Five Things that have Gone Totally and Utterly Wrong with Freestyle!

The problem with freestyle is that it has degraded into the basic fact of fighting. Sounds contradictory, I know, but I began learning martial arts over 40 years ago, and I have seen a different face of freestyle. This was a freestyle that was actually more effective, easier to learn, and made students evolve into better human beings.

Now, I have nothing against MMA, or UFC, or learning ground and pound and all the other modes of freestyle. Truth, I think some of this stuff would have been awfully useful back when I was beginning. That said, consider the following points.

Controlled freestyle in the martial arts effectively died when people started wearing protective gear. Sure, we occasionally wore wraps and things back then, but the purpose was to protect injuries that had already occurred. The breaking point, however, was when school owners began making money selling pads and gloves, they pandered to mothers fears, and this halted little Johnny from learning about the true control possible through the martial arts.

Bruce Lee really smacked the martial arts hard by introducing bouncing. He watched Mohammad Ali fighting, saw how floating worked, and realized that bouncing disrupted timing, and thus he changed the world of freestyle. Unfortunately, the effect was also that people stopped learning how to gauge timing, and this stopped students from observing a whole fact of life, for time, as you may not have known, is what keeps this universe going.

With a loss of reality and a degradation of the sense of timing eating at the innards of martial artists, a loss of control was quick to follow. I remember seeing a fellow who had not had but a few lessons in the martial arts taken to a tournament and encouraged to fight, not to get a point, but to beat people. He fought, there were injuries, and control went out the window. And control, control through timing and of reality, is the course of the true martial arts path.

The final straw behind the downfall of the old way of doing freestyle had to do with respect. I was taught to bow when I entered the school, and to bow to my classmates and partners, and to bow before I stepped on the mat and fought somebody, and it all showed respect. Now there is an attitude of I’m tougher than you I spit on your school, and this utterly destroys the art of freestyle, and even the fact of human compassion.

I know there will be those who will not accept what I say, and, let’s face it, my criticisms must be tempered by some of the marvelous things that are inherent in the arts that have developed, and this includes the mixed martial arts and the ultimate fighting championships styles. There are things to be learned in the martial arts that are popular today, and, I am not opposed to these new arts. When I see people showing a total lack of respect, fighting merely to beat each other up, I am on the other side, the old side, the side that shows compassion for their fellow man.

So, I ask you the question, what can you do to resurrect the old attitude of respect? Will getting rid of gloves and pads enable people to feel the reality of what they are doing, and get rid of harmful attitudes? And, can you do this and still make the art work?

Al Case has analyzed martial arts for 40+ years. A writer for the mags, with his own column, Al is the originator of Matrixing and Neutronics. He is giving away a free ebook about Matrixing at Monster Martial Arts.