Of course not.

And I knew it. See, he is a dabbler, and while you may find some dabblers who do engage in fighting, most dabblers, if they do anything, just train. They rarely have a strong core of training partners because they don’t belong to any community of martial artists. And what’s worse than not having a community to pull training partners from, he has no master. That’s right. He is a patient with a fool for a doctor. A client with a fool for an attorney. A student trying to “create his own path, just like Bruce.”

That really irritates me when people call him “Bruce” as if they know him.

But I digress.

We talked about his vast background, his long trail of impractical and incomplete martial arts styles, and his many masters whom he only learned a little bit of shit from (my words), and how he is combining the best of the systems to create his own fighting style. And right now, he is only skimming the surface of Bruce Lee’s art. Let that one sink in…

Okay for those of you who are a little slow: This guy took Bruce Lee’s philosophy of create your own style by taking a little of this and a little of that (btw, that is NOT what Bruce Lee did)–which he considers to be the best of the fighting systems–and not only will he not commit to fully learning any martial arts style, this stupid young man won’t even fully learn the art Bruce Lee created! In other words, this guy thinks he knows better. He knows better than every master of every art that he’s ever studied. Better than Bruce Lee Himself. I am not one to mince words, but this young man doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.

I am not an enemy of innovation. The greatest of every field you could think of were all innovators. Bruce Lee was an innovator. But here’s the difference:  Bruce Lee was not a novice at a whole bunch of stuff. Those who think they know better will one day get old to become either self-proclaimed masters or they will become nobodies in the art who still can’t fight. And here, we arrive to my original point:  This self-guided (not self-taught, he has teachers, it’s just that he leaves before he learns anything) young man doesn’t fight because he doesn’t stay in anything long enough to get the skill or confidence to last in a fight with well-trained fighters.

That’s not to say that you can’t do it. I’m just saying you have to have a foundation in something to build on while you “create your own path”. So you learn a little bit of boxing, a little Kenpo, a little Jujitsu, a little Muay Thai, a little Eskrima… so basically that means you suck at 5 different arts. Plenty of martial artists do this. It is my main issue with teachers who “dabble” in arts, get certified (which means nothing when we’re talking about proficiency) and then teach side classes. However, a guy who takes the art seriously, doesn’t get any particular advanced ranking, but trains like an animal and logs plenty of sparring rounds with superior opponents can “create his own path”. Creating one’s own path is a valid martial arts philosophy, but it is not for the dabbler, it is not for the know-it-all, and not for the guy who refuses to accept advice and learning.

The one creating his own path must have an open mind to learn whatever he can, but he must equally be willing to test his theories and accept feedback from those with more wisdom than himself. For a beginner to read Bruce Lee’s story, or watch MMA on TV and hear the rhetoric about being “well-rounded”–and then go forth to recreate what those experts have done, is foolish. Those men put a lifetime of research, training and testing together and some 25 year old who only watches real fighters duke it out  on TV will never be able to duplicate this in TWO lifetimes. The blind leading the blind only find themselves lost. All men who were innovators began with a guide or mentor.

And almost all experts fine-tuned their craft by doing their craft hundreds of times more than his peers. Doing a little of this and a little of that will get you nowhere.

Or you could just do what this young man does, and lecture non-martial artists. Let me say this. Anytime you form a strong opinion or revolutionary theory about a subject, and you express this opinion around your peers (or around REAL experts), be prepared to be challenged on those theories and be capable or proving it. No man unwilling to put his art to the test, aka fight, should be creating his own path. Leave that to the dedicated.

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I love that.

See, when the martial artist is properly trained, he cannot fully do his martial arts because of a sincerely concerned for his opponents. There is a joke in the arts, that when a martial artist is unskilled, he avoids sparring because he doesn’t want to maim or kill his opponent. Yet for some, this is a real concern. It’s sort of like when you spar with kids, how you play around and tone down what you are capable of doing 90% because you don’t want to hurt him. When the skilled martial artist is sparring even with other Black belts, he must hold back because of safety. It’s not in your mind; this is a reality that some martial artists must live with when he is of the highest caliber.

To illustrate, take a look at the following video:

Had this been any other man being interviewed, the dynamic between interviewer and expert would be completely different. Size is irrelevant; I am speaking solely of the differences between their skill levels and ability. Even if the interviewer wanted a match with Iron Mike, he could never oblige or fight him as if he were an opponent.

Here is my point. I have seen some martial artists who fight with novices and people on the street, and defeat them easily. These men are not of the caliber I am speaking of. Although they may dominate their opponents, they are of the lowest level of “experts” because of the quality of opponents they choose to accept. Can you imagine Mike Tyson accepting a fist fight from a random drunk in a bar? How stupid is that? In fact, Tyson has more to lose by fighting such a man, as it will ruin more than his reputation–he could be sued or have to carry the guilt of killing a man over something insignificant. The martial artists of the highest order does not accept such fights because they are beneath him, and for him to beat an unqualified opponent is a waste of energy and time. This is why any Black Belter who comes into my school and asks for a match with my students is automatically treated as a beginner, because he is either mentally or physically inferior to me or the instructors under me. The Black Belt who sees beginners as possible opponents either has poor skills or he lacks the maturity to match his ability.

