Extreme Martial Arts

Extreme Martial Arts, Hmm, exactly what does that MEAN? Okay, I am not one to criticize another person's efforts, passions, expertise, etc, but I can't just refrain here from just pointing out the positive aspects of the traditional martial arts as opposed to Extreme Martial Arts, because it just wouldn't be right.

First of all, and what I believe should be foremost in the mind of anyone who decides to practice the martial arts, should be the understanding of just what the phrase "Martial Arts" means. For the uninitiated, or for those who just never gave it any thought, the word "martial" is defined thusly:

mar·tial [mahr-shuhl]
-adjective
1.
inclined or disposed to war; warlike: The ancient Romans were a martial people.
2.
of, suitable for, or associated with war or the armed forces: martial music.
3.
characteristic of or befitting a warrior: a martial stride.

So, you see, unlike the showmanship of Extreme Martial Arts, Traditional Chinese Martials Arts is the art of the warrior in battle, or, as in the Chinese definition, "War Art"

A martial artist is called upon to master many things internally, and many things externally. Let's take them one at a time shall we?

Discipline

Discipline is freedom, Period. Does Extreme Martial Arts teach you this? How you ask? Well consider this. You go about your everyday life reacting to the forces around you. Forces from outside you and forces from within. The key point here is the fact that a reaction is not an action. Actions come from within, they are a purposeful thing that comes from your inner being. A reaction, however, automatically gives over control to the active force, the one you are reacting TO. When you endeavor to discipline yourself, it means that you have chosen how you will act, how you will be, WHAT you will be. It means that you have taken it upon yourself to control, at least in some small way, what your life is to be and to mean. So, rather than being trapped forever in a chain of reactions to the forces that affect our lives, you have chosen the freedom of discipline, the freedom to be what you want to be. There is no freedom without discipline. To make the decision to do Extreme Martial Arts is to buy into the reactive nature of people who respond so showmanship.


Training:

There is no improvement without training, and one should constantly strive to improve. Notice, I did NOT say perfect. There is no such thing as perfection, and any truthful martial artist will tell you that their abilities fluctuate from one day to the next. There are a million and one people out there who got a "black belt" in Extreme Martial Arts, and then stopped training. Do you think they are a black belt a year later? A person who makes Extreme Martial Arts their focus is quite different from a person on the road to mastery. A master trains every day of his or her life. Training takes many forms, and a thoughtful practitioner will always strive to come up with new ways to train. It is important to focus not only on the big picture, but on the small parts as well. Take the focus down to whatever size component is necessary to begin the process of improving. One should try to find the weakest link in the chain, and improve THAT before trying to improve the whole.

Example:

If you have a form that has a jumping spinning crescent kick in it, and you are having trouble pulling it off, take a look at the components:

How strong are my feet? Not strong enough? (Foot strength in TCMA is extremely important) Then do bunny hops, duck walks, frog jumps, standing jumps using only your feet and calves to get you off the ground.

How strong are my calf muscles? Same as above, but concentrate on standing jumps, frog jumps, explosive calf raises using a 2x4 under your toes.

How strong are my quadriceps (thighs)? Leg strength in Shaolin techniques is of paramount importance, train the horse stance, dragon stance, twisted horse, turtle stance, cat stance. Do them in a static stance format, holding each stance as long as possible, building up every day, and also do them in a moving format, changing from one to the other kalaidescopically. Mix it up, and try to improve each component of the movement individually, speed, power, fluidity, each in its own right, then train to meld them together. Unlike training for Extreme Martial Arts, these techniques are not designed to improve the "show", they are designed to make you a warrior.

Do I have the necessary flexibility? I could write a book on this, but fortunately for you and me, the Evil Russian, Pavel Tsatsouline has already written the definitive work on this in his book "Beyond Stretching: Russian Flexibility Breakthroughs" available here. I would like to present a few of his ideas now. Most people haven't the faintest idea on how to train flexibility properly, especially martial artists. I'm going to be adding more to this section in time, because it is HUGE, but for now, let me say this:

Extreme Martial Arts has a nasty tendency to concentrate on extreme flexibility, but in a very unhealthy way.

A) Ligaments and tendons do NOT stretch hardly at all without either tearing loose or breaking. Do NOT try to stretch your muscle attachments.

