Article by Marc MacYoung on CyberKwoon.

[PHILBERT]

http://www.cyberkwoon.com/html/article.php?sid=281

Nice article by Marc MacYoung over on CyberKwoon. He discusses the fads about these new reality fighting arts. Also discusses the people who walk around acting like they are tough stuff and not. Etc, etc. Pretty good article.

[dedalus]

Marc MacYoung is a supeb educator. I think all martial artists should read his articles to help put their training into perspective.

For those who haven't come across him before, checkout http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/

[Budokan]

That was an excellent article.

[TaoBoy]

I'm a big fan of MacYoung. He's straight to the point and bluntly honest. We need more of this in the MA community.

Good article, thanks Philbert.

[PHILBERT]

Yeah I was goofing around last nite waiting for a girl to return a call and saw the article by accident, though Id share it here since people seem to like him. Plus its about martial arts :p and basically discusses McDojos and McKwoons.

[Cody]

Interesting and worth reading.

[tnwingtsun]

Two thumbs Up!!

I've trained with /under/over him.

Well worth the time spent.

[PaulLin]

No time to read now.......must put a reply so I would remember to come back and check this out.

[guohuen]

Another spot on article from someone that walks the walk.

[Chum Kil]

Marc knows his ****. Every MA should checkout his website.

[PaulLin]

Sound to me like Marc has paid a lot of price to come up with what he knows now. He is very honorable to share his founding so others may not have to pay the same price that he did. I do agree with a lot of what he said. However, I do have some different point of view in some topic that he broght up. I think they are very valuable point to pounder further on. I will try to bring them up carefully later when I have the time.

[PaulLin]

The writing perspective form Marc is based on an Western MA practician. My background is form Chinese, and we see/define MA differently. So there I have to explain every thing from the background when I got to that point where I have different point of view.

The first quote I want to bring out form that is:




The appeal of learning the “ultimate art” is based in misunderstanding of the reality of fighting. It’s the appeal of never being hit again or losing a fight. It’s the appeal of thinking that you will have the emotional security and be free of fear-if you know the ultimate fighting art.
Simply stated, fighting is like playing American football. It’s fun to run around the field, throw the ball, catch the ball and to tackle people. It is however, unrealistic to think you can play and not get tackled yourself. You will get hit and you will get tackled. And every time that you step onto the playing field, no matter how good you are, no matter how much protection you have, there is a serious chance of injury.
But more importantly, the very idea of “the ultimate fighting style” is erroneous. Sticking with the football analogy. The reason that there is no such thing as an ultimate fighting style is that as you advance, so do other people.


The part I agree with is that there are no #1 style nor #1 fighter. Therefor, the fighting of keeping the #1 title is foolish, and the claim of #1 style is ignorance (although there are cases of one style better than the other ).

However, I am thinking, other than the constantly upgraded level of the opponents is not the only reason, in fact, not the major reason.

I think that each person has his/her own advantage body types, advantage time period, fighting environments, and special techniques. There are many other factors to be counted for a result of winning or loosing a fight. Fighting can't really determind one style's advantage over the other. The only way to determine that for sure is if one share with the other of their own skills and try them out for themselves, and then compare to what they were practicing before to see if the new one from the other is more advanced/efficient.

Most known #1 MAs in China's old days are focusing only on imporving their skills, find the solution to what they are puzzle of, rather than care of the #1 place.

I would compare it to Golf games, there are many top players, but even the most top player could have many bad games and not doing well in them.

[PaulLin]

Quote form Marc:



The world is full of school yard bullies. Unfortunately, many of them have left the school yard and moved into the dojo.
There is hardly a school in the world that you can’t walk into and find some little tin god strutting around. Now whether this is the instructor who has convinced himself that he is a god - or a senior student who is getting his revenge about being picked on in school out on others because NOW he knows the ultimate fighting system-doesn’t matter.
It’s still the same tired old **** that you are trying to get away from. But this time the bullies want you to pay them so they can teach you how to be as cool as they are. Yeah, they may dress it up in tradition, or how street effective their system is, or how empowered you can be if you go through their program or how deadly their ultimate fighting style is, but in the final analysis they are selling you the delusion of being tough.



Well, I didn't grown up the same way as he did, nor the ones that he addressed. Chinese MA used to be very strict about who should teach and who should NEVER consider to teach. Such as mistreatment of parents/elders, love to pick fight, taking form others to benefit him/her self, etc.

So in an usual case, TCMA should taught according to the rules, not to pick any fight. When teaching applications, safty issues are first and prevention the students form injury. The real hurting level is only used when the real case situation that must be used.

But now, every thing for business. Because the general Americans(Westerners) thinks you don't have MA if you don't hurt/injure them. If you don't teach the people that were supposed not to teach, you are not going to stay in the business for sure (like me). So there, we have this side-affect of wrong-teaching MA.

I am lucky in a sense that I didn't go through all that. I have heard many people were spending a lot of money just to get beat up every class and learn craps. That is why it is so important that the correct MA knowledge should be publicized.

[draco]

After reading Marc's philosophy I see his understanding and I can agree. We make things too complicated, we have a tendency of making a huge science out of every little thing, why not just get down to it and do it?
:(

[PaulLin]

Originally posted by draco
After reading Marc's philosophy I see his understanding and I can agree. We make things too complicated, we have a tendency of making a huge science out of every little thing, why not just get down to it and do it?
:(

I think there is a big fear in many people who are not sure of they can find/have found the true MA. They don't want to just get down and do it and then later find out they have spended much money and times, taking beat-ups, just to learn some crap/fake MA. This is very sad situation:(

[draco]

Originally posted by PaulLin


I think there is a big fear in many people who are not sure of they can find/have found the true MA. (

Hi Paul, You could fight before and you can fight now what's in between? The privelege to fight better fighters? The arts were made for war, we don't kill we only have the illusion.

Nobody knows what another knows for fighting skill, maybe they'll get lucky and walk away with a scratch. MA is not measured by belt or school idol. In a deeper sence there is something more for an individual, an understanding if you will, maybe self satisfaction peace and balance within their enviroment.

[PaulLin]

Originally posted by draco


Hi Paul, You could fight before and you can fight now what's in between? The privelege to fight better fighters? The arts were made for war, we don't kill we only have the illusion.

Nobody knows what another knows for fighting skill, maybe they'll get lucky and walk away with a scratch. MA is not measured by belt or school idol. In a deeper sence there is something more for an individual, an understanding if you will, maybe self satisfaction peace and balance within their enviroment.

Sincerely, I think one good way to measure that is to compare to your own yesterday. To honestly pounder through about if you have improved more than you were in the past.

And fight is the last option to me. And an ideal fight should be shorter the better. This is a paralle point in SunTze's Art of War.

I agree that the self satisfaction, peace, and balance are the elements that must be included in MA practicing, but if that are the only elements, one may fall into blindness and not realize that they are praying by some one else. Like people can sale you grass and say it cure your head ache. If you take it, sure the head ache goes away. But the cause of the head ache was never taken care of.