Best Advice for Practitioners of Questionable Martial Arts

 

In this article, I will be sharing my thoughts about martial arts which have a questionable reputation, which get a lot of crap online, and I will be giving advice to people who practice these martial arts and what they could do about it to change the reputation. So before I head into the actual advice, just to give you a brief intro, most of you probably know me, but if you don't, I've been doing Aikido for more than 15 years. I was a professional instructor, I did some other martial arts too, Wing Chun included, a lot of the questionable martial arts, so I have direct experience of learning and teaching it, and later I moved on to mixed martial arts, I did MMA with some of the top trainers in the world, I had an MMA fight, so I got to experience the both sides of the picture.

I went through a process of using critical thinking in martial arts and learned a lot of lessons through the way, which I will share with you in this article. So recently I was reading a lot about critical thinking, which I feel is a missing element from the world in general, but many martial arts miss critical thinking significantly, and especially the martial arts which have a questionable reputation. So what I mean by that is, I spoke about this in some other discussions, but the gist is that people who are identified with questionable martial arts, like a practitioner of Aikido, a practitioner of Wing Chun, you invest 10, 20, 30 years, you teach it, it's your main source of income, that means your identity is tightly connected with that subject.

It's almost like a religion, not necessarily in a bad way, but it kind of is. And it's so dear to you that many people in that situation don't see, there's no gap for them between them, who they are, and that martial art. And that happens not only with questionable martial arts, it happens with a lot of martial arts.

But in those cases, whenever somebody says something bad, let's say about Aikido, the martial art which I know best from experience, if I'm an Aikidoka and somebody says something about Aikido, that Aikido sucks, you feel insulted. You feel like it's directed towards you, you feel like you need to defend it, because again, it's such an integral part of your identity. And my first advice would be to stop and consider this aspect.

Whenever someone is criticizing a martial art, realize that they're not really necessarily saying something about you, or even if they do, they're like, oh, you practice Aikido, you suck. What they really mean is, they're criticizing Aikido, they're criticizing the martial art. I know it can be a tough process, but if you make that distinction, that can already help you become more aware of what that criticism is actually about.

There's this phenomenon called cognitive dissonance, which is a psychological aspect that when our deep, strong beliefs are threatened or questioned, that that brings out a natural defensive mechanism from us where we become irritated and we shoot back by saying something angry at the other person. But that decreases our ability to discuss, that decreases our ability to look profoundly and objectively into the subject. So if you start to question what the other person is attacking, whether a person is criticizing, and you make that distinction that there is a gap between who you are and what you practice, that can help you keep your cool, that can help you not go into cognitive dissonance, and you can become more aware about the real issue.

Now, moving on to the real issue, I made an article about that, which is called Why Aikido is Disliked by BJJ and MMA Practitioners. And in that article, I point out, I'll use Aikido as an example, but it's really close to, the situation is very similar to Wing Chun, sometimes even Karate, these martial arts which sometimes get a bad reputation. So when I'm saying Aikido, think about whatever questionable martial art you have in mind.

So when Aikido is criticized, many people, many of its practitioners think that these people just hate Aikido, period. They don't see the beauty of Aikido, they don't see the legitimacy, perceived legitimacy of Aikido, they don't realize that Aikido is good, they're just biased, and they don't know what they're talking about. But basically, they think that they hate those people that criticize Aikido, they hate Aikido.

The truth is that I discovered through my exploration and my personal experience, I came to a realization that actually, these people who criticize, for example, Aikido, they don't hate Aikido itself, what they hate, even if they sometimes don't understand themselves. They hate that sometimes the Aikido practitioners make claims which are not realistic, and they don't have anything to back up those claims. That's what frustrates people.

And I think the same could be said about Wing Chun, and again, some other questionable martial arts. I'll give you an example. So for example, Kendo doesn't, as far as I can see, does not have that same bad reputation as Aikido, or Wing Chun, or the martial aspect of Tai Chi, or some of the Kung Fu styles.

But that's because, the way I see it, Kendo does not make any claims, big claims, like, oh, we're teaching self-defense, or, oh, our martial art is better than yours. But you can hear that, I know from my personal experience, you can hear that in Aikido, you can hear claims that, oh, Aikido is really good for self-defense, and even criticism towards mixed martial arts, or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, saying that, oh, you guys don't know what you're talking about, we are better, we know, we would actually defeat you in the ring. And I don't hear the Aikido is too dangerous for MMA argument much anymore, but I think partly that's because I published the article Aikido vs MMA, where I showed to everyone that my Aikido did not work, as much as I tried, after a decade of training it, and that kind of decreased the ability for people to make that claim.