B) Muscles are MUCH longer than people think they are, but there is an involuntary muscle reflex that prevents muscles from extending to their full range, and actually causes tears. This reflex can be retrained using the proper techniques so you can use all of your innate flexibility. If you can put your leg out to the side and rest your foot on a kitchen table at waist height, you CAN do full splits, but don't try it until I post the techniques for training this reflex. Suffice it to say, you do NOT want flexibility withOUT springiness. It does you absolutely no good to train extreme flexibility to put on a show in Extreme Martial Arts at the cost of losing your retractive capability. Consider the difference between a martial artist practicing Extreme Martial Arts, that stretches the wrong way, and eventually can do a full front or side split, but has to crawl his way up off the floor, with a properly trained one who can jump up from a full standing position and drop to a full split, and then using his inner leg strength, like spring steel, spring right back up to a full standing position without missing a beat. Think it can't be done? Guess again. At over 70 years of age, Lau Fat Mon, could do it

C) Probably like people who practice Extreme Martial Arts, you've always been taught that slow stretching as part of your warmup will gradually increase your flexibility, well it will to some degree. You've also been taught th dynamic stretching, or "bouncing" is bad for you. Bullshit. It is, in fact, the ONLY way to overcome and re-train the built in stretch reflex. Here is how the built in stretch reflex works, your muscles are actually long enough to stretch far beyond what you're used to. Your nervous system has a built-in defense mechanism called a stretch reflex. Basically what happens is this, your nervous system is used to your muscles moving through a learned range, if you exceed that range, the stretch reflex tries to immediately contract to the muscle back to its original position The body's self-defense mechanisms are designed in such a way to prevent you from tearing your attachments such as your ligaments and tendons because muscle tissue is much easier to repair than ligaments or tendons. A muscle that is stretched too far, and too fast will always contract to oppose that stretch. There probably is no way to prevent this completely but you can improve it greatly by gradually increasing the range and speed of your stretches. I mentioned before that the common belief is that dynamic stretching or bouncing is bad for you, the truth is flexibility is velocity specific. There are two types of muscle receptors, or spindles, one is associated with flexibility alone, the other one is associated with flexibility and speed together as a unit. If you stretch slowly and gradually you will re-train the receptor that is associated with flexibility, however you will not re-train the receptor that is associated with velocity. To be safely flexible at the speed you will use in your given sport, you have to stretch in motion and at full velocity. The reason this happens is that ligaments are partly made up of wavy collagen fibers... if you completely uncoil them by stretching slowly until you've taken out all the slack you're asking for trouble, because at that point if you stretch them even 6% to 8% more they will tear. The reason for this is that slow loading takes up all the slack in these coils on the other hand, a force that is applied very quickly does not have time to do this. Studies show that knee ligaments can withstand up to 50% more force when the speed of loading is increased.. joint surfaces are also much less likely to get damaged when loaded quickly because of certain properties of the cartilage. Cartilage about 20 to 40% collagen and 60 to 80% water. Because of this, it acts a lot like a sponge that's filled with water. If you squeeze it out slowly, then all the liquid goes away...you get a thin little membrane that offers very little cushioning whatsoever. On the other hand when the loading is rapid as in landing from a jump, the water doesn't have time to get squeezed out and the cartilage's cushioning effect is at its highest.

D) The stretch reflex so far seems to be a problem, however, it serves a very useful function. The stretch reflex is what gives you your spring. If you will remember, before I mentioned that what you really want is flexibility like spring steel, unlike the type of flexibility that is commonly displayed in Extreme Martial Arts. One of the best ways to accomplish this is through the process known as plyometric flexibility training. If you've ever watched an international sports event such as the Olympics, you will notice that all of the athletes from the Eastern Bloc countries are jumping around, bouncing around and doing a bunch of really quick dynamic ballistic type of stretches. Do you think it's a coincidence that they get injured less frequently and perform much better? A note here; it is very important, to build up to ballistic stretching and plyometrics gradually if you have previously been stretching the old-fashioned way, which is to say slowly and gradually. An important thing to remember is that loose, ragdoll like, flexibility, such as the kind displayed by practitioners of Extreme Martial Arts, can be extremely dangerous, simply because the stretch reflex that is designed to save your ligaments and tendons at the expense of your muscle tissue will not engage quickly enough and in an extreme, sudden stretch your muscle attachments could be completely ripped out.

E) Here is something that someone who practices Extreme Martial Arts will seldom know...stretching is a form of strength training if correctly done. A very effective way of doing this in increasing your dynamic flexibility at the same time is to use isometric flexibility training. The way you do this is to position yourself at your maximum range in any given stretch that you are trying to improve. When you reach that point contract your muscles against the stretch and hold it for as long as you can. By repeating this technique over and over you will not only improve your flexibility, you will also improve your strength and your springiness. This is TRUE Extreme Martial Arts training, unlike the shows you see on TV

... More on this later

Am I using my waist - core properly? For a martial artist, the core must be strong and flexible. Forget having a skinny core like a dancer (or like someone who practices Extreme Martial Arts), take a look at the core on the statues depicting the Greek Spartan warriors. The waist is used to transfer movement from the foundation, the legs, to the upper body, shoulders, arms and fists.

