Thanks, Rob

Rob Redmond

The few of you who have been reading this blog regularly for a long time are no doubt familiar by now with Rob Redmond of the karate blog 24 Fighting Chickens. I have referenced his writing several times here. Though I've never met Rob, and have never (with the single exception of one rather unpleasant evening) even trained the martial art he writes about, Rob has had a profound impact on the way I understand and train martial arts.

It was Rob's writing that encouraged me to examine my romanticized preconceptions about the martial arts -- about what they are, about what they can do, and about what my job is as a practitioner -- and I am better for it. I might have quit training long ago if I hadn't given up looking for things in the martial arts that aren't there.

I have made extensive use of Rob's words here on this blog, and I suspect I have sometimes misused them (especially in my posts from 2010 -- I grow increasingly dissatisfied with much of what I wrote that first year). Were Rob to read this whole blog, I'm not sure he would be happy with all my uses of his words, but I hope he would at least take some satisfaction in how much he has affected me and my training and writing.

I visited 24FC for the first time in a couple months last night, and was saddened to discover that the site had been archived and Rob would no longer writing new articles. Barely a day after I had last visited, digging up a quote for one of my blog posts, Rob had said goodbye:

I think 18 years of logging in here and cleaning out the spam is long enough, don’t you? I’m 45. I started this site when I was in my 20′s. Since I started it, I’ve built two houses, owned five cars, and have had two sons, one of whom is in middle school now. I have other things to focus on. I’m writing some sci-fi stories. I volunteer in the Boy Scouts of America heavily. I’ve taken up mountain biking and running for most of my exercise. 

The people who were so obnoxious about doing karate a particular way have mostly died or have been discredited by the rise of MMA. Where once was a world-wide panic over “the internet black belt” burning the temple of Shotokan to the ground, today there is mostly just a field with some kids playing in it and no one really even knows what happened. 

I’m looking around, and I think we’re done here. Time to lower the flags of discontent, and move on to other projects.

I suppose this is a happy ending for Rob. He has spent the last 18 years trying to teach the Western world what his instructor in Japan taught him, and he seems to see no need for him to continue. A teacher with nothing left to teach, I think, is a teacher who has succeeded.

With that in mind, rather than using this space to lament the end of 24FC, I'd like to share a list of lessons that 24FC taught me:

• Contracts should be avoided. No matter how good a club is, a contract can only really do one thing: force you to keep paying for something after you no longer want it or can no longer get it.
• A martial art is no more moral or spiritual than the person practicing it. By extension, martial arts experience does not make someone a moral or spiritual authority.
• Martial arts ranks don't mean a whole lot. Those who ascribe a great deal of meaning or importance to ranks are probably doing so for the sake of their egos, their wallets, or both.
• A martial artist (especially an adult) has the right to decide what he wants out of his training, and is not obligated to have the same goals as his instructor or anyone else.
• A martial art isn't a person with a will, feelings, or a philosophy. A person who speaks on behalf on an entire art (e.g., "This is what aikido is all about," or "That is bad for taekwondo!") is really only speaking for himself and trying to impose his own will, feelings, and philosophy on it. His art doesn't care and never authorized him to be its spokesperson.
• Learning a martial art is not the same thing as learning self-defense, and most of the people trying to sell the martial arts as self-defense systems know nothing about real self-defense.
• None of the practices martial artists treat as sacred traditions are sacred, and most of them aren't particularly traditional, either.
• Static stretching should be done after training, not before.
• Martial arts training, in the grand scheme of things, isn't all that important.

In hindsight, I feel like these things should have been obvious to me from the beginning, but it took Rob's unflinching  and uncompromising writing to make me see what was right in front of me. Reading the comments on his final post, I see that my experience is not unique. Rob changed a lot of minds during the long run of 24FC.

For those of you who want to keep following Rob, he has started a 24 Fighting Chickens page on Facebook. He presumably won't be writing long articles anymore, but there will still be some small doses of Rob to be had there. And of course, all of the old 24FC stuff is still up.

Rob, you don't know me, and I'm pretty sure you've never read this blog. For what little my thanks are worth, thanks. And good luck in your future endeavors.

What is a Martial Art For?

I have stumbled into many discussions on Bullshido, Martial Arts Planet, and AikiWeb lately with people who have a very strong sense of what their martial arts are all about and what is good (and not good) for their martial arts as a whole.

Performance art is not what taekwondo is for and is bad for taekwondo. Aikido is a spiritual pursuit and people who leave the spiritual element out of aikido are missing the point. People who aren't really learning to fight are wasting their training and are diluting the martial arts.

These claims are all rooted in the same basic belief: that a martial art is for something, that it has an objective raison d'etre which is independent of the needs and goals of the individual martial artist. If your practice of the art does not serve this particular purpose, then it is wrong, and, even worse, it harms the art as a whole.

My favorite martial arts blogger, Rob Redmond of 24 Fighting Chickens, addresses this belief in discussing one of his blog entries:

Karate is not _for_ anything. Karate doesn't have emotions. It isn't a person. Karate is a concept, an instruction set, a gathering of principles.

The people who do the Karate determine what they do it for. That is where the purpose comes from -- from the people who do it. Each of them does it for a different reason.

Just because I do not do Karate for a particular reason does not mean the reason is invalid for you. It simply means that we are habituated to thinking about Karate incorrectly and speaking of it as if it had willpower and personality -- as if my doing it one way would affect the other way of doing it someone else practices.

That has come to us, I believe, from the group-think of organized sports, organized religion, and the Japanese culture.

"Gambling isn't good for baseball." What the heck does that mean? It means that the person saying it doesn't like what happens when people gamble. Baseball isn't damaged by gambling. Baseball happens all over the country whether anyone gambles or not. But his experience is lessened, he feels, if the players gamble.

"What is Karate for?" is the same sort of group-think question. Karate isn't for anything. Nothing is good or bad for "Karate." Karate isn't a person.

