What is TMA?

SBG Ireland

can anyone define what makes a martial art Traditional?

its confusing...

• TMA - traditional martial arts - i dont know what this is??
• MMA - mixed martial arts - which are typically a combination of the Combat Sports ie those with a competitive outlet boxing, wrestling, sambo etc.
• Modern MA - RBSD?

smacl

My guess is that TMA in the context of martial arts is an acronym coined my MMA practioners to differentiate the combat sports that they practice from other martial arts. As you'll see from the link above, googling TMA does not return much relating to martial arts, similarly googling traditional martial art doesn't come up with anything coherent. To me this suggests a very loosely used term that doesn't have any broadly accepted definition.

My personal interpretation is a traditional martial art is one that carries forward traditions of training in a certain way over a protracted period of time. This may be through a documented syllabus that will be commonly used across most schools that claim to practice the same art. By this definition, MMA will doubtless become traditional in the near future. It would certainly already include the likes of boxing.

How any of it relates to art, any more than any other sport or physical discipline such as football or tennis, is something else again.

Tim_Murphy

I started the same thread on a TKD forum before. Whilst most of the posters there were proud to proclaim that they did traditional martial arts, they could not agree on any sort of definition. Generally, any definition put forward was so vague that you could apply it to any martial art.

flynny51

When you asked the question in the other thread I had a think about it. The first thing that came to mind was non sport based martial arts... But then surely the likes of Krav Maga and more recent military combative martial arts shouldn't be included under that umbrella...

Taekwondo also heavily sport based and I think someone mentioned that it's only about 55 years old. This begs to question... How does age factor in and when can we say something is old enough to be "traditional".

pearsquasher

"Tradition"

From dictionary.com

"the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation, esp. by word of mouth or by practice: a story that has come down to us by popular tradition."

So TMA are martial arts that emphasize this aspect.

In the Bujinkan... there are 9 "traditions" or TMA's. Bujinkan is therefore mixture of all these.. so Bujinkan is MMA too

Also...Bujinkan is a modern MA, as 100 years ago, these 9 TMA's weren't all mixed (some of them may have been) but taught separately and its only in the last 2 generations that they have all been mixed.

Bujinkan is also an RBSD because the traditions up to and including the current iteration include lessons gleaned from reality.

Dyr

It's just a term much like "human cock fighting" is just a term :pac:

Doug Cartel

Welcome to the sticky world of semantics and ontology. Human language is inherently imprecise and vague, and there are a huge number of everyday concepts that we take for granted as being well defined, yet wouldn't be able to describe clearly and completely if put on the spot. TMA, MMA, and RBSD are among these.

TMA, MMA and RBSD are also largely idioms at this stage. Age has nothing to do with defining a TMA, just because you practice a mixture of martial arts doesn't mean you're doing MMA, and many RBSD practitioners seem to be entirely divorced from reality.

Barry.Oglesby

As an MMA coach I'd describe myself as fairly traditional. Not in any cultural sense of the word, I wouldn't emphasise bowing or anything like that. But I would emphasise certain values in what I teach:

1. Respect; both for yourself and your training partners. For your opponents and their teams
2. Modesty; there's lots of people out there better than you, so keep your feet on the ground. Also that submission you "catch everyone with" will let you down one day- guaranteed!
3. Hard work; nothing was ever achieved without effort

I've been down this road and had this discussion before. There is no TMA. MMA is just as much an abitrary term as TMA. I've given up on calling myself anything. Just enjoy your training, have fun, fight if you want to and let other people call you what they will. They'll probably call you "some kratty dude" or "a cage fighter" anyway.

SBG Ireland

smacl wrote: »

My personal interpretation is a traditional martial art is one that carries forward traditions of training in a certain way over a protracted period of time. This may be through a documented syllabus that will be commonly used across most schools that claim to practice the same art. By this definition, MMA will doubtless become traditional in the near future.

no, by this definition every combat sport that makes up MMA is a TMA - can you think of any martial arts with longer histories than boxing, wrestling??

so clearly 'time' has nothing to do with what makes an art 'traditional'

bambi not too many people proudly say they do 'human cockfighting'.

seemingly Bujinkan is a TMA, MMA and Modern MA? i cant say for the other 2 but i do have some experience in MMA and find that hard to believe- have Bujinkan had much success in MMA?

Dyr

SBG Ireland wrote: »

bambi not too many people proudly say they do 'human cockfighting'.

