As much as I enjoy Mr Abanethy’s videos (and I do) he seems to be parroting the exact same nonsense that “traditional” martial artists have been saying since the 1990s and UFC 1, so in that way nothing has changed. It’s an exercise in the straw man argument:
He sets up the flase dichotomy between “sports” (or “modern”) and “traditional” martial artists, when in fact there is no easy distinction to make - the biggest ‘sport’ marital arts like Wrestling, Judo, BJJ, Boxing or Muay Thai are in fact older than many “traditional” marital arts like Aikido, Karate and Taekwondo - it’s these “traditional” martial arts that are in fact, “modern”. Sport fighting is ancient for a reason.
So, moving on from that he then sets up the straw man argument that “sports” martial artists can’t distinguish between techniques that work within a sporting context and those that would work on the “street” (which is another straw man concept)
His argument is one of context - that “the objective is key” - define the objective then work back to the most effective way of achieving that.(to paraphrase) He says: “it’s not a matter of what works or doesn’t work, but a matter of what’s relevant or irrelevant”.
I say (with respect to the man because I think he's great
) bullshit!
Some things work and some things would never work in a month of Sundays. Just admit it Mr Abernethy. Some of the kata applications he teaches I don’t think would “work” in real life.
The other thing is, I can spar BJJ with complete realization that I wouldn’t want to be turning upside down underneath my opponent in a real life confrontation. I have the mental ability to differentiate between those two things, as does everybody else. Musashi was wrong when he said “you can only fight the way you train”. We are not automatons, we are human beings.
The things is “sports” marital arts (which are often the real “traditional” martial arts) is that you get to spar with resistance, and doing all that sparring with resistance is what builds all the skills that actually translate to real life situations- dealing with aggression, dealing with non compliance, dealing with an attackers strategy, dealing with trickery, dealing with the adrenaline surge, having enough cardio not to pass out, getting used to being hit, being thrown and being submitted.
You can do 1 step, 2 step, ’you do this, I do that’ type applications all day while looking down on “sport” fighters who do stuff that follows rules… but look in the mirror. It’s the way you train that matters not what label you put on your marital art.
Sorry to everybody offended by this. But going on to what he says about guards - what he says there is actually pretty damn good.