Fighting: The Essence of a Martial Artist?

Last year I joined a local boxing club. I enjoyed it, especially the sparring. I was good at it and could hold my own with anyone in the club. The club closed a few months ago and I worked out by myself again, as I have for the most part since I closed up my martial arts school eight or nine years ago.   I never stopped working out and training my martial arts in one fashion or another. I'll always be a martial artist.

Working out on my own has been fine, but I've missed sparring. I've missed fighting. For that reason, I checked out the local MMA club and joined up with them last month. We sparred the other night and I did okay, my standup skills were still pretty sharp because I've kept them that way. My timing was little off and I got a little sloppy at times--ring rust, I guess--but overall my stuff was okay, could be better, but okay.

My ground game sucked, mostly because I haven't worked on it for ages--kinda hard to do that by yourself--but also because I had no gas tank for it. I tapped from exhaustion more than anything else. Gotta work on that.

Why do I like fighting? I'm not sure, but here are a few ideas:

• Fighting is the most absolutely pure sport there is. It's just two people, one-on-one, no equipment, no bats, no rackets,  no clubs--I almost said no balls, but you definitely have to have balls to fight.
• It's more than physical--fighting is a game that is far more complicated than chess.
• It's pretty definitive--is your martial art effective or not?

I believe every martial art should have a fighting aspect, otherwise it doesn't deserve that "martial art" label. If you just stand around practicing techniques on each other without some kind of sparring that develops timing, endurance, and technique while moving dnynamically, then, I'm sorry, but I think your art won't measure up when the sh*t hits the fan.

Does this mean you need to go out and beat the crap out of each other every week? No, but you need to have a sparring aspect in your art and it needs these attributes:

• Techiniques that emulate the movements that make up your art thrown and defended against in a dynamic fashion, not by rote or by-the-numbers.
• A consequence: that is, if you don't defend a technique properly, you should know it, you should feel it. It should be physically apparent.
• A reward: if you throw a technique and it is right on, and undefended, it should be physically obvious.
• Control: while you should feel like you've been in a fight, you should not be so beat up and injured that you can't effectively train in the next class. Bruises are part of training, but keep it to bruises and nothing much more than that.

After sparring the other night, my legs were sore because I didn't check those damn leg kicks, my jaw was a bit tight because I dropped my right hand when I jabbed with my left and paid for it, and I was a little stiff all over because I was taken down hard a couple of times. On the other hand, I got in some good kicks and punches of my own and felt like I could have done something on the ground if only I had enough gas to last a bit longer.

It was painfully obvious what I need to work on and very evident what worked for me. I'll get back to class and work it all out.

So is martial arts only about fighting? No way. I'm a martial artist, not just a fighter. But, by God, there is a fighter in me and I need to keep him trained so he will come out to play when I really need him to.

More about fighting in my next post.