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8/13/2019 ARMA Editorial - John Clements
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ARMA Editorial - November 2013
Reflection and Personal Growth in Renaissance MartialArts Std!
By John Clements
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Around the time I was 20 years old or so,
my best friends and I were getting into
kickboxing. We all had a mass of books
and VH ta!es on the sub"ect and had done
a ton of s!arring and cross#training with allsorts of different !eo!le. We bought all
manner of training gear, as if the more wehad the better it made us. $%entually, we
went to get some !rofessional instruction,
trying out assorted local classes and
coaches, but seldom long enough to warrant
any educated o!inion. Ade!t at %irtually
nothing and without any real !rogram tofollow we still imagined oursel%es
com!etent and knowledgeable. When Ilook back on this now, I reali&e "ust how
much youthful enthusiasm and energycarried us along more so than any real
learning. 'nly now do I gras! "ust how
much was obli%ious to us e%en as we
regularly criti(ued !rofessional coaches andfight trainers who)d been !racticing longer than we)d e%en been ali%e.
*roblem was, we didn)t know what we didn)t know. Hell, we hardly knew what we did know. We
"ust weren)t ex!erienced or mature enough to
a!!reciate what was being taught to us, or forthat matter, what wasn)t being taught to us+which can be almost as significant. We "ust
weren)t (ualified really to e%aluate most any ofwhat we were shown one way or another. We
sim!ly hadn)t !ut in the years of work or the
de!th of effort +!hysically or mentally. -et,
none of this sto!!ed us from endlessly s!outing
off our o!inions on e%ery as!ect of martial arts
where%er and whene%er we saw it. $%en when
we did encounter real masters and ex!erts thatim!ressed us, we always seemed to find somereason or other for re"ecting their ad%ice in fa%or
of our own notions. It was so easy to make la&y
excuses for our limited skill sets or our own still
un!olished amateur abilities. 'utgrowing this didn)t come easy. +And kee! in mind, I)m am
referring here to the !ursuit of widely#known Asian martial art styles with readily accessible
traditions, not extinct combati%es still being redisco%ered
/ecades would !ass before I came to understand what !rocess was at work and how few e%er getbeyond it. I cringe now when I imagine how we must ha%e looked at the time to our seniors and
elders. We had the admirable !assion of the nai%e, certainly. And in the realm of martial
disci!lines, sometimes when there is extraordinary a!titude, it as!ires to something commendable.
ut more often than not, regardless of how uni(ue or how well#read we belie%e we are, it
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ultimately "ust ends u! being ex!osed for what it is1 untutored ignorance.
I recogni&e this same thing today among the younger Internet generation s!ewing "udgements
about historical martial arts matters for which they !ersonally ha%e no great ca!acity and within
which they ha%e achie%ed no admirable accom!lishment. A twenty#something of no !articular
athleticism, not es!ecially gifted, and not e%en of remarkable !hysical conditioning, willnonetheless imagine that his o!inions on using historical arms and his %iews on little#known self#
defense methods of which he only recently encountered, should hold some !articular %alue for theworld. It)s lunacy.
In my youth, my friends and I were at least smart enough to recogni&e when others were far better
and far wiser about matters of fighting than we. We understood when they had training regimens
and !ractice routines that !ut ours to shame. We conceded that their seniority, their ex!erience,
their conditioning all meant something, e%en if we weren)t (uite sure what. We held them inesteem as role#models to emulate and e%en dream of sur!assing, whether we !ersonally meshed
with them or not. We e%en admitted to oursel%es that there was a much larger world out therebeyond our limited "udgement and understanding. I don)t see that among the et generation. $%ery
adolescent thought, e%ery insi!id o!inion, e%ery ine!titude, e%ery uninformed notion and fli!!antex!ression of foolish inex!erience gets embarrassingly enshrined in a blog, %ideo, social#media
!ost, or tweet. 3all it the archi%ing of stu!idity.
As a !rofessional fight instructor, as a !ioneer in historicalcombat studies, and as a %eteran of more than thirty years of
fencing and martial arts, I now ha%e %ery little !atience for
such self#deluding ine!titude. It tarnishes our heritage and
certainly offers little to im!ro%e my students or aid my
constituent membershi!.
4oday, the craft of learning 5enaissance martial arts contains a
strong autodidactic com!onent, in that, not being able to callu!on extant teaching lineages of sur%i%ing !edagogical
traditions, many of us are by necessity self#taught. We came to
our skills by %irtue of whate%er le%el of !hysical work we !ut
into de%elo!ing our understanding of the craft. Howe%er,
martial arts are heuristic only to a small degree. $ach new
generation doesn)t really come to the sub"ect with 6new ideas
and fresh %iews6 because e%ery no%ice student must first learnkey biomechanical lessons about the nature of combati%es andabout dealing with !ersonal %iolence ##lessons slowly accumulated o%er generations by fighting
men down through the ages. 7artial knowledge is ac(uired only through will and ad%ersity. It is
!aid for by !ain and sweat and blood. -et, today we don)t do this with our sub"ect. We ha%e instead
!lay %ersions and !retend fights that for the %ast ma"ority are what moti%ate and instruct +and
obscure.
