How many here are veterans?
How many of you have been in combat?
How did your military combat training measure up or compliment your TMA training?
Did you ever use your TMA in combat, or to defend yourself while serving?
I ask these questions because of all of the postings surrounding the validity of traditional martial arts and the effectiveness in modern day times.
Please don't derail the conversations to: MMA VS TMA, or If you don't compete it is not valid, etc, etc, etc, etc. We all know that in order to be effective we have to cross train, learn ground fighting & grappling, and that there is no "one" style or art that is superior to another it is the martial artist that makes the art.
I am a vet, I have been in combat and I have used hand to hand combat live, so it is important to me to understand others perspectives on the subject.
I study and teach TCMA, I coach high school wrestling (I my incorporation of TCMA concepts and techniques put our team in an advantage since most traditional wrestlers don't know what to do when movements done are outside of the cannon they have been taught - we go to states every year), I grapple; compete/competed in bare knuckle fights, continuous sparring, full contact, sanda, point sparring, and MMA (not professional... getting a little too old and showing up to a Fortune 100 company with a black eye is frowned upon, especially when you work in corporate HR with upper management sitting on the same floor).
Military hand to hand combat training is based on principles of boxing, TMA, Judo, and Jui Jitsu. While training in the military having my TCMA background definitely help to apply and execute in more ways that what the instructors were teaching. In actual combat, my TCMA training helped me control myself better than my counterparts in similar situations. View situations from different angles and perspectives.
Now the military has implemented MMA to their training as well and have their own leagues that compete against each other in Uniform but without combat boots. Which I applaud.