Likewise for a term like TMA, both terms carry a negative connotation IME

SBG Ireland

well ive never heard someone say they do human cockfighting but have heard a lot of people say they do TMA

Dyr

tbh I've only heard the term TMA come up in internet debates and it's not usually used in the first person. Never heard anyone using that term in the real world, I probably don't get out enough though

SBG Ireland

is this not the real world? lol

yomchi

It's an interesting subject no doubt. Although I am guilty of using the term TMA myself from time to time I think it is a misnomer.

As far as I am aware, the term really only started getting bandied around when MMA burst onto the scene and training methods from these so called TMA's were being questioned, and rightly so.

When MMA became more popular it challenged the very foundations of the arts that some people were already training in. It had a polarising effect, which undermined the identity of these other arts. So what did people do? Well those that wanted to study this new method (MMA) went and trained it. This caused unease within the other systems, some frantically rebranded themselves, some decided they would use the term MMA for marketing reasons without knowing a tap about about it (no pun intended) and then others just continued on the journey that they were on with their chosen art.

Like any polarising effect, you will have one side and you will have it's opposite. On one side you had MMA which encompassed all the good things about functional training and fighting, and on the other side you had them umm... ermm... what will we call ourselves?... o yeh.. Traditional Martial Arts, the arts that concentrate on developing your character and your spiritual side. Who needs all that crazy ass fighting anyway? <- tongue in cheek remark.

Furious-Dave

yomchi wrote: »

Traditional Martial Arts, the arts that concentrate on developing your character and your spiritual side. Who needs all that crazy ass fighting anyway?

That's not entirely accurate. There are a lot of so called TMA's that do actually complete their tasks of turning practitioners into effective fighters. You also forgot to mention the traditional people who kept their styles the way they were but changed their training methods, and even added grappling training to their systems. Of course, there were people already doing this long before UFC came along.

yomchi

Furious-Dave wrote: »

That's not entirely accurate. There are a lot of so called TMA's that do actually complete their tasks of turning practitioners into effective fighters. You also forgot to mention the traditional people who kept their styles the way they were but changed their training methods, and even added grappling training to their systems. Of course, there were people already doing this long before UFC came along.

OK i better edit that, as it was a tongue in cheek remark.. unfortunately there is no smiley for 'tongue in cheek'

Furious-Dave

Lol. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't complaining
Further to your post, I really think it was the grappling that shook the TMA world. Most systems simply had no defence against skilled grappling or even wrestlers, and that was the really big wake up call.

Niall Keane

MMA seems to be often confused with “modern” martial arts rather than “mixed” martial arts. So an MMA guy can be practicing only old established TMAs but must do a few of them. Muay Thai and Wrestling?

Of course the term MMA now popularly relates to Cage Fighting or an arena where different styles can compete, but this precludes Lei Tai / sanshou which has traditionally provided this facility. (Although IMAC see sanshou as MMA)

Re. TMA, just to add to the confusion; for me as a practitioner of Chinese Martial Arts, traditional martial arts differ from modern “Wushu” which are routines of all the “flashy” moves combined and exaggerated out of recognition from TMA. So from a CMA point of view if you want to fight and compete do a TMA, if you want to back flip and dance do Modern Wushu. Bejing University produces a lot of dancers and film stars, where as Xian’s Xing Yi schools have produced some outstanding sanda fighters who traditionally fight on a Lei Tai or raised platform without ropes. But these guys have also fought “mixed” Sanshou / Thai rules in a ring, and now many in the “Art of War”, (Cage Fighting in a boxing ring) Could you keep up??? Worse still just in case you’re getting your head around this, take TMA / CMA out of China, and into Europe and in most cases you’ll have charlatans teaching routines and no martial aspects, declaring the dance an art.

Which begs the question what is meant by art? Some people think this means the forms, the flowery stuff that doesn’t seem congruent to improving fighting skills. They’ll tell you that such practice is character building, or teaches respect, as if the murderers who founded many of the traditional arts carried much of this “respect” for their fellow man?

But art is really about communicating, about engendering specific, intended, responses in the observer. It’s the faints and draws, the use of your dynamic form and rhythm to entice a response in the opponent, setting him up to fight your fight, high level fluency and mastery of skills, not for journeyman sluggers. All of this of course is or at least was explored in the so called dead drills of TMA, they became dead when those teaching it basically used their crayons to “colour-in” a Caravaggio. You know the type, “no its done this way”, they can only replicate, never understand the essence, and so a creative and all encompassing art becomes a mechanically restricted dead routine. I know that many modern systems that test themselves have “alive” response training drills, well just stop testing and with a few packets of crayons you’re back to dancing in parks.

