Calling a spade, a spade....

[Fu-Pow]

It dawned on me when I was just running in the park today that what refer to as
"martial arts" is not very precise.

Martial arts or Wu Shu could be any warfare related skills. Shooting a gun or military strategy could be referred to as Wu Shu.

What practitioners of Martial Arts, Kung Fu, Mixed Martial Arts, Muy Thai, Karate, whatever actually study is "hand-to-hand combat."

Using the term "art" is too broad and opens up to much interpretation. For, example is PRC Wu Shu a "martial art?" Maybe, but it definitely doesn't have anything to do with "hand to hand combat."

Then you have Mixed Martial Arts which is a kind of misnomer in itself because practioners of MMA actually just study "hand to hand combat" and they draw from many different disciplines of hand-to-hand combat, but really the eschew all the cultural baggage that goes along with a "martial art."

So I propose that we don't use Kung Fu, Martial Art, Fist Method etc, but rather call
what we study what it actually is and that is "hand to hand combat."

And once we call it that we can move on to a dialogue about which method is better for improving skill at "hand to hand combat" not who has the most hand sets or best lineage or who won in whatever sporting event.

And we can definitely discount people that claim to teach "hand to hand combat" and yet have never and will never engage in any thing that even resembles "hand to hand combat."

Ok, I'll get off my soap box now.

FP