There’s been a lot of talk recently in the ‘Budo’ community about the way modern martial arts are taught.

Topics range from fake teachers,  excessive costs to train, etc etc but I’d like to touch on the sport v. self defence debate.

Not everyone in martial arts is inclined to compete and chase medals. It’s predominantly a younger person’s prerogative and should be actively encouraged.

That’s not to say our older students are pushovers; far from it!

But martial arts, ‘Budo’, were originally devised in feudal times as a way of defending oneself in a violent society. I’ve always said that Budo is a reflection of society, and when the world saw  a boom in sport, especially the Olympics and the Football World Cup, martial arts followed suit. Then, what happened in many martial arts was a shift towards a sports dominated culture, often at the expense and neglect of self-defence!

What good is a medal when attacked in the street!

I believe Judo and Brasilian Jiu-Jitsu have neglected self defence in recent years! Self defence seminars are few and far between but in fact there is a huge demand for them which remains largely untapped!

Thankfully there is now a shift back to teaching self defence in some BJJ schools EVERY LESSON utilising a wide variety of common attacks and defence.

What this means is that when we think of BJJ we must actually CHANGE our perception of the martial art as not just a great, fun, evolving sport but a super tough and effective SELF DEFENCE  system that runs parallel and equal to the sport aspect!

We must EXPECT  and ACCEPT self defence and VALUE the training as important and not think that it’s boring and ‘can we skip to the sparring’!

I think that at first this will take some time getting used to and acclimatising but eventually as new students join and are used to the new format we will again have a good balance between sport and self defence.

Thank you and stay safe.