Am I using my arms properly? This is a very interesting question..in the above example, a jumping, spinning crescent kick, requires proper use of the arms as counterweights to help get your airborne to deliver the kick powerfully and effectively.

How is the timing supposed to work? This is a question that bears careful examination in that you can have very good timing with a given technique and still be doing it completely wrong if the emphasis is wrong. Nowhere is this more evident than in Extreme Martial Arts. It's really important to know what the movement or technique will be used for so that you can first determine the proper emphasis. Once you have determined the proper emphasis then you can slowly and carefully work out the timing. Once you have THAT nailed, the next thing to do is to gradually increase the speed and power of the technique.

Once you examine the components in this way, and determine what the weak points are, you can then devise a micro-training regimen to bring the respective weaknesses up to standard. THEN you can go back to the whole movement, and train it properly, but there is really no point in trying to train a complete technique when some of the fundamental components of said technique are lacking. Unlike in Extreme Martial Arts, a warrior must be able to deliver.

Strategy:
Where in Extreme Martial Arts do you ever hear about strategy? Your training strategy is a very important component of your overall success. It's not enough to just go out there and work hard everyday, you need to examine everything that you're good at, everything which are bad at, figure out which ones are the most important and develop a plan to isolate the weakest links in the chain so you can improve. Success in martial arts, like any other athletic endeavor depends on mastering the basics. You have to have cardiovascular, respiratory, and muscular endurance. You have to have strength, speed, agility, and flexibility. Fortunately just practicing Chinese martial arts forms is an ideal way to accomplish all of this. Cutting edge fitness guru Robert Fagan, author of Natural Hormonal Enhancement, explains that the ideal way to lose fat and gain muscle is by manipulating the body's hormones. Part of this has to do with your eating habits which we are not so concerned with here, and part of it has to do with a technique called interval training. The human body responds to repeated stress by adapting to to better meet that stress. In the case of anaerobic training, that is, training having to do with stressing the musculoskeletal system, the body adapts by making the muscles stronger, the skeleton stronger, and increasing muscle size and endurance. Anaerobic training by its very nature is a form of interval training because of the resting phases between sets. Aerobic training, on the other hand, is not typically done using the interval training method, however, if you combine aerobic training with anaerobic training using the interval method, that is, an interval of aerobic training followed by a rest followed by an interval of anaerobic training followed by a rest, you will achieve the maximum hormonal advantage, which will allow you to build muscle, build skeletal strength, and build cardiovascular and respiratory strength. I mentioned before that you don't hear much about strategy in Extreme Martial Arts, TCMA teaches battle strategy in all of it's styles. There are diversion and distraction techniques, techniques designed to mislead or evoke the other person's battle strategy in all of the styles and forms. This something you will NEVER learn if you choose to practices Extreme Martial Arts

Focus
I almost called this one meditation, and while meditation can be a part of helping you to develop focus, they are not the same thing. Developing focus can be very challenging as it involves training the mind in a way that people are not usually accustomed to. Throughout the ages there have been many many different ways of training the mind in this fashion. Techniques like staring at a candle flame, staring at a Mandala, etc. are among a few. A long long time ago I met a woman from India by the name of Mala Jani. She taught me that the best way to meditate was to observe without being the Observer. This technique is self-explanatory to a large degree if you think about it, but to elaborate just a here are some instructions. If you are still bent on practicing Extreme Martial Arts, you might just want to bag it here and go to another website, because this may be too much for you.

Find a quiet place where you will not be interrupted for about 30 minutes every day, sit in a comfortable position that you can maintain for 30 minutes, and by this I don't mean a full lotus or any other such convoluted position, just a position whereby you can maintain your attention comfortably. Breathe naturally, not deeply or forcing the breath in any way, and began to observe your thoughts. At some point you might realize in your thoughts and you might even say something like this in your thoughts, "Hey, I'm watching my thoughts." The fine point on this is if you are aware of that thought statement, then the "I" in the sentence is not truly you, rather the awareness that is hearing the thought sentence is it true you, or Observer. In this way you can begin to understand the idea of observing without being the Observer. If you practice this technique every single day you will acquire tremendous focus, and you will also acquire a few other abilities that I'm not going to go into at this point, but suffice it to say that they are "interesting" to say the least. However you should not become distracted by that or any other weird abilities you might begin to develop, because ultimately they are completely unimportant. However, the ability to bring a razor-sharp focus to bear at any time you wish is an incredibly valuable tool for a martial artist.

