An interesting evolution of the term “fraud” has entered the martial arts lexicon. I don’t know when the new definition first became common, but I’ve encountered it twice in recent memory. That redefinition defines as morally and functionally equivalent those who lie about their martial arts credentials and those whose martial arts simply don’t pass functional muster.
To put it another way, let’s say we have two martial artists. The first is the “Soke” or “Hanshi” of a made-up ninjutsu style with a fictional history. Soke Grandmaster Bob Smith claims he has been in over three hundred street fights, that he secretly worked for the CIA, and that the only reason he is not on the cover of Black Belt magazine is because his many jealous enemies have conspired to push him out of the industry. Soke Grandmaster Smith regularly posts lengthy screeds about that conspiracy on his free Internet blog.
The second martial artist is a multiple-dan black belt in Aikido. Let’s call him Sensei Jones. He has spent part of his life living in Japan, speaks fluent Japanese, and is well regarded among his fellow Aikidoka. He travels the country getting paid to teach seminars in Aikido and otherwise lives quietly. He is not famous and does not aspire to be, but most people in his state who study Aikido have heard of him.
Both men get into separate arguments on Facebook with separate MMA exponents. Sensei Jones, eager to defend the honor of his system, accepts a match with BJJ blue belt Douchebag McBragshard. Soke Grandmaster Smith accepts a backyard Kimbo Slice -style grudge match with a self-styled street fighter who has knocked out five opponents on YouTube.
Both Sensei Jones and Soke Grandmaster Smith get their asses kicked in their respective matches. Are they both frauds?
Adherents to the “new” definition of what the word fraud means would say, yes. The only problem is, that’s completely untrue. The reason it’s not true is that the term fraud implies — connotes, if not denotes — wrongful or criminal deception undertaken with the intent of personal or financial gain. Stated another way, a fraud is lying to you and knows that he is lying to you.
Clearly, there is a difference in tenor and character between the two men. Sensei Jones is a man of good character. At worst, his crime is having devoted his life to the study of a martial art that isn’t combat-effective. Soke Grandmaster Smith, on the other hand, is actively dishonest. He seeks to make himself more than he is, he knows that he is trying to deceive others, and he has no problem cheating his way into a position of power and prestige. Only an idiot would see the two men as morally equivalent. Yet in the world of martial arts and combat sports, idiots abound.
When we apply the term “fraud” to all those who do martial arts of which we do not, ourselves, approve, we do every adherent of martial arts and combat sports a disservice. Stated differently, you don’t get to call someone a liar simply because they have honestly reached a conclusion you don’t like. Yes, you may well be right; Aikido, or the Bujinkan, or Wing Chun, or strip mall Tae Kwon Do, or your ten-year-old’s Karate class, might not impart training that actually can be used to win a fight at full force and speed with aggressive resistance. But the majority of people teaching those systems aren’t teaching them knowing them to be flawed or inadequate. They are at worst misguided — and at best naive.
Martial artists and fighters who proclaim all ineffective martial arts fraudulent — or as fraudulent as made-up and deceptive systems — come in two varieties. Some are motivated by the genuine desire to see their fellow human beings training only in “what works” as they see it. They are frustrated by their fellow citizens’ insistence on not agreeing with them. They don’t understand how anyone, given the same information, might decide differently. Others who sneer at all martial arts they dislike as useless and therefore fraudulent are interested only in aggrandizing themselves. The result, though, is the same: It conflates being wrong with being false — and it equates being foolish with being fake.
If another man practices or teaches a martial art you consider useless, and if he insists on committing the deep and abiding sin of failing to agree with you, you may consider him misguided. You may consider him stupid. You may consider him delusional. You would be within your rights to say so. But if you confuse all these qualities with deliberate lying, if you see no difference between lying to yourself and lying to everyone else, you are the one guilty of fraud. You are lying about another human being by imputing to him malicious intent he does not possess.
It’s very comforting to tell ourselves that everyone who disagrees with us must necessarily be a liar. After all, it could not possibly be the case that we are incorrect… could it? It would never be so that a man could have all the information we also possess, yet reach a different conclusion… could he?
If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that our fellow humans can and do disagree with us in earnest. Just because a man studies a system you don’t like, just because he believes techniques will work that you do not, does not make him a fraud. His errors, his false reasoning, his delusions may make him wrong… but they do not make you right.
We must therefore insist on applying the term “fraud” only to those who are actually lying. Fraud is deceit. It is not merely being incorrect. If we allow the two concepts to become equivalent, we unfairly malign countless people whose only real crime is that they dared to believe something we do not.
lets be honest here, the world of martial arts is full of bullshit. Most of it seems to stem from the USA. 40 plus years as a student/Instructor qualifies me to say this.
Seems like common-sense to me. The problem is not that arts like aikido and Japanese jujutsu (which I’ve had the misfortune of training in for 10+ years: the first time sparring in boxing I got my ass handed to me like a total newbie) do not constitute good self-defense. The problem is that a lot if not most instructors in said arts at least in passing mention self-defense as a reason to study these arts. That claim constitutes intellectual fraud to me: presenting something as the truth when it’s clearl anything but. Almost no sensei in aikido or jujutsu will tell you that what he teaches is not really all that suitable to real life violence: isn’t that lying by omission?
