Traditional Kungfu – comprehensive sport or martial art

Nowadays we live in (more or less) peaceful societies with police, laws and a professional military system. And even when there are martial conflicts between states, weapon systems rules the battle field. In contrast to former times, the martial skill of a single person is less important than the technology one commands and only in rare cases of self-defense martial techniques may help to fight and survive.

This cultural development may be one important factor why people think that ancient martial arts may only justify their existence today as sportive disciplines. Therefore, when you talk about the Chinese martial arts or Kungfu, you probably talk most of the time about the sport Kungfu. However, traditional martial arts contain more aspects besides being a sport and this article tries to highlight just a few to point out the claim of traditional Kungfu of being an art rather than a sport.

Sport as such has two major fields by definition. First of all, most of sportive activities increase your stamina, strengthen your body and mind and are performed in training sessions or competitions. You can call that physical and mental fitness or resilience. Physiological conditioning has of course many positive effects on your body and brain (e.g. improved cardiovascular parameters, newborn cells in the blood, brain and immune-system) as well as beneficial influences on your mind (improved cognitive capacities) and soul (reduction of work-related stress). For sure, every physical activity that recommends your full attention and will-power will provide you similar benefits, such does Kungfu-training.

Secondly, sportive activity however targets regularly also the field of competition. Competition can mean either being better than others or being better than the previous me. Competitions in martial arts can be performed as fights or show performances. Both have direct contact in space or time to one or more competitors and have the aim to outperform them all.

Nowadays, modern Kungfu has many sportive competitions in the boxing ring
(e.g. Sanda competitions), on the stage (performance of forms) and in other formats. The drawback in those sportive approaches is however: someone has to judge the demonstration or performance. Fortunately, most of the competitions do not end with a final knock-out and are stopped before severe injuries. Thus, the mere idea “who stands last wins” is not the general rule. But even then, judges have to judge what the opponents are doing and they need rules to do so. Vice versa, not everything that one opponent does is covered by the set of regulations and cannot be rated properly. Therefore many modern competition martial arts have a limited number of techniques that are allowed or that are useful to perform, since others are either not marked or hard to see by the referees. And even in very physical combative sports as MMA and similar formats, not everything is allowed to reduce the risk of highly dangerous injuries.

So what are Traditional Martial Arts (TMA) and what differentiate them from others? To make a point at the very beginning: there is no sufficient and broadly accepted definition of TMA or other formats of martial/combat arts, but many approaches are interesting to get an idea about different ideas what is the aim of the particular training and about prioritization. At the end, all humans are mortal and we cannot train everything that maybe important for every situation or life style.

To give just some preliminary ideas: Traditional Chinese Martial Arts include martial arts that are practiced in China and originate primarily there. Nowadays they can be trained globally, but the historical, cultural and philosophical roots should be found in the area of the former or current boundaries of China. Furthermore, traditional martial arts are not historical per se. Historical Martial Arts (such as Historical European Martial Arts, HEMA) have the goal to revive old martial arts techniques and systems, using “old” weaponry and rules, while coping with the challenge of reconstruct those techniques and methods from books and other origins.

Traditional Martial Arts in contrast have living representatives, masters and teachers, that conserve training methods, but also modify and adapt techniques and the system to modern-day needs and challenges. Often also “old” weaponry and other training equipment is used, but this is often not mandatory. For TCMA this means, that the weaponry avails itself of Chinese military arsenal (spears, swords, sabers, etc.) or civilian tools (short knifes, shepherd’s crook, and others). And due to Chinese historical circumstances, besides military and martial origins, also street performances are not uncommon in TCMA milieu. 

A highly important point is, that as a TMA, most of the passed on methods and training curriculum is constructed in this way, that practitioners can include this training in their everyday life. A ancient farmer or worker could not allow himself to be severely injured in training during harvest time or without proper medical care at hand. Of course there were also professional training systems in the military or security domain; but also here the goal was not to destroy the health of recruits. Thus, within the broad field of TMA, the amount of combative training is highly variable, although it is necessary for martial training. However, for the sake of realistic training, light or heavy sparring could also be troublesome if you always train to avoid certain techniques, keep back power emission or follow ritual-like patterns. What and how you train will become a habit, for good or bad.

Finally, a slight but maybe important differentiation between Martial Arts and Combat Arts is, that the latter highly focus on quick and effective techniques and methods to win fights in either sportive events or in self defense scenarios on the street. To accomplish this goal you have do train in parallel fitness and exercise other aspects to get the necessary physical resources. Martial Arts in general encompass besides mere martial techniques also training methods (i.e. toughening exercises, etc.), philosophical knowledge, psychological and mental training, fitness exercises, etc. all adjusted for the particular style.

Thus, there is not one good reason for keeping TMA or TCMA alive today, if you just believe that nowadays modern weapons rule all conflicts. However, if you believe that physical fitness and mobility, mental resilience, and the curiosity to learn new movements, is important in your life, if you think that your well being is related to more than just power, but still you want to learn self defense methods, TMA can offer you a various aspects. 

As mentioned above, this discussion should only give a glimpse of several points that can make a difference between styles, schools, and teachers. What should be stressed is however, there is no “Eierlegende Wollmilchsau” (German for a monstrosity, that do-it-all) of any kind. Just know what you are aiming for and for what purpose you would like to spend your time; then you can find something that fits less or better for these goals.