The Need for a Non School Based Martial Arts Research Group

Schools are setup to have teacher/student relationships and they usually have a curriculum and an agenda. The agenda is usually one or more of: making money, spreading the tradition of a particular style or teaching a competitive sport. While this may teach you about martial arts, sooner or later these agendas will get in the way of the search for effective techniques. The more experience you have, the sooner this will become obvious in any school.

I have plenty of knowledge and I do not want to be just another student, I want to question and debunk any technique which I feel is not effective. While I am open to and do learn from anyone no matter what their skill level, I do not want to accept as fact what an instructor is preaching. I want them to prove to me that they can use a technique effectively against people other than their students, at least against beginners, and against teachers from other schools!

I am not looking to get another black belt or become an instructor within an organization. I just want to learn more and get better! I want to practice what I think will work, not what is on someone else's curriculum. On occasion, I want to test my skills by sparring (safely) without letting rules get in the way¹ (I am trying to learn how to fight, not how to compete). I want to practice a technique until I feel like I actually understand it and could use it effectively. I want to practice with someone who is going to try to refute what I think works so that I don't delude myself.

I hope that this group could help make this a reality.

-Martin

¹ In no way am I trying to imply that sparring should be no-holds-bar (although even that has rules). Sparring should be a safe learning experience. There is a place for competitive ego building sparring (fun and thus rules), but it can detract from combat training and condition you to fight ineffectively by following all the rules designed to make sparring safe and hence ineffective in a real fight! So while I am not advocating kicking everyone in the groin until they drop, I am advocating kicking gently, in the "general direction of the groin", if it is open to illustrate this clearly. The same goes for hitting the back and the legs, all things which are usually outlawed by rules, or stepping on the face of someone on the ground, very real and effective (so effective that even no-holds-bar outlaws it and so effective that law enforcement agents do it).