But before that, it was a popular claim. If somebody would try to make an argument, look, Aikido doesn't work, or Wing Chun doesn't work, Taekwondo doesn't work, whatever argument, statement you take, they would sometimes say, well, the validity of the statement is because you don't see Aikido in MMA. And that's when MMA people would say Aikido is too dangerous for MMA, because we would gouge eyes, and we would break bones, and it's a claim which I could debunk at the moment, but I want to, again, this article is about giving advice to people who are challenged by these claims, and what to do with them.

So that claim disappeared, but coming back to the main point, that's the real issue. The real issue is that some martial arts, especially the question of martial arts, make big claims which are not backed up. And that's the issue.

So for example, if you hear some Aikidoka saying that Aikido is actually really good in self-defense, or it actually would beat, let's say, boxing, you go to a search engine, and you search for Aikido vs boxing, and probably you'll see an Aikido person getting destroyed, or you don't see any discussions at all. And there was even a specific situation, which I was involved in, where one Aikido instructor, he made an article, which I shared on my blog, where he showed an Aikido way of defending against takedowns. But the article was highly criticized for various reasons, and then I said to the person who made that article, I said, look, the solution is very simple.

Just take a college wrestler, a medium level wrestler, and because that's one of the criticisms, because the people that were giving him, were trying to take him down, were doing a really poor job. They weren't really making any attempts to take him down, and the takedowns were really low level. A lot of people said, and I said the same, I said, just grab a wrestler and re-film the demonstration where you show that it works against the wrestler.

He did not do it. I think the reason for that is because subconsciously, probably that person knew that it wouldn't work, and that would be kind of, I wouldn't say humiliating, although it could be interpreted as humiliating, but it would be a challenging experience for that person, because that would threaten the ego, that would threaten the identity, so many things that that person worked for, and the person neglected. He never did that demonstration, which for me, I was frustrated about that.

I was like, how can you not try to disprove your own theory? And that's actually how I naturally come to the main advice that I have in this article. As I was reading about critical thinking, I've read about a specific technique used in science, which I thought is a brilliant technique, and that is when you make a claim, which is not yet backed up by evidence, and which is questionable, that it should be your responsibility to try to deny, to try to disprove your claim as best as you can. Now, let me explain what I mean by that.

So for example, if something is really legit, if something is really true, something really works, no matter how much you will try to disprove it, no matter how far you will go, it will still stay true. So I'll give you a crazy example, but it actually kind of makes sense. So let's say I would make a claim that every time I jump, I levitate, I don't go to the ground, and I would make that claim everywhere, and people would say, well, so prove it to us.

And I would say, I don't need to prove it, because I can do it. I could go home all my life without jumping in front of people, and not showing my levitation, and just making that claim that it works. And I could also try to come up with scientific evidence, and show some articles, and maybe show some picture where I'm hanging midair.

But actually, if I really want to make that claim, and if I really want to convince people that it's real, I should actually try to disprove myself as best as I can. I should jump a hundred times, and observe, and document that, and see if I can debunk my own claim. And obviously, in this scenario, it would get debunked right away, if I would make that effort, and that would make me drop that idea altogether very quickly.

And the funny thing is, even I could convince myself that I can levitate whenever I jump, if I would refuse to jump in any times in my life. If I wouldn't jump at all in my life, and I would make that claim to myself enough times, I could maybe even make myself believe, oh, I could levitate, it's just I don't want to levitate, because scientists would grab me, and then they would dissect me. And actually, that's a claim that was made to me by a cult member who tried to get me into a cult.

They believe that their leader is a reincarnation of Jesus, and he made the claim that the guy makes miracles. And I said, can you prove that to me? And he said, well, actually, he does not perform the miracles on record, because the scientists would then take him, and would dissect him. So actually, that's a legit claim that people make.

But now let's come back to questionable martial arts, and how that applies to you, or to us. So if you want to make a claim that Aikido works as a means of self-defense, you should try to debunk your claim as best as you can. That should be your responsibility, especially if you're highly convinced of it, and especially if you go around online, and you try to make that, and you make that claim to others, if you try to if you try to convince others that that's true, by just, you know, making statements.

