Episode 637 - Martial Arts vs Martial Science
In this episode, listen in as Jeremy and Andrew talk about the importance of flexibility in the Martial Arts.
Martial Arts vs Martial Science - Episode 637
Martial Arts is a very broad term wherein we almost conveniently put everything, even those that don’t involve Martial Arts in the traditional sense, under its umbrella. In this episode, Jeremy and Adam talk about Martial Science where a line is drawn between traditional Martial Arts and the use of science in Martial Arts. Listen and join the conversation!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us, Jeremy. I'm here with Andrew and today, we're going to talk about martial arts. But we're going to compare it to a term that you may not have heard before, because I think we made it up in Martial Science, Martial Arts versus Martial Science. What does that mean? Well, we're going to figure it out together. So stick around. If this is your first episode of the show, thanks for joining us, we appreciate you. And you should go to whistlekick.com and check out everything we do, and learn what we're all about. We're about producing stuff, whether that's shows or books or products or programs for traditional martial artists throughout the world. We are style agnostic, because we believe everyone should just train. Sometimes we say you should shut up and train when people were talking too much about stuff that they shouldn't. We even have shirts that say shut up and train, and you will find it at whistlekick.com. And if you use the code podcast 15, you can get them for 15% less. Oh, did you know that all of our apparel is available with free international shipping, you know? Doesn't matter where you are in the world.
Andrew Adams:
I didn't know that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, yeah, that was something.
Andrew Adams:
Wow!
Jeremy Lesniak:
We rolled out recently. So check out our stuff. If you want to go deeper on this show, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com is the place to go for that. And if you want to go super deep, if you want the behind the scenes, the exclusive, free programs, free books, all kinds of stuff that we throw at you for making a recurring contribution. Well check out our Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick. You can start as little as two bucks a month and it goes up from there. It's really cool stuff. We appreciate all our Patreon contributors. So Andrew.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I had this this thought I might have had a drink or two. It may it may be what led to this thought. And I think that that was pretty much it. Didn't I email you? There's like a late night email.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I think I woke up in the morning. And I was like, why is Jeremy sending me an email at two o'clock in the morning?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Actually, I think that was that day. Because I couldn't sleep. It was really hot, I couldn't sleep. I got up, I took a shower, sat on the couch. And just I was flipping through social media. And I realized that a lot of the arguments that we have, are because the term martial arts is so broad that there are things that we strong-arm in there that really don't belong in there.
Andrew Adams:
Hmm. Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
For example, training that is exclusively self-defense training, does not involve any traditional training approaches, does not do forms does not do any technique in any way other than technique and training that is applicable to a self-defense combat situation. Should that be turned to martial art? Well, right now we throw it in under that term.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And anybody who knows me, well knows that my definition of martial arts may not be your definition of martial arts, and that's okay.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But what if we introduce a new term? That is adjacent? Martial Science?
Andrew Adams:
I have heard it before.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You have? Darn it. I didn't come up with something brand new.
Andrew Adams:
No, I have heard I couldn't tell you where. But I know I have heard the term martial science.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, that makes me a little sad. But that's okay. I I fully understand that I'm not the only one who comes up with great ideas. But regardless, we should still unpack that term. What does that term mean? They even go back. I don't know what episode we've done on a bunch of them. Episodes where we talk about Martial Arts. My definition of Martial Arts is personal development through the training, the lens of hand to hand combat. So there are a lot of things that can fit in there. But it's that personal growth part that I think people really get stuck on that. For me, when I unpack that term, Martial Art, the core word is art. It's not martial.
Andrew Adams:
Uhmm. Uhmm.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We are modifying art with the word martial. And that's where it starts to fall apart. But what about martial Science? What is a science? Science is a process. It is a repeatable, testable pattern and involves hypotheses. And it involves repeatability. AKA, one of the big buzzwords in the world of Martial Arts right now. Pressure testing.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Pressure testing, is scientific experimentation of fighting.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, you're testing what works and what doesn't work.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Martial science. So martial arts is what I said it was. That's my definition. You can have your own. I don't care. Martial science could be. What are the things that work in martial situations? Fighting? What are the things that make the most sense? And this is interesting because it starts to include other things like firearms, or mean we could make it really broad and it could be military, Martial Science. I mean, Military science is a thing. Martial Science, how you define it if you choose to, could start to include those things. Martial Science could be, I don't know, driving around in a tank.
Andrew Adams:
I mean, yeah, I mean.
Jeremy Lesniak:
A lot, a lot of martial art going on there. But there could be Martial Science going on.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, you could I could make you could make that argument for sure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So the question is, is this a term that we should adopt? Does it matter? And should we start to draw a line? Between the two, there's probably a, I like Venn diagrams. I, I'm a nerd. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a nerd. Yeah, Venn diagrams. You got you got the intersection? Right?