Maybe that’s the only real difference in martial arts, those who do and do not pressure test their skills? I can document my art back to 1750’s, the origins are said to be in the 13th century, and we can still fight, but not a single generation has failed to test themselves, it’s a tradition!

ehunt3_14

A TMA is defined at least in Japanese based arts as anything generally anything pre 1876. After that it's a modern maratial art.

1876 is the date that the wearing of swrods were prohibited in japan and as such the "arts" developed after that date were less martial (ie deisgned for comabt and warfare) and more art. This is also distinguished in the changing of jutsu to do in many martial arts. Accordingly arts such as Kyudo, Iaido, Jujitsu are consdiered classical TMA. In other words arts used by warriors on the battlefield or derived by those same warriors to maintain martial skills, prior to the abolishment of the sword wearing right.

Arts such as Judo, Aikido, Karate are modern Martial arts. I'm not aware of any strict guidlines for non Japanese arts.

I think it's an easy enough definition.

As regard Mxed Martial Arts - in my opinion that's not a martial art - it's a sport. And a great one at that, but there is little or no bearing on those technqiues being used in warfare or combat. No were an obviously created by warriors, during a classical military period.

RBSD is not a martial art nor does it claim to be. I practice several and they are self defence systems, lablled as such, not martial arts.

smacl

SBG Ireland wrote: »

no, by this definition every combat sport that makes up MMA is a TMA - can you think of any martial arts with longer histories than boxing, wrestling??

Yup, MMA in my opinion is a largely free style competitive fighting sport that borrows heavily from older fighting traditions such as boxing and wrestling. It keeps what works best for its competition format, and discards the rest.

so clearly 'time' has nothing to do with what makes an art 'traditional'

I'd say it takes time to establish any tradition, martial arts or otherwise. I think by traditional what you are actually referring to are traditions that don't provide any competitive value in an MMA context, e.g.

• Wearing unusual clothing and belts
• Training through a foreign language
• Bowing, and observing other overly formal traditional rituals
• Subscribing to a belief in the efficacy of the 'art' and its techniques without testing them under pressure
• Practicing techniques that are rarely useful in a competitive environment
• Grading outside of a competition format
• Practising katas, forms, etc..
• Restricting your techniques to a given range (e.g. no grappling or no striking)
• Punching and kicking the air, bricks, blocks of wood, and other inanimate objects that don't fight back
• Using weapons
• Meditation
• etc...

While I'm not a fan of many of the above, I think others provide value, just not in an MMA context, e.g. enjoyment, fitness, long term health, etc..

Niall Keane

As regard Mxed Martial Arts - in my opinion that's not a martial art - it's a sport. And a great one at that, but there is little or no bearing on those technqiues being used in warfare or combat.

You cannot use a punch in combat?

Would not a combat sport instill an understanding of timing, angle and range? Is this not essential in combat? How else does one develop these skills? Traditionally the combat arts have always competed. Kung Fu on a Lei Tai, Burmese Boxing - Lethwei, Muay Thai in every village festival, Western Boxing (and stick) and Wrestling, I even recall something about a Japanese dude who went about with a wooden sword knocking seven shades out of local samurai, and isn’t the “book of five rings” the bible of Japanese bushido? No art is not the subject matter but the application. Hence the term “artful fighter”.

OLDMAN1

SBG Ireland wrote: »

no, by this definition every combat sport that makes up MMA is a TMA - can you think of any martial arts with longer histories than boxing, wrestling??

so clearly 'time' has nothing to do with what makes an art 'traditional'

bambi not too many people proudly say they do 'human cockfighting'.

seemingly Bujinkan is a TMA, MMA and Modern MA? i cant say for the other 2 but i do have some experience in MMA and find that hard to believ i- have Bujinkan had much success in MMA?

could you tell me what martial art has a longer history than wrestling?
shuai jiao (chinese wrestling ) has a recorded history going back to 200 bc, some say it goes back futher to the yellow emperor (2600 bc)
wrestling is the oldest martial arts in the world, there was folk wrestling in europe before a lot of eastern styles started...

Doug Cartel

ehunt3_14 wrote: »

A TMA is defined at least in Japanese based arts as anything generally anything pre 1876. After that it's a modern maratial art.

You're talking about the distinction between koryo and gendai martial arts. That's a different thing to what's being discussed here.

