The Best Martial Art in the World

"Ego is the biggest enemy of humans." - The Rigveda

Let me start this out with a little story.  Years ago, less than a decade after I'd begun training in martial arts, I had to leave the Jeet Kune Do school I was training at because they were moving too far away and had raised their prices beyond what I could handle (being a teenager with a minimum wage job meant that wasn't very much).  Now, there weren't any other Jeet Kune Do schools in the area at the time so I had to make the decision of what art I would train in next.  I personally believe it's good to experience a little bit of everything if possible, so I was open to any art really.

After quite a bit of searching, comparing schedules and prices, and figuring out what direction stylistically I wanted to go in at that point in time, I settled on three schools that were in the area that looked promising; one teaching Shaolin Gong Fu, one teaching Tracy's Kenpo, and one teaching To Shin Do.  Now, the JKD school I had attended was a JKD Concepts school under Inosanto, and the focus there had been on a lot of Wing Chun a lot of Muay Thai and a lot of Kali with a little Brazilian JiuJitsu and Savate and things thrown in.  I was kind of intrigued then by the Shaolin school, since it was so different from everything I had done previously, even the Wing Chun.

Now, I know better than to just jump right into an art or a school and sign up without knowing much about either, so the first thing I did is call the school up.  I wound up talking to the owner of the school.  This was where things started going comically down hill.  The first tip off for me was that after introducing myself he never offered a name.  He did sound a lot like Morgan Freeman though, in my opinion, so we'll go with that.  The next big tip off was when this happened:

Morgan Freeman - So, you're interested in learning Shaolin Gong Fu?

Me - Yeah, I've done martial arts in the past but the school I was going to moved so I'm looking to get back into it.

Morgan Freeman - You don't say 'yeah' to me, you either say 'yes sir' or 'no sir,' understand?

Now, I'm not against being polite as possible, nor am I against responding to your instructor with 'Yes sir/ma'am' (that was the convention at the JKD school I had attended, as it is at the current school I'm attending).  It was more the way he said it.  You could tell it wasn't so much a 'you should be polite to everyone' attitude, but rather a 'I am deserving of the utmost respect from everyone' kind of attitude.  Regardless, that wasn't enough for me to rule out that school yet, and our conversation continued.

After a few minutes though, he said the one thing that was a deal breaker for me when the topic switched to my past experiences in martial arts:

Morgan Freeman - You said you had trained in other arts before, which ones?

Me - I attended a Jeet Kune Do school and we did a pretty wide variety of things, Wing Chun, Muay Thai, Brazilian JiuJitsu and some other arts.  I really love martial arts, and I would really like to learn as many as I can.

Morgan Freeman - That's stupid.

Me - Um, excuse me?

Note to any martial arts school owners out there, it may not be wise to tell potential students they're stupid.

Morgan Freeman - Shaolin Gong Fu is the mother of all martial arts.  There is no art better than what we teach, it's unbeatable.  It would be pointless to learn anything else.  You've wasted your life learning all those other things.  I'll let you train here though if you realize you don't need all of that other stuff.

Now, at this point I was almost speechless.  He'll let me train there? I've wasted my life? Unbeatable?  I politely declined and hung up, and needless to say he didn't get any business from me.

While he is an extreme example and people like that are thankfully the minority when it comes to instructors, that phone call caricatures an attitude that does rear its ugly head all too often in the martial arts world - egoism.

I know that this probably seems obvious to most people, but ego has no place in the world of martial arts.  Whether it's in relation to technique (My sidekicks are way better than anyone else in class), rank (I'm not gonna work with a white belt), or art (My art can beat up your art), it's always a bad thing.  I'm not even going to touch the personal ego issues, I think those should be resolved primarily by those students' instructors.  However, when it comes to instructors, thinking your art is unbeatable is kind of a problem.  So let's look at some of the common claims people make.

• My Art is Better - This argument is totally out the window right off the bat because 'better' is subjective.  If you're 5 feet tall and 260 lbs than Judo might be 'better' for you than Taekwondo.  Does that mean Judo itself is 'better' than Taekwondo across the board?  If you're particularly pacifistic perhaps Aikido is 'better.'  If you want to focus on qi development, meditation or joint health maybe Taijiquan is 'better.'  If you want to get in a ring and fight maybe Western Boxing is 'better.'  The point is, there is no one art that has everything, so just saying something is 'better' or even 'best' without a categorization is inherently a fallacy.

