The Best Martial Art
I often am asked by people, “What is the best martial art?” They probably expect me to say Jeet Kune Do, Muay Thai, any number of the Filipino Arts, or, of course due to popularity, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ).
My reply is always: “Why do you want to train?” This question will generally lead to talking about the person’s background likes and dislikes. And, this is more important than the actual system.
If he or she wants to train for sport, then they should go find someone to teach him or her sport training emphasizes, whether it is point competition or mixed martial arts (MMA). If the person wants to train for self-defense, then he or she needs to find someone who wanted the same thing when beginning to train. Maybe he or she wants to train for the beauty of the art; this is something totally different than the other two reasons.
We at Synergy Martial Arts believe that there are no superior martial arts, only superior training methods. Even Jeet Kune Do, if you take the base of what Sijo Bruce left us, is a little outdated. Facts are facts: Sijo Bruce didn’t have weapons training in the curriculum, and the ground skills that were far ahead of everyone else who did striking arts then are really below average today.
Sijo Bruce knew this; that is why he was always changing his training methods and the program that Taky Kimura, James Lee, and Dan Inosanto were teaching.
That is why we supplement our training methods with ones from other arts, conditioning programs, and movement therapies. There are things I learned about grappling and joint locking that I didn’t learn from martial arts; they came from being a massage therapist.
We always want to look for magic in a bottle, but really, excellence comes from a good solid foundation—and then exploration.
Your training is only as good as your training methods. If you are training for a marathon, and you run, and your friend tells you the best training method is a quarter of a mile a day, then on race day you can only run two miles. Where is the real problem? Is it the protein that you were taking for recovery? Or maybe it’s your shoes or your shorts. These factors may tangentially influence your performance, but really, you couldn’t run the marathon because you didn’t practice for a marathon: you should have trained in distance running to be able to run a great distance.
In closing, your training methods will always dictate the outcome of your performance. As the old saying goes: You play the way that you practice.
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This is a question I’ve heard since I was a little kid (I’m 26 now). Bottom line is that there is no “best martial art.” I believe people ask this question simply as they are not educated about the arts.
Think of it in the context of cooking. Throughout time as different chefs of specific dishes (i.e. Chinese, French, etc.) traveled the world and shared their recipes, others take this and integrate it into their own style. That’s what “fusion” style restaurants are all about. Go to a place like Hawaii or San Francisco and they are everywhere. They are the MMA of food.
The evolution of food will never stop, same goes for martial arts. In 20 years, we’ll have a new form of MMA. There are those who do this already, take Dave Camarillo for example. He has integrated Judo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to create “Guerilla Jiu-Jitsu.”