Wrong Fu

By Jamie Clubb

This unique collection of essays, provides a prequel to Jamie Clubb’s multi-volume work, 'Bullshitsu and the Fight to Make Martial Arts Work'.

Turning the critical eye inwards, Jamie asks vital questions that highlights how far irrational thought has permeated the martial arts subculture. Other essays focus on logical fallacies that are often used to promote individual styles or schools, the dangers of narrow-mindedness, the many mistakes of martial arts documentaries, the cult of many so-called reality-based combat systems and finally the power of embracing one’s mistakes when training in martial arts.

Reviews:
"This book is fantastic! In just under 70 pages Jamie Clubb manages to identify and address many of the, often unnoticed, problems in martial arts today. I really admire Jamie’s objectivity and deep thinking. The book is so well written too. This book will entertain and educate. It will undoubtedly have a positive impact on your martial arts too! Taking the time to read this concise book is one of the best investments you can make for your marital arts and self-defence training. I love it!"
- Iain Abernethy

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jamie Clubb
• Release date: Aug 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9780463576083

Jamie Clubb

Jamie Chipperfield Clubb was born into a circus family. He lived on his parents’ travelling show until they ceased touring in 1983.Unsurprisingly his background led him to pursue a wide range of subjects and experiences. He has had a lifelong interest in writing, history, psychology, literature, mythology, the arts, criminology, showbusiness, critical thinking and physical development.He has been a professional performer, an extreme professional wrestling promoter, an administrator for his parents’ private zoo and he is a qualified assessor for National Vocational Qualifications/Qualifications and Credit Framework.He gained his first black belt aged 16 in Sakiado and went on to train in a wide range of martial arts and modern self-protection systems, gaining several teaching qualifications, including a BTEC Advanced Award in Self-Defence Instruction. Having written for the UK’s leading martial arts magazines he has had the opportunity to train closely with some of the world’s most renowned instructors. He founded his own approach to martial arts and self-protection, Clubb Chimera Martial Arts in 2004.He wrote and presented the best-selling documentaries, Cross Training in the Martial Arts 1 and 2, in 2005 and 2006 respectively.His first book, The Legend of Salt and Sauce, was published in 2008.In addition to his martial arts business website, Jamie has two blogs:www.beelzebubsbroker.blogspot.com for all his miscellaneous writingswww.jamieclubb.blogspot.com for his work related to circus historyJamie is married with a daughter, a stepdaughter and a stepson, and lives on his parents’ zoo in the Cotswolds.

Book preview

Wrong Fu

A prequel to the series Bullshitsu and The Fight to Make Martial Arts Work

by

Jamie Clubb

Edited by Thomas J M Wilson

With Photography by

Charlotte Von Bulow-Quirk

© 2021

Having purchased this eBook from Amazon, it is for your personal use only. It may not be copied, reproduced, printed or used in any way, other than in its intended format.

First edition published, as an eBook, by Ex-L-Ence Publishing in 2018

This edition published, as an eBook, by Jamie Clubb trading as Clubb Chimera Martial Arts

Neither the author nor the publisher of this eBook has any knowledge of your personal situation or abilities. Therefore they cannot be held responsible for your use or misuse of any of the advice contained within this book. Further, it is your responsibility to discuss with whatever healthcare or other professionals you consult before practicing anything contained within this book.

The material contained herein is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for instruction by a qualified instructor.

Nothing is intended or should be interpreted as representing or expressing the views and policies of any department or agency of any government or other body.

Links to third party websites are included for your interest and entertainment but neither the author nor the publisher are responsible for any of the content at those sites and you visit them entirely at your own risk.

All trademarks used are the property of their respective owners. All trademarks are recognised.

The right of Jamie Clubb to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

Contents

Dedication

Critical Questions for Martial Artists

Martial-Appeals & Other Dirty Moves

Jessup Thinking and Pious Fraud

The Boxing Kangaroo and the Law of Instrument

The Pornography of Reality-Based Self-Defence

How Factual are Martial Arts TV Documentaries?

Taking it on the Chin and Listening to Fools

Coming Soon!

And Now

Acknowledgments

Endnotes/Reference Material

Dedication

This series of books is dedicated to Mim, my wonderful wife, who for years wanted me to write a book bearing this title and got ever more frustrated each time I put it on the back-burner. Thank you for your belief in this project. At last I did it!

Critical Questions for Martial Artists

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

- Christopher Hitchens

Martial arts have arrived. From a cultural perspective, the invasion is over. We are now past the early years of occupation and beyond integration. Every town in Britain has at least one martial arts school. Most British villages have them as well. Full-time martial arts academies flourish throughout the nation’s cities. The same story can be said all over the rest of the developed world. When I first took my precarious steps into the subculture of formalised hand-to-hand combat training, the usual English dictionary definition for martial arts was something along the lines of Systems of fighting; usually originating in Asia. As I write now, the western world’s second wave of Orientalism has passed and there is a general acceptance in martial arts subculture that systems of fighting are not unique to Asia. Therefore, when we discuss living with martial arts in our society, its foreignness cannot just be defined by geography. The martial arts subculture can be found in schools, colleges, universities, religious institutions, prison societies, political parties, national militaries, guerrilla militias, theatrical companies, film stunt groups, fraternity societies, sorority societies and as part of a package holiday. By the end of the 1980s familiarity had eroded much of the exotic charm and the martial arts world I first stepped into was one primed for a big reality check.

