Major Misconceptions about Martial Arts by Matias O.

 Major Misconceptions about Martial Arts

Something that irritates most martial artists is the way Hollywood portrays them. We first heard about this with Bruce lee a Chinese American man who first showed the western world martial arts. We can see many misconceptions of martial artists in the movies and as you know people like to be represented well. 

Let's get a large misconception out of the way.You don't need to start at the age of 5 or 8 to be good or even a great. The truth is you can be any age at starting a martial art and still learn to be good. The main reason people think this is because they see movies like karate kid or games like assassin's creed where they think you need to start martial arts at a very young age but. Gordan ryan the world's best grappler started when he was fifteen years old.

Another crazy misconception is that most martial artist are mean people or killers. The truth is most are very calm and tame. A Lot of people have the belief that because they think people practicing martial arts are scary because they get hit or tackled. The main reason why they are so tame is because they practice in a very controlled environment and are so calm because of how safe they feel because of what they can do if something happens.

You know when you're watching ufc with your friend and they say they can beat up this fighter on ufc. Yeah its really annoying especially when its a girl because all they say is

“Im aLoT StRonGer so I wiLl prObaLy wiN”

The fact that some people think that is very ignorant of them its like me saying I bet I could play violin better than this one person all because I have better ears. It doesn't make sense, because if you spend a large amount of your time practicing a skill you are bound to be good at it its just common knowledge that you get what you give. 

I seriously think its not very wise when people think that wrestling isn't a martial art because it's too strength based or its not from Asia or its not pretty enough. For those people I would like to say.

“hate to break it to you but, its not” 

A way you can spot this easily is if you watch ufc you can notice that a lot of the fighters have a wrestling base to their grappling. Wrestling is an art as much as karate is or brazilian jiu jitsu.

I hate to be the one to say this but your friend doesn’t get mad and turn into the hulk and start beating people up. Saying that is like saying

“When i'm mad I blackout and shoot 3 pointer on the basketball  court”

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense saying that. So next time you hear someone say that, take it with a mountain of salt.

How do you feel about this information? Do you think this will change your way of thinking when talking to a martial artist? Or will you just shrug your shoulders and say that's cool? I guess I will forget it tommorow.