Quote:
Originally Posted by
mizanation 
so, what is so traditional about traditional martial arts?
the original, "traditional" purpose of martial arts was to be able to fight effectively. in that case, wouldn't martial arts like MMA or Muay Thai, be considered the true, "traditional" martial arts? after all, they are concerned with performance first.
muay thai is hundreds of years old, so, why isn't it considered a "traditional" martial art? it predates karate styles that are considered "traditional."
Yeah, "traditional" martial art isn't always the most helpful term. When I hear or use the term TMA, I generally think of it as meaning a martial art that has a fairly rigid ruleset and/or training methodology, practiced by people with a fair amount of pissiness about any messing with the recipe. On that same note I don't think age is a necessary criterion for being a TMA. When you think about the fact that except for some of the Okinawan styles, most of the karate being trained today is mid-20th century in origin, you wouldn't call karate a TMA on age alone. So much has been monkeyed with that a practitioner from the early 20th century (probably even Funakoshi himself) would take one look at the training in a modern dojo and ask WTF happened.
I think of MMA as being a training methodology rather than an a single discernable art (feel free to offer your thoughts on that), so for that reason alone I wouldn't call it a TMA.
completely not intentional.
