Warrior’s Intent: Combat vs. Sport

There are a wide variety of martial art, “combat” sport, and self defense systems available at a number of training centers and gyms in the Washington DC area.  Some training centers, however, overextend on what their training programs authentically deliver.  Competition-based martial arts or combat sport systems selling their programs as self defense, or self defense programs selling what they do as appropriate for competitive sports are common occurrences of promotional overreach.  In order to select the best program and training center for your needs, your intentions and goals should be clear.  Are you looking for sport or self defense tactics?

Many combat sports or competition-based martial arts systems, such as Muay Thai (Thai Boxing), Boxing, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), etc., train practitioners in strategies and techniques that specialize at winning within a specific set of rules against an opponent using a similar set of skills.  For instance, walk into a BJJ tournament and you can be relatively assured that your ONE opponent will also utilize BJJ and grappling techniques that fall within the rules specified for that event space (such as a ring, cage, or mats), and the match will last no longer than a specified time.  Moreover, you will not face any outside weapons nor your opponent’s friends…at least not during the match itself.  This scenario is not at all true in a self defense situation.

Conversely, if you are training in a TRUE self defense or combat system such as Krav Maga or Kali, you are not leaning skills to compete.  Your focus is on bare-knuckle, no-rules combat that keeps you safe.  Competition-focused martial arts programs are very good at building skills and strategies to fight according to prescribed rules against an opponent using similar skill-sets, but a quality self defense system will not follow this track of training.  The word “opponent” should not even be used in the programs training vernacular.  Self defense is focused on reacting, defending, and surviving no matter what the scenario is.  Luminous Warrior goes even further in self defense by incorporating mental and emotional components to build an  innovative, holistic self defense program for the warrior body, mind, and spirit.

Whether you are looking to train in Krav Maga, Muay Thai, Kali, BJJ, MMA, or any other system of self defense or martial art, there are 4 main factors that distinguish self defense training from competition-based systems.  If/when the eventuality of using the full force of your skills occurs:

• Are you expected to follow certain “rules”?
• Are the size and number of your opponents regulated?
• Are you preparing to willingly physically engage someone in a controlled, known environment?
• Are you training to react to a specific style of attack or to ANY style of attack for ANY scenario?

Whether competition focused or self defense focused, there are great skills to learn and training to experience in most systems.  Just be sure that your intentions are aligned with the genuine focus of the training center’s programs.  Fighting for a prize and fighting for your life are two completely different scenarios demanding different skill-sets and training.

Written by: Cary on November 18, 2011.
Last revised by: Cary on December 14, 2011.