Traditional Martial art ?

hi fergal, pleased to meet you. You seem like a nice person and intelligent. Let me tell you what I think happened to you.

I don't know why you got into martial arts. Maybe you liked bruce lee movies. Maybe you were bullied in school. Maybe your dad brought you down and you just went because you were told to go. More often than not, there is a type of fantasy people have before starting martial arts, the most typical being a fantasy of becoming a chuck norris level fighter who can defend from evil assailants and rescue damsels in distress. Please don't be offended by me inferring this, it's the same for JJJ, judo, bjj, mma, muay thai. Most people don't admit it to themselves.

next, you've being training in jjj for a long period. over this time, you've been inculcated with the ideas of loyalty, fidelity, allegiance, honour , respect for jjj and your jjj superiors. Thus it makes it very difficult for you to assess jjj objectively, for you to say jjj is not good means you're saying your sensei is not good, or your friends or not good. Furthermore, because you've invested time and energy, it becomes difficult for you to admit that what you've invested in is flawed. you've become attached to it and again, you cannot think objectively, rationally and clearly. I repeat, please do not feel offended by this, it happens to everyone, in mma, in bjj, in jjj. They find a team, a family, they get this type of brain washing and it becomes difficult to see the wood from the trees.

what you are doing, which is typical of reasonably intelligent people who think they are being open minded and fair, is trying to rationalise the time you spend/spent doing jjj. so first you will say that your jjj isn't like the rest. you will find the criticisms others have of your martial art (compliance, lack of drilling, old fashioned syllabus, not realistic etc.) and try to debunk them individually. I will say your sparring isn't with resistance, but you'll tell me you got a black eye, surely it is resistant. I'll tell you you waste time on kata, you'll tell me it's only a week around gradings. I'll tell you something and you'll invent an excuse as to how it doesn't apply to you.

let us look at the evidence.

the are numerous reports staying that jjj isn't effective as a methodology for anything approaching realistic fighting (mma, street fighting , self defence). you will dismiss them as biased, misinformed or simply not applicable to you. if you read 100 reports saying the lada automobile was a bad car, with poor fuel efficiency and bad handling, would you try and maintain that your individual lada actually handles like a ferrarri etc?

jjj has never been seen in MMA competition (e.g. ufc etc)

thus we infer that jjj isn't applicable in this arena, as someone from jjj would have taken up the gauntlet/mantle to represent. you can rationalise this as either, jjj isn't for COMPETITION, the ring or cage, it's too lethal. or you can say, you're club isn't in it for competition sakes, just for other reasons. if i told you there was a competition for paintings, and you win 500 euro for every winner, would you beleive that your painting class could enter and win, but just choose not to because that would be unethical ? unappealing? surely someone would take 500 euro.

finally, this last point is really subtle, and you won't beleive me now, it will take months/years/life time for you to get it, and accept it. BJJ, wrestling, judo are actually extremely sophisticated. people have been doing them on a daily basis, 1-2-3-4 hours a day, every day for years. They are trying to win local competitions, nationals, europeans, worlds, olympics. the sports have inherent rules, they have referees, they have some fairly arbitary criteria if you look at them from mma/free fight/vale tudo point of view. but what happens is, in these sports, you have 1000s of people, all practicing in a sporting manner that maximises improvement, development, innovation, skill accusation, rewards determined ism, endurance, work ethic, behaviour. so in the end, the champions that come from these disciplines are mega athletes, legitimate masters, experts that can actually start thinking about how to apply it to mma/vale tudo successfully.

the difference to your jjj is that you have guys fooling around on the group, for 30m to an hour a week, maybe a few weeks consecitively, then a break for the summer holidays, then a break at xmas, then missed this because of a party here, then missed because of a wedding there. nobody comes from this environment and gets GOOD. nobody comes from this environment and gets good enough to do it in a real fight against a guy who is bigger and stronger and knows how to throw a dig. no one comes from this environment and goes to mma and wins.

what comes from this environment, is white people, middle aged, nerdy, fat, overweight, well meaning, nice guys, not necessarily arogant or over confident. what comes from this environment is a black belt who has a good academic knowledge of a number of martial arts moves but would be novice level in application. what comes from this is people who probably think they're very good at what they do, and what they do is very good. they are well meaning but just wrong.

fergal, you are on a path to mediocrity, self-limiting, self-praising,self-promoting. YOu will get a black belt that has no value outside of your own school. you might get a lot of the psychological benefits of martial arts, some of the physical benefits but probably none of the neurological . you need to quit jjj and do judo/bjj/mma/wrestling and see which you like the best and try to get good at it within the context of your personal circumstances.

that video is complete nonsense