OLDMAN1

i just googled greek wrestling and wiki says that wrestling was added to the olympic in 700bc, i would really like to hear of a martial art that has a history longer than wrestling

Niall Keane

Wrestling is the oldest martial arts in the world, there was folk wrestling in Europe before a lot of eastern styles started...

True and many of the traditional forms of wrestling were not simply "sports", they take into account the use of weapons, awarding more points for clean throws, and none for sacrifice moves. Some included weapons, some Indian forms had daggers, and Chinese Shuai Jiao originally used helmets with cow horns attached.

The great hero Genghis Khan the originator of the only meritocracy in history, conqueror of anywhere he could get to, and ancestor of 10% of the current world population, awarded superior rank to the best wrestlers amongst his soldiers, allowing them a step up to command and the chance to further their military careers, an opportunity once afforded only to nobles.

Niall Keane

wrestling was added to the olympic in 700bc, i would really like to hear of a martial art that has a history longer than wrestling

Shǒubó (手搏), practiced during the Shang dynasty (1766–1066 BC), and Xiang Bo (similar to Sanda) from the 7th century BC, are two examples of documented ancient Chinese martial arts.

Dyr

OLDMAN1 wrote: »

i just googled greek wrestling and wiki says that wrestling was added to the olympic in 700bc, i would really like to hear of a martial art that has a history longer than wrestling

Think there was a pretty huge gap between the BC years and the 19th century when greco-roman was recreated along with the rest of the olympics.

Doug Cartel

There's also styles like Traditional Wing Chun™ and whatever jujutsu style the Jitsu Foundation teach. These are new versions of other styles that claim to be more traditional than the originals.

Though in fairness to TJF, they don't hide that their stuff was adapted from judo in the 60s. Still, they don't make it very clear either.

OLDMAN1

Bambi wrote: »

Think there was a pretty huge gap between the BC years and the 19th century when greco-roman was recreated along with the rest of the olympics.

do you really believe that wrestling was not practised between the bc years and the 19th century, just because it wasn't in the oylmpics?

Doug Cartel

OLDMAN1 wrote: »

do you really believe that wrestling was not practised between the bc years and the 19th century, just because it wasn't in the oylmpics?

I took his point to be that it doesn't have some unbroken linage going back to the Greeks. All these things have pretty fragmented histories when you actually look at them.

cletus

Niall Keane wrote: »

MMA seems to be often confused with “modern” martial arts rather than “mixed” martial arts. So an MMA guy can be practicing only old established TMAs but must do a few of them. Muay Thai and Wrestling?

Of course the term MMA now popularly relates to Cage Fighting or an arena where different styles can compete, but this precludes Lei Tai / sanshou which has traditionally provided this facility. (Although IMAC see sanshou as MMA)

Whereas mma was originally coined to describe what you have said above, it has become a sport with a ruleset of its own, so that, despite the fact that the training borows very heavily from certain martail arts. it is now possible to go to an mma club with no background in any ma at all, and train

Very rarely any more is mma billed as an arena in which to see different styles of martial art battle it out. It has become its own entity

As a result, I think that IMAC should not consider sanshou as mma, although there is no doubt a great amount of crossover between the two


As regards what is tma, who knows. There are a variety of aspcts pointed to as being typical of tma, however, any one of these can be applied to most "non-tma" martial arts too.

SBG Ireland

smacl wrote: »

I think by traditional what you are actually referring to are traditions that don't provide any competitive value in an MMA context, e.g.

• Wearing unusual clothing and belts
• Training through a foreign language
• Bowing, and observing other overly formal traditional rituals
• Subscribing to a belief in the efficacy of the 'art' and its techniques without testing them under pressure
• Practicing techniques that are rarely useful in a competitive environment
• Grading outside of a competition format
• Practising katas, forms, etc..
• Restricting your techniques to a given range (e.g. no grappling or no striking)
• Punching and kicking the air, bricks, blocks of wood, and other inanimate objects that don't fight back
• Using weapons
• Meditation
• etc...

While I'm not a fan of many of the above, I think others provide value, just not in an MMA context, e.g. enjoyment, fitness, long term health, etc..

could that list be summed up by saying 'playing dress up and pretending to fight'?

interesting thread....although with all the varying definitions im still confused...

cletus

John, you've started a very interesting thread here, but I get the feeling that this

although with all the varying definitions im still confused

was your reason behind it. I'd be surprised if you actually expected to get an all encompassing answer

Doug Cartel

I don't see why people feel it needs to have an exact definition.

flynny51

Yep and even if ye manage to establish some kind of consensus on what ye mean when ye say traditional martial art, it will still just be between boards.ie folk. Everyone else will have their own meaning for it.