The martial arts expert of today, however, is often not cut of this cloth anyway. He is rarely skilled and knowledgeable enough to have the need to warn others of his skill. He often lacks the confidence a man of his level should possess. I blame this is on the impatience many teachers have in promoting new Black Belters and certifying “experts”. Most so-called instructors have spent less than 5 years studying their arts and have neither the strength nor the experience to dominate his peers. He boasts of multiple fields of expertise, and often is not much better skilled than most of his advanced students. He has never had the pleasure of being proven the top fighter in his community. So many others carry the same rank he has, that the title “expert” or Black Belt, in his case, is meaningless. In some styles, grown men have the same certificates from their masters as 12 year old boys–yet they want to be respected as equal to the real experts.

The first thing a martial artist must do is to train his skills to its limit. I have a suggestion on how to accomplish this:

• pick 10 techniques and 10 attack or counter combinations
• train those 10 items 100 repetitions per training session
• give yourself 100 training sessions to develop basic ability in those 20 items
• at the end of the 100th session, change to another 20 items
• do this with everything in your arsenal

I consider this to be necessary for one to be considered an intermediate in the art. When you’re ready, get with me and I’ll give you my ideas on the advanced and expert level.

But wait! Mustafa, didn’t you say “train to your ability’s limits”?

Yes, I did. But I am positive no one reading this blog has ever done this first step, and you damn sure can’t expect to start at the top, do you? LOL. Yes, you DO…. And that’s the problem, my martial arts brothers. You’re in too much of a rush to call yourselves Black Belts and experts, but you haven’t achieved the skill level of an expert yet. I know some of you personally, and I have seen you bypass learning the hard way and opting to take easy classes from seminar trained experts or just taking seminars yourself. What I want you to do, is give yourself 100 workouts to improving your skill level to a point that 99% of your peers will never arrive to. 100 workouts. Train every day, and you will be there in a little over three months. Do it 4 days a week and get there in about 7 months. You were in a huge rush to strap on the title “Instructor”, so how much of a rush will you be in to have the skill to accompany that title?

And I haven’t even touched on the fact that you purport to be an expert on fighting, but remind me again of how many fights you’ve actually had?

Yeah, exactly. So, when some guy asks you for a match or a demonstration of your martial arts ability–and you warn him that he might get hurt, you don’t really mean that, do you?

But you know how dangerous you really are, don’t you? Take 100 workouts, and call me when you’re done. Thanks for visiting my blog.

“I remembered you as a serious martial artist, but then everyone said you got so much into sport fighting. I’m glad you returned to  the traditional arts…”

As if one couldn’t be a traditional fighter and still fight in the ring.

I agree, that many teachers go so deep into the tournament style of fighting they lose focus on real combat, but my question is, what is REAL combat? What are ”traditional” martial arts? Martial arts without rules? Question, have you ever fought someone without rules? I seriously doubt many readers here have ever fought without rules. That would be a life-or-death fight. Even those masters you love to tell stories about had some type of rules in those “death matches”. If any Eskrimada master told you he fought a real death match, I’d say that master lied to you. The Philippines was not the Old West, devoid of law and order. I know it sells books and videos, but it simply isn’t true.

Here is my point, all fighters need some type of fighting experience. the more fighting experience they get while learning and developing the art, the better prepared and more knowledgeable they will be in order to teach someone else to fight. None of us who teach Eskrima have ever really killed someone with our sticks and knives. I’ve met quite a few Eskrimadors who claim to have had real live experience with their weapons, and I have yet to meet a man who makes this claim who will fight a match with me. Yes, we all spar with our weapons, but no halfway intelligent martial artist will be stupid enough to engage in the criminal act of pulling out a real blade and testing his skill via mutual combat with another Eskrimador. I am not referring to a real self-defense situation–I have done this myself. But all matches–with my students, with another teacher, with challenges I have accepted or issued–all had rules. I won’t disrespect you by asking to be so stupid to believe that I have done anything more.

In order for the martial artist to properly learn the art he has been taught, he must have the experience of using this skills with another combatant. Not a partner. Not a classmate. An opponent. It’s the only way he will be able to fully understand his martial art. And ring fighting is the safest way to find a multitude of opponents and gain a lifetime of experience. Once a fighter has had so many fights that he cannot remember how many opponents he has had, he cannot remember how many wins versus losses he experienced, he has had more matches with no winner/loser declared than he can remember–he has had “enough”. When a martial artist is engaging in refereed matches with rules, he is doing what is traditional in the martial arts: He is finding opponents to test his art on, and is discovering all those fine points that his teacher could never teach him, and he would never discover on his own. No master has arrived to the true level of mastery without it. One could spend a lifetime teaching and innovating to his imagination’s limits, but without these ever-so-important matches, he is no Master of fighting.

I would like to share with you the basic differences between training for the ring and training for the street. They are vastly different, and so I consider them distinct, but equally important, stages of development in the martial arts student’s education.

