Forms are not martial arts

 

In this article, I will be using the general term ‘forms’ to refer to the solo practice of martial arts since I feel that these views apply to all martial arts not just Taekwondo.

 

For those of you who have read other articles on this blog, the title of this article may surprise you. After all, a good deal of the articles I have written are concerned with how to apply the movements from the Taekwondo patterns to self-defence situations. However, I feel that the true practice and meaning of forms in the martial arts has been lost somewhere along the way.

 

When I was younger, I asked the question “how many forms do I need to know to be considered good?” Well, of course, the answer is ‘none’. Many effective styles have little or no form practice within their system. In fact, even the systems with a form based syllabus have changed over the years. Traditionally, students were not required to know the number of forms that schools would have on their curriculum these days. Normally they would specialise in a small handful of forms and work on the techniques contained within them. Knowing a complete system was only for the teachers and masters of a particular style.

 

The practice of learning one form, pattern, or kata per belt level is relatively new. Possibly a product of when traditional martial arts became less about fighting and self-defence and more about tradition and culture.  It no longer mattered if a student really understood the movements within the forms of their style, students just had to be able to perform them in solo practice to a certain standard, usually competition based. Adhering everyone to the competition standard brings its own positives and negatives that is for another article.

 

With this focus on forms, came styles and teachers that specialised forms. The teacher would push the idea that forms make martial artists, that martial artists of old created a  countless number of forms, and of course the existence and importance of ‘secret forms’. In my training, I have come across styles with huge curricula that involve as many as 64 forms with some supplementary forms on top of that! I know of one famous teacher of Chinese styles from America who makes an annual trip to Beijing to learn more forms from his teacher so that he has more material for his students. Within taekwondo, I know of one group whose curriculum contains all of the KKW poomse, the ITF patterns, and some weapons forms. 

 

There are a lot more examples like this and of course, for the most part, after a certain point knowing yet another form becomes pointless for the students and it becomes clear that the teachers don’t have anything else to teach. Here I feel it is less about training students and more about entertaining them. Giving them something new and shiny to practice instead of working to improve what they already know, lest students become bored and leave.

 

The over emphasis on forms has also increased the popularity of sport forms. All tradition or martial effectiveness is forgotten in favour of flashy movements, intense facial expressions, and pointless screaming.

 

So should we abandon solo forms practice? Certainly not, but like all other arts of the martial arts we should approach it with a practical mindset. Not just from a self-defence point of view but from a martial art point of view as well. All traditional forms, no matter what style, should be studied deeply, including body movement, power generation, accurate stances, and of course application of the movements. They should not be used to pad a curriculum and keep students entertained.

The Problem with Drills

In the world of RBSD and Bunkai etc, the ‘drill’ has become increasing popular. Phrases like ‘pressure testing’ have become part of the every day conversation.

Largely people have taken a step sideways and replaced sparring with drilling. Whereas I can see the reasoning behind this there are a few problems with this approach.

What often happens in self defense classes now is a technique is taught and practiced, the technique is practiced harder against a stronger attack, the technique is then practiced in a bad situation which could be multiple opponents, attacked while exhausted, attacked in poor lighting and so on.

Generally at some point there is an argument about how the partner didn’t do what he or she was meant to. In most cases this involves not letting go of a hold or reacting to the defense in an unscripted way. It is then discussed that the attacker shouldn’t respond to the defense since in ‘the street’ the attacker wouldn’t know what was coming, or something like that (The problem with this, of course, is that attacker generally do react in someway when you try to defend yourself.)

So the drill continues with each partner having an unspoken agreement that the defense will be ultimately successful not matter how hard the initial attack is.

It can also happen that the ‘attacker’ is so bought into the defense that they themselves just won’t let the defense fail. To do so would be to bring into question their own training and even the art which they study. So again we have an internal governor of sorts that will give in to the defense once they feel that they partner has put in enough effort.

These things happen not matter how hard the pressure test is. Only is a small number of schools do they test to failure and then look at what the problems were and where they could be fixed.

Now, this sort of training is good and should be included in someone’s training. However, it falls short of actual sparring. In well planned and thought out sparring each person has a different mindset. They are not doing anything fixed but are using the techniques in a live situation. They learn how the techniques fit into non standard attacks. Students also learn what to do when the techniques fail, something very seldom covered in drills.

I have written about sparring and sparring drills in the past. These remain some of the most popular articles on this blog. I believe that no matter what system you are studying there should be an element of sparring in it. Patterns, pad work, drills, and sparring all have their place. To properly develop ourselves we need to understand the purpose and limitations of each.

Warrior mindset

Getting to black belt or achieving anything of value takes patience and hard work. It is an admiral quality that people display when they just keep turning up to the dojang and taking another small step towards their goal. This is one mindset that is important to making progress. We can call this a ‘yin’ mindset, something that keeps you chipping away at a goal and knowing that you will get there eventually.

However, we also have to train our ‘yang’ mindset, that of facing a challenge in the present. One that cannot be chipped away over time, but has to be dealt with in its entirety immediately

Years ago I was in a class and we were doing pad work, the instructor introduced the technique to be practiced, which happened to be spinning turning kick. This produced a collective groan from a group, mainly from the higher grades within the class. Granted spinning turning kick is not the easiest of techniques but it is hardly tough enough to have people groaning about it. At that point, I feel, all the people who expressed their dislike of the technique had already lost.

For sure they had exposed a weakness in their technique, the fact that they didn’t enjoy practicing the technique. Also they exposed weakness in their mindset, they had almost already admitted defeat just because it was a tough technique. In that session, no one that expressed their displeasure put in 100% effort. Maybe just going through the motions until the instructor moved to a different technique.

Ok, so it was only a pad drill, but what happens if we carry that mindset into other parts of the art. If we have to spar a tough opponent or even defend ourselves physically. We can’t get used to admitting defeat when we are presented with a challenge. We need to develop a strong mindset that doesn’t let us shy away from challenges

We do this simply by facing up to challenges, in class we hear there is a difficult technique, we have to spar the club champion, we have to spar 2 on 1 , or 3 on 1 or even 5 on 1. No matter what the challenge we should meet it with no complaining and pretty much no comment at all.

At the beginning of this article I referred to the 2 different mindset as yin and yang. Both have to be present in your training. Whereas turning up for training everyday but never meeting a challenge will not help you progress, turning up for training once a month will mean that the basic will always be a challenge for you. If we balance the two, turning up and also constantly accepting challenges that we are presented with they we will make strong progress in our training.

Next time in training, when you are presented with a challenging situation, watch how you react