Goal based martial arts technique

This is part one of a series on revolutionizing the martial arts world.

Any technique you perform in real life needs a goal. One of the biggest problems with martial arts training today is training without a goal in mind.

Most instructors will teach you a technique and either:

1. Apply a goal for you
2. Teach the technique with an open goal

Better ones will show you the places in the technique to accomplish different goals.

The technique should not shape your goal. Your goal should shape your technique.

Examples of having-no-goal problems

Rosanne teaches her student, Tony, to break free of a wrist grab and then apply a wrist lock to his attacker. She then teaches him to perform a takedown and restrain his attacker on the ground.

Let's say the technique is sound and the restraining works. This seems ok, but not optimal. In fact, it can end up being problematic. The problem is that the goal was never addressed beforehand. Tony now knows how to restrain his attacker through multiple stages of the attack, but when Tony gets to the street and a guy, with all of his big mean friends with him, grabs him, Tony's goal should be altered. It is no longer to restrain anyone, but to escape as quickly as possible. Does Tony know how to distance himself from his attacker instead of attempting to restrain his attacker? Does Tony even know to change his goal around? If he trains only one goal, what will he end up doing?

In the martial arts world we are often expected to "assess the situation when it arises" and deal with it then. We teach and are taught technique that does not necessarily have break points at which we can make it to different goals. For example - a ground fighter will often go straight to the ground to defend himself because it is the best way he knows how. If his goal is to escape and not stay and fight, how can he ever expect to do the right thing?

Another example - a Kali practitioner, Jim, is generally taught to fight in order to mame and kill because much of the technique comes straight from a very warfare-based art. However, Jim is a cop, not a soldier. Every class he is training to severely injure, when his major job function involving martial arts would only be to protect himself and restrain his attacker, using force only as necessary. What might he end up doing?

While certainly much can be very translatable and judged based on the situation, there is still a very good portion that is inherent to the style of training and the technique itself.

Examples of goals and how to develop them

Here are some examples (I believe to be a comprehensive list) of likely goals you will have when using technique:

• Kill
• Maim
• Disable
• Restrain
• Escape - escape the situation
• Protect - guard something

I use the full phrase of "escape the situation" to differentiate between escaping the situation and escape techniques such as releasing a grab or escaping the mount position.

Each one of these goals calls for a very different usage of your martial knowledge.

Escape and restraint are two of the most common goals in general street use of martial arts today. To reach each goal, you may have to take significantly different paths of technique.

For those wishing to escape (this should be your goal most of the time if you're truly training for self defense), it may only take a couple distance-creating hits before you can start running and fully escape.
If you want to restrain your attacker, you'll need to add quite a bit more than just hitting him/her a couple times. In fact, you'll probably change your initial technique around significantly because you won't want to distance yourself from the attacker - you want to get closer so you can restrain.

Find what your goal is and develop your technique around it - do not let the technique shape your goal.

The solution

Goal oriented technique is absolutely necessary in order to be effective in executing one's training. In any field, in any activity, in any project there most likely is a goal. Working toward something without direction will lead to unexpected results. The problem is not that goals do not exist; a goal almost always exists, but it must be realized and declared in order to work toward it.

Goal-based training must become part of all martial arts training. Instructors must start orienting their own training methods toward goals. They must guide their students on what goals they should have and how to reach them in their training.