I remember when I studied under a then 8th dan in jujutsu: I’m sure he’d be more than competent against the untrained but he’d get his butt kicked by any competent boxer, kickboxer, wrestler… Yet he felt qualified to teach people self-defense, strutting around like a peacock and regaling us with his endless stories (no doubt mostly made up) and fight ‘wisdom’. Trying to put a joint lock on someone when the’re trying to punch you lights out is next to impossible unless you’re also very competent at striking and use it as an alternative to beating the snot out of him. The only way to reliably achieve a submission is take him to the ground, pin him and then lock or choke him. Which of course is potentially highly dangerous on the street.
The worst is that my old dojo has been taken over by a guy with a credible background in fighting who in essence changed nothing. He’s an ex army officer and a proficient savateur (fought full contact with great succes) so he knows striking very well. Yet now he teaches the same old bullcrap that was taught to him by this clueless old man without even mixing it with savate… Obviously I’ll never say this guy can’t defend himself because he bloody well can (chances are not with jujutsu) but I’m equally sure his students (even the higher ones: brown belt and up) would get beaten to a bloody pulp when going up against someone with street experience or even a boxer with 6 months training. That’s how bad that style really is. It might have worked great against men in armour in the past but in my view it’s highly unsuitable to today’s violence and crime.
I’ll not say such styles can never work or have never worked (for a select few with such a high level of acquired skill or natural ability they may be perfect) but on the whole for the average person they are a disaster. I still cringe at the memory of women at the dojo where I trained practicing wrist locks diligently in the firm expectation of them being useful against a man who’d actually want to hurt them. For these women they’d be better off either studying a valid self-defense system (or even a proper sports system like thaiboxing although that is hardly ideal for their needs) or doing nothing and save their time, money and effort.
In this article the (fictious) idiot claiming to be a soke and a streetfighter is one extreme of the spectrum. How about people teaching self-defense when they are knowledgeable and certified in a certain system but have no experience whatsoever in actual fighting? Shouldn’t those people also be considered frauds?
By that definition (succes in street fighting, bouncing, policing, sports fighting or military close-combat) how many teachers could be considered ‘the real deal’?.
I love martial arts and self-protection but given that I’ve only had a few fights (none of them truly serious) and some judo competition I’ve decided I shouldn’t teach anyone since I don’t know what real violence feels like (mentally and physically). Even if I’m competent in sparring empty handed and with weapons how in the world can I consider myself an ‘expert’? I don’t even know how I’ll hold up under a real threat.
Even though it’s hard to swallow for experienced martial artists there’s much truth in the saying that teaching people how to fight when you haven’t done it yourself is like teaching sex-ed when you’re a virgin. All you can teach is hearsay and theory, credible at best.
I would say that instead of “fraud” those with legitimate credentials who practice or teach styles that might be ineffective in actual combat and/or have little to no experience in “live testing” against resisting opponents or actual attackers are more like the blind leading the blind.
To put my own style as an example, Tang Soo Do, I would like to think it is an effective style – but I have never tested it against live opponents or aggressors, so I can only say it’s an interesting hobby. There are elements in TSD that are effective (such as decking someone in the face), but then I’d have to consider that unless you train your punches against someone trying to punch you back then it remains nothing more than an interesting hobby.
So TSD, perhaps like many other TMA styles, must modernize with the times. Our roots go back to old battlefield arts such as subahk, but because we focus on staying with tradition – the battlefield has evolved but we have not. We train primarily striking and some weapon disciplines through hyung (forms), and (at least at my current brown belt level) sparring is done point-style with protective gear. This is a far cry from altercations that might actually occur in the field where everything is randomized: your opponent, the presence of absence of weapons, the terrain, the weather, the number of opponents, etc.
I could go on, but I’d just be repeating points I’ve already made. If surviving TMA schools want to survive in this day and age, they must reflect the needs of the time – or at least be realistic about what they have to offer. Some old styles have merit, like Judo, and some not so much. They were created to fit a specific need in their time. Sensei Jones in the article above, I trust, is a good aikidoka – but to honestly think that he could go toe to toe with a modern hybrid fighter and win is at least deceiving himself. I don’t entirely think Aikido is bunk, but a good chunk of it seems redundant these days. Wrist locks are a staple of the curriculum, as they are in BJJ. Perhaps the major note is that BJJ teaches you how to get to the wrist lock, while Aikido (in the few months I visited a dojo) just assumed you were already in position for one. TSD also just kind of assumes you’re in position for certain techniques, but never touches on how to get into those positions.
This could be a lack of realism, or just oversight by our current generation. I have hope that with time these issues will be addressed.
While it is true that fraud (being a legal term) might be too much to describe these folks, that is still a far cry from saying “I’m putting this down because I just don’t agree with it.”
Example, you teach a striking art but you do not do (or do very little) any sort of impact training (working bags, focus mitts, live training that atleast attempts to mimic how real people move). The teacher of this art may be quite good at it, but if he markets it as effective or as a means of self defense he is atleast committing malpractice. He is teaching something to someone and marketing it in a way that cannot be squared with reality. you cannot claim to teach a striking art that leaves out the fundamental part of striking (hitting real stuff).
By this metric, I would say most instructors engage in malpractice, and I’m inclined to think many people would agree.