I'm with Rob. I think a martial art, like all forms of art, exists for its own sake (ars gratia artis). It doesn't need to have a point. It doesn't have to justify or validate its existence by serving a particular purpose. It is up to me to determine what purpose my aikido serves in my own life, and it is up to every other martial artist in the world to make that determination for himself. Their reasons do not  invalidate mine, and vice versa.

This strips me of the authority to say that something is "bad for aikido". I can only speak for myself and my own needs; all I really mean if I say that something is "bad for aikido" is that it is bad for me.

This doesn't mean I don't have complaints about the way some people practice the martial arts; I do. Some people (like the belt-chasers I described in "Karateville") practice martial arts in a way that negatively affects my own personal experience of my art when I train with them. But I cannot be so arrogant as to presume my complaints are -- or should be -- everyone's. I don't have that authority. No one does.

Grappling With Humanity

(Image source: CBS News)

The latest innovation in the world of portable technology is Google Glass, the computer you wear on your face. I have yet to see this thing in person, but I can't help thinking that the first time I do I'm going to find it comical and creepy in equal measures. I mean, dude, you're wearing a computer on your face.

I especially hope that I don't actually have to talk to the person wearing it. It would be positively unnerving to try and have a conversation with someone who may or may not be looking at a LOLcat or a Twitter feed (to say nothing of the less innocent possibilities) while I'm speaking to him. According to an NPR piece I listened to last night, those who are wearing Google Glass are already being labelled "glassholes", and I think I can imagine why.

I'm sure the proponents of progress and innovation would be quick to assure me that I'll get used to Google Glass -- and the imitators that are sure to follow it -- in the same way that I've gotten used the internet, the laptop, and the smartphone before it. They're certainly right that I've gotten used to a lot in my short lifetime, but I think this particular invention might be going a little too far for me.

My whole life, I have watched real interaction with real people being slowly replaced by technology. Video games replaced ball games, discussion boards replaced discussions, virtual worlds replaced the real world. Then laptops let us take these replacements anywhere we could find a place to sit, and then smartphones let us keep these replacements in our pockets all the time. And now, with Google Glass, we will have the option of avoiding human interaction even while ostensibly interacting with people.

Now, before any reader who knows me points out my hypocrisy, let me point it out myself.

I am a blogger. I am a gamer (currently on my third time through Fallout: New Vegas). I am a regular poster on at least five internet forums. I have preferred books to people my whole life, and now I get my books on my smartphone rather than going to buy or borrow them from places manned by real people. In short, I am hopelessly dependent on technology and I am as guilty as anyone of using it as a replacement for a real social life.

All that said, Google Glass still worries me. The times when circumstances force us to come face-to-face with other human beings are the last bastion of real interaction. If I can't go to the store or to a restaurant without a computer screen literally attached to my face, it's pretty much all over. I might as well go full-on Mr. House at that point (if you don't get that reference, good for you). I admit I'm right at the line, but I'm still very afraid of crossing it.

In light of that fear, I'm glad to have aikido.

There is something that has always felt so very separate and different about aikido, like stepping into the dojo is entering another world. I used to think this was about things like the gi and the hakama, the bowing, the Japanese terminology, the weapon racks, the sitting in seiza, and the image of Ueshiba on the kamiza. The more I train, though, the more I come to see these things as nonessential trappings, and the more these trappings lose their novelty for me. What really sets aikido apart from the rest of my postmodern existence is the people.

Grappling is cooperative to the core; it cannot be done alone. Players at aikido, judo, jujutsu, wrestling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, etc. are unique among sportsmen. They have no ball, no bat, and no racket. They have no net and no basket. Even in practice, they have no pads or bags to hit, and no forms to train against empty air. There is no medium other than another human being -- one whose sweat will be mingled with your own, whose pain will mirror your own, and whose movements will be real-time responses to your own.

Aikidoists generally don't like to think of their art as primitive, but I think there's something wonderfully primitive about it. The thousands of years we have spent developing new, more diluted ways of interacting with other humans, from the first written words all the way to the current generation of social media, are forgotten: come to me, grab hold of me, and throw and be thrown. Aikido training is as low-tech as my life gets and is more physically intimate than anything I do with anyone other than my wife and daughter. It flies in the face of the e-world of profiles, avatars, and typed messages.

Grappling, I think, offers us a unique opportunity to remember what it is to be human. And it is this memory, I hope, that will prevent me from one day joining the ranks of the "glassholes".

Swimming With Sharks

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.
- Proverbs 17:28

"Take that meathead rhetoric to Bullshido."

"Don't post stuff like that on Bullshido -- they'll eat you alive."

"Are you going to challenge me to a fight like the goons on Bullshido?"

If you frequent martial arts-themed internet communities, you are likely to occasionally hear things like this. Bullshido.net has built up a rather a scary reputation in the martial arts e-world, and I think it's fair to say its members like it that way.

Back in 2010 I decided to make a Bullshido account. I'm not sure what I was thinking; perhaps I got it into my head to go defend the honor of stylized, traditional arts like aikido against the evil hordes of MMA exclusivists rumored to dwell there. I never gathered up the courage to actually post there, but I'm sure that I had Bullshido in mind when I wrote "Haters Gonna Hate" in February of 2011.

My perception of Bullshido started changing last spring, when I began looking up information about infamous "ninjas" Frank Dux and Ashida Kim in preparation for the writing of "We're the Problem". In the cases of both men, Bullshido's Martial Arts Encyclopedia proved an invaluable resource, full of well-researched information from credible sources and solid investigating and reporting done by Bullshido members themselves. Perhaps, I began to think then, this was more than just a hangout for Tapout thugs.

Even that, though, wasn't enough to actually convince me to post there. I still feared an aikidoist like myself would be chewed up and spit out by Bullshido's famous "Bullies". Every once in a while, I lurked on the forums or read through the investigations on the Martial Arts Encyclopedia, but that was as close as I was willing to get.

