.

The traditionalists have sold us a lie and we are buying it up left and right. You buy into that lie, and after a while you end up believing it.
One part of this lie is unarmed Techniques, are superior to weaponry. In most karate schools and other traditional MAs either don’t teach weapons or do not teach the type of weapons you might have to face on the street Like a pool cue, brick, knife, or gun.

In the Military they teach:
A weapon as in a M16 is better than a sidearm. A sidearm is better than a knife. A knife is better than a fist. A fist is better than being dead.
Empty Hand Combat gives you time to draw your secondary weapon because if your primary weapon was working there would be no need for Hand to Hand Hand to Hand provides you with time for your mates to arrive.

Hand To Hand is always secondary to weapons.

If you look at the Samurai the same was true for them the sword was better than the hands/feet. Jujitsu was only used to provide time and survivability until the samurai could pick up another weapon, or his friends arrived. So why have so many MAs gotten away from this or teach traditional weapons instead of today’s weapons? Are they better? No in fact most of them don’t apply at all or not very well. A sword is still as deadly as it ever was but firearms are deadlier, and knives are more easily concealed than swords. The bow, sai’s, and etc find very little practicality in today’s world. Not many BGs bad guys use these.

Another problem is far too many traditional arts rely on fine motor skills and not enough on gross motor skill. This is a problem because the cognitive brain shuts down to some degree and the primitive brain takes over when the adrenaline hits and we go into fight or flight mode. Basically meaning all of our movements and reactions are all, or at least near all, on a sub conscious level.

The good news is we can train these reactions to do what you want but it has to be done in a certain way. One principle that traditional and non-traditional both share is repetition. Other than that this training needs to consist of using natural reactions to situations and turning them into our favor and using techniques that are simple and direct or in other words gross motor skilled.

Gross motor skills:
1) Gross motor skills are defined as the movements of the large muscles of the body.
2) Motor learning on an elemental level, is a set of internal processes that leads to a relatively permanent change in an individual's capability for skilled motor performance.
3) Skilled learning through repetition and easily repeated without conscious thought

An example would be: putting your hands up in front of your face in reaction to someone punching at your head would be both a natural reaction and a gross motor skill while trying a circular block followed by a trap would be an unnatural reaction and a fine motor skill. See the difference?

Less is more simply means you are better off focusing on fewer techniques that are closer to gross motor skills and becoming very proficient with them. This will cut your reaction time dramatically in a real life situation.


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