1. When training for the ring, stamina is extremely important. We want to be prepared for a lengthy, multi-round fight. When training for the street, stamina is important as well–but a different type of stamina. We are not preparing for a long fight, however, you will train to exert yourself 100% of speed, power and intensity for the duration of your altercation.
2. For the ring, you will focus a lot of calisthenics on the midsection, in order to take the body punch and kicks to the body. On the street, you are unlikely to be hit in the body (although it is a good idea to use body shots. You will likely destroy an opponent without risking killing your opponent by hitting him in the head). Street fighters must perform a lot of pushups and dips, to develop punching muscles.
3. Street fighters focus on power, point and full contact fighters focus on speed and timing. Speed and timing are good for the street as well, but in the ring they are extra vital. You must be able to out point your opponent in the event you cannot knock him out.
4. Ring fighters fight from a further distance than streetfighters. Most likely when fighting for self defense, your opponent is not experienced and will not utilize position, distance and faking. In the ring, the fight is more of a chess match. Footwork is more relevant in the ring because you have the advantage of the clock.
5. Streetfighters must learn to improvise with using walls, tables and objects to their advantage. Ring fighters enter with only themselves. The most a fighter may use for his advantage are the ropes of a ring (if he fights in a ring)
6. Streetfighters must be aware of additional opponents and hidden weapons (self explanatory). Ring fighters do not.
7. Streetfighters should work on attack combinations of 4 or more strikes, and be able to utilize them to end their fights. The ring fighter must fight in short bursts, between 2 and 5 strikes and kicks.
8. Ring fighters spend at least 50% of their time on defense. Streetfighter training should be attack-oriented. (This is the #1 reason I say that Modern Eskrima is out of touch with reality for Street Self Defense!)

If I keep going, I will reveal the secret of Mustafa Gatdula’s FMA. Take this information and absorb it. And don’t shy away from the ring. You will benefit greatly if you learn it’s lessons.  If you like this article (or if you *don’t* like it), please share! And you may also enjoy my books as well. Take a look at my “Offerings” page for more information! Thanks for visiting my blog.

Both martial arts students and teachers all seem to think that martial arts education imparts wisdom. The teacher is many things to his student, when in fact, he may not be qualified to play some of those roles. The martial arts teacher may be in the arts for several decades and the only expertise he has is in the technical side of the martial arts. Martial arts knowledge does not bequeath fighting skill, fighting skill does not lead to teaching skill, teaching skill does not lead to wisdom. Teachers and Masters must know their place, and be disciplined and humble enough to stay in that place.

I have two good friends, one Chinese and the other African American, who had been friends since the 1970s. In the mid 80s, the Chinese friend encouraged a group of his students not to leave for college, and instead remain in town to complete their martial arts education. My African American friend was terribly offended by this and voiced his opinion. His complaints:

1. YOU aren’t making a good living at this, why would you lead these young men away from the path where they would make a living?
2. They won’t be accepted as a teacher like you; they are Black. What future would they have doing what you do, in a Chinese-dominated industry?
3. How dare you convince young men from pursuing an education when they fought so hard to get college acceptance letters? They already have two strikes against them: they are poor and they are Black. Now a third, they’ll be uneducated.

Twenty years later, both my friends still teach, they are actually prospering. But the young men? There were four. Only one is teaching and doing well. Fortunately, he used his winnings from competition and teaching, and completed his education. He is a master chef with a good job with Hilton, and has income to open a nice school in a downtown area with wealthy clients. The other three? One drives a cab. One drives a truck. I hadn’t heard about the fourth. None of those three are involved with the arts.

I agree with my African American friend, but for a different reason. First, the martial arts is a difficult business. However, there is good money to be made in the arts. I just don’t measure success in terms of financial rewards. Secondly, social acceptance in the art, being amiable or popular have NO bearing on one’s ability to make a living. Take me, for example. I am disliked greatly in the FMA world. I don’t have many FMA people I do like. I am seen as a troll by some, jealous by a few, and unqualified by others. But none of those things hurts me or my reputation as a fighter or teacher. In the Chinese martial arts community, I am seen as a senior teacher and I’m not Chinese. One thing I have that many don’t have is skill. It goes a long way in the martial arts community. College education? Irrelevant.

I know the four young men, and none were exceptionally talented. And that is why I thought it was a bad idea to talk them out of a formal education. A martial arts education, in my opinion, is just as valid, however. These young men were decent as martial artists. They just weren’t die-hard expert material. They had to think about what they wanted to do. The path to instructorship in the martial arts is not a decision or a career goal; it is a calling. If you have to be convinced, it simply isn’t for you.

My point of all of this is this:  My Chinese friend, while an expert in the art of fighting–is not an expert in life. He is not wise. Without getting into his personal business, Kung Fu is the only thing he had going for him. He is not an authority on finding a spouse, he is not a spiritual leader, he is not a guidance counselor. He is not a family therapist. He is not qualified to turn misbehaving children into obedient soldiers. He cannot teach anyone the value of life. If you’re depressed, he is no qualified to hear your problems than the pretty librarian at the  local library. He can teach you a form, he can show you how to generate power out of a kick, he can teach you to prevent getting your butt kicked by three guys. But he does not have the wisdom to guide young men into anything but the martial arts. And apparently, he is not even qualified to recognize teacher material either.