What finally changed my mind a few weeks ago was a desire to start an "investigation" of my own (I won't go into the details here, but those interested can follow this thread on Bullshido). I didn't want to be that guy who shows up out of nowhere, asks for help with a particular matter, and then disappears, so I browsed around the forums a little bit, hoping to contribute a little to some discussion without stepping on anyone's toes.

Wonder of wonders, these supposed MMA-minded thugs had a whole board devoted to traditional Japanese martial arts. That didn't sound too scary, so in I went. Inside, I even found a thread about aikido. It was a longish thread, already eight pages, so rather than try to read it all and respond to everything, I just gave my two cents in response to the OP.

I braced for impact, not sure what to expect. A caps lock rant? A condescending lecture? A warning? A ban?

"I like this n00b," came the first response. "We shall keep him." It was one of the forum leaders.

It's a strange feeling having all one's preconceptions shattered by a few words.

It didn't take me long to figure out that I'd pegged the Bullies all wrong from the start. Bullshido, I quickly discovered, isn't about declaring the supremacy of a few full-contact martial arts, but about exposing the dishonesty and delusion that plague the martial arts world. Most of its members are more than willing to converse respectfully and open-mindedly with an aikidoist, so long as said aikidoist isn't delusional about the applications of his training and is willing to remain silent on subjects he doesn't know anything about.

That last point is one I can't stress enough. If the stories of Bullshido's single-mindedness about MMA are exaggerated, the stories of their harsh treatment of those who earn their disfavor certainly are not. I know of no faster, more effective way in the world to have one's ego taken down a peg than to spout off on Bullshido without being able to prove oneself.

The Bullies take their proof very seriously: anyone making a bold claim had best be prepared either to cite evidence from a credible source, to participate in one of Bullshido's many meetups, or to be carried away on a wave of condescension and ridicule.

This dynamic, while some find it harsh, certainly has its merits. Many martial artists claim to train "scientific" arts (some Wing Chun players come to mind), but Bullshido is the only group of people I've ever known whose approach to the martial arts resembles anything genuinely scientific. Their acceptance of a claim is not based on who makes it or how eloquently it is made, only on whether or not that claim can be or has been confirmed by experiment. Those who make claims that they cannot substantiate in this way can expect the same reception on Bullshido that a young-earth creationist might receive at a convention of evolutionary biologists.

The internet martial arts community is awash with horror stories about Bullies' disdain for traditional martial arts, and indeed for anything that doesn't belong in a cage match. Many of my friends from AikiWeb and Martial Arts Planet talk about Bullshido the way Tolkein characters talk about Mordor.

But I have experienced no such disdain, and the way I have avoided it is very, very simple: I don't make claims I can't back up and I keep my mouth shut unless I really know what I'm talking about. This humility and adherence to the rules have been the only prerequisites to my acceptance on Bullshido.

I have a hard time feeling sympathy for those who cannot manage these two things. About a month ago I watched the Bullies embarrass and then run off a Bujinkan stylist who was lecturing on unarmed defense against weapons but was unable to provide any evidence in support of his ideas. He seemed genuinely offended that people were not willing to blindly accept his words at face value, and mistook that unwillingness for a refusal to listen to him at all and a disrespect for his training.

He was a living personification of obsolete martial arts thinking: a guy with a black belt told me stuff, therefore I know all I need to know, and therefore anyone who disagrees with me is an ignorant fool. He probably still believes it all, and probably has added to the horror stories swirling around the internet about the evil place called Bullshido where there is no respect for traditional martial arts. The truth is that the lack of respect he experienced was only for him, specifically his willingness to lecture on things with which he had little or no experience.

Socrates tells us that the only true wisdom is the recognition of one's own ignorance. My message to my fellow internet aikidoists -- and, more broadly, to traditional martial artists of all stripes -- is this: if you are willing to accept the truth of your own ignorance, then you have nothing to fear from Bullshido. It is not the boogeyman, and it is an informative and interesting resource.

Gentleman

"The Most Interesting Man in the World"

I have just finished reading Brad Miner's The Compleat Gentleman.

The book calls itself "The Modern Man's Guide to Chivalry", and attempts to assemble a general model of the perfect chivalrous man. The Compleat Gentleman, says Miner, is sophisticated and brave, personifying the virtues of the Warrior, the Lover, and the Monk, and is rich in sprezzatura, that is, gentlemanly grace and restraint.

On the whole, I found the book to be extensively flawed. For all Miner's lip-service to an apolitical ideal, his idea of chivalry is inextricably bound up with his strongly conservative political views. Miner is adamant that a gentleman's honor is worth fighting and dying for, but he never bothers to explain what honor means to him. Worst of all, while the book makes clear that the modern gentleman "has a newer and more realistic view of women" than his historical predecessors, Miner never once considers the possibility that a woman might fulfill his ideals as well as a man.

All that said, the book did give me a few things to think about.

Miner is a student of Goju Ryu karate, and what he writes about karate in his book leads me to believe that he is, like me, a relative newcomer who didn't begin his martial arts journey until adulthood. Nonetheless, the martial arts are important to his model of the perfect gentleman:

Life is a martial art. It is anyway if you do it right. As the Stoics of ancient Rome used to say: Vivere militare! How can our modern knight protect the innocent and punish the guilty unless, along with his courage and honor, he has prowess?

Let's put aside for now the question of whose duty it really is to "punish the guilty", and also the question of whether or not Miner's karate or my aikido amount to real prowess. What interests me most is Miner's idea that prowess is a key ingredient of the true gentleman.

Does a gentleman need martial training? And if he does, does our martial training, therefore, bring us closer to being gentlemen?

Many of us like to think so. We like stories of the Celtic warrior-poet, the samurai philosopher, the rapier-wielding Renaissance man, and (if we are taekwondo players) the ancient Korean hwarang youth, each a sophisticated man educated in the various arts of peace but trained and ready for combat.

