of 16 in Boxing and similar sports : “… there is no place in contemporary society for a youth sport which has, as its primary goal, the infliction of acute brain damage on an opponent”  

American Medical Association proposed total ban of MMA because it is dangerous and lethal in nature. Here are few research papers on the dangers of injury involved in MMA.

Research paper A      Research paper B   Research paper C   Research paper D  Research paper E 

These are just first few research papers that appeared in internet search , there hundreds of other relevant researches and they all point to one thing, MMA is the most dangerous sports activity today with extremely high risk of injuries, in fact so high that they cannot be avoided. As we can see, from purely medical point of view MMA is completely opposite from traditional martial arts. While medical science not only recommend but actively uses traditional martial arts as proven therapeutic  method , on the other hand it strongly opposes to MMA as an extremely risky and dangerous activity. Again , telling people who use traditional martial arts as a form of therapy, exercise and health preservation method that thir martial arts are useless is completely stupid, especially if we have in mind that there are literary hundreds of thousands practitioners of kung fu and other traditional styles that are over 80 years of age and there is not even one in MMA. In fact , in Asia majority of TMA practitioners are over 50 years of age , while in MMA if there are any practitioners over 50 they are only few in entire world. Training approach in TMA enables practitioners to practice their chosen arts their entire life  with all the benefits that practice brings ,while MMA training approach is only suitable for people fairly young and strong and MMA can be practiced until training takes its toll and damages the body to the pointy where further training is impossible. 

Let's examine TMA and MMA from psychological and sociological point of view. Traditional martial arts were and still are a subject of various research studies which cover vast of array of topics. One of the things shown in those studies is a positive effect of traditional martial arts on decrease of  aggressiveness, violence prevention and overall positive effect on other forms of antisocial behavior. Even more, traditional martial arts are used as a therapeutic method to improve overall social and cognitive skill of kids with different kinds of social and cognitive developmental problems.

Research I   Research II  Research III  Research IV - benefits for kids with ASD Research V

  

On the other hand many studies clearly show negative influence of MMA , especially in children and young adults. Participating in MMA whether as an active practitioner or just a spectator leads to increase in aggressiveness, violence and various forms of antisocial behavior. 

Research 1  Research 2   Research 3  Research 4   Link 5

Exposure to MMA leads to increased levels of violence in children and adults and professional MMA fighters are involved in crime that involves violence on significantly higher raters than the rest of the population. Personal opinions in this matter are not important , medical , psychological, sociological and police reports are completely clear and they all point to same thing, MMA is dangerous and violent activity with bad influence on the individuals and society on many levels.

Now let's have a closer look at MMA , what it is and what it does. While roughly defined as a sport there are strong opinion among sports professionals and connected disciplines that MMA cannot qualify as sport. What it is in its core is a spectacle with great financial potential. This spectacle is built on violence, aggression and lowest, primal urges of competitors and spectators. The goal of the competition its self  is to inflict as much pain and injury on the opponent in order to win, if possible to completely incapacitate him. Let's stop for a moment and think what kind of person would enjoy watching the pain of other human being and even more , what kind of person would hurt other human being for pure pleasure of excitement and financial gain? These people fight in a literal cage, before MMA only animals fought in cages (illegally), what is strange , competitors take pride in this. For an average person it is extremely  derogatory to be locked in the cage and fight like an animal giving your best to hurt other human being for the sake of money. Of course, like every subculture , MMA has its own rules,beliefs  and values which are quite different from general cultural values. If we look closely how these people behave, not only professional fighter who are just giving the public what they expect but if we check also the amateur practitioners they all promote and justify violence in its purest form. It is only important to be physically and mentally prepared to hurt others , everything else is not important, The more violent and aggressive someone is, the more pain and injuries he inflicted to others , more respect and higher status  he gains. Everything these people talk about is how effectively they can hurt others. Some sociologists and psychologists argue that MMA is a pure sign of human deevolution on personal as well as on the level of the society as whole.

