Hey I too first watched these kind of videos a little bit drunk. Fascinating shit.

I think it was also a similar video that taught me the totally legit move "Monkey Steals the Peach" - have I ever used it? No all my fights have been rugby related. Do I want to? .. Yeah kinda.

So, in case anyone reads this before watching the video, there's a minor content warning in the sense that it briefly touches on some dark subjects. It's not anything super crazy or in depth, but it's there.

I think I was pretty lucky growing up, because I started out martial arts real right thanks to both my parents and my first Karate teacher. Very briefly, my parents had enrolled me in a Tae Kwon Do school, but saw that it was both very expensive and honestly, not very good. They quickly took me out of it and put me in a Karate class at the local YMCA, with an amazing teacher, who taught us not only Karate, but bits on philosophy, Japanese culture, etc. It was wonderful.

One of the biggest things this teacher taught us was the motto "Ask. Doubt. Challenge." Ask questions about what we're being taught, why we're being taught it, whether or not it's useful. Doubt what we're told, look into it, think for ourselves. Most importantly though, challenge ourselves to learn more, grow more, try and succeed, try and fail, struggle, and grow, grow, grow. If we're not challenging ourselves, if we're not failing, we're not growing,

It's a really good philosophy and can be used anywhere in life, not just martial arts. But since we're talking about martial arts, I think in addition to the motto of "Ask. Doubt. Challenge." a healthy degree of experimentation should be encouraged. Try different styles. Try different teachers and coaches. Learn what works for you and why. Learn what doesn't work for you and why. Learn what you can take from one teacher or style and apply it to other things you've learned previously. Most of all though, be skeptical. It'll help insulate you from some of the crazy out there. Not just in martial arts, but in life.

Thanks for the video, kingmudsy. Sorry in advanced for the self righteous ramble.

Shu is on point from what I know: if two fighters of differing practices are at an expert level, then you want the fighter that draws from a wealth of arts to form their style than stuck playing the rules of one. I've been taking my time at a Ving Tsun school (known as Wing Chun in this video), and students come from different backgrounds. When it comes to our forms of sparring, the Sifu encourages you to use your background to your advantage - to blend it into your Ving Tsun teachings to make your kung fu your own (sorta a paradox if you think about it hard). Now, I just go to that school for good cardio, and tips in case my shitty boxing/judo doesn't do the trick in the slim chance I have to defend myself.

The progression of the video seems to state: Fake Martial Arts << Real Martial Arts < MMA. The 'masters' challenging Shu are probably great in their respective fields (benefit of the doubt). That story could have been better supported in highlighting the cult-like propaganda of martial arts in China back to American cult stories. Under the context of the title, I don't think sliding the concrete forms of martial arts under the same lens as 'fake' was enough to make the transition to Shu's story.

Otherwise, using his platform to give more exposure to Shu's message/story is a circledot in my book.

Pre-viewing Thoughts

This came up on my own YouTube feed (since I'm a subscriber), but I haven't watched it yet. The problem is that the underlying premise is ... iffy.

I've been teaching a martial art (Ving Tsun, specifically) for about 3 years now, and training that same art for almost 10. One of the things I've noticed is that as my training has gone on, my idea of what we mean when we say a martial art "works" has changed quite a bit. Or perhaps better said, the fact that most of the time we don't actually know what we mean has become much clearer.

I've run into this a lot when trying to market myself. I dabbled with engaging with the subreddit for my area, but that didn't work very well. It takes a lot of time to explain why the generic "just train MMA instead" comments are dumb (and why I think MMA is at best a middlin' choice for self-defense), and that got exhausting really fast. It's also a lose-lose, because it's assumed that if I don't reply, it's because I can't refute what someone said.

But beyond this, this question of a martial art being "fake" or not usually involves some pretty narrow criteria at best. This is true even for those teachers who claim to be able to knock someone over without touching them (which is, I assume, a prominent point of the video). Because all of these attempts at critique don't really ask what they mean by "fake" or "works" when they're talking about it. Even the original post quotes someone saying that supereyepatchwolf has a ton of experience with "real" martial arts, but it's not actually clear what that means. And how can you have a "fake" martial art if there's no real definition of a "real" one?

I think we often conflate this idea of "real" vs. "fake" with whether a martial art "works." But even then, what do we actually mean?

You may say that a martial art "works" means simply "allows you to defend yourself." This is meaningless and arbitrary.

I "lose" fights (or sparring or whatever, although we don't call it that specifically) every class. Does this mean the martial art I'm studying doesn't work? Is it fake, then?

What if one of my students who's been training for 3 weeks loses a fight outside of class. Does this mean what I'm teaching doesn't "work"? What if someone who's been training for 3 years loses one? How long does someone have to train before their win/loss ratio is a reflection on the art itself? Doesn't who their opponent was matter? Or the person themselves?

If I've never used my training in a full-on street fight, does that mean it does or doesn't "work"? Let's say I lose such a fight. Does that negate the times my training has saved me from falling down the stairs or helped me avoid a car wreck? What about the simple health benefits of being in better physical shape? Does it somehow undo all the times other people have used it successfully to defend themselves? In other words, which instances of a martial art "working" count? What is the "worked" to "didn't work" ratio that something has to have to be considered "real"?

There are a lot more variables at play than we usually, actually consider. To me, the only thing that matters is whether training the art is a net positive for one's life. That's super broad, but it has to be. Losing one fight doesn't necessarily negate all the other benefits someone got from training something. (As an aside, anyone who is more likely to get into a fight after training is an asshole.)

Addendum after watching the first couple minutes

So far, he's not doing much to dissuade me that he's not asking the questions that need to be asked. Also, his history of martial arts in the U.S. is inaccurate. People were boxing well before WW2 (or does he not think boxing is a martial art, or that it was popular before the 1940s?). Greco-Roman wrestling was certainly a thing before then. Sailors were using things like savate at least by the 19th century, and that had some broader resonance (Sherlock Holmes was said to know it in the original books).