Budo vs Martial Art ?

Don,

I have heard many testimonial accounts first had of soldiers using hand to hand in actual combat. It happens, more often than not. We do not have a good system for documenting it though.

Matt Larsen at the Combatives School tries to capture the stories (lessons learned). He even had a column for a while in grappling magizine, although I did not see it in there last month.

I will point out that BJJ is the basis for the army combatives program...it is NOT the program. We have essentially adopted the MMA concept drawing from the best systems and experts that we find to build a solid foundation.

What you run into though is you have to codify a system in order to train thousands of soldiers to some sort of standard. Korean's have TKD, Russians have Sombo, U.S now has Modern Army Combatives.

It encompasses BJJ, Muay Thai, Boxing, Greco-Roman for the most part.

Matt Larsen has done an excelllent job maintaining the delicate balance between developing a core system and managing to keep the aliveness and quality in it so far.

Really the evolvement of it parallels the evolvement of the whole MMA movement. Which, I think is very healthy outlook.

For too long schools have model of "I am sensei, do what I say and you will be rewarded".

Gracies opened our eyes to a new way, and now you have Westerners doing what we do best sometimes is breakng the rules and paradigms and establishing a new methodolgy for learning and growing...called MMA.

It is an exciting time to be involved in martial arts!


I don't think it is necessarily Japanese culture exclusively that looks down on change....but human nature. It is easy to get comfortable and complacent with the familiar. If I am a black belt or an instructor, it is far easier to delude myself into thinking I am special by setting the conditions for my success and controlling them. We all do this everyday subconsciously.

I have been studying "acephalus" organizations lately. those without a centralized authority or leader. It is interesting but these organizations work. Straight Blast Gym is doing it (or trying). I read an article about a Brazilian Company that is doing it. Many Terrorist organizations work this way as well.

Thanks for the info Kevin. It sounds like a great system. As you know, I do not advocate just bjj if you are going to get into a knock down drag out fight. I'm glad the army's system isn't just bjj either.

And I do agree it is an exciting time to be involved in martial arts. But I would say as long as you are training with instructors willing to be open minded enough to let the excitement in. I'm not going to get into that though.

I'll have to read into acephalus orgs. I've been pushing my company to switch from hourly to performance based pay. As you can tell, I sometimes have lots of free time. I wish I could spend it somewhere other then this chair.

I have a few friends recently out of the marines, they were not all that impressed with the combatives program they went though (They joined up in 2000). I hope they are following in the same stride.

I don't know much about the Marine Corps program, but I do know that they integrated it into everyday Marine life. Marines wear a different colored belt with the combat uniform denoting their rank in the MCMAP, they are also required to complete different phases of it for promotion etc.

Army doesn't do that....our regs say all soldiers are required to do it. But finding units that actually make it a priority is a challenge sometimes. Most soldiers will get exposed to the program in the next couple of years, most will get formalized training when they go to schools, just about every post that I know of has at least one Subject Matter Expert in the program that is available to roll with these days if they want to. I usually have 5 or 6 guys on any given day...but to me, that is not alot given the size of our post.