At the end,let's analyze is there any truth in the believe that MMA is only true or at least the best martial approach rooted in reality? MMA is simply a training approach developed for certain type of competition and it trains people exactly for that. MMA fighters, even champions die and get seriously hurt in street fights, they got stabbed, shot, hit with different objects ect. Realistic training would involve knife fighting and cold weapons fighting as well as fire arms fighting. In reality, MMA fighter has same chances of being hurt in violent no rules fight as any other person. If nothing else ,MMA training may give a person false sense of security that may and did cost life some people. The only truth that MMA people say, although they understand it wrongly it that :'you are what train". If you train for MMA , you are just an MMA fighter , nothing else. If their training is really "reality based" why weight divisions? On the street there is no choice who will you fight. How about one against multiple opponents? There are fights like that in MMA, neither they prepare for that. In all honesty average MMA practitioner is in better physical shape and better prepared for violence but we have to be aware that competition, no matter how brutal brings totally different mind set from a criminal violence. I am not saying that traditional martial arts are better in this area, they are probably little worse, but there is no significant difference , no style can be effective against weapons that is why people carry weapons at the first place. Untrained person with a knife can always kill traind martial artist , as they do regularly if we check the news and no style have advantage over other in this matter, that is a simple truth and reality of things. 

In conclusion, MMA people completely misunderstand traditional martial arts and to the some degree the society in general. Only people with specific mind set are drawn to this activity. It is of course never good to generalize things but overall impression  is that MMA attract people with violent and antisocial tendencies and medical and social studies support that impression. Personally I do not socialize with people involved in MMA, just as I do not socialize with people involved in fundamentalist religious or political organizations or criminals. 

Why Wing Chun fails in real fight?

 Wing Chun fall from the most praised kung fu style to a laughing stock of martial arts because it is failing miserably in real life fighting and full contact competitions. There are two main reasons for this failings. First is inadequate training system and the other, even more important is lack of understanding what is really Wing Chun created for. Both reasons are based in same fundamental truth, compete lack of fighting for several generations.

Inadequate training is easily seen in almost complete absence of physical conditioning, developing completely useless and fundamentally wrong physical attributes and complete lack of sparring. Although training approach ca be changed and small percentage of schools indeed do sparring and hard physical conditioning , their Wing Chun fails in real life situations and competitions as well. So what is the reason for that?

The main reason why Wing Chun fail despite correct training approach is complete absence of understanding how, why and when Wing Chun should be used, what is its purpose and what it was crated for a first place.

Wing Chun is martial art developed and highly specialized for specific environment. It was invented on the Red Boats in the 1800's as a short and easy to learn self defense system  to be used on the Red Boats exclusively. From today's perspective , making a highly specialized system for only one kind of environment can look illogical but for people who spent more than 95% of their time on the boats that was the best if not only acceptable solution.

While there many "theories" how and why Wing Chun came to existence , if we analyze the art's technical content it becomes obvious that it was made for close quarter fighting in confined spaces where full range of martial motion is highly limited by physical obstacles, exactly what environment on the Red Boat was at the time.

Model of the red boat

Wing Chun is pretty much static style ( many will not agree) with two forms performed without footwork and only one form with rudimentary footwork but with heavy emphasis on shifting. All techniques are linear, based on centerline principles with almost complete disregard of side attacks. Footwork is simple , just stepping forward (and back) with not even a full side steps. Techniques are designed to be utilized on a very short distance, in fact on the distance  where in any other situation grappling techniques would usually be used. In the environment of the red boats, with chronic lack of space where large number of people and even more equipment ,where two people could not pass each other in the same corridor or a passageway, where there was no space for side step because passages were too narrow the only way of fighting was Wing Chun way.

Inside the red boat cabin, beds on both sides of the passage

There was no need for any kind of footwork besides front and back steps because that was the only footwork that could be used. There was no need to pay attention for any attacks from the side because only open space was in front of the fighter and that was the only way where attack could come. I was impossible to take wide , low stances because those stances would be wider than available space, thus , high narrow stances. It was impossible to perform any other kind of punches or kicks besides straight ones , that is why there are only straight  punches and kick in Wing Chun. Te only way to fast remove a body from the path of the attack was shifting or stepping back, but stepping back is tactically bad move and we don't find it in forms. Grappling techniques could be performed because there was  simply no space to do such a thing. Available space dictated techniques, distance, footwork...everything. Wing Chun was not some ingenious invention of some kung fu demigods but natural evolution and adaptation on the physical environment of the lace where it was created. 

