Athleticism and Traditional Martial Arts-Part one

In the modern world Athleticism is one of the most highly prized aspects of being a person. (I'm going to capitalize Athleticism for the sake of our post - random capitalization, it's helpful)This may sound like a strange statement, but if you stop to consider some of the world's best athletes and their prestige, it may sound more reasonable. Let's look at competitive Wushu, especially from China. Or the UFC, quickly spreading to be the world's most popular sport, in which Athleticism is paramount to success. How about the professional athletes that get paid millions of dollars to play and entertain the world. And let's not forget the Shaolin Monk performers with their athletic feats of high jumping and speed. Generally speaking, athletes or movie stars that do martial arts are recognized and praised far more than the traditional practitioners these days.

Does this mean that Traditional Martial Artists should not have athleticism? NO IT DOES NOT! The other side of this point, in which TMA don't practice to make their bodies strong, healthy and lively is just ridiculous. You can see many a demonstration on YouTube in which two guys show some fighting applications and they clearly do not practice their art with the proper basics, much less the physical conditioning, stretching and mental training. Not only that, but most times those applications wouldn't work against someone throwing more than one punch.

Its important to understand that professional athletes are impressive. Gymnasts, Dancers, Olympians-they deserve praise and recognition for their feats and accomplishments. But as people, it's also important to understand the pain staking work and detail that goes into training a traditional artform, whether "internal" or "external." These arts deserve as much understanding and value as the others when they are actually trained properly.

In Part two, we'll go over some of the reasons why we value Athleticism over Traditional Arts, and we'll talk about when and how to incorporate the hard physical training into an art form. See you then!


Laoshi Markle
Head Teacher Gold Summit Institute
President GSODEC
Director Buffalo-China Sister City Affairs