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Are Semi Contact Martial Arts Dying Out ?

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In this modern day and age, everyone seems to be crazy about the UFC or about the big fights in Boxing. Everyone also seems to train in either BJJ, Boxing , Muay Thai or Kickboxing.

 

Fighters are cutting weight and getting their stamina up to scratch as they endeavour to compete over 3x2 mins of kickboxing, 5x1.5 minutes of Muay Thai , 2x5 mins (or 3x3 mins) of MMA to step into a ring or a cage against an opponent who has been pre matched on experience and weight.

 

Fighters sell tickets to their friends and family and enjoy a percentage of said ticket sales and travelling expenses or sometimes even a set Fight Purse dependant on experience.

 

The days when you turned up to a sports centre , pay something like £10 or even more to compete and just step onto the scales and then have your name put into an envelope and take pot luck which Weight division (sometimes with a 5kg or 10 kg spread LOL) you will take part in seem to be a thing of the past.

 

Back in the 1990's and early part of this century , people would pay £10 or £12to enter a competition and fight often over a single round of 2 minutes or even 90 seconds (yes really!!!).

The rules were not often clear and sometimes the rules on contact levels would vary as to which club you came from.

 

I have met many competitive martial artists from many different disciplines.

You still seem to get the odd Tae-Kwon-Do competitor who fights either Full Contact under WTF Olympic rules or the Semi Contact Continuous as done by the T.A.G.B, but these days stand up martial artists seem to want to fight

K-1 rules while those who have a Grappling background are happy to "go the whole hog" and do MMA.

 

Could this be a sign that Martial arts are going back to the source so to speak? I.E. Competitive Martial Arts returning to their roots of Pankration as the Ancient Greeks and many other ancient civilisations did before us?

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Bit of a wide topic here, but surely its down to the two fighters to agree whether its semi or full. Personally, I think for people who occasionally spars, full contact to body is fine, should go lighter for the face tho!

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Bit of a wide topic here, but surely its down to the two fighters to agree whether its semi or full. Personally, I think for people who occasionally spars, full contact to body is fine, should go lighter for the face tho!

 

 

That a dig at any one? Only problem with sparring lightly a lot is when you go in the ring to fight your in for a big shock happened to me twice always wanted to sparr lightly but when came to ring fight I bottled it its so different to sparring

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In martial arts, you get trends,,,just like anything else. Yes, there is lots of interest in mma, K1 etc. But semi-contact stuff will persist and exist.

 

As for the ridiculous 'semi contact' is for wimps quote: Some people want to spar without risking brain damage######!!!!!.

 

Oh yeah,,, and if we're talking about styles and titles: it could be argued that full contact kickboxing and mma is mega-fragmented with loads of factions,,and therefore it's titles are meaningful to the recipient only.

 

These threads are full of people basically saying: 'I'm harder than you, cause' I do full contact'.

There is a place still for all types of martial art, whether it be Karate, TKD, Judo, k-boxing, BJJ or whatever.

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I think the main reason semi/no-contact used to be more popular than full-contact, is that, in those days, full-contact didn't exist in tournaments.

 

Teachers of many traditional martial arts perpetuated the view that the techniques of those arts were 'too deadly' to be used in competition.

 

In the 60's/70's there was a genuine widespread belief that, if a karate expert were to compete against, say, a boxer, that the boxer would be easily overcome by the karate mans kicks and stronger punching techniques, as, whereas boxing is a mere sport, karate is about prectical self-defence.

 

That myth was shattered when a few karate people did compete against boxers and got knocked out in seconds :)

 

And since then we had the rise of full-contact, then kick-boxing & Muay Thai, and then, UFC etc.

 

So, these days there are multiple options for a variety of full-contact martial arts, which simply did not exist back then- so it's inevitable that semi-contact is going to be less popular than it was it the days when it was the only option.

 

Plus, there's a general perception that training in full contact will transfer over to usable self-defence situations far better than semi/no contact, and, for many, the self-defense aspect is a key motivation for training in martial arts.

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Sparring is for learning and practice, you do neither if your sparring full out, we never do this at our gym, we spar hard but never trying to knock the other person out... semi contact is ok. suppose its each to their own...

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thats why i love bjj, you can spar full tilt every day because (unless you get a dick head training with you) you can apply submissions slowly and you can tap out....... its a little harder to tap when your legs turn to jelly and your falling to the floor nose smashed and teeth missing.

 

i agree with craig, practice/learn then smash

 

remember fren always must smash, espesh wen passa de gward an aple treeangoo. but esesh wen cloke choke ~~~~~t

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In this modern day and age, everyone seems to be crazy about the UFC or about the big fights in Boxing. Everyone also seems to train in either BJJ, Boxing , Muay Thai or Kickboxing.

 

 

Everyone? :)

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I think the main reason semi/no-contact used to be more popular than full-contact, is that, in those days, full-contact didn't exist in tournaments.

 

Teachers of many traditional martial arts perpetuated the view that the techniques of those arts were 'too deadly' to be used in competition.

 

In the 60's/70's there was a genuine widespread belief that, if a karate expert were to compete against, say, a boxer, that the boxer would be easily overcome by the karate mans kicks and stronger punching techniques, as, whereas boxing is a mere sport, karate is about prectical self-defence.

 

That myth was shattered when a few karate people did compete against boxers and got knocked out in seconds :)

 

And since then we had the rise of full-contact, then kick-boxing & Muay Thai, and then, UFC etc.

 

So, these days there are multiple options for a variety of full-contact martial arts, which simply did not exist back then- so it's inevitable that semi-contact is going to be less popular than it was it the days when it was the only option.

 

Plus, there's a general perception that training in full contact will transfer over to usable self-defence situations far better than semi/no contact, and, for many, the self-defense aspect is a key motivation for training in martial arts.

 

Nice one dave!!! This has to be the best reply that I have had on this forum so far!!!

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I think the main reason semi/no-contact used to be more popular than full-contact, is that, in those days, full-contact didn't exist in tournaments.

 

Teachers of many traditional martial arts perpetuated the view that the techniques of those arts were 'too deadly' to be used in competition.

 

In the 60's/70's there was a genuine widespread belief that, if a karate expert were to compete against, say, a boxer, that the boxer would be easily overcome by the karate mans kicks and stronger punching techniques, as, whereas boxing is a mere sport, karate is about prectical self-defence.

 

That myth was shattered when a few karate people did compete against boxers and got knocked out in seconds :)And since then we had the rise of full-contact, then kick-boxing & Muay Thai, and then, UFC etc.

 

So, these days there are multiple options for a variety of full-contact martial arts, which simply did not exist back then- so it's inevitable that semi-contact is going to be less popular than it was it the days when it was the only option.

 

Plus, there's a general perception that training in full contact will transfer over to usable self-defence situations far better than semi/no contact, and, for many, the self-defense aspect is a key motivation for training in martial arts.

 

Then the boxers got submitted by the grapplers!! ;)

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