Andrew Adams:
Yep. Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And I, you could certainly say, you know, some things that we do are one or the other, some or both. And that's cool. That works. But here's why. I don't think I want to carve stuff off. Because it complicates the definition discussion. If I say, this is Martial Art, and this is Martial Science, and you disagree. Now we have two definitions that we have to argue about.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, very true.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I don't like when we argue at all, I would rather just say, you know what, maybe what you think you do is martial arts. And I don't, but you train and it checks your boxes and you're happy? How does that affect me? It doesn't. And I will go to the mats. Figuratively, not literally, I'm not getting in a fight with somebody about this. But I will defend the idea that anybody has the right to train what they want. If it doesn't affect you, then just shut up and leave it alone. It's a waste of your time, you should if you have enough time to complain about what other people are training, you have time to train more yourself. And that's really what should be the priority. But I think that for folks like that, who are going to ignore what I just said, and we're going to continue to spend way too much time worried about what other people are training. Maybe this gives them an out. Maybe they're not actually martial artists, maybe their martial scientists.
Andrew Adams:
Interesting.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Maybe they have a new way to self-identify. That gives them enough space that they don't have to worry about what martial artists are doing. That would never work on the street Robert, well, maybe you're a martial scientist. Maybe that is your priority. Maybe Martial Science is a subset of Martial Arts. Maybe it's a superset of Martial Arts, maybe is completely separate. The two shall never meet them, in the middle.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I don't know.
Andrew Adams:
The thing that gets me about people who use that, that would never work in the street. It's like, well, I'm going to take, you know, Karate, for example, because that's what I trained in. There are lots of different kinds of Karate, there's Sport Karate, there's, you know, competition, Kata, there's all these different aspects and saying something won't work. Well, you're probably trying to pigeonhole one kind of Karate into what you're trying to do.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right.
Andrew Adams:
You know, you're there are ways that you can train Karate effectively for the street. But are you now, but that stuff wouldn't work in a competition. It's in Sport Karate.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right.
Andrew Adams:
Because we're, we're using two, we're doing two different things. We're calling it one thing, we're calling it Karate. But that, but you can't pigeonhole it into every single scenario.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. And this is where the why becomes really important, because very few people are training for a single reason.
Andrew Adams:
Exactly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
When I go, and I train, why am I doing it? Well, there's a social component for me. There's a fitness component, you know, I get some movement. There's a self-defense component. There's a creative outlet component. There's a mental component and emotional component. I went through my techniques. And I bet for a lot of people that list and maybe more works for them. We probably all most have similar lists prioritize differently.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, yep. Exactly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If there was only one thing on the list, it would be really easy to define what we should and should not be training and how and how often.
Andrew Adams:
It's almost like everyone's different.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's almost like food. Do we eat the same thing all the time? No, because we value variety. And we value taste, and we value. You know, I've got a garden. I value going outside and being able to pick some food versus going to the store. And I value food differently when I'm having a meal with someone else. You and I had a meal on.
Andrew Adams:
Friday.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Thursday. I don't remember, days are blurry. We had a meal on Thursday. We went to a Hibachi grill, because there was an experience a show associated with the meal. And it gave us the opportunity to talk while that was going on, right? There are lots of different reasons to do lots of different things. And I think this term, though, I'm not going to use it becomes a perfectly valid term for someone to hopefully, let other people go do their own thing.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If you can't stand other people doing certain things in their Martial Arts, there's a good chance you are a Martial Scientist, not a Martial Artist.
Andrew Adams:
Yep, I'm with you. I agree.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. If you don't agree, I want to know.
Andrew Adams:
Tell us. Tell us.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I want to hear about I. This is a, though Andrew says he's heard this term before. Though, this is not a brand new term, it's new to me. And this is the most I've thought about it. I didn't spend a couple hours thinking and writing notes on this, I just kind of, I just kind of went, I went for it. So there could be aspects of this conversation that don't make any sense to you. I want to know about that. Helped me in my understanding of this new terminology. And maybe we'll do a follow up on this. Or maybe I'll do a retraction. That's not really my style.
Jeremy Lesniak:
My goal, for any episode we've ever done has never been to convince you. It is to make you think. If you listen to this episode, you disagree. 100% with everything I've said, if you even disagree with the intro, that's fine. I just want you to think, because the more you think about who you are, and your place in the world, as a Martial Artist and beyond, the better I think you are as a human being. I don't like when people just take information and stick it in the brain. And it just sits there and they take it out and they use it and then they put it back. Information should be worked with. Just as we should work with our techniques. We should work with each other. Okay, email me, Jeremywhistlekick.com and follow us on social media. We're at WhistleKick everywhere. Go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com check out the transcripts, links other episodes. There are a bunch of episodes we've done that are similar to this, just use the search function you'll find them. Or you can support us by telling people about what we do. You could make a purchase at whistlekick.com. You could join the Patreon. You could leave a review, buy a book on Amazon. So many ways you can help us. To those of you who do. We really appreciate you. Thanks. Until next time.
Jeremy and Andrew:
Train hard, smile and have a great day.