The martial arts teacher must understand this about himself. He is not that old monk from the Kung Fu movies who tells the young fighter to make amends with his father. He will never have to tell a student to forgive an old enemy and not kill him. The way martial arts are taught, I doubt if any of the masters of the past possessed this kind of wisdom. They had a high rate of divorce. Most were broke. Many were alcoholics, used drugs, and without their martial arts legends to keep their story going–most were by our definition, losers. The martial artist, if he gave his art what it needed to rise to the level where he would be dominant in his community, probably ignored everything in his life in order to master his art. Therefore, the martial arts master is most likely only a master of the art he teaches. Hate to burst your bubble, but it’s true.

Most of the martial artists I have known over the years have been womanizers or woman abusers. Few were “normal” guys. The ones who were “normal guys” weren’t all that great at the arts. Something about the arts, if you hadn’t noticed…. it keeps us looking fit and trim and young. We are good looking men for our age. We are vibrant, and we have healthy sex drives. You know what happens when you combine a good looking guy, with a strong drive, a gleam in our eye for a dream school we will never achieve? Um, yeah. We divorce because our wives don’t support our dreams. They want us to close our schools and get “real” jobs. We, in turn, become single men who run businesses where our kids’ moms are single and looking to us to fill in where their Dads won’t. Don’t shake your heads, I’m speaking truth right now…. Few of us who struggle are still married.

On the other end, the martial artists who excel in the art are a little more high strung than most guys. We have hot tempers–forget all that calm crap you think we’re supposed to represent, I’m speaking about fighters–so we are prone to arguing and fighting. Our up and down relationships. Other teachers. Guys at the bar. Cops. I don’t know about you, but in my circle of martial arts friends, most of my friends who are good fighters and train regularly seem to all have legal histories, myself included. I sure hope you didn’t think you were coming to FFSL to get lied to. There is a disproportionate percentage of people in our field who have had fist fights past the age of 25, and you can blame the training. Hot temper is a by-product of good training. Yeah, put that in your “Back-to-School” advertisements. Want to curb it? Stop sparring and training hard. It’s that simple.

The martial arts has many benefits. But we mustn’t act as if the arts were replacements for Ritalyn, it doesn’t cure Adult ADHD, and it sure as hell won’t solve relationship woes. We are not training to learn to be honest men. Our arts do not make us better citizens, just because we practice 1,000 punches a week. There have been many masters who have combined philosophy, morality, and fighting arts–but those things are not side effects of training. If you wish to be a wise martial arts teacher, study philosophy or religion. If you happen to be involved in an art where that is already done, then good for you. For the rest of us, we are not automatically becoming wise in anything but martial-related things when we train–and even then, we are only becoming wise in the fields that we pursue our expertise in. What virtues I possess outside of martial arts related topic, I achieved through reading and studying my religion. But I claim no expertise in anything but what I teach. The martial arts teacher must understand that he is a teacher of the arts, and nothing else. The martial arts student must understand this as well. Martial arts masters are not wise old sages, who impart lessons of life, love and secrets about them. If we fully understand that, we can then avoid cult-like schools and masters, and bad decisions made at the hands of teachers who don’t know their place.

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• Some styles are tightly controlled–who gets certified to teach it, who is called a teacher vs master, and access to learning those arts
• Some arts are very commonly found, where just a decade ago they were obscure
• The more popular an art is, the easier it is to learn these arts, the skill level of those who teach the art is poor
• The rarer the art, the more it is in demand, and it is treasured more

I disagree with those who want to mass-market the Filipino Martial Arts. However, I have to admit that 20 years ago when I began teaching my art, I was among those who wanted the FMAs to be as accessible and respected at Karate and Tae Kwon Do. Yet over the years, I have seen the art move from just a few visible masters to “yes-my-10-year-old-has-a-Black-Belt-in-it” mainstream. Those who have known me for years can probably recall me throwing tantrums on online forums such as MartialTalk and Bladeforums about weak representatives teaching “my” arts. A local Filipino newspaper once called me a “gatekeeper” to Filipino arts, when my school was the only FMA school in town, citing my disgust with long-distance FMA course-trained teachers. In those days, I saw myself as an owner of the FMAs and disliked seeing Eskrima teachers who were misrepresenting the art (with misconceptions about techniques and false histories). I wanted to see FMA empty hand to be truly appreciated as practical forms of fighting–not just something you devoted a little time to in seminars are fancy demos. I wanted the art taught full-time in schools and for every city to have schools offering the FMAs. I wanted FMAs to be just as popular as any other style and for our styles to be household names.

Of course, as time passed, I changed that desire.

I no longer want to see the Filipino arts get as big as Tae Kwon Do, especially after seeing what has happened to TKD. Korean styles have been reduced to either a sport or a children’s activity. They are a laughing stock among “real” martial artists. Tae Kwon Do is now treated as a gateway art to supposedly more practical arts, like jujitsu and MMA. You can’t go more than 10 miles in any direction these days without running into a TKD school, and almost every adult you find today has studied it, or has a friend who studied it. Although Tae Kwon Do is a valid form of fighting (only people who have never fought a TKD fighter will swear it is not), for some reason it just doesn’t have respect. I blame this on one very real fact–This is NOT a generalization:

Most people teaching Tae Kwon Docouldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag.