I'm a musician--a damn good one if I do say so myself--so I like to think I have the "poet" half of the warrior-poet equation down pretty well already. With some more martial arts training, could I join the ranks of history's great gentlemen?

I am reminded of the popular series of Dos Equis beer commercials featuring "The Most Interesting Man in the World". The character would perhaps not satisfy all of Miner's gentlemanly criteria (not enough of a monk, I think), but he does in many ways embody the popular ideal of the gentleman, that is, a man who is sophisticated and cool without being weak. He rescues trapped animals, he woos women, and he plays at politics, but he is equally at home arm-wrestling or wielding a shinai in a kendo match. The commercials' narrator says of him, "He could disarm you with his looks... or his hands, either way," and, "He's a lover, not a fighter, but he's also a fighter, so don't get any ideas."

Be honest: what guy doesn't want to be that guy?

Much as I often criticize romanticism in the martial arts, I must confess this image appeals to me a great deal. I didn't start my martial arts training with the single-minded goal of becoming a great martial arts master; I wanted to add one more piece to myself, a piece that would make me a more complete human being, a more "interesting" man.

I have written before on how I feel my training has prepared me to face life's challenges with a little more grace. And, stylized as my aikido may be, I suspect I am a little readier for a physical confrontation than I was before, too. Both of these, Miner and the Most Interesting Man in the World seem to agree, are key ingredients of the gentleman. Is it such a bad thing, then, to pursue this romantic ideal in the dojo? I am starting to think not.

Of course, we must pursue this ideal outside the dojo, too. Miner's Compleat Gentleman and the Most Interesting Man in the World are not just fighters. They are jacks-of-all-trades, well-traveled and broadly educated.

I keep saying that I want to make a deeper study of Buddhism, that I want to learn to speak Spanish, that I want to improve my cooking, and that I want to be more diligent in the gym. If I am to be the perfect gentleman, I'm going to need all these things, and I'm going to need to fit them in around working, being a husband, and raising a daughter. It's not for no reason that Don Quixote calls it "the impossible dream".

But even if it is impossible (and, skeptic that I am, I'm pretty sure it is), I think it might be a worthwhile pursuit. And I think my time in the dojo can help.

The Best Way

I once ventured to say to an old clergyman who was voicing this sort of patriotism, "But, sir, aren't we told that every people thinks its own men the bravest and its own women the fairest in the world?" He replied with total gravity--he could not have been graver if he had been saying the Creed at the altar--"Yes, but in England it's true." To be sure, this conviction had not made my friend (God rest his soul) a villain; only an extremely lovable old ass. It can however produce asses that kick and bite.
- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Whether the matter in question be religion, music, or the martial arts, I've never felt the need to assert that my way is the best way or the only way. Protestant Christianity, acoustic singer-songwriter music, and aikido, respectively, are all paths that I have stumbled upon, more by chance than by choice. Were I to take too much pride in the perceived relative merits of a fate that chose me far more than I chose it, I fear I'd become like the above patriot, boasting as if he'd chosen to be born English.

There are those, though, who'd have me do exactly that.

I was urged, even in the tolerant United Methodist denomination in which I grew up, to "save" people of other creeds from sin and hell by sharing my truer and more correct beliefs with them. I have been told by fellow musicians and music fans that my kind of music is "real" music, and that metal, rap, and electronic pop are "just noise". And from my first day in the dojo, I've had instructors telling me that aikido is something deeper, more sophisticated, and more moral than all other martial arts.

To be sure, on the spectrum of ignorant conviction Lewis lays out for us above, these particular aikido instructors have been much closer to the "loveable old ass" end than the "villain" end. My respect and love for them are not in question. But I still think they're wrong.

Aikidoka, tell me if you've heard these before:

• Aikido is superior to other martial arts because it values technique over strength, so you don't have to be a big, strong guy to do it.
• Aikido is superior to other martial arts because it teaches a way of life and not just a set of physical skills.
• Aikido is superior to other martial arts because it doesn't dilute itself with sport competition.
• Aikido is superior to other martial arts because O Sensei incorporated the best of many different martial arts into one art.

When I hear people claiming that aikido is the way, they usually support their position by making one of these four claims. There is much truth in all of these claims, but as assertions of disciplinary uniqueness or superiority, they all come up short.

All martial arts, not just aikido, aspire to be methods by which a smaller, weaker person can defeat a bigger, stronger one. And some, like Royce Gracie's jiu-jitsu, have proven themselves quite convincingly.  The "way of life" claim has never impressed me, and at any rate aikido is hardly the only art making it (check Google if you don't believe me). Absence of competition is not exclusive to aikido, and I find the argument that competition is a valuable tool a compelling one (Rob Redmond, for instance, makes it here). Finally, many arts, including Shorinji kenpo and jeet kune do, can make equally valid claims to being a brilliant master's synthesis of multiple martial arts.

Does this mean that aikido isn't unique or special? Of course not. It probably does mean, though, that aikidoka have very little cause to be looking down their noses at anyone.

What's more, I suspect most aikidoka are like me: rather than exhaustively researching every martial art available to them and making educated decisions about their relative merits, they got lucky and happened upon something that was affordable and convenient and looked fun and interesting. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this method, but it's not a method that puts one in a position to make claims about the superiority of a particular discipline.

To return to the other examples I used earlier, my music and religion came to me much the same way. I didn't choose to be born and raised in the United Methodist Church, and the acoustic guitar landed in my lap during an elective class my senior year of high school. Does that mean these things aren't vital and meaningful parts of my life? Of course not. But it does mean that I don't really have a leg to stand on if I start to claim my religion or my music are the best in a world full of options. Maybe I might claim that they are the best for me, but even then I'm not saying anything that does me any good in an appeal to a universal or objective standard.

One more thing: who cares?