Photo of the same design boat as red boats 1880

For the purpose for which it was developed, Wing Chun was and still is the best martial art in existence. For fighting in narrow passages, elevators, buses, airplanes or nay other place that limits range of motion, especially footwork, Wing Chun is perfect solution. But, taken out its natural environment, all the advantages Wing Chun has over all other arts in those conditions become art's biggest flaws. Wing Chun is so highly specialized that adapting it for fighting in any other conditions is pretty much impossible. To compare it with fire arms, hand gun or short barrel shotgun is perfect weapon for confined spaces and short distances, much better than heavier , bulkier weapons, but take hand gun out and try to hit moving target on 50 meters and you will find your self in big problem. Same is with Wing Chun. For fighting in a competition or self defense in open spaces or any space that allows even minimum footwork and wide techniques and Wing Chun will fail, simply it was not designed for those conditions.

Where does such misunderstanding come from? Why people believe Wing Chun is omnipotent art fit for any situation? It comes from Yip Man and his "history" of the art. Yip Man not only credited a mythical figure for creating the art but put the art it self in context that gives wing chun a great historical significance claiming that it was invented to replace all other martial arts on the field of battle. Although these historical events were later proven false the myth about the art's superiority somehow persisted. Even on first glance it is clear that Wing Chun wold be totally useless on ancient battlefields. With only two short swords, no footwork, impossibility to utilize techniques while wearing heavy armor, total lack of any techniques that could be used in organized infantry unit, Wing Chun could only cause death to those who would try to use it on the open field facing an incoming wall of shields and spears. Being aware of this,and after "southern Shaolin" story was proven completely false, many Wing Chun ''historians" and "researches" tried to tie the art to some other, real historical events and to give it more historical and also technical significance in those events, most notably  Taiping rebellion, trying to present Wing Chun as an "assassin's" art, or the style widely used by rebel army , or the art used by spies and secret organizations. All these claims are completely false and there is no a eve a shred of evidence to support them. Simply Wing Chun is made by "Red Boat people" to be used on Red Boats, nothing more and nothing less.


Taking Wing Chun for something it is not did and will only cause problems for those who are doing such a thing. Real fighting is not based in belief but in facts that could be logically analyzed. Wing Chun should practiced for what it is. For situations that go beyond technical and tactical capabilities of Wing Chun practitioners should consider other options, either learning another style of fighting better fit for required or supplement Wing Chun with necessary tools from other arts. This way, through understanding and proper training approach future failures can be avoided. 

Yip Man a master or something else

Stories about Yip Man’s unparalleled kung fu skills are widely known as well as stories about how good teacher he was. Every year Yip Man and his skills become little better although he died almost half a century ago. Every generation of students add a little more to his legend, every year more stories appear about his martial exploits. For many people Yip Man is much more than a man, he is a deity they worship unconditionally. As it is often case among kung fu practitioners very few people are able to think about Yip Man through the filer of critical thinking and put him in a realistic context not only of the time and culture he lived in but also in a context of an ordinary human being which has proven to be an impossible task for majority of his followers.

So let’s look Yip Man and his life through the lens of real historical evidence and common sense that comes from critical thinking.

As it was said Yip Man is today celebrated as one of the best kung fu fighters of all times. Not only that, he was also regarded as an extraordinary teacher and even full time philosopher and philanthropist. Sadly, non of this is true.

If want to present only real, historically accurate and verifiable data about Yip Man’s life we will find our self in the situation where we can offer very little to nothing. Besides that Yip Man was born, lived and died in certain time frame and that he had taught wing chun everything else is simply very hard to prove.