And that’s the damned truth. The art has become so popular, so easy to achieve rank in, that a Black belt in this art is nearly meaningless these days. There is no way you could hold your Black Belt certificate in high regard when a 7 year old tested right next to you and holds the same rank.

But don’t laugh, FMAers. We are no different. In fact, I would say we were worse, because these days a Tae Kwon Do guy has to spend more time in class–way more time–than you do to reach an “expert” status. In the Filipino arts, most places don’t even have places to study every day if you want to really commit to the art. We are tucked away on weekends between classes in commercial Karate schools and community centers. We barely even have men who teach FMAs full-time, nor do you often find students who have devoted all of their martial arts education to FMA study. We are the ultimate add-on art, and if you are too busy to dedicate your time to it, we have convenient self-study and crash courses which will certify you in fewer than 100 hours of training time.

Many of you who tested for your Black Belts didn’t even TEST. You want to see what a Black Belt test looks like in a real kick ass school? Take a look at this video and you tell me if you’ve seen an FMA school with something of this caliber.

I’ve said it millions of times already, and I will say it a million times more:  The Filipino fighting arts  aren’t for everyone in its purest form. If you dilute it to make it palatable for the average Joe, it is no longer FMA in its purest form and you shouldn’t call it such. If the FMAs were to become a household name, it must grow slowly and carefully. The video and seminar markets have made these arts more commercial, more entertaining, and they have strayed too far from the source and now emit a weaker frequency. When a child can get the same thing you got in the same amount of time, when you can be certified to teach but you are not confident to take on any attacker, when you cannot guarantee that the Black Belts under you are superior to those of another teacher–your art has not been transferred properly. We can publish all the articles we want, produce the cutest Youtube clips of what our arts entail, we can tattoo our arms, lift weights and build muscles, swing knives, sticks and blades to look tough–and the art is not growing the way it should.

Real martial arts cannot be mass marketed, because real martial arts are not for the masses.

My opinion about how the FMAs should be promoted:

1. Stop promoting. Individual schools should promote in their areas to increase membership, but the best product on the market shouldn’t need a PR campaign. Enough of the reality shows and exaggerated displays of what FMAs are all about.
2. We do what we do, and we do it best. This is the “Good to Great” concept. We should not try and be everything to everyone. If you did not develop your empty hand as a specialty, don’t promote that you did. Many people have left FMA schools disappointed that their FMA empty hand was not practical. I know, because they usually come to me.
3. Masters don’t chase after students. It makes us look less sincere about our art. If you had a beautiful, smart daughter, do you advertise to try and find suitors for her? Or do you protect her and wait for the best young man who deserves her. We treat our arts as money-tickets, not as treasured skills we earned and paid for with blood, sweat and tears.
4. Our schools should be bottom-heavy with beginners. Only the best and most deserving go to the senior ranks. We don’t allow people to hold rank just because they’ve been there a long time. We make them earn the right to be among our best–trust me, they will work to show their appreciation.
5. Teachers must have their own experiences to teach from. FMA teachers give me more excuses than anyone not to spar and not to compete. It’s disgusting; you’ll fight to the death on the street, but you won’t fight lightly in a competition. Yeah, right. Gaining fighting experience with unfamiliar opponents must be a prerequisite for achieving rank in the martial arts, period.
6. Students must be given ample time to develop their skills. It appears that students test and are awarded rank almost immediately after learning their skills. This makes for men who can demonstrate, but not use, their martial arts. Solid skill is patiently built.
7. If your thing is money, find another way to make it without compromising the quality of the art you teach. That means do away with watered-down classes and art; and give only the best quality instruction you can provide.
8. Stop accepting students who cannot dedicate themselves to the training. We make it too easy for students to learn when the reality is that they really don’t want to learn. Too busy? No budget? Live too far? These guys will make a way to a woman they meet on the internet, but they won’t make a way for the art. Sounds like they really don’t want that art. Long distance learning is not learning.
9. We must have events to showcase our talent, i.e., tournaments. If we are superior to Karate and Kung Fu, then get your guys in front of Karate and Kung Fu and prove it. It won’t kill them. What are you afraid of?
10. Finally, we must respect skill and demonstrated knowledge. What is demonstrated knowledge, but skill? We rarely even ask to see a man’s skill (demonstrations of give and take and one steps are not demos of skill) before judging if he is good or not. We are so bad, we can’t even recognize a real fighter when we see one these days.

The Ninjitsu community is able to control quality because they don’t mass-market their art. If you want to learn, you must travel to learn with a master. They do not grant Black belts to kids. They do not teach by video. You don’t get to call yourself a master or expert just by writing articles about yourself. And where you find a man with a Black Belt in Ninjitsu, you find one with excellent skills. I would love to find this same thing in the Filipino Fighting Arts.