Who cares which martial art (or religion, or music style) is the best? Why can't we just find something that works for us and let it work? Why do we need to be better than anyone else? It's a question that returns to my mind whenever I am foolish enough to read YouTube comments.

To be sure, there are a select few who genuinely need the most effective combat skills they can find, and for them the comparative efficacy of different martial arts is a valid concern. But I'm certainly not one of those people, and neither are most aikidoka, or even most martial artists.

Most of us, then, have no authority to declare our way better than all the others, and, moreover, no reason to. Rather than trying to prove how much better we are than everyone else--something we are entirely unequipped to do anyway--why don't we all just get back to training?

We're the Problem

Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?
- Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars

Apparently this happened a couple years ago, but I was only alerted to it recently by this thread on Martial Arts Planet. Famous (or infamous) "ninjutsu masters" Ashida Kim and Frank Dux are now inductees into the United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame. I don't know how legitimate or prestigious the United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame is, so I don't know if this is a great honor or just an excuse to throw a party. I do know, however, that any "hall of fame" that includes Kim and Dux is inviting some pretty big questions about its selection process.

I am, as I keep saying, only a beginner myself, so I can't make any criticism of these two men solely on my own meager authority. But the good folks at bullshido.org have taken Kim and Dux apart quite handily: here and here, respectively. At the very least, these two have extremely questionable credentials and are propagating a movies-and-comic-books perception of the martial arts. Worse, the information presented by Bullshido makes a strong case for outright lies and fraud.

And yet, both these men are receiving honors like induction into the United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame. Both are successful instructors. Kim has made a living for decades writing ninjutsu books. Dux has even been the subject of a major motion picture starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.

If the evidence against these two is so strong and so available, how have they become so successful? Why have people been so willing to give their money and their respect to two men who can be easily discredited with a simple internet search? Back in the Eighties when they were first cashing in on the ninja craze, perhaps a lack of information might have been blamed, but we've had Google for more than a decade now. And even without it, shouldn't reasonable adults be skeptical of claims to have trained under secret masters or won secret tournaments that no one else has ever heard of?

Before I go too far, let me make clear that the purpose of this piece is not to discredit Ashida Kim or Frank Dux. If a few people, after reading this piece, are inspired to learn the truth about these two for themselves, so much the better. But Kim, Dux, and many others like them are just symptoms, not the disease. Here, they only serve as a starting point for a discussion of something much bigger than them. I hate the players far, far less than I hate the game.

Snake oil salesmen, as some savvy readers are likely already thinking to themselves, are hardly unique to the martial arts. Every field has its share of charlatans and underqualified hacks looking for an easy dollar. But in the martial arts, the easy dollars seem especially easy to come by. What makes the martial arts exceptional is not an abundance of snake oil salesmen, but an abundance of eager snake oil consumers.

There are plenty of examples right here in the Milwaukee area (my little blog can't do much harm to Kim and Dux, but I won't be naming these names). I could direct you to a popular taekwondo club in a southern suburb of Milwaukee run by a "master" whose fifth dan in taekwondo comes from an organization that doesn't exist. It took me ten seconds on Google to find this out; dozens, perhaps hundreds, of students are willing to pay this man up to $160 a month for training but couldn't be bothered to take those ten seconds.

I could direct you to a kenpo instructor on the south side of Milwaukee who was kicked out of the organization that oversees his tradition and stripped of his rank by its board of masters. This information is supplied helpfully in the Yahoo! Local reviews of his club. He continues to make a living as a teacher of said tradition, however, and his club was even recently featured on the local news.

I could direct you to a martial arts club in the northwest part of Milwaukee that is part of a successful nationwide chain. The "grandmaster" who founded that chain has been fined for consumer fraud, has spent five years in prison for conspiracy to commit tax fraud, and claims to have won a championship tournament that does not exist. His clubs have also been widely accused of cult-like behavior by the media. All this information is readily available on Wikipedia.

Note the commonalities here: (1) they're all being kept in business by many paying customers, and (2) very damning information about all of them is only a click away on some of the most popular search sites on the internet. This is not a case of secretive businessmen protecting their livelihoods by keeping their shady practices under wraps; their secrets are out for anyone who bothers to look. But people, even people smart enough to accumulate a lot of money for themselves, aren't looking. Why not?

I think the answer lies in the popular perception of the martial arts as something esoteric and inscrutable. People assume that they can't understand the mysteries of the martial arts on their own, and so put their trust in anything they see in movies or hear from someone in a fancy costume. The sport of mixed martial arts is slowly chipping away at this perception, but not quickly enough for my tastes.

For example, Florida judge John Hurley recently declared from the bench that the hands and feet of anyone with a black belt in karate should be legally considered deadly weapons. That's right, moms, your 12-year-old who's put in three-and-a-half years at Master Bob's Karate in the strip mall is now a deadly weapon.

This kind of ignorance boggles the mind. John Hurley is no one's fool. Besides being a former attorney with a law degree, he's also a former Navy intelligence officer. He wasn't born yesterday. Why is he willing to accept such a fanciful, romanticized understanding of the martial arts without question, even when his understanding of the martial arts is about to be a focal point of a ruling? I think he, like so many others, has never considered the possibility that a deeper understanding is available to a layman like himself.

The legal implications of this kind of misconception are staggering, but that's not the worst of it. Meet Jim Green:

Yes, that's a child Green is teaching to take falls from imaginary forces. It should go without saying that I find this despicable and dangerous.

Personally, I don't care whether or not Green honestly believes his karate gives him telekinetic powers. What really frightens me is that parents (no few of them, judging from the kids sitting along the edge of the mat) were happy to entrust their children to a man who wants to use them as props in his magic tricks. They were undeterred by their knowledge of basic physics and apparently unwilling to to seek out a second opinion before investing their money and their offspring.

