I've been studying the martial arts in some form or another for about 15 years or so and there are a few lessons I've taken away from it all.

The first is that traditional arts mostly blow for training people to fight fo realz yo. I've come to the conclusion that traditional martial arts, especially those hailing from china and parts close by, were designed mostly as a way of life for a few "masters". String along students for decades with potential "secret" techniques and long hours training forms and other less than efficient ways of training. most of the classes I've attended, or stopped by to observe seem to lack the type of individual who appears to have a real fighting spirit. They seem more obsessed with the tradition of the art and the sillyness behind magical thinking that still pervades a lot of tma.

A few individuals have taken traditional arts and applied modern science or reworked or in some cases just completely removed the traditional ways of training and have managed to come up with some serviceable and practicle ways of fighting.

Many TMA instructors seem ego fueled or financially motivated and tend to claim their own perspective on the art or martial arts in general is better than everyone elses and generally it's just more of the same crap.

3 months in an program designed off modern principles for practicle reasons, no practicing of forms, no long days spent memorizing crappy strings of moves, just demonstrations on how to do this or that then tons and tons of drilling against fully resisting opponents trying to apply their own lessons on you. In fact it reminds me that I've seen whole TMA schools that appear to not even bother sparring or attempting to apply their techniques under the guise of "too deadly" or some such other crap.

I used to be one of those guys who cringed whenever an MMA guy on this board started talking about his experiences but as it turns out, modern ways of training and the application of science, not magical thinking, will provide you with the fight skills a whole lot faster. In some ways I think even the arts that have turned mostly to sport these days provide something more tangible than a lot of so called TMA.

So what's the deal? What's keeping all these crappy arts and instructors around?