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When a martial artist says that he is striving to be “the best”, he is actually working for a goal he could never achieve. To be better than all other martial artists and fighters is an impossible endeavor, and one he would never be able to prove that he has achieved. No matter who you beat, and who you think has not beaten you yet, the man who will defeat you is always out there. I remember a saying that the moment a man says he cannot be beaten, he will soon meet the man who can and will. So in that case, the fighter should be humble but confident, lest he hasten the wait to finally meet him.

This is not to say that the martial artist shouldn’t try to beat opponents, however. Opponents, to the fighter, are not the test of whether you have perfected your art–but the tools that you use to determine if you have perfected your art. We try to find better and better opponents to cross sticks and cross hands with, and regardless of the outcome we should take that experience back into the gym to refine and retool our arts. Win or lose, we can get better and improve, we can become more efficient and more perfect. We can become stronger and faster. We can califbrate our timing to near-perfection (it can always get better). We can come up with better ways to use our techniques, or create new techniques, or find more efficient ways to apply them. Opponents, not training partners or friends, are the surprise quizzes we take to find out what progress we have made. Every criticism I have ever had of the FMA man stems from the fact that most FMA men prefer to surround himself with training partners and friends, rather than opponents. In such case, they will never approach any place close to perfection with their art. And they also happen to be the first men to strap on the title of “Grand master” or whatever.

Perfection, my friends, is a level that the best martial artists and fighters NEVER see. And those who are in constant pursuit of perfection are the ones that most of his peers believe have achieved that level.

Perfection will never be grasped by adding to one’s repertoire also. You cannot perfect a mish-mash of arts. This is why the men we know who are the best we have seen usually only have had a few masters, if more than one. Rarely, we will see a man who has studied many arts and actually form the opinion that this guy is one of the best we have seen. The men with the most arts under their belts, in my experience, have had the worst skills. Likewise, the men I have met that have the highest levels of Black belt, the loftiest titles, have also been the lousiest fighters (or not a fighter at all) I have seen. Few people you will meet will be as honest as I am being with you right now.

Perfection is an ever-evasive plateau the martial artist will spend his life in pursuit of, and only what one stops chasing, will he have time to self-promote and Faceturbate with all these degrees and fan clubs and martial groupies. Trust me on this one. The best fighters you will find don’t have time to do PR.

So when you hear of being “the best”, what the real martial artist is really trying to say is “being MY best”; we are in competition with ourselves, with our old achievements, with the memories of what we once were. And this is why you find men like Bernard Hopkins trying to stay in the ring too long, and why some fighters seem to keep at it way past their prime. They are not afraid of losing. They are not afraid of poverty. They are not afraid of failure because they understand that in order to elevate to the next level of their pursuit of perfection, the martial artist must exhaust his last breath to find out more about his art. The martial artist who pursues perfection is always struggling to develop his art further, he trains until his body won’t allow more progress, and then he fights to find students who can continue to train and test the art when he can no longer do it himself. This is a never ending process you will never retire from. The goal is not to get more students, but to get better students. Not to add more arts to one’s knowledge base, but to know the arts in one’s knowledge base more.  I hope you understand what I mean.

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Last night, I recalled something Boggs Lao once told me, “Practice every day, you will be one step more to Mastery. Miss a practice, and you lose ten steps.”

Those who know me, know that I teach by maxim–and I either demonstrate on the student to make the point clear or I point to actual instances those rules are broken or upheld. All of this helps cement understanding in the student, and no teacher should teach something he is incapable of doing or pulling off in real time. (That’s a saying too, by the way)

Hey, what can I say? I hang out with old Masters!

So one of the book ideas I had is a book of these sayings–which is temporarily scrapped as I realize that most martial artists only like shiny things that adorn uniforms, walls or website bios. Although there are many who enjoy this blog, I am constantly asked for videos and clips they can watch. But you know me; we will do nothing of the sort! I have, however, recorded some DVD but only students and good friends will ever see them.  So, my new book will be a techniques book, complete with pictures for you visual types. That books, which I actually thought would represent some of my best work, is titled “Ten Rules of Fighting for the Serious Martial Artist”. I would like to share the 10 rules with very little explanation. If you want to learn them in detail, well… you know what to do.