Ego
Ego is the enemy of every martial artist, as well as every person alive. Unfortunately for people who practice Extreme Martial Arts, it is their master. It is our egos that drive us to buy things that we don't need, to act in superficial ways, to desire control over others, and to believe that we are in some way more important, or different or better, than any other living organism on the planet. If a person takes up the martial arts and practices them due to any, and I mean ANY, ego driven motive, they will eventually fail in every single way to become a true master. Extreme Martial Arts by its' very nature supports and magnifies the ego. There is an old saying that "Pride goeth before a fall." It is important to remember that there will always be martial artists or everyday street people with fighting abilities greater or lesser than yourself. It would be interesting to see how a practitioner of Extreme Martial Arts would fare against an everyday thug on the mean streets of L.A. or New York. Therefore the only way to survive is to adopt what I like to call the Humility of a Warrior. A warrior does not subjugate himself to anyone, nor does he allow anyone to subjugate themselves to him. To function this way is to prevent ego from clouding the mind and the intent. Only when clarity without ego prevails can a martial artist operate at his most effective level. To delve into this even further you can look into the Japanese idea of Budo. The Japanese warrior never goes into combat with the idea of surviving or even trying to survive, in fact he goes into combat placing no importance on his life whatsoever. Some people like to characterize this as being "Ready to Die", however that's a little bit of a different idea from placing no importance on your own life and being ready to die. Using the phrase "Being Ready to Die" implies that one is controlling this willingness to die. If one is controlling their willingness to die, then their ego is running the show. It's a very different thing to have no ego driven ideas about your life or death or the importance of it. To clarify let me just say this. Subjugating the ego is the most egotistical thing you can do because it implies control by the self, the ego. Losing self-importance is the opposite of this, and when one loses their self-importance completely, then their ego is no longer clouding their mind, their heart, their actions or their intent. Contrast these ideas for a few minutes with the showmanship involved in Extreme Martial Arts.

Compassion
Compassion is what defines being human, it is what separates us from unconscious animals, (not that all animals are unconscious, but many are.. Dolphins and whales are a couple of good examples of exceptions to this). Compassion is the antithesis of ego; understanding that we are all struggling human beings and we are all the same inside means that there is absolutely no place for ego within your being. A warrior, especially a trained martial artist that has no compassion, is WORSE than a monster, he is an animal devoid of any emotional capability. Believe me when I tell you that not every person walking round that LOOKS like a human being is human, only when the ego disappears and awareness and compassion are dominant does an animal become human. Extreme Martial Arts will never teach you this.

Fear
Fear is the mind killer. While it is completely normal for human beings to have a fear response when there is danger, the critical difference and advantage for a martial artist comes in the way that they respond to that fear. To become aware of your fear response is to be free of it. To be completely unaware that this automatic response has engaged is to indulge in it. The topic here is fear, but a key concept to remember is the concept of indulging. Extreme Martial Arts teaches you to indulge in many of the animalistic tendencies such as ego, anxiety (about putting on a good show), fear, perhaps of failure, etc. Human beings have a variety of emotional responses, fear, anger, grief, depression, anxiety etc. Anytime you indulge in any of these emotional responses you have completely given up your awareness and have become completely reactive. To be completely reactive to outside forces or to internal forces such as emotions means that these forces are controlling your life. Extreme Martial Arts supports the reactive nature of the human animal in almost every way. I am not suggesting that you should react to the fact that you're having emotions and try to gain control... That again, is ego. What I am suggesting is that when these emotions arise in your being that you should be completely aware of everything about them without indulging in them. In this way as I mentioned before you are observing without being the Observer.


Below follows my personal opinions in very brief format of Extreme Martial Arts.

Criticism

Uses lighter weight weapons which are more easily spun about.

Attention grabbing colours for both uniforms and weapons instead of more traditional versions.

Lack of real-world application (techniques that work) leads critics to argue that "martial arts" is a misnomer for XMA.
however, the term XMA is looked down upon in the martial arts tricks world.

Support

Develops a high degree of coordination, flexibility, and muscular strength.

Allows martial artists to be more creative with the martial arts style(s).

Adds more "excitement" in tournaments
In popular media.


2008 Discovery Channel Television Series 'Fight Quest'
1985 motion picture Gymkata.
EMC Monkey
Team Ryouko
SideSwipe
Team Osu Be
Team Chinese Box

Extreme Martial Arts at Wikipedia