Martial Artist

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Introduction

Martial arts, are bodies of codified practices or traditions of unarmed and armed combat, usually without the use of guns and other modern weapons. They are often taught today with the goal of developing both the character of the practitioner and the mindful, appropriate, controlled use of bodily force.

The martial arts, perhaps due to a half-century of dramatic portrayals in popular media, have been inextricably bound in the Western imagination to East Asian cultures and people. Martial arts are by no means unique to Asia, however. Humans around the world have always had to develop ways to defend themselves from attack, often without weapons. As a result, there are many martial arts known and practiced; for further information on a particular art, see the list of martial arts.

"Martial arts" was translated in 1920 in Takenobu's Japanese-English Dictionary from Japanese bu-gei or bu-jutsu that means "the craft/accomplishment of military affairs". This definition is translated directly from the Chinese term, Wushu (Cantonese, mou seut), literally, "martial art", meaning all manner of Chinese martial arts.

This term is slightly anomalous in its English usage. Its strict meaning should be "arts for military use" but in normal usage it is used to refer to formalized systems of training to fight without modern technology. It is nevertheless valuable to distinguish between fighting systems intended for soldiers in battle, even without modern technology, and fighting systems intended for sport or for self-defense. The technical characteristics of these three kinds of fighting system are rather different.

Martial arts are, simply put, systems of fighting. There are many styles and schools of martial arts; however, broadly speaking, they share a common goal - to physically defeat a person or defend oneself.

Some Eastern martial arts have a tradition of being about more than simple fighting, and this is perhaps why their practice has been seen as worth preserving in the face of their military obsolescence in modern technological culture. Certain martial arts, such as Tai Chi Chuan may also be practiced to improve mental or physical health.

What differentiates the martial arts from mere unarmed brawling is the organization of their techniques into a coherent system and the codification of effective teaching methods.

One common training technique is to have a series of routines called forms (also called kata, poomse, ch'uan, kuen, tao lu, or hyung) which can serve as a dictionary of essential techniques to be memorized and drawn from at need. Martial arts are also characterized by the controlled, mindful application of force in ways selected for empirical effectiveness. In this sense, boxing, fencing, archery, and wrestling can also be considered martial arts.

Not all Martial Arts were developed in Asia. Savate, for example, was developed as a form of kickboxing in France. Capoeira's athletic movements were developed in Brazil.

Most martial arts include some study of all these, and some explicity attempt to be complete - Eskrima, many types of Jujutsu, and some traditional Chinese arts.

Some martial arts, such as the traditional Chinese arts, go beyond this to teach side disciplines such as qigong, acupuncture, acupressure, bone-setting and other aspects of traditional Chinese medicine. This is a natural extension, as at an advanced level techniques can take advantage of a detailed knowledge of how the opponent's body works to drastically increase the effectiveness of techniques.