Much talk has been made about classifying martial arts into hard and soft styles. Much of this is misleading as it tends to classify arts as either one or the other whereas most martial arts are in fact both. What seems more important to me is to reclassify along the lines of martial art and combat sport.

Traditional Martial arts are far more comprehensive and so take much longer to learn than combat sports which tend to focus on a smaller range of techniques

Combat sports enable the practitioner to try out their techniques in a relatively safe, yet competitive, environment

Therefore if you are seeking to learn some good techniques and would like to compete then there is a large range of combat sports available for you to choose from.

Unfortunately if you choose to learn a traditional martial art and are prepared to dedicate many years into gaining self mastery through the use of a beautiful yet lethal art form then your choice of schools is much more limited as it is hard to find an instructor who has such knowledge and is willing to impart it. This school is just such a school.

Here is a little bit of history about how these two different types of school came into being in China:

Thousands of years ago the monks of China sought to perfect themselves physically, mentally and spiritually. They developed very high levels of meditation skills and needed methods to train the body to be strong and supple enough to withstand long meditations that could, on occasion, last for days. They also had the responsibility of looking after temples full of important and very valuable religious artefacts and knowledge that made them the targets of bandits. So they developed the movements that not only trained the body but also enabled them to fight off these attackers. So the Chinese martial arts were born.

However, China is a country that has had very few periods of peace in its history. The country was governed from the North and so the Northern Chinese arts tend to be militarily based, their use of longer weapons and kicking skills well suited to the use of warfare against an attacker mounted on horseback. The Southern Chinese were mostly farmers and so their styles were more suited to fields and use of agricultural implements as weapons.

The average Chinese citizen didn't have the time to study and develop their martial arts skills as they had to work long hours to survive. Only the monks on their hilltop temples had the time available to them to experiment with different movements and their interest in the natural phenomena around them caused them to base movements on animals and forces of nature such as the swaying of a branch or the movement of a cyclone. They sought to train their minds and bodies to the ultimate to experience the limits of humanity and (being good Taoists and Buddhists) they wrote it all down for future generations of Taoists and Buddhists to follow their examples. Naturally this knowledge was highly prized and only given to the most talented of their disciples. Tragically much of this unique knowledge detailing the highest reaches of human potential was destroyed firstly in the year 213BC when the first Chinese Emperor decreed that all such defamatory books (bamboo scrolls as they we then) should be burned as they might inspire the populace to rise up against his sovereignty. This happened again during the Cultural Revolution when the Communist Government banned all such philosophies and their troops raided, looted and burned down the temples. They destroyed the sacred documents and either killed or banished the temple followers to exile.

In 1963 this all changed. Mao Zedong decided to use the martial arts to improve the health of the people and to show the world the beauty of Chinese culture and history. Many masters were invited to get together and produce a unified system of training that could be taught to the people and shown to the world. This system was called Wushu. Despite the constant monitoring of the Communist 'observers' and their own private fears that their secret arts were being exposed and exploited for political reasons these masters trained 8 hours a day to produce a showcase spectacular that would be shown first to Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the other ministers of the government then all over the world. Wushu became a resounding success and there are now schools of Wushu all over the world. Wushu is a competitive sport and the Chinese are pushing for it to be included as a sport at the next Olympic Games.

Of course the Chinese were used to competitive martial arts as they often set one school against another in tournaments. One of the things the Chinese are most passionate about is betting and lots of money, not to mention honour, is won or lost at these fights. Many of them are run by the underground organizations we now refer to as Triads and sometimes the fight is to the death. In order to prevent too many deaths in the ring they introduced a set of rules and banished the use of many types of lethal techniques and had to water down many others. Naturally in traditional martial arts where the aim is simply survival and personal mastery all of the original movements were preserved albeit taught behind closed doors to a privileged few.

This situation remains today. However, there seems to be an ever increasing divide between the traditional martial arts that the public rarely sees and the combat sports that have become the acceptable face of martial arts training. This is a shame as, in my view, the traditional arts have so much more to offer - a chance to spend your life developing yourself to the fullest extent you can. If you choose to follow that noble path it will certainly not be 'a life half lived'.