"If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete."
- Jack Welch
In my opinion, FormosaNeijia is the best martial arts blog out there. The author over there has done all kinds of stuff in the Chinese internal world, and probably lots of reality/competitive/external stuff in years past. Currently he's very big on physical conditioning and reality/athletic martial arts, for example, judo. He likes to emphasize that hard physical training and lots of resistance grappling and sparring are the sine qua non of genuine martial arts progress. So basically for all intents and purposes he's become an MMA advocate.
And who could blame him? Given that MMA can use traditional arts as toilet paper every single fricking time.
But for some reason, that isn't my interest at all. Even though I have done plenty of honest, hard, sweaty, bloody, gritty training in my time, wrestling, boxing, san da / san shoubefore anybody in the USA even knew those Chinese words, tons of edged weapon training (attack and defend), not to mention the really weirdo stuff, like Systema underwater drown training or mass attack work and whatever else. As a result though for sure I am no Rambo, however, I have just enough background to be basically somewhat dangerous, in a cutesy kind of way, maybe like a cornered, rabid squirrel in your living room. You aren't afraid of it exactly, but you don't especially want to have to deal with it either. That's how you should feel about me *smile* (But come to think of it, that's how you should feel about anydamn body, given that, even if your rolling armbar or flying scissor takedown is absolutely sans pareil, some HIV positive asshole could still spit on you in the fray ...)
But if not that then what doI like, training-wise? It isn't exactly that I dislike dirt and sweat and blood and grit. It's just that I have bigger fish to fry. It was all triggered back in my impressionable youth when at the age of 13 or so I got into Zheng Manqing style Tai Chi. To me, he embodied (and still does in my fantasies) the entire point of martial arts in the first place - namely when somebody outwardly, ostensibly, who is weaker/smaller/older or at whatever superficial disadvantage totally cleans the floor with a (physically) much larger/tougher/stronger opponent(s). It made sense to me because I'm not especially large, heavy, or strong. I was seeking something that promised to transcend rather than reinforce all the usual bullshit human variables: size, muscle, mass, speed, gender, killer attitude, and so on.
Alas it was not to be. Since then I have learned (through a bunch of brutal encounters too tedious to detail) that there are no actual sporting type faceoffs in the real world (or, at least you better make damn sure there aren't), and none of it matters anyway in the face of napalm and Daisy Cutters or even the occasional Buick, still I got this idea imprinted on me of how cool would it be, to show that gentleness can prevail over the ugly brutality of this world. I kind of felt that, if not practically at least symbolically, an attainment like Prof Zheng's was a living illustration of the otherwise comical (literally!) sentiments of the Silver Surfer (also popular at that time), as below:
From cradle to grave –
Your lives are rooted in senseless violence!
Since power is your god –
I’ll show you power –
Such as you have never known!!
If ever they are to come of age –
They must be taught to reason!
They must be shown that force can never be the answer!
AHAHAHAHA!! Total and absolute bullshit of course. There is only one rule in this predatory Earth Plane Time/Space Illusion: MIGHT MAKES RIGHT.
MIGHT is defined as machines guns and so on. So I know perfectly well that the spirit expressed in the Dao De Jing below is total nonsense:
Nothing in the world is softer than water,
Yet nothing is better at overcoming the hard and strong.
This is because nothing can alter it.
That the soft overcomes the hard
And the gentle overcomes the aggressive
Is something that everybody knows
But none can do themselves.
Yet... yet... yet. I can't help myself. That's my only real interest in martial arts (although I do other stuff now and again strictly for the hell of it). My only real interest in martial arts is what Prof Zheng seemedto embody. That's why even though I totally buy the logic of it, sermons about the great importance of physical kickass resistance training against seriously resisting opponents and athletic conditioning and BJJ and how all the really great internal people are now into grappling and all the rest - its all just noise to me. Pearls strewn before a swine!
Because if it can't be done Prof Zheng's way, if that's just puerile fantasy not only in practice (obviously!) but in principle as well, then I'm outta here. Completely out of the game. I just don't care enough to switch sides, give up on the Tao and say fuck it teach me to be a martial athlete.
As for practical utility, preparing for an actual attack on yourself or your loved ones, well that is a matter best left to your own heart and soul. I'm the last to attempt any advice in that domain.
So I am left behind with my Tai Chi bunny fantasy. But I don't care. The great Meiji era swordsman Yamaoka Tesshu stated that even if nobody in the world was left practicing zazen, he'd keep on just the same (Shinto was making a big comeback in Japan at the time, and Western influences were also seriously encroaching).
But don't take this post seriously. This is just my own personal psychpathology. Do as your conscience bids. If it should ever happen, and this day may never come, that you are strangled to death by somebody mounting you with a rear naked choke, don't come around crying and expect me to pay the undertaker.