I arrived at the tail-end of the 1980s Ninja Boom, a less respectable epilogue to the 1970s Kung Fu Boom. I was a late Generation X martial artist and, looking back, it was inevitable that many of my kind would lean towards scepticism, eventually asking more uncomfortable questions about this fighting subculture. RBSD (Reality-Based Self-Defence) emerged as a fully-fledged martial arts tribe to join in with, crossover into, and compete alongside Traditional Martial Arts and Combat Sports. All three tribes (Traditional Martial Arts, Combat Sports and Reality-Based Self-Defence) regularly criticised each other, but RBSD stamped its place by stating that what it represented was reality. One might argue that this implies anything taught outside of RBSD was not based on reality. I had and still do have a firm interest in what all three tribes present, but RBSD provided the impetus to my aim to apply critical thinking to the martial arts subculture and write a book on the subject. However, what I discovered was that RBSD was just as guilty as the other two tribes in allowing personal biases to shape their teaching.

When I first began researching the history and the presence of irrationality in the martial arts subculture, I expected to find charlatan instructors who had either been corrupted by commercialism or were hopelessly deluded by their own mythology and other, well-meaning teachers, who had simply become stuck in their ways. Cutting these away cleanly I thought I would just be left with the heroes of a rebellion fighting for truth across the history of martial arts. Such a view was naïve in the extreme. What I discovered was that critical thinking is a cold and hard tool of reasoning that has no loyalty to style, teacher, tradition, testimony or anecdote. It isn’t impressed by an individual’s level of experience or where they have taught. Critical thinking did not simply filter out a bunch of villains, nutcases and relics, but uncovered a condition that permeated every part of martial arts subculture including the RBSD movement. Even when I deconstructed the most notorious controversial figures in the martial arts world, I often found uncomfortable reflections.

A lack of overall regulation, the persistence of tribalism, and a general under-appreciation of the scientific method has allowed something comparable to a social virus to mutate and break down walls of logical reasoning in many a hardened fighter or a reasoned teacher. I called it Bullshitsu, primarily because it made a mildly offensive title for my book, but also because it was a good martial art portmanteau equivalent for what many sceptics have used to loosely bracket all sorts of nonsense and magical thinking in society.

My sales blurb to one side, below are a selection of some reoccurring questions that I have found helpful to ask in order to identify the existence of Bullshitsu in one’s training, learning and teaching.

What do you know about your system’s history?

Even a modern system has its roots in something and will be modelled on the experience of an individual that has then been taught by someone else. As techniques and concepts are passed from teacher to teacher, changes are invariably made. Many martial artists rightfully argue that they are continuing a living tradition that they can prove has an unbroken lineage stretching back for generations. Others are trying to reproduce a system that died long ago, sometimes as an immersive historical investigation. In both instances a type of irrational thought that psychologist Bruce Hood calls essentialism often takes place. i Nothing, not even physical objects, can age without some form of change taking place. This isn’t to discredit individuals who try to preserve a tradition or resurrect one, but rather to acknowledge the inevitability of constant change influenced by a wide variety of forces.

A third group, which operate alone or as part of the other two, are those who believe in and/or propagate martial arts mythology. These are individuals who put their faith in the word of teachers who have no evidence to back up the roots of their art. Many martial arts have attached their origins to unprovable lineages, sometimes stretching back to pseudo-histories about the Japanese Ninja, the Korean Hwarang, the Chinese Shaolin Monks, the European Knights Templar, the Russian Cossacks and many more besides. Ethnocentric ideas of hyperdiffusionism have put forward many creation myths where one country is seen as the root for all martial arts learning. Russia, Greece, India and China all have persistent martial arts creation myths. This is often backed up by the natural human instinct to see patterns and to be driven by confirmation bias. Despite the fact that any culture with access to wood has independently developed a hunting bow seems to escape this mind-set. The bow and arrow stands as just one example of convergent evolution in combative systems. ii

A variation of this group go to another extreme and offer an Immaculate Conception theory that dismisses clear evidence that their system is either the development of another system or was influenced by other cultures. History is often twisted and distorted to satisfy certain politics or ideologies. This leads to many martial arts leaders using pseudo-history to distance their respective system from its undesirable foreign roots or to insert philosophical ideals to soften an art’s warlike reputation. Furthermore, an Immaculate Conception theory elevates the value of a more recent head of a system in the eyes of his students.

Understanding what the evidence tells us about a system’s roots and its evolution helps prevent us from operating off a false premise. We can see why changes were really made and decide which model we might want to follow in our personal training.

Have you ever properly questioned your teacher?

Many martial arts operate in a tribal hierarchical subculture. The person at the top is the seat of all knowledge. This descends through his most senior instructors and down to the various instructors under them. It is a top down system of control akin to feudalism. If the chief instructor changes his mind on something, which virtually all of them do to some degree, the entire martial art he heads changes with him or splits off in protest. If he dies then his named successor takes on the mantle and so on. Other instructors do have a say on matters, especially if they suddenly prove themselves to be successful, but the changes are often subtle. Martial arts associations have often proudly displayed their committees, but these are rarely elected officials. There isn’t usually an established or respected line of feedback coming up through the ranks that will have a regular impact on the head instructor. Meanwhile, in the even more tightly controlled environment of the regular classroom, the students work to please the instructor (or a grading panel) more than improving their actual education in the martial art.

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