• My Art is Older/Original - There seems to be this general idea that the traditional/original/old way is somehow inherently superior to the new/modern/corrupted way.  It's reflected in my talk with Mr. Freeman up there, but I see it elsewhere too.  Instances where people argue that because their style is the original style, it is superior to more modern off-shoots.  This just isn't true.  Are World War II era planes superior to modern fighter jets?  I know there's a lot of mysticism surrounding a lot of the old arts, as well as a general notion that the ancient people who came up with them either knew more than us or were just better able to develop fighting styles, but that just isn't necessarily true.  Now, this isn't to say that all modern arts are inherently superior either, just that the age of an art is largely irrelevant.

• My Teacher is Hardcore - There was a guy I went to school with who I didn't know very well, but who struck up a conversation with me one day because he'd heard I was into martial arts.  He bragged about being a white belt in one art, and a black belt in another. He wanted me to check out the school he was a white belt in, and explained to me that it was the best, deadliest art ever.  He went on to relate a story his teacher had told him, about how some biker was giving him trouble.  The teacher supposedly hit the biker with a secret pressure point technique then left, and the biker died from a heart attack an hour later, meaning the teacher didn't go to jail.  According to this schoolmate of mine, that meant that his art was the best ever.  I asked him then, if you're a white belt in that art, what are you a black belt in.  I shouldn't have been surprised by his answer - his own style.  Apparently he developed it all by himself, complete with unique stances which, when he showed them to his teacher who supposedly killed a guy, were said to be 'brilliant' and 'so perfect you'd have to attack from four directions at once to get through them.'  I wish I was making that story up, but really, just because your teacher is cool (or says he's cool) does not mean it's the best art.

• An [insert art here] Person Could Beat an [insert art here] Person - MMA these days is, essentially, it's own style.  I know some MMA people might disagree with me, but anymore it has boiled down pretty much to an amalgamation of Muay Thai and Brazilian JiuJitsu.  It may come as a surprise to some of the younger folk, that this was not always the case.  In the early, pre-oiled-up-dudes-in-speedos years, it was started as a way, essentially, to compare martial arts.  You had Karate practitioners fighting in their gis, Gong Fu practitioners of every style fighting in their uniforms, pretty much everything from Judo to Savate was represented.  So what happened?  Well, even MMA has to have rules, and due to these rule constraints some tactics, like submissions and grappling, work better than others.  For instance a Krav Maga expert, if thrown into an MMA fight, would be largely crippled because most of what they know would be too brutal.  That is the first reason that 'This art beats that art' arguments are worthless, in any kind of good, civilized society it can never be fully tested because it would require the option of fighting to the death.  Good luck getting that one pushed through by the U.S. Gaming Commission.  The second reason is, there is always the human element involved.  You cannot definitively say that a Taijiquan practitioner could never take apart a Krav Maga expert, or a U.S. Marine or something, because there very well could be one out there that could.  Certainly if you want brutal no holds barred combat Taijiquan is traditionally probably not the best suited art for what you want, however it can be done.  I've seen some efficiently brutal combat forms of Taijiquan, it just takes the right person and the right circumstances.  So while you can rightfully argue that one art may be better suited to something or other, you can never definitively say an art can always beat another art, or that it is inherently better.  Besides, no matter what art you practice, there's always the possibility of a guy 30 yards away with an assault rifle.  Good luck with that one Mr. Our-gong-fu-style-is-unbeatable.

Now, I know that more likely than not if you were the kind of person who genuinely needed your eyes opened by an article like this, you probably angrily closed the page several minutes ago, and the only people who have read this far are those who don't need to be told not to be egotistical.  That's fine, at least now hopefully some people are  little more aware of the problem.  While I don't think this will stop all those lovely 'which art is best' discussions on forums between all those kind, courteous people I do hope it's a step in the right direction.

Do you have anything to add? Any ideas for helping to combat egoism? Any good stories about someone who was way too full of their own art? (everyone has at least one)  Then share them in the comments!  We love to hear them, and I know all our readers do too.

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