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| From an Internet Exchange: Eis wrote: I think the distinction between martial art and martial sport is not so complicated. A martial sport trains primarily for matches with specific rules. Boxing, wrestling, sport judo, sport karate are martial sports. Martial arts train primarily for self-defense or combat, and though they may use sparring and randori for training, the goal is not to become proficient at the sparring or randori itself. One must recognize that the sparring and randori does not reflect the full scope of self-defense. ---------------------------------------- Actually, the distinction is both complex and ironic. Firstly, it is a matter of competing training methodologies. One, because of its purported lethality, engages in highly artificial and mostly dysfunctional training tools, which involve "pulling" techniques, artificially modifying the point of lethality and, finally, adding in a cautionary element of movement that, rather than training the body, inhibits its natural action. Sport, by removing the purported lethality, achieves the opposite, that is, sport more typically produces natural, fast movement in a reflexive mode of full-power application, achieving a result against an unwilling opponent who is likewise engaging in full power, strategic and tactical resistance using all of his psychological, physiological and experience resources. Each opponent is operating at his limit of physical, psychological, and physiological skill and pushing that limit continually into unrealized potential, thereby continually realizing and expanding that potential. If nothing else, the "combat" arts substitute intellectual perception, a highly subjective and deceptive tool, for genuine training of the body and mind. Martial "arts" don't train for self defense and combat because they can't train for self defense and combat; at least not without severe risk to training partners. So they have pretended to do so by adopting highly stylized ritualistic training methods, in some cases, or highly dysfunctional training methodologies, in other cases. Ironically, sport trains as combat people wish they could, but can't. This is why Judo tends to remain a remarkably effective self defense training tool, even after 118 years of everybody else's "combat" method. Kano [Founder of Judo, 1882] applied the sport methodology and found that it produced a better combat art. Taekwondo has very closely followed the sport training approach that Kano so very successfully utilized, and this is one reason why Taekwondo has become so successful and appreciated worldwide in the past thirty years. The debate on this training methodology has really been closed a long time, although each successive generation seems to feel a need to reargue the historical record. It perhaps should be remarked on as well, as to the idea that training for "self defense" or combat might suggest study of a "greater philosophy and way of life." Neither of these avowed practical goals inherently suggests anything of the sort. A training motivation based on either inordinate personal physical fear or for the idea of killing people has no rational or plausible inherent connection with the idea of "Do." We might more accurately argue to the contrary. Sport, on the other hand, has a long and well-defined tradition of social, political, physiological and societal goals entirely compatible with the idea of a profound way of life. Best -- Kim Sol, Head Coach, University of Montana
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