What is a martial art?

[Former castleva]

China still holds the greatest warfare history.

[bob10]

In what way? In size of empire, conquests, being undefeated, military innovations?

R

[curtis]

BOB
WOW!
You came up, in the one place I never thought of looking. You are absolutely Right ! I was looking at the hand-to -hand type of combat, as well as martial arts (styles) but as history has served us. You are correct as far as Chinese go, although the Japanese and Koreans may have a slightly different view. (No! Now that think about it, you are absolutely correct!)
Thank you BOB, perhaps WE should not be caught up in the nostalgia. After all the art of war is always being re-written by the victors.
Sincerely C.A.G.


P.S. Who is Clausewitz?

[nospam]

Any fighting type activity requiring human effort, imagination and skill is a MA - judo, boxing, fencing, knife fighting, whatever!

A MA can also be a sports activity. The skill is dedicated more to a set of governing rules ALL adhere and practise to.

So boxing is a MA. It is then up to the individual if they want to excercise their skill in sport, self-defence or straight fighting or a combination of them all and more...

To say judo is simply a sport and not worthwhile in a 'normal' brawl is dumb...your right to think and say so, but dumb nonetheless. I would imagine theres many a sports boxer that could whoop a karatika, and visa versa.

SPorts oriented MAs train differently - that is to say they emphasize areas or take to extreme certain areas that all MAs share in commone. Such as conditioning. In sports you need to last anywhere from 3-12+ rounds of fighting. So emphasis is on cardio conditioning. In a non-sporting fight...me and my neighbour...I'll kick her a$$ in less time than it takes for a boxer to get one hand wrapped!

Many a folk practise and emphasize the 'art' aspect vs the 'martial'. Especially in modern day tai bo..er, I mean tai qi. Too many gung fu enthusiasts, IMNSHO, just want forms forms and more forms. These 'people' are also MAs, but of a different sort. Their application again differs.

nospam.

[Shaolin Punk]

to me, the concept of art seems to be more about the process rather than the end product. by this definition any process for anything, such as plumbing, or refrigerator repair i'd define as art.

sports implies competition and end results. wushu forms competition are sports, push hands contests are sports chi sao competitions is a sport, kong sao challenges are sports...as long as the mindset is focused on defeating others, it is a competitive sport.

but that doesn't mean fighting arts are necessarily sports. if one does a fighting art, but isn't consumed with defeating others and being defeated, and is doing the discipline purely for its own sake, with no regard to any particular "ends", maybe this is what is the art. and perhaps this is near impossible to do in the beginning, when you are developing a foundation. maybe it is something that comes after the foundation is solid, when there is less cognitive thinking invloved...the sport turns into an art.

in essence, any discipline whatsoever is about learning techniques/concepts, or developing "tools" for situations. i don't see a distinction between any discipline to favor one as an "art" and the other as not. therefore, i think the art lies in the process rather than the end results of any particular discipline.

but i am probably wrong, and am happy to acknowledge so. i think if you really want to get at the heart of this debate, you must have a very solid and clear definition of what the definition of "art" is, and what the definition of "sport" is.

[Boffo]

Originally posted by Former castleva
China still holds the greatest warfare history.

I'll give the Chinese that they have a lot of pride in their martial arts studies.

On warfare, I have to respectfully disagree. There are too many other examples of nations and empires with a greater degree of warfare competancy. China's ongoing history is more a matter of the stability of its social structure and written language than a testament to its military capacity.

[LEGEND]

Sorry former...china sucks when it came to military...mongols kick their ass...the japanese kick their ass...then communism permanently kicked their ass.

[No_Know]

If they were so kicked they would have had to change the name.

For a kicked peoples there seem to be quite several around.

One called LEGEND, I No_Know that you fully understand what it means to be beaten...good for you.