I've never encountered anything quite this outlandish in my own aikido (though examples of such things in aikido can certainly be found--a quick look through YouTube turns up at least two telekinetic aikido masters), but I have had instructors try to teach me how to throw opponents with "spiritual energy" and try to demonstrate how they can increase the pressure their body weight puts on the mat through manipulation of ki. In cases like this, I nodded and smiled politely, but my common sense was unshaken (it is worth noting that I no longer train at the club where these instructors teach).

I don't think this shows exceptional willpower or wisdom on my part. What makes me different from the willing victims I've profiled in this piece is my confidence (the result of reading I did on the subject before I started training) that nothing in the martial arts is too mysterious or magical for my uninitiated mind to comprehend.

Such confidence is not hard to come by and does not require martial arts experience. We have the internet. We have libraries. We have televised mixed martial arts competitions with experienced commentators who get paid to explain how techniques work. In today's world, there are simply no excuses left for being duped into martial arts nonsense. We have every defense we need right at our fingertips.

Martial artists like myself love to complain about charlatans who stain the reputation of the martial arts. I think it's important, though, to remember that people like Kim, Dux, and Green aren't really the problem: we are. We're the ones begging, and even paying, for the opportunity to be fooled. Others may be telling the lies, but the lies need us to feed them.

What I Like

I have a former instructor (the friend I mentioned here) who has said to me multiple times, "Once you've seen good aikido, you know bad aikido." He says this to me whenever I say that, because I'm still a relative beginner, I have no business judging instructors. Despite his encouragement, I'm still not convinced I have any business deciding whose martial art is good or bad; those whom I might potentially judge still have every right, I think, to tell me I have no idea what I'm talking about.

That said, the more I train and the more I talk to experienced martial artists, the more confidence I have in deciding what I like. This confidence is what fueled the decisions I started to make in "Aikido for Me" and continue to make as I explore new places to train.

I recently visited a school of Wing Chun kung fu and saw lots of things I like. Does an abundance of things I like make an objectively good club? I, arrogantly, like to think so, but I'm not going to make any such claim here. What I am going to do is make some observations of things that I like, using this club as an example, and try to give readers an idea of what I'm looking for when I visit a martial arts club. You can decide for yourselves whether or not you agree.

I like friendly instructors. A surefire way to scare me off is to begin our relationship by either ignoring me or lecturing me on how serious/important/powerful/difficult your martial art is. I wrote about a Shotokan Karate instructor like this last summer. A good instructor, I think, makes an effort to be someone people enjoy training with.

The instructor at this Wing Chun club was always smiling. He was happy to talk with me when he wasn't too busy with his students, and when he was with his students he was not above joking with them like the fellow adults they are. There are those who believe that this kind of attitude results in wasted time and half-hearted training, but I didn't see any of that at this club.

I like students who look like they're having a good time. There are a few things in my life worth getting really serious about, like my family and my job. The martial arts have definitely made me a healthier and happier person, but they're just not in the family/job category of importance. I have very little patience for those who treat the martial arts as something too serious or too sacred to be merely enjoyed. There are very few of us who really need advanced unarmed combat skills, and those of us who need exercise have many cheaper and more efficient options than martial arts training. If there is no enjoyment, there is no reason to train at all.

The students at this Wing Chun club were obviously enjoying the process of learning their art. They smiled when they discovered new things, they laughed at their own mistakes, and they treated each other like friends rather than animated training dummies. Apparently, there are people who have a problem with this, but I can't imagine why.

I like seeing some students who look like they could beat me up. At this Wing Chun club, I saw a few guys that I definitely wouldn't want to mess with. I don't necessarily believe I'll ever be one of those guys, but I do like to think that my training is the kind of training that those guys find challenging and interesting.

My own discipline of aikido has a reputation for being the martial arts refuge of the weak, the old, and the out-of-shape. It's not entirely true, but it's truer than I'm happy to admit. One of several reasons I'm looking for an alternative to my current aikido club is that I'm tired of training with people who would have a hard time with a few jumping jacks, let alone a live application of martial arts techniques.

That's not to say that instructors who can no longer practice everything they preach are of no value; in fact, they are often great instructors (anyone who has trained with the great Hiroshi Ikeda can back me up on this). No one expects Doc Rivers to be able to get back out on the floor and guard Chris Paul. But in my day-to-day training, I want to work with people who can push my body to its limits. It's one of the reasons I started training in the first place.

I like honesty in instruction. I'm not training to become a vigilante crime fighter, and I hate--hate, hate, HATE--all the arguments on message boards and YouTube about what works "on the street" (the suburban cul-de-sac where you live is not "the street", mmakilla12, and you haven't been in a fight since grade school). All that said, I like to see an instructor doing his best to be honest about what works.

At this Wing Chun club, I heard the instructor say things like, "That's only working because he's letting you get away with it," and, "That's not going to move someone who's a lot bigger than you." He would then show alternatives. He had no illusions about his art being an ultimate fighting style, but he wasn't teaching a dance, either. He looked for things that didn't work like they were supposed to, and corrected them, even when they were executed with good form and had all the aesthetics of good kung fu.

In my own aikido, I struggle (internally, not verbally) with instructors who teach "center" and "connection" but have no time left over for the positioning and unbalancing that make throws and takedowns possible against an uncooperative opponent. The aikido they teach often looks very pretty, but doesn't bring down partners who haven't been conditioned to take falls. I'm sure some people genuinely enjoy this kind of martial arts training; they can have it. I want a reality check every once in a while.

I like seeing students sweat. I don't really feel I've gotten my money's worth unless my gi needs washing after a class. There will be time for tai chi in the park when I'm 80; right now, I want a workout. Like most martial artists, one of the reasons I first got into martial arts training was exercise.

The students at this club worked hard enough that they needed sweat rags and water bottles. Even when they were doing choreographed forms, they practiced with enough energy and did enough repetitions that it worked up a sweat. There are many people who equate traditional, stylized arts like aikido and Wing Chun with yoga and chi gong. Not here. The students at this club, despite their traditional, stylized training methods, were working hard.