If you doubt it, and you say, well, I think so, but I'm not sure, you know, you don't, it shouldn't, it's not necessarily, the responsibility to disprove yourself does not necessarily fall to you. But if you make that claim passionately, and you're completely sure that it's true, it should be your responsibility to debunk your own claim, to disprove yourself. Because if it's true, you won't succeed, no matter how hard you try.

If it's true, it's true. And the more you try to disprove it, and the more you're unsuccessful in disproving yourself, by really going the length, then the more legit it will be. The more people see, oh, okay, look, he did 10 experiments, or he tried to disprove that Aikido works as a self-defense system, and it still continues to work, holy crap, that means it really works.

And then, trust me, the questionability would go out of the window directly, it wouldn't stay there anymore, and people would start to respect whatever you say. But now the issue is that nobody does it. It's like that claim of levitation, there's a lot of claims, there's a lot of trying to convince other people in an intellectual way, but nobody goes the distance to disprove, to try to disprove themselves, or to prove themselves even.

But I think disproving, trying to disprove yourself is a better and more legit way to make it happen, if you're really sincere about it. And that's kind of what I did with Aikido versus MMA. I tried to disprove the claim that Aikido works in MMA, and I succeeded, and that was the end of it.

I never made a claim that Aikido works in MMA. I mean, I didn't used to do that before, but people used to make it to me. But I went the distance, I disproven it, and that was it.

Some people tell me that it's me, told me that it's me that failed, that it's not Aikido, that I was just a bad Aikido practitioner. Well, here's your chance. Try to disprove your claim.

Go to the octagon, take an MMA fighter, film yourself, because we all want to see that, try to disprove it. See if you can really hold on in an octagon, in an MMA cage, under the most difficult circumstances to begin with, and then keep decreasing the level and see where you will prove the claim. If you won't go the distance, what gives you the right to make that claim so strongly? That's where you should stop and question yourself really deeply.

That's kind of the other advice. What makes you believe that you are right? What makes you so convinced? What's the evidence that you're basing on? Because if you're truthful, if you're honest, and I've been there too, probably it's just stories and hearsays, and there's no real legitimate proof to back it up. If you want to make big claims about a martial art which is questionable, it should be your responsibility to try to disprove your own claim as best as you can, document it, and if you can do that, if you fail to disprove your claim by going the distance, people will start to respect it.

People will see that it's true. But if you're not up to that, if you're not doing that, then stop and question yourself. Consider, why are you not doing that? Maybe and probably you're lying to yourself.

You know deep down that it's not a legit claim. You have those doubts deep down in yourself, and you're afraid to face them, admit that those doubts you have are real, because as I started the article with, that will threaten your identity. But that's a lie.

You're living a lie, and the lie is not going to change no matter how much you try to convince yourself. So my last advice here is stop doing that. Face the truth.

Face your doubts. Try to disprove yourself, and if you succeed, soon enough you will realize the truth earlier than later. Because as I said, the lie is not going to change.

The more time you'll spend it, the more time you'll waste believing in a lie. So make the change now. Try to disprove yourself today, and trust me, you'll save time and energy.

And just a couple more advices is to give you advice on how you could disprove yourself. If you're saying that your martial art works, but it's for the streets, you know, it's too dangerous, and that you cannot test it with partners because you will hurt them, there's a way to try to disprove yourself. Put gear on your partner.

Self-defense courses do that all the time. You know, get some armor, headgear, you know, all that buffed up stuff, and make those people attack you, and see if you can deal with them, at least on a certain level. Then the other step is Aikido, a claim that Aikido makes often, is that it works against untrained fighters.

That's not so difficult to try to disprove. Grab a person, grab a friend who will sincerely attack you, who does not know any martial arts, and see, you know, what happens. Ask him to attack you randomly anytime in a random way.

Put on gear yourself, so you wouldn't get hurt if you're afraid that you'll get hurt, although if it works, you know, why are you afraid? But, you know, ask him to attack you in a random way, and see if suddenly your Aikido will kick in, because that's another claim which was told to me years ago, is that Aikido kicks in instinctively when somebody attacks you out of nowhere. You know, try that. Stand there with the other person, and ask him to attack you just suddenly out of nowhere in a random way, and see if your Aikido is going to work.