Ten Rules of Fighting

1. Learn to use simultaneous block/check/trap and attack. It’s a little more complicated than what most of you know as simultaneous “__-and-counter”. The main thing here is learn to use, not simultaneous…  The martial artist spends too much time learning to *demonstrate* technique, and not enough time learning to USE their techniques. I can’t count how many martial artists who know these techniques–many Wing Chun and FMA guys come to mind here–but can’t use them when they fight. The simultaneous clear-and-attack technique is a very powerful, difficult to stop technique. But in order to have dominating skill, you must learn to use it.
2. Feet are the horse, hands are the arrows.  This is a Chinese saying that comes from my Jow Ga master, Chin Yuk Din. Although we kick more in Jow Ga than many other Southern styles, our specialty with the feet is to outrun the opponent; we can catch running opponent and use his lack of stability to finish him. In my school, the first thing we do is develop strong legs and agility in the feet. The job of the hands, however, is to penetrate the opponent’s defenses are sharply, quickly and accurately as a shower of arrows. Hopefully this visual will explain it better than I can.
3. Steal the breath. This is also a Chinese saying, however, I only stole the title. When I mention “steal the breath” I am referring to the Kuntaw philosophy of striking the throat and the breast bone. This is an advanced technique whereby you observe the breathing pattern of a fatigued opponent and strike him with full force when he has just completed his exhale. I have used this technique in “friendly” sparring with superior opponents who were winded and I needed to level the playing field. It is difficult to accomplish, but when you figure it out is a miracle-worker. This is all I will say about this technique.
4. The best time that is ideal for attack:  When the opponent is not ready and you are.  So self-explanatory I should stop here. But for those of you who can’t picture it, I am referring to having your figure on the trigger. If you or your opponent is at rest and not occupied, you and he are ready to attack. When doing anything else:  moving the hands, blocking, striking, kicking, readjusting one’s clothing or stands, repositioning… you are not. Make sure you are always ready and he is never ready. Most of the time you are fighting, you should be searching for this moment.
5. Strikes at an opponent should be like the links of a chain. Any gap in your attack is like a broken link in a chain. By keeping your attacks linked together on one rush, your opponent will not have an opportunity to launch his own attack. You should tie him up with his own defense, and by the time he is able to untie himself–you are out of range.
6. Every technique has a counter. When studying a technique, you should learn what counters are most likely as well as possible. Then along with your practice of that technique, you should practice the counter to the counter of that technique. Doing this will give you the:
7. Iron Defense, Loud Attack. The fighter must have a set of defenses like an iron wall–not only will the opponent be unable to pierce the wall, it would be injurious to try. Each time he attacks, make him pay for it. The attack should be as easy to escape as one can escape the loudness of thunder. One of my criticisms of “self-defense”-oriented martial arts is the reliance on defense as a means to end combat, rather than building a set of attacking skills that will shut down the opponent. Defense techniques to these folks is almost always practiced softly, and only a few have times when they practice under pressure. If you’re going to develop defense, make it impenetrable.
8. Hit with the hips and shoulders, not the limbs. We should develop our strength in the arms and legs. However, we do not want to rely on the limbs for power. Learn to use the hips and shoulders when punching and kicking, and you will increase your output threefold. (Note: It is more complicated than shoulders=punching, hips=kicking. Try utilizing the shoulders for kicking and the hips for punching!)
9. Enter with boldness. This has as much to do with mentality and training as it does with execution. One of the most dangerous mistakes a fighter can make is to hesitate. If you don’t attack or counter with 100% commitment, you give your opponent the opportunity to stop you. Even if you are not utilizing a full-power attack, you must be at 100% with something: power, distance, speed… Now, anything less than a well-trained or experienced and confident fighter will be unable to do this. Cultivate your fighters into the kind of fighter who can enter with boldness; they will never fail.
10. When the arms touch, you can fight better blind, than the seeing opponent. If you are not familiar with sticky hands, you may not be able to understand this rule. When the arms touch, you should be able to sense the opponents’ next move through the arm or hand that is touching you. Often, fighters make moves–not by intention, but by happenstance–and the aware fighter will know it before that fighter even realizes it. What I mean is that many opponents rarely plan their next move. They hit with whatever feels natural, based on where their hands and feet are placed, where their balance is, where the opponent is as what he is doing, and where the opponent’s hands and feet are. If you have developed the heightened awareness of TRUE sensitivity (not the stuff done on youtube and DVD), your opponent’s intentions will be transmit through his hand/arm–and you will know before he even realizes what’s going on.

Whew! 1,360 words! We will stop here, and who knows? Maybe in the future I will actually write the book to fully teach these rules.  If you like this or any other articles, please check out the “Offerings” page off the main page and check out my books! Thanks for visiting my blog.

Among his instructorships is one in Wing Chun Kung Fu, which he received in a week. I am very familiar with the organization that awarded him permission to teach WC because that master is a distant relative of mine. In fact, I often show his advertisement to visitors to my school to illustrate how low the martial arts industry has gotten. I scanned the wall of his dojo, hoping to find a certificate in JKD/Kali or Eskrima so that I could bait him into a conversation about it. As an old friend, I never pass up an opportunity to educate… um, excuse me–rescue–those I truly care about.

Okay, I do it to almost anyone. But seriously, sometimes I really think I would be wasting my time with some folks. With my friends, however, I couldn’t care less about offending them and will speak my mind.

Thank God he does not teach the FMAs, although he did hit me up for a written curriculum that he could “follow along” to start a “sticks and knives” class. Conversation followed. Then he attempted to change the subject by asking me about the difference between Jow Ga’s sticky hands and Wing Chun’s sticky hands. (By the way, did I mention that I have also studied Wing Chun? Yes, one of my favorite cousins is a Wing Chun Sifu too)  We ended up crossing hands, and I had to give my good friend a lesson in Chi Sao. This isn’t fun, and bottom line, he should have beaten me as my total amount of instruction in Chi Sao (most of which came from white eyebrow, not wc) about 7 days of 6 to 8 hours of hands-on instruction. I am no expert in Chi Sao–and apparently neither is my friend. Sadly, my learning in just Chi Sao is more than his total amount of learning from the whole system of Wing Chun. Bottom line again:  He shouldn’t teach Wing Chun.