If we start with Yip Man’s young age we find very hard to find out how long he spent with his first teacher Chan Wah Shun. In older books we can find that he started to practice wing chun when he was 13 or 14 and that he spent only 6 months with old teacher and then he continued to learn from Ng Chan So for less than two years until he left to Hong Kong. In later years , time Yip Man spend with Chan Wah Shun and age he started training was slowly changed and today’s “official “ version written by Yip Chun, Yip Man’s son is that his father started training when he was 9 and stayed with old teacher full 4 years. Training with Ng Chan So didn;t change drastically in following years but from less than 2 years became full 2 years or 2,5 years according to different sources. All the data we have about Yip Man’s young life and training come from his sons and close students. Oral sources are the most unreliable sources of information and this is a clear example why. Over time , “sources” felt uncomfortable with their original claims and then changed them the best they could. Let’s admit , for most of people who spent decades to learn Yip Man’s style, his less than two years   training looked really inadequate. On the other hand 6 and half years looks much better. Feeling that even that is not enough, Yip Man or his students invented a story about Leung Bik to add more time to his learning process and to find explanation for their claims of his superior kung fu. Of course, it is impossible to prove Leung Bik was a real person and even if he did exist( he did not but let’s assume he did for the moment), Leung Bik would never teach Yip Man. Yip Man was no family, they didn’t have same social circles and even if they did meet by some impossible odds , Leung Bik would never invite Yip Man, nor anyone else to be his student, simply in China of that period teachers could not invite anyone, students actually had to request to be accepted .  So when we clean all the hype and outward lies about Yip Man’s learning period we can conclude that he probably learned for about  two years. Could he learn complete system in two years? Probably yes because Wing Chun of that time was much simpler and had much less content than today. What was the quality and level of his art? We will never know, we have no recordings of his performance and we have no evidence he had any fights. Of course there are a lot of “oral” evidence about how good fighter he was but all those stories are just that, stories and they are fairly exaggerated and hard to believe. For example the story when Yip Man supposedly broke a revolver with his fingers. A weapon made to withstand pressures much higher than any human can possibly achieve no matter what skill he posses was broken by fingers of a fairly small man, it is simply physically impossible. Or another story where Yip Man as police inspector engage a fight with a dangerous criminal although he had a lot of police officers around him who cornered the criminal and were ready to arrest him. All police operates by same basic principles and only in the moves a brave inspector engage a fight where he can be killed despite his fellow officers can apprehend the criminal with little to no effort. No one in the right mind would do such a thing, no one would risk his life if it is not really necessary, in this case if criminal would assault police officers he would probably be killed, definitely not engage the fight with a police inspector who had family, children and was extremely wealthy and would be really stupid of him to risk his life. All stories about Yip Man’s supposed fights are just like this, they have no support in reality , actually go against common sense and on top of all we have no evidence these fights ever happened.

Yip Man was extremely wealthy, belonged to the highest social circles and had good connections everywhere. He simply had no need to put his life and his health in danger, even more, wealthy Chinese people of the time would do anything to make their life as comfortable as possible. Just as today we don’t see billionaires like Bill Gates fight, people of same wealth and social status of the past did not fight. That is why so many unbelievable stories were invented by Yip Man’s students, to give him credibility as a kung fu master and teacher. Unfortunately, invented by people who never fought , these stories have no support in reality and later each new generation of students added a little more making these stories a total opposite of what they suppose to be.

 Everything about Yip Man and his life is exaggerated to enormous proportion. Chinese culture allows to exaggerate things or even lie in order to give “Face” to ancestors. In reality neither Yip Man nor Win Chun have real historical significance . While other styles in republican period had thousands of followers , Wing Chun didn’t have even 50 people all together in period from 1911 to 1948. Wing Chun was completely unknown to outsiders , like so many other styles and was not popular as people tend to believe today. Real world is different from the orld of myths and legends. Having a successful kung fu school at that period as a matter of political influence, connections and of course money. Challenging a master from another school would probably result in retaliation with serious consequences , we have several examples that happened , the most famous case is Baji master Li Shu Wen who was poisoned because he challenged and won over several other masters. People who had successful school with many students had good political connections and also had been connected to various lucrative businesses , not always completely legal , they were influential ad dangerous people, challenging them would only bring troubles. 

Let’s not forget that Yip Man and other top wing chun names of that time were opium addicts, like Ng Chan So and his students from Yiu family, Yuen Kai San…They probably weren’t full time junkies , just recreational users bt still…using heavy drug like opium definitely influence physical abilities and changes  personality.

As we can see Yip Man led quiet life of wealthy upper class and practiced his art with other members of the same class. Wing Chun, as well other arts was not practiced for practical purposes but as sign of prestige and wealth as well as a sign of patriotism and national pride.

 We can summarize Yip Man’s life before his escape to Hong Kong in just one sentence, he led quiet, leisured life and practiced kung fu because that was a fashion of the time.

