5 Martial Arts Myths You're Probably Believing

We live in a modern world where modern combat practices are on high attention. Such practices as MMA and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu are becoming more and more popular, yet there are still plenty of martial arts schools who are not up to modern standards. While oftentimes they are beautiful practices and great for self-development, they oftentimes promise something that they do not actually deliver, especially in the realm of fighting and real-life self-defense.

While the world is evolving, not all martial arts schools yet evolved with it. And thus, we have a number of myths, where believed by many to be true, still since the 70s and classical martial arts movies. To bring more clarity to the martial arts world, in this martial arts journey video we will look at 5 common myths, which are still believed and misunderstood by many martial arts fans and practitioners.

5. Training Katas will make you a good fighter

There is a commonly believed myth, still from the days of Karate Kid and other martial arts movies, that training katas will prepare you well for a real fight. Yet as traditional martial arts were exposed to more combat oriented practices, it became clear that unless you spar and train with a live resisting opponent, all your solo training of complicated and beautiful looking movements will be beneficial for other reasons, but will not prepare you for a real fight. We become good at what we train.

By training katas, we will become good at performing them, but if a person wants to be effective in a consensual fight, there is no other way to learn it, than to expose yourself to it, even if on coordinated circumstances.

4. If you are skillful enough, your physical shape does not matter

One of the earliest signs of a McDojo is an overweight, out of shape grandmaster, oftentimes of his own school or style. This lack of physical shape oftentimes comes from their belief that their techniques are so effective, that they do not need to rely on physical strength or conditioning.

Yet when martial arts were exposed to the modern world, it quickly became obvious that if you possess no physical strength or cardio, most techniques will not be effective, and the martial artist who is out of shape, will soon be in trouble.

 3. If you train diligently for many years in your martial art, you will become invincible

Movies are probably to be blamed here, yet there are still people who train in closed environments with cooperative partners and have the belief that their skills have reached or will reach a level, where untrained or even trained opponents would be of no match to them. This lack of pressure testing and exposure to reality of violence and fighting, presents no real challenge to the skills of the practitioners, stopping them from realizing that even an untrained attacker has power behind his weight and punches, and that a real fight looks far away from that of a coordinated movie fight or kata with a partner.

In the midst of chaos of a real fight, an experienced fighter knows that anything can happen at any moment and that there are no guarantees for safety.

 2. Some martial arts techniques are deadly, aka too deadly for the ring

Whether these oftentimes secret techniques are told to be deadly for self-defense, or whether they are too deadly for MMA, a number of traditional martial arts schools still believe that their school possesses knowledge of deadly techniques. Whether it's a hit with a fist to the chest, or some secret deadly pressure point, these schools oftentimes have an excuse of not being able to prove that it works, because a real demonstration would kill a person.

Unfortunately to them, if hitting pressure points would really be as effective as in movies, they would already have been used in MMA or applied by well respected self-defense systems. But as UFC proved straight away, the use of even not deadly secret techniques of martial arts schools went straight out of the window when they were faced with a more experienced combat sports practitioner with pressure tested skills. As these deadly masters soon realized, their secret techniques had no real application behind that of their fantasy.

 1. No touch techniques work

We all want to believe somewhere inside that magic is possible. This makes life more exciting and gives the belief that we can be more special than we think. Yet as it was proven more than once, as soon as a no-touch master is faced with a person who has no belief in it, all the no-touch magic goes out of the window.

Of course, the master always has an excuse, such as he had his tongue on the top of the mouth and that blocked my technique. But while this explanation does not make the no-touch technique more real, even if it did, what's the use of it if it doesn't work as soon as you raise your tongue?

While there are many more myths in martial arts that people still believe, these are the top 5 myths that I've gathered through my investigation and questioning of martial arts. What myths would you add to the list? Let me know in the comments.