And he doesn’t. Actually, I believe my friend knows that he is no expert in these arts, so he lumps all of his martial arts offerings into one class appropriately labelled “Martial Arts”. He offers Yoga, After School Karate, tumbling, XMA, Aerobics, cross-fit style exercise, “kickboxing” (my friend is actually a good fighter), and a few other labels. I noticed, however, nowhere does he mention his lineage–and he comes from a very strong, Korean lineage–or his accomplishments. What he does best, he doesn’t teach. When I looked at what he’s pursued, I see that the dates correspond with the latest trends in the martial arts: Ninjitsu in the 80s, Kenpo in the 90s, BJJ in the 90s, Wing Chun in the Y2K, Israeli martial arts most recently, a generic “close quarters defense” certificate lined in camoflauge… I’m sure you’ve seen this before.

JC is in great shape, by the way. He looks better now in his 40s than we did 20 years ago, when I was hanging out with him. Yet in my opinion, he was probably a better fighter in those days than he is now–not due to age, but because back then, he only knew a few styles. Last I remembed, he had three main arts he did. Moo Duk Kwon (we were classmates) is a hard Korean style similar to Japanese Shotokan. He also dabbled in Judo and too part in a few open mats. And around our early 20s, he was learning “ninjitsu” from a Shorin Ryu expert whose teaching was very similar to our MDK teacher. I say he was better then because he only had a few arts that he was doing.

Many martial artists today are chasing so many different, unrelated arts that they know lots of stuff but they don’t do any of that “stuff” well. I call this “skill dilution”. (Actually I ripped that term off from Striking Thoughts’ page)  The thing about learning everything under the sun is this:  there is nothing wrong with learning a bunch of stuff, as long as you take the time to fully develop that stuff to proficiency. The question is, what do you consider “proficiency”? Well, as a student, proficiency at a minimum is the ability to use it in a fight. For a teacher, however, proficiency at a minimum is expertise–the ability to isolate that skill and use it against many opponents and to be able to dominate with that skill. Martial artists today are just satisfied with being able to demonstrate a skill and consider that ability to demonstrate the skill as “qualified to teach”.

Well, if my homeboy can’t whup me with a skill I had only about 40 hours of instruction in but he is certified to teach… he ain’t qualified to teach that skill. And in case you were wondering, yes, I did tell him. Had he opened his school here in Sacramento, he would have to deal with some very good Wing Chunners who might want to see how good he is at that art. Yes he is my homie. But then, some of these WC experts in town are my homies too. I can help you out with maybe two or three of them, homie… Fortunately there are no WC schools in DC that I know of.

This problem in the art is more widespread than you may know. Take any ten schools out the phone book in any city, I guarantee at least half of the teachers you find over the age of 30 will boast of expertise in at least 4 styles. Now ask around for who the best teachers are, and I am sure they will most likely recommend teachers who only teach one or two styles. This doesn’t mean he has only learned two or three arts; most of us have sowed our oats and picked up a few things or two (or three) along our journeys. The only difference is that we know what we are experts in and will not misrepresent ourselves to be experts in more than what we really know. Some people are in such a race to know and teach the next art, that the dilute their ability in arts they should be focusing on in the effort to skim the surface of a few other arts. Yes, they water down what may be excellent knowledge and skill, by failing to develop their proficiency in favor of stuff they know very little about. In my art of Jow Ga, we offer over 40 forms and weapons. Ask any of my students from my Advanced class, and they will tell you–I only claim full proficiency in five of those forms. And I practice this art full time, and have been practicing, for 21 years. I also happen to have permission to teach the arts of five Masters, but take a look at my website; I only offer the systems of two of them. These are the arts I do best, and the only way I will achieve the higher levels of skill (I am still in pursuit of those levels, by the way) is to focus on just two of them.

My old childhood friend is running a day care center because he has put the art he does best on the shelf while chasing side hustles that have not brought him the results he thought he’d get.

Here’s an afterthought:  Many MMA fighters do the same. Rather than learn to adapt what they do best to the ring, they dabble in a bunch of stuff that they only do halfway decent–and lose to the guys who have learned to maximize their Hedgehog. More on this later…

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Look for upcoming articles to be published in Spanish. I have my reason for doing so, but I want to surprise you with it. I have a few articles that will first be translated into spanish, and then eventually we will be publishing our articles simultaneously in English and Spanish.

Hint:  My next book is already done and will be sent to Amazon. But the one after this will be a techniques book. You’ve asked to “see” my method… I resisted the urge to produce videos and books, but my readers win this one. I have a co-writer, a photographer, and we will get started on this one soon. The only catch is, you won’t be able to read it in English…. (more on this later)  And you never know; I’ve been flirting with the idea of producing a DVD. We’ve made a few cheap attempts and perhaps this book will be released with an accompanying DVD. Or perhaps not….

So if you know anyone living south of the border who is interested in the martial arts–any style, not just FMAs–send em on over. The first article will be up within a week.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Bernard Hopkins meets Rashad Evans