SBG Ireland

cletus wrote: »

but I get the feeling that this

its nice that you have a feeling about my motivations

i just see it come up on so many threads then when you push it people have no idea what they mean.....i have my own definition.....but im interested in what other people say.

usually get wishy/washy answers

'well its old' - so is wrestling/boxing and in contrast TKD is less than 100yrs old
'well you bow' - bjj/judo
'you go for belts' - bjj/judo

etc etc

as for 'builds character' or 'respect' etc....sorry but boxing, wrestling, bjj, judo, thaiboxing, sambo etc all do these too

so....what is it that makes an art 'traditional'?? why do we refer to one art as TMA and not another??

cletus

So my feelings were correct

So, whats your definition?

Dyr

SBG Ireland wrote: »

could that list be summed up by saying 'playing dress up and pretending to fight'?

interesting thread....although with all the varying definitions im still confused...

Is, let us say, BJJ and judo playing dress up and pretending to fight also then though? I've know that most casual observers would not describe either of those activities as "fighting".

Or are they fighting within an agreed set of parameters? Which is also what stuff like chi sau is i guess

_oveless

I thought we were passed the stage of "mma vs tma". I mean do people still have a go at mma and the arts that are prominently used in it because they're not "traditional"? And if so who really cares?

SBG Ireland

Bambi wrote: »

Is, let us say, BJJ and judo playing dress up and pretending to fight also then though?

well i certainly wouldnt describe them as 'fighting'! i always refer to them as 'playing' - i will say both those sports you described do 'exactly what they say on the tin'

SBG Ireland

cletus wrote: »

So my feelings were correct

yes my reason was because of the 'varying definitions im still confused' - whats your point?

OLDMAN1

SBG: you asked me the same question on a different thrend and to be honest i had trouble anwsering it because to be honest i never taught of it before i came on this board, im a simple person and to me fighting is fighting, as long as there is competitions involved, im happy...

EnjoyChoke

TMA simple 5 point check list:

1. Wear "white pyjamas" while training.
2. Line up in strict grade order, at the beginning and end of each class.
3. Have kata as an important composite of the sylabus.
4. Have a Sifu or a Sensei.
5. Have a large framed photograph of a venerated past master on the wall.

SBG Ireland

EnjoyChoke wrote: »

TMA simple 5 point check list:

1. Wear "white pyjamas" while training.
2. Line up in strict grade order, at the beginning and end of each class.
3. Have kata as an important composite of the sylabus.
4. Have a Sifu or a Sensei.
5. Have a large framed photograph of a venerated past master on the wall.

apart from pt 3 that describes a lot of BJJ clubs i know

SBG Ireland

OLDMAN1 wrote: »

to be honest i had trouble anwsering it

it would seem a lot of people do...

yomchi

EnjoyChoke wrote: »

TMA simple 5 point check list:

1. Wear "white pyjamas" while training.
2. Line up in strict grade order, at the beginning and end of each class.
3. Have kata as an important composite of the sylabus.
4. Have a Sifu or a Sensei.
5. Have a large framed photograph of a venerated past master on the wall.

Simple, is a good choice of words. :rolleyes:

SBG Ireland

Furious-Dave wrote: »

There are a lot of so called TMA's that do actually complete their tasks of turning practitioners into effective fighters.

whats a TMA?
why are you furious? (silly joke!)

EnjoyChoke

SBG Ireland wrote: »

apart from pt 3 that describes a lot of BJJ clubs i know

Has to be all five, or no dice.

EnjoyChoke

yomchi wrote: »

Simple, is a good choice of words. :rolleyes:

Thanks.

yomchi

EnjoyChoke wrote: »

Thanks.

You're welcome.

Furious-Dave

SBG Ireland wrote: »

whats a TMA?
why are you furious? (silly joke!)

Really, it's just a misnomer. Perhaps it was originally used instead of "Classical Martial Arts" to describe what came into people minds when they thought of martial arts i.e. Karate, Kung Fu, Jujutsu etc. As we all know though there are martial traditions from all over the world.
As has been said, everyone seems to have a different idea of what TMA means to them. I do think that modern Karate, Kung Fu systems etc are TMA's as they follow the same or similar class formats, practices, routines, etiquette, wear the same or similar clothing etc as the styles that they evolved (or devolved ) from.