I agree with Dahma on this one, FWIW. There is a lot more to martial arts than flashy moves and such. When you get sufficiently high in rank that becomes glaringly obvious. The higher belts aren’t really concerned with being able to take out fifteen people with a tornado-axe kick. It becomes less and less “Look what I can do” and more . . . just being at peace with things, as clichéd as that sounds. Opinions and experiences will differ, of course. This is my experience with people of higher rank and in several schools (and, indeed, martial arts).
"Honor, loyalty, discipline, sportsmanship, etc are all very fine qualities that all people should learn. And martial arts are a great way to learn them, BUT they are secondary. The primary objective of martial art training is to learn how better to deliver damage to your opponent while sustaining less damage yourself."
I’d say it depends on the person/school/martial art. When I joined it was because I was getting the crap kicked out of me at school. After about a year (and six belts), I realized that yeah, I was getting decent at fighting, but the mentality behind stuff was so much cooler.
Beside that, this school stressed honor, loyalty, etc. If I’d ever attacked another student, hoo boy would shit have flown.
The primary objective of martial arts training really depends on the person/school/art. But as far as I have seen in dealing with people in higher belts and people in lower belts, the lower ones want to be able to do some move or be able to hold their own in a fight. The higher ones are more into the philosophy/camaraderie and history behind it.
"Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying this is bad by any means. I’m only saying you should call a spade a spade, so to speak. Martial artists aren’t all members of a warm-fuzziness club. They are people who are trained in methods of causing injury to other people."
Yes, but that doesn’t mean that’s the primary reason for going. When I was a brown belt (decently close to black), for example, I cared more about learning (and not just forms and kicks and such) than I did about how many ways I could kick the crap out of someone. Yes, I was learning how to beat people up, but that was an after-effect of the instruction, so to speak. We were learning how to use our bodies; we learned about pressure points and how to do X thing without hurting yourself. It wasn’t nearly all about, for example, eighteen ways to break someone’s nose with your left hand.
"That said, I tend to agree with what Glitch said. Disarming somebody with a knife, especially if they have the slightest clue of how to use it properly, is a very dangerous proposition."
Very true. And the average person is probably going to have some semblance of how to use a knife. But if we’re talking about someone who’s had training specific to this sort of thing, then we can assume a level of competency with which it is reasonably safe (inasmuch as disarming someone when one is unarmed is safe) to do this.
For example, in two years of training, going to practice roughly four times a week, four hours a week total, I’d say I learned skills sufficient to handle myself in most average situations. Were I to go up against someone with a knife who had above-basic tutelage, yes, it would be challenging. But then, as you go up in belt ranks (and this is something I’d forgotten about earlier, Suo Na), you learn both how to use weapons and how to defend against them. So if your Tae Kwon Do character were, say, a 2nd degree black belt (which in my school would be black with a white stripe down the middle), it would be entirely fair to assume intermediate skills with and against hand-held weaponry.
"It’s possible to get injured severely even just by accident by a wild wave of the hand holding the blade. I’d recommend you don’t make it sound easy in the story. In real life, it’s really hard."
You will notice, I hope, that what I described didn’t sound easy. It wasn’t easy to put into words. It’s easy for me to do, but only because I practiced it for a long time and against several different scenarios, so to speak.
However, the margin of error in what I described in my earlier post is not that high. In fact, it’s fairly low. But if you’re skilled enough it is quite possible to do. And that’s not even accounting for someone who is accurate enough with their feet (which a higher-belt would be) to kick the knife out very quickly. I knew 2nd and 3rd degrees who could do that.
However, pepperspray might be slightly more believable. Opinions will differ. Bear in mind that I have used that technique I described in my earlier post against people with weapons in either hand, and of varying strengths and sizes. So long as the person opposing me wasn’t substantially taller, it wasn’t a problem. But you have to be quick with it because part of the appeal is that it’s like “What the hell is this? Ohshit!” People aren’t expecting that kind of move.
::pants::
