Traditional Schools Hit Hard?

[grzegorz]

A friend of mine runs a karate school in a small town. He told me that he is going to stop teaching karate and just teach bjj. He said that kids these days have little or no interest in traditional styles that they just want to do bjj and mma. I've heard this from other sources that traditional schools have been hit hard trying to compete with mma school. Has anyone else noticed this?

[Chris McKinley]

The question is: has anyone not noticed it? In fact, it would be more noteworthy to mention a community where traditional martial arts school enrollment is as robust as ever and hasn't been affected by modern sport combat.

[everything]

when you say "kids" how old are these kids? the traditional schools teaching primarily TKD seem full with kids.

my judo school has added a guy teaching muay thai. however, in the reverse direction, my bjj school seems to be planning to drop the muay thai. people in it just enjoy learning gi jiu jitsu primarily as a hobby and some time sport, not too mma or "street" or "combat" focused.

[grzegorz]

when you say "kids" how old are these kids? the traditional schools teaching primarily TKD seem full with kids.

my judo school has added a guy teaching muay thai. however, in the reverse direction, my bjj school seems to be planning to drop the muay thai. people in it just enjoy learning gi jiu jitsu primarily as a hobby and some time sport, not too mma or "street" or "combat" focused.

I think he's using kids in the American meaning young people in general.

[grzegorz]

The question is: has anyone not noticed it? In fact, it would be more noteworthy to mention a community where traditional martial arts school enrollment is as robust as ever and hasn't been affected by modern sport combat.

Of courses, my question is have people seen schools actually closing down over it because that's what has surprised me.

[Chris McKinley]

Plenty of them, and that's just here locally. I'm not quite understanding why this is so surprising. How many years, or generations, more do you think traditional schools would be allowed to flourish without having to demonstrate their effectiveness in meeting the purpose for which they advertise themselves? This grace period would be all the more shortened, I would think, in the presence of a training method which readily and regularly demonstrates its validity at every level, from the most elite practitioner on down to the most average neighborhood student of only a few months experience.

[grzegorz]

Plenty of them, and that's just here locally. I'm not quite understanding why this is so surprising. How many years, or generations, more do you think traditional schools would be allowed to flourish without having to demonstrate their effectiveness in meeting the purpose for which they advertise themselves? This grace period would be all the more shortened, I would think, in the presence of a training method which readily and regularly demonstrates its validity at every level, from the most elite practitioner on down to the most average neighborhood student of only a few months experience.

I just figured in a small town a Karate school could still survive.

After all boxing has been around forever and it never stopped the flood of Asian martial arts that has spread to the west and in my mind boxing is probably the best martial art anyone can learn because that is usually what decides "most" street fights.

Btw, I didn't say it was "so" surprising I just figured mma and tma would survive side by side. Then again I did leave the country for 5 years so yes I did miss a few things. The 5 years I wasn't here and the 5 years I was away, so essentially I missed a decade.

[Chris McKinley]

Your logic here about boxing doesn't really make sense. Boxing has been around forever because it has never stopped proving its value. There has never yet been a generation of boxers who hasn't used the skill to actually fight. TMA schools have been on borrowed time for about the last 15 years now. There's no reason to believe that, in competition for a limited market share, the method that doesn't prove itself regularly would exist for very long alongside the method that does. Eventually, people will want to spend their hard-earned money on the one that proves it actually works.

[grzegorz]

Your logic here about boxing doesn't really make sense. Boxing has been around forever because it has never stopped proving its value. There has never yet been a generation of boxers who hasn't used the skill to actually fight. TMA schools have been on borrowed time for about the last 15 years now. There's no reason to believe that, in competition for a limited market share, the method that doesn't prove itself regularly would exist for very long alongside the method that does. Eventually, people will want to spend their hard-earned money on the one that proves it actually works.

15 years Chris?

How old are you?

[Chris McKinley]

40, why?

[grzegorz]

40, why?

Because TMA has been in the States for a lot longer than that. But I get your point UFC started back in 90 etc...

