This section doesn’t currently include any content. Add content to this section using the sidebar.
Q: What's the difference between sport martial arts and other martial arts, such as LMA?
A: If a martial arts program istournament focused, it's a sport martial art.
You basically have to pick two of these three things:
1. More emphasis on combat effectiveness
2. Little to no injury
3. Competition / Tournaments (sport style)
If your program is tournament focused, and people rarely get injured in those tournaments or while training for those tournaments, it necessarily means that your program does not teach people how to fight. This video gives some specific examples of why:
[placeholder for video, ETA before the end of January 2024]
[WARNING!: The links below may contain graphic imagery or strong language]
LMA is a martial art for people that don't want the elevated risk of injuries associated with extreme combat sports (such as CTE, broken bones, or damaged joints), but, within that limitation, they still want to learn a martial arts style that is more potentially effective in a fight.
We achieve this by isolating techniques that we believe to me more effective and drilling those techniques, potentially with contact, but in a non-competitive environment without full contact free-sparring.
When we do light contact, non-competitive free-sparring, we encourage students to experiment with "non-compliance". In other words, try things out (whether it's something you learned in class or not) and have your partner NOT follow along, and see for yourself if it's still possible to make it work. You will find that there is a counter for everything, but you'll also find that for many things taught in the vast world of martial arts, a good counter often comes very naturally, even when the other person is untrained in that counter, rendering the technique useless.