In my youth, what was always strange to me was how back then some of my friends who were the
least !hysically gifted and least ca!able !ractitioners were among the ones who had the dee!estdelusions about their own skill and !otential while being least able to recogni&e or acknowledge
excellence in others. 4hey ne%er did grow much as martial artists, either. 4hey ne%er came to
understand the !rocess or the "ourney. 4hey ne%er mo%ed beyond their own adolescent en%ies and
inade(uacies e%en as adults. If anything, they became worse as their youth faded. 4he fact is, not
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all martial artists are made e(ual. ome !eo!le "ust don)t ha%e any real talent for it and ne%er will.
*roblem is, they often delude themsel%es into imagining the le%el they !ractice it on is the 6real
thing.6
4oday, as an ex!erienced instructor, as a
successful !rogram manager, I see this samekind of resentment and %itriol on the et all
the time. Haters gonna) hate, after all. eingan instructor, I long ago disco%ered ways of
dealing with such ignorance in !erson. It)s not
uncommon to find it in many combat s!orts,
martial disci!lines, or any other serious
!hysical skill. Ine!t !eo!le tend to weed
themsel%es out of higher standards and a%oidthe challenge to better themsel%es. ut today,
in the realm of historical fighting arts on theInternet, they can readily reinforce their
mutual delusions because, after all, these areskills that will ne%er get tested, ne%er get
strenuously challenged, and ne%er get !ut to
the test +artificial s!orting contests
notwithstanding. 4hey will instead always remain safely in the con%enient realm of s!eculati%e!ossibility and hy!othetical theory. 4hus, mediocrity tends to flourish.
ow, this isn)t the say that e%eryone, no matter how untrained or inex!erienced a no%ice, can)t
contribute in their own way to the ex!loration of this sub"ect or ha%e useful insights into its
in%estigation. 4his as!ect is something that I ha%e myself s!ecifically ad%ocated for years. +In fact,it is a central message of the A57A)s reco%ery and reconstruction efforts. ut there is also nodenying there are two sides to this. 4o come across some !udgy trash#talking adolescent imagining
he now understands a fighting method that hasn)t been !racticed in centuries all because he)s cutsome !lastic water bottles, or read some 28#year#old)s 6definiti%e6 inter!retation of a 98th#century
close combat source 6deci!hered6 because he)s won some !retend bouts with !lastic swords, is
astonishingly absurd.
I)%e said this before and I)ll say it again1
it would be ridiculous for !eo!le with
%irtually no ex!erience in self#defensetraining, no lengthy history ofexercising in the source teachings or in
handling wea!onry, and no noticeable
athleticism or !hysical a!titude for
combati%es, to ne%ertheless imagine
that they could reconstruct some
forgotten styles of "u"itsu or kung fuafter s!ending "ust a cou!le years
!laying at it while surfing the net fromtheir !arents) basement. :ust read some
books, !lay with some wea!ons, and
##poof ##you)re now (ualified to go
online to 6inter!ret.6 And don)t forget
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to o!ine and com!lain bitterly o%er techni(ues that you yourself are inca!able of !ro!erly doing.
-et, if we are honest, this is in effect what has emerged now when it comes to the study of the lost
martial arts 5enaissance $uro!e1 A huge net community of amateur enthusiasts !laying at it while
in%enting modern sword#s!orts congregate to mutually reinforce a lowest common denominator
status (uo of !erformance. 4he only ones denying this !henomenon are those neck dee! incelebrating it. It)s certainly not a !roblem exclusi%e to our disci!line or sub"ect and there)s also
nothing that can be done about it ##exce!t to offer an alternati%e based on excellence.
When it came to historical fencing, in my youth there were no
credible authorities or ex!ert know#how a%ailable. 4here were
only 3A bo&os and stage#combat klopfechters+of which not
much has changed. 4here were few resources to draw from,
%irtually no good e(ui!ment, and e%eryone was more or lessonly "ust beginning to !iece together that there e%en was
something real to reconstruct. ow by contrast, there aretremendous resources to call on and significant exam!les to
follow. It)d be wonderful to think this would automaticallytransfer to !ersonal growth in the !ractice of authentic
5enaissance fighting arts. Alas, this is not the case. ot e%ery
fighting method or !ractitioner is created e(ual. And not e%ery
style or class or teacher will meet the needs and !ersonality ofe%ery student. o matter what, someone)s always going to be left disgruntled in some way o%er
something. ut, howe%er defined, it is a!titude and attitude combined with good training habits
culti%ated by self disci!line that determines a successful martial artist.
In 9;rand7aster :ohannes ?iechtenauer. He com!lained that the show#fighters !roduced things that
belonged not to real fencing but only to 6school fencing and the exercises for their own sake.6 4othis we might add a modern corollary, that there are none now who can claim knowledge of this
Art without being able to com!etently demonstrate the teachings of ?iechtenauer. 4hink about this
the next time you catch a -ou4ube cli! of some adolescent with weak !osture and abysmal balance
standing at im!ro!er distance to slowly cho! at !lastic bottles. Who is there to tell them of their
ine!titude@
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I think back to a night, circa 9=
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