AHC/PC: Western Martial Arts (Hand to Hand) Traditions

As a note, most Asian martial arts styles around today are distinctly civilian styles, meant for use by civilians, for civilians, against civilians.

There are still civilian martial arts styles from the West floating around, like boxing or fencing.
 
ok, but even still, the east has a much stronger tradition of hand to hand combat.

And it seems overly simplistic to say that boxing is any combat where you strike, and wrestling is any combat where you grapple.

however, i am asking about how can the west acquire the same richness in martial-arts tradition that is present in the east? and what would some of these traditions look like?

i'd be very interested if someone came up with ideas for alternate martial arts styles

It isn't overly simplistic at all, and it is in fact literally true. There is a greater complexity to the names of throws in Judo than in folk wrestling styles, but that's just because they were written down in a book by Jigaro Kano. To give an example of how this works, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and SAMBO are both nothing but Judo with different training philosophies and competition rulesets. The roots and style are the same, but BJJ has a much richer repertory of named ground maneuvers and simplifies standing grappling and throws compared to Judo, and SAMBO likewise with its usage of strikes and leglocks.

If you look at Chin Na, despite different roots, it's the same thing as Judo. An armlock is an armlock and a hip throw is a hip throw. The way the body works, there are only a certain number of ways to hurt people. How you codify them and train them may be different, but the number of techniques are going to be limited.

What "richness of martial tradition" are you talking about? The history of martial arts in India, China, Japan, mainland Southeast Asia, and insular Southeast Asia are very different. There isn't really a common theme except for the Chinese concept of internal martial arts, which was imported to China from India at some point over a thousand years ago and spread to other parts of Asia much more recently, in most cases since the 1800s. If you can clarify exactly what you mean when you lump all these disparate things together, then maybe I can start to help you.

European martial arts existed - undoubtedly as rich as anywhere else in the world - but they fell into neglect as their relevance to what they were intended for faded.

Preserving them as traditional fighting styles didn't have the appeal it did in Asia.

Again, this is quite literally not true. Look at how popular wrestling based on folk styles from England and France is in America today, and look at western boxing. Those are no less martial arts than anything in Asia.

As a note, most Asian martial arts styles around today are distinctly civilian styles, meant for use by civilians, for civilians, against civilians.

There are still civilian martial arts styles from the West floating around, like boxing or fencing.

Well, yeah. Martial arts intended as training for soldiers and martial arts intended for competition are different things, but tend to have similar DNA, since there is no way to test technique except in competition.
 
Again, this is quite literally not true. Look at how popular wrestling based on folk styles from England and France is in America today, and look at western boxing. Those are no less martial arts than anything in Asia.

Certainly true on the issue of wrestling and boxing, but not the same thing as the bulk of Western martial arts of the pre-gun era surviving as still-practiced arts.

There isn't a surviving swordplay tradition from the days in which the long sword was a weapon, for instance.
 
I just think the OP is talking about the popular belief a Shaolin monk would obliterate even the best practitioners of boxing/wrestling in combat.

@Elfwine: Have you seen the revival societies? Those guys are brutal. I've done it once or twice myself and seems really practical.
 
Certainly true on the issue of wrestling and boxing, but not the same thing as the bulk of Western martial arts of the pre-gun era surviving as still-practiced arts.

There isn't a surviving swordplay tradition from the days in which the long sword was a weapon, for instance.

Well, seeing as that has nothing to do with the OP, I didn't address that point. The thread title even says "hand to hand".
 
Have you seen the revival societies? Those guys are brutal. I've done it once or twice myself and seems really practical.

Only via reading about them. But "revived" and "preserved to the present" are not the same thing.

Not to dismiss what they've done, mind, just noting the difference.

Well, seeing as that has nothing to do with the OP, I didn't address that point. The thread title even says "hand to hand".

Well since most of the lost Western martial arts are lost because the hand-to-hand was a component of (for instance) long sword fighting...

That's my reasoning for mentioning it.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I just think the OP is talking about the popular belief a Shaolin monk would obliterate even the best practitioners of boxing/wrestling in combat.

I heard a interesting storyonce, that some middleage German wrestler travel to East Asiain the early part of last century, and tried fighting some of the master of different eastern martial arts. He more or less crushed everybody.
 
I heard a interesting storyonce, that some middleage German wrestler travel to East Asiain the early part of last century, and tried fighting some of the master of different eastern martial arts. He more or less crushed everybody.
I have no idea if one is better than the other, my personal belief is it has a lot more to do with the individual's own skill and creativity in adapting their knowledge to the situation. I was just speculating as to where the OP was coming from.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I have no idea if one is better than the other, my personal belief is it has a lot more to do with the individual's own skill and creativity in adapting their knowledge to the situation. I was just speculating as to where the OP was coming from.

I don't think it indicate anything about figthing style, it just indicate that a 120 kilo bloke with fighting experience crush 70 kilo blokes in no rules fights. The East Asian at that time had a lot less protein in their food than Europeans had.
 
Only via reading about them. But "revived" and "preserved to the present" are not the same thing.

Not to dismiss what they've done, mind, just noting the difference.



Well since most of the lost Western martial arts are lost because the hand-to-hand was a component of (for instance) long sword fighting...

That's my reasoning for mentioning it.

I see what you're saying. The difference between Japanese jujitsu/Judo and Western wrestling is that the jujitsu revivalists built their arts out of what had been the hand to hand techniques of the samurai and the Western wrestling built off of peasant recreational traditions while the nearly identical Euro techniques for swordfighters died out. That was a somewhat unique case, though. Other than the insular Southeast Asian tradition and some Chinese styles (the story of Chinese martial arts isn't my area of expertise, but the current state of a million fractured styles is a relatively recent one), commonly practiced martial arts techniques, armed or unarmed, aren't really focused on the science of hurting people as much as they are on competition. Obviously, this is because there isn't really a safe and effective way to teach the use of lethal force against resisting human beings in the same way as one can practice boxing and wrestling, though the art of Harm and fighting sports can cross-pollinate a lot.

I heard a interesting storyonce, that some middleage German wrestler travel to East Asiain the early part of last century, and tried fighting some of the master of different eastern martial arts. He more or less crushed everybody.

Indeed, there was a lot of cross-pollination between wrestlers and boxers from different countries in those days. The early judoka liked to test their techniques against Western and Indian wrestlers and learned a lot from them, also vice versa.
 
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