Is the Style of Martial Arts I Do Important?
What style of martial arts do you train in? Is that relevant? I personally believe the idea of styles is dying out. I think there are much more important questions. Why are you training? What is it you are looking to gain? Do you have a good report with your instructor? And the most important thing, are you enjoying yourself?
Everyone who starts training has a purpose. In my experience for most people, it is for self-defense, to lose weight, they need focus or discipline, gain confidence or just thought it looked cool. Notice how nothing listed has anything to do with style. I have been running schools for around 20 years now and I have received plenty of calls of people asking for a certain style. “Do you teach X?” “What is it you are looking to gain from X?” The answer is usually something listed above, or I heard its good for something specific but that something every art offers.
The Facts
Ultimately what you do in your school comes down to your instructor. Their beliefs and approach to teaching. If you walk into 20 different Tae Kwon Do schools and ask them to teach a roundhouse kick. Everyone one of them will teach you same kick but in a slightly different way. Every student under that instructor is going to take in that same information differently.
Every style has some interpretation of how to handle any and every situation. If someone attacks you in a certain way. How to close a gap or create one to walk away. Ways to increase your overall fitness. But the things you train/learn/focus on in class come down to the person running the class.
A lot styles have been around for hundreds of years. Practitioners from all over the world, eras in time and different walks in life have crossed paths and shared knowledge, influencing one another to keep martial arts evolving. In my opinion, very few arts are still pure due to exchanges of training, evolution of civilization, the culture of why people trained and lastly the want to turn it into sport. Everyone wants to be or have the best so they would borrow from one another due to their belief in what was better. That all comes down to opinion.
What Matters?
So, does style matter? I don’t think so. Only your wants and needs. It is your training. It is your journey. The value in what you do comes from your goals. If there is something specific you are looking for like weapon disarms, takedowns, grappling, kicking, etc… It’s not a style that offers it. It’s an instructor. So, find an instructor who inspires you. That’s where you should train.
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