Also I don't think boxing has survived simply because it's effective. When I've trained in with pro boxers they just loved boxing most didn't really have the concerns that people who want to learn self-defense have and if they did they'd probably being doing Muay Thai anyway.

But perhaps you're right perhaps it simply comes down the fact that the secret it out. As someone who trains in BJJ though I don't really think MMA addresses everything for those concerned about self-defense, which is why I'm surprised. As much as I love grappling for me it is a game and it's the game that I love, but I doubt I'd ever use BJJ on the streets.

Because I don't look for fights, I don't get into situations where people would want to fight me and I don't go to places where I'm likely to get into a fight. It's not hard to avoid fights but one should be ready and on top of that most street I've seen didn't go the ground until it was already over. Of course it happens but I hardly see that as a reason why TMAs would disappear.

To be honest I think the disappearance of TMAs to BJJ is as silly as people saying Machida represents TMAs. I don't think the problem is TMAs the problem is when people spar with too many rules. There are a lot of guys in MMA who do TMAs. Fedor does Judo, Machida Karate, GSP Karate, Karo Judo, etc...but they also cross-train.

[Chris McKinley]

RE: "Because TMA has been in the States for a lot longer than that.". No kidding. I'm wondering if there might not be a miscommunication here due to some language difficulty. You see, when I stated that TMA has been on borrowed time for the last 15 years, it implies that they've been around longer than that, perhaps much longer, which is of course the case.

RE: "Also I don't think boxing has survived simply because it's effective.". It's been effective at showing itself to be a fairly realistic method of fighting. It has done that within the medium of sport combat. No one doubts the effectiveness of boxing's punches to cause real fight-ending damage in an actual fight. Because of this, it has been a very popular spectator sport, which is the primary reason it's still around and still so successful.

RE: "As someone who trains in BJJ though I don't really think MMA addresses everything for those concerned about self-defense, which is why I'm surprised.". No, it doesn't, as I've addressed in great detail in many previous threads. However, as relates to real self-defense, the problem is often many times greater in TMA. BJJ at least bothers to demonstrate its effectiveness, whereas most TMA these days do not, at least to the same degree nor with a similarly large representative sample. The surprise ought to come at finding that there even are still people looking to TMA for their self-defense needs.

RE: "To be honest I think the disappearance of TMAs to BJJ is as silly as people saying Machida represents TMAs.". I would find both of those statements silly.

[JusticeZero]

Well, one of the other issues is that increasingly, "martial arts" is "something that kids do". It used to be that martial arts classes were generally adults, now they all seem packaged for and dominated by children.

[Juan]

I was at the Long Beach Internationals this past weekend. There they had forms competition, point sparring, continuous sparring, grappling, and for the more daring kickboxing and MMA (pankreation style). Let me tell you, there ware hundreds of people competing there, the minority of which were in the MMA and kickboxing divisions. There were tons of people doing forms and point sparring. So to answer the original question, I would say that TMA schools are still doing well. However, I can see were MMA is getting more interest.

Also, I was super impressed by the karate guys who competed in the American Kickboxing divisions. If more karate guys would go out and compete in these style of competitions people will start to take notice, because besides what other people say, Karate guys CAN fight. I saw it this weekend. And Machida is proving it in an even bigger stage. They just need to do away with the gay point sparring competitions that really have no point at all.

[grzegorz]

RE: "Because TMA has been in the States for a lot longer than that.". No kidding. I'm wondering if there might not be a miscommunication here due to some language difficulty. You see, when I stated that TMA has been on borrowed time for the last 15 years, it implies that they've been around longer than that, perhaps much longer, which is of course the case.

Language difficulty huh?

Nice try, I happen to be an English teacher bro.

If you want to have a debate about English grammar then let's do it.

Explain to me the difference between the 2nd and 3rd conditionals, the proper tenses used and how you'd explain this to a foreigner with limited English. You have 10 minutes.

If that's too hard then you can explain the difference between the American and British use of the Present Perfect. That should be easy for you.

Now get off my thread!