  After communists took over Yip Man escaped to Macao leaving his family behind. He gambled away all his family wealth and became basically homeless until friends brought him to Hong Kong and gave him shelter. While this episode is mentioned in his biography no one actually pay any attention on it but this actually gives us great insight what kind of person Yip Man was. He left his family in a situation where they could be killed any moment and he left alone with the money he had. Instead to use that money to save his family he gambled all away and then started to heavily use opium. Without other people who gave him food and place to stay in Hong Kong he would probably die.

How and why Yip Man started to teach Wing Chun?  It was out pure necessity, he hadn’t any real skills, he couldn’t do any real job, not even work physical jobs because he was already too old and he never worked hard before. Only option for him to survive was to sell kung fu people willing to pay for it. During his life Yip Man was not well known nor very popular teacher in Hong Kong, nor Wing Chun was respected and well known style. In his 20 years long teaching career, Yip Man had around 200 students. Other schools in that period had thousands of students. Yip Man became popular after his death solely because he had connection to Bruce Lee. Wing Chun was fairly unknown style even in Hong Kong until Bruce Lee died and kung fu craze exploded aover the world. If Bruce Lee had practiced some other kung fu style Yip Man would be forgotten today and his style would probably not exist anymore.

Now, let’s see what kind of teacher Yip Man was. We can see a great degree of difference even the arts of his students. Most of them justify that by the claim that Yip Man taught everyone differently according to his abilities and understanding. While that may be the case there are so any variations and differences in even basic principles and techniques. All other Wing Chun lineages are pretty consistent over time, you can clearly tell what is Yuen Kai San’s or Snake Crane Wing Chun by watching forms and basics, no matter of the particular line of succession in given style everyone is doing same things , have same forms , although training and application can vary, still it is clear what style is in question. In case of Yip Man there are so many differences in almost everything and to make things more interesting, those variations we can find only with Yip Man’s direct students. Later generation follow the known pattern of other  styles  so we can clearly say what is Leung Ting’s WT or Wong Shun Leung ‘s style, they did not pass their styles the way they claim Yip Man taught them.

Why Yip Man taught different people differently is an open question. While claim that he taught everyone according to his ability is valid, it is the fact that most of the teachers are doing the same. It is also suspicious that different students have different knowledge about same things. Either Yip Man taught completely different styles to different people or he didn’t actually taught much. Second is probably closer to the truth because according to Yip Man’s students he would teach very little and then let students practice that for a long time, just like “old times” teachers. For example, there is a certain lineage of Yip Man’s style that is famous for their “advanced” kicking techniques. How they became famous for that? Well, according to founder of that lineage Yip Man payed him a visit one day and showed his some kicking techniques on wooden dummy!!! ONE DAY, showed him something he base his style on in one visit, seriously??!!! We can just from that example how little Yip Man actually showed to his students.  We can see that Yip Man’s Wing Chun is much simpler than other styles and lack a lot of elements that can be found in other styles. According to his own students Yip Man was an opium user till the end of his life. While many followers praise Yip Man’s simplification of the art as something positive and advance, the probable reason behind that was no intention to modernize the art. Being a heavy drug user he probably couldn’t remember all the things correctly and he taught what he could remember at the particular point, that is why there are so many differences among his students, he taught what he could remember at the certain point and also was he in the mood to show more or less details. Many of his students later being aware of enormous gaps in their knowledge supplement their styles from other sources. For example Leung Ting learned from Sum Nung, Chu Song Tin borrowed things from Tai Chi Chuan and Ba gua , William Cheung invented his style him self , many of the students exchanged bits and pieces they got from  Yip Man to make their styles more complete. No one stayed more than 3 years in Yip Man’s school ( although few students claim differently, older sources show they changed their stories in recent times). Even at slow pace Yip Man was teaching he didn’t have enough material to teach for more than a three years. Later, styles developed to such extent that Yip Man’s students have material to keep someone occupied for 20 or more years, and that says a lot about them.

As we can see Yip Man was not a fighter and he was not particularly good teacher as well. His only accomplishment in the field of martial arts was a connection to Bruce Lee. Generations of people were unfortunately cheated by learning incomplete, watered down style without any real substance. Many became aware of this fact and while no one wants to admit it publicly, more and more people from Yip Man’s style are leaving that art and learning other , older, more complete and more traditional Wing Chun styles.