I like clubs that keep pretense to a minimum. I am turned off by martial arts instructors and schools that take themselves and their traditions too seriously. I want to laugh at instructors who expect to be called "master". I am baffled by classes conducted in foreign languages students can't even pronounce, let alone understand. And I bristle at students being taught to treat their uniform and gear as religious relics. I think these kinds of things are usually the efforts of overzealous, misinformed Westerners trying to achieve what they perceive to be authentic Asian-ness.

My own experiences with authentic Asian-ness have been quite the opposite. I had the great privilege last fall of training with the aforementioned Hiroshi Ikeda, an internationally renowned master of aikido. When Ikeda Sensei's luggage did not arrive in time for the class, and he had no gi or hakama to wear, he dismissed it with a laugh and taught the class in his jeans and tee shirt. And though he occasionally stumbled over his English, he never spoke a word of Japanese after he greeted us with, "Onegaishimasu."

This Wing Chun club was similarly unpretentious. Clearly, clothing was supposed to be dark and functional, but I didn't see a set uniform. There were belts (sashes, in this case) that showed rank and official club shirts, but not everyone wore them. No one was speaking Chinese, except to call the instructor sifu ("teacher", similar in use to the Japanese sensei). Other than the occasional bow, there were no other Chinese affectations, either. Weapons and other equipment were treated as tools; they certainly seemed well cared for, but there was no sign of worship.

I like up-front information. I have complained before about martial arts clubs that aren't forthcoming with basic information. I regard any club with suspicion that doesn't supply information about rates or schedules until after the prospective customer has heard a sales pitch. Are they afraid their prices will scare me away? Are they gauging my gullibility? No matter how many times I think it over, I can't come up with a good, honest reason a club would conduct business this way.

The first thing the instructor did when I sat down was hand me a schedule, tell me what the monthly rates were, and tell me what was included in membership. He also told me that membership was month-to-month, which meant no contracts. That reminds me...

I like clubs that don't make their students sign contracts. Contracts are, in my humble opinion, a blight on the martial arts landscape. There are those (mostly people who run contract clubs) who defend them, and some even make some pretty good points in the process, but the fact remains that a contract can really only do one thing: force people to keep paying for something they no longer want.

What if I get hurt? What if my schedule changes? What if (as is happening to me now) there are changes at the club and I'm not sure if it's the place I want to train anymore? What if, a few months in, I decide that my body's just not up to the demands of the training that goes on at this particular club? In any of these cases, if I'm locked into a contract, I have to keep paying. Even more frightening are stories I've heard (here, for instance) of clubs that have closed down and sold the contracts to collection agencies, meaning that students have to keep paying for training at a club that doesn't even exist.

This Wing Chun club was not cheap (about $100 a month), but didn't seem to have any trouble hanging onto students without using contracts. And that makes me wonder why so many clubs seem to think they're necessary.

Finally, I like clubs that don't cost a lot. I debated with myself about whether or not to include this last one, because there are many very good clubs--the one I talk about here included--that aren't cheap. But I'm not a rich guy. I'm a lowly special education aide at a tiny little non-union public charter school. I have rent to pay and a baby on the way. I don't have much of a discretionary budget. The martial arts are wonderful, but they're not worth cutting into food and rent for. I can't afford expensive clubs, and I don't think the martial arts can afford to become exclusively a rich man's hobby.

I don't have a clever way to wrap this up; it was never really more than a glorified list. All I can say is, this is what I like. What do you like?

Karateville

I'm going to begin here by directing my few readers to a better and more widely-read internet writer than myself. This particular writer happens to have the same parents I have.

My brother recently wrote a wonderful piece on The Inclusive about video games. Specifically, he aired his beef (shared by many of us who grew up on the NES, Sega Genesis, and SNES) with the kind of social games on Facebook and the iPhone that he calls "Villes" (think Farmville, Cityville, etc.). The purpose of these games, says my brother, is not be fun or interesting, but to hook players on a progression of increasingly difficult and expensive rewards. The goal in developing these games, he says, is to get a few gullible people so addicted that they're willing to pay real money for benefits that exist only in the imaginary world of the game.

My brother compares these games to B.F. Skinner's operant conditioning chambers:

This is why these games are free, brightly colored, and cute: if they get enough people in the box, some of people will keep hitting the button. If there are time delays constricting how often the button can be pushed, some people will pay for the privilege of hitting the button sooner. Although this sounds like a Dire Metaphor, it is almost literally accurate: pay fifteen in-game-currency units (sold at ten for a real-life dollar) to get the Pig Pen now, rather than waiting to accrue that many units over time.

My brother, mind you, has a much bigger and much more important point to make than his distaste for a particular kind of game; I encourage you to read the piece for yourself. But his grievance against the "Villes" got me thinking (as many things seem to these days) about the way we, as students, practice the martial arts.

I train because I like to. Sure, in the back of my mind, I'm on a years-long hunt for an elusive treasure known as the Black Belt, but that destination wouldn't be worth anything to me if I wasn't enjoying the journey. The martial arts fascinate me; when I'm working my way through a new technique, the next rank is the last thing on my mind.

But if you've ever been to an independent regional taekwondo or karate tournament, you've likely seen a very different attitude from mine about rank. You've seen cadres of "masters" who seem intensely proud of all the ranks and awards prominently displayed on their doboks and gis. You've seen children as young as nine who have already blazed through dozens of ranks to earn their black belts and are eagerly working on the next degree.

My mind is boggled by this kind of thing. In my own discipline of aikido, many instructors are middle-aged men who have yet to move beyond their first dan. Most organizations have only six ranks between zero and black belt, and usually most of those ranks do not have corresponding belt colors. Testing at my club is done only once a year. Rank, in my experience of aikido, is a personal milestone and a tool for designating instructors, nothing more. The art is its own reward--ars gratia artis.

Now, I'm not suggesting that anyone who's not doing rank the aikido way is doing it wrong. If I thought that, I never would have attempted my foray into taekwondo. What bothers me is a tendency I see among some martial arts schools to sell the next rank (for which there will of course be extra fees), rather than an experience, as their primary product, and worse, a tendency among students to buy it.

The last time I went to a taekwondo tournament, I watched black belts compete who could not punch straight or kick above their waists. I watched a red belt compete in a wheelchair--a man who cannot kick is nearing his black belt in an art that is roughly 75% kicking. These peoples' ranks are not indicators of skill; they are rewards for investments of time and money.

There are those who say that awarding ranks so freely makes a mockery of the martial arts. Personally, I couldn't care less about mockery. I put on long, white underwear and play with wooden swords with other grown men three times a week; the truth is already as funny as any mockery that might be made of it. What I do care about is the perception, fueled by people like the aforementioned tournament-goers, that the martial artist's purpose is to accumulate ranks rather than to practice an art.

A martial arts experience shaped by this perception stops being about learning and enjoyment and becomes Karateville, an endless cycle of chasing the next little reward. This is, of course, good news for people trying to cash in on testing fees. It's bad news, though, for all of us who just like the martial arts because they're interesting and fun: we don't want to confine our training to the handful of things on the next test, and we don't want to train with people more concerned about colored pieces of cloth than well-executed technique or a good workout.

Twice before (here and here) I have brought up Rob Redmond, writer of the excellent karate blog 24 Fighting Chickens. Redmond's take on rank is both cynical and iconoclastic. He goes so far in one piece as to suggest that the Karateville game is the only reason to have more than a few broad ranks:

There are not twenty discernible levels of skill in karate. I submit to you that there are probably only four or five. You are giving out ranks to reward attendance, memorization, and good conduct. You are encouraging the payment of fees for tests, belts, and for continuing lessons, but your ranks you give out do not have any real meaning. No one could look at your yellow belts and purple belts and see with their eyes which was the higher rank without you telling them first.

So what's a martial artist to do? Abandon rank altogether? I'm not going to advocate that here, though I do think the question of whether or not we really need rank in the martial arts is an interesting one. For now, I think we can ask some simpler questions of ourselves.

Is my pursuit of rank helping me focus on my training or distracting me from it? How different am I really from a student one rank higher or lower than me? How much recognition do I really need for learning this new technique or form? Is there an obvious purpose behind all the ranks at my school?

Socrates tells us that the unexamined life is not worth living. It naturally follows, I think, that the unexamined art is not worth practicing. If we only notice what we are awarded without ever asking questions about what we're really learning, we may be stumbling over the city limits into Karateville.

Martial Arts: Serious Business

Last Thursday night, plagued by a nagging wrist injury and still not sure I was getting everything I wanted out of my aikido training, I payed a visit to a nonprofit Shotokan karate club on the north side of Milwaukee. If nothing else, it was certainly an educational experience.

First of all, I learned karate is not all that much easier on an injured wrist than carefully practiced aikido. This seemed strange to me, since I haven't found the same to be true of taekwondo, which is similar to karate in many ways.

There were other lessons, though, that were much more profound.

To this point, I've mostly had experience with the more lighthearted side of martial arts training. I don't mean to suggest that the people I train with don't take their arts seriously enough or try to do their best, but there has never a question of why we're all there: we enjoy martial arts training. Training in the dojo or dojang is not primarily a matter of honor, devotion, or even necessity for us. We train to get a workout and to do something we enjoy.

What I found at this karate club, though, was very different.

We ran to line up at the beginning of class. We bowed as we were curtly ordered by the senior student, first to the shomen (we were in a gymnasium--where was the shomen?), then to the instructor. We stood silently as the instructor introduced me to the class, then lectured on the history of Japanese karate and how serious an undertaking karate is. He told me that some people cry when undergoing the training he starts to deal out at purple belt level.

No one else spoke. No one smiled.

Kihon (basic techniques) were done as military-style drills with the instructor barking orders every step. Kata were done in a similar fashion, though the instructor softened a little while teaching me the first kata. We never got to any kumite (sparring); I suspect this was a basics-heavy class for my benefit.

At no point did anyone other than the instructor speak, except rarely for clarification of instructions, and I'm not sure I ever saw anyone smile.

Before and after class, the other students were friendly enough, and the instructor was a genuinely nice guy--even if he had a hard time keeping his low opinion of taekwondo to himself. He was very complimentary about the aikido club and showed real interest in my difficulties with the wrist injury.

What I couldn't wrap my head around was why all the friendliness had to be put away before stepping out on the dojo floor. I have read the Dojo Kun and the Niju Kun; there's nothing in there that says karateka aren't allowed to smile. Why do these students keep coming every week if they're not going to try to enjoy themselves? Are they preparing for duels? Do they think that a smile or (heaven forbid) an occasional laugh will weaken their punches?

I must confess, my understanding is limited here. My martial arts training to this point has been in aikido, an art whose founder believed in training joyfully, and taekwondo, an art that is not afraid to be honest about its identity as a sport. I don't understand why anyone would pay to undertake training and then not try to enjoy it (I suppose it's possible that there are a few people who genuinely enjoy maintaining a perpetual grimace while a little man sternly barks orders at them in Japanese, but there can't be very many).

The only guess I can make is that some people think martial arts training is too big a deal to be treated like a mere sport. All that ritual and silence and furrowing of brows must convince some people that they are becoming genuine warriors rather than just hobbyists.

To me, there are two things wrong with this attitude. First, the martial arts, as fun, interesting, and valuable as they are, don't deserve to be elevated to the level of a religion. Second, most of us, no matter how hard we try to be something more, really are just hobbyists. We have (at least) families and jobs that will always be more important to us than martial arts training, and rightly so.

Needless to say, I won't be returning to that karate club. If I ever do leave the aikido club (it seems less likely every time I go looking), it will be for someplace where the instructor has a sense of humor and I'm allowed to behave like the hobbyist that I am.