A brief thread on my personal thoughts on the utility of "very soft" martial arts.

I "am" a white belt (entry level novice) in traditional karate and judo, based on lessons I took back in college.

At the time I was considering military enlistment.

I was getting in physical shape for entry / testing but also wanted to have some basic unarmed combat practice beforehand, since I was intending to go into a combat role (enlistment did not pan out due to my prior history of cannabis smoking and being unwilling to lie about it).

I took these particular classes largely because it was what my university offered but in doing them I also gained an appreciation for their approaches versus that of "hard" (contact) martial arts.

The karate was non-contact.

The judo was contact but attempted restraint.

At the far end of the "hard" spectrum we have boxing and Brazilian jiu jitsu (itself descended from Japanese jiu jitsu like judo is): these approaches practice with full contact and are excellent (with their own tradeoffs) in preparing for unarmed combat: but risk injury.

At the "soft" end of the spectrum, we have traditional (non-contact) karate or tai chi (this can vary, but take the softest varieties), where risk of injury is very minimal, essentially non-existent in comparison.

But, of course, no practice in taking actual blows.

In a lot of discussion, there are rather macho, simplistic takes which basically advocate "hard" martial arts as the only viable approach, because of the challenges which not actually taking and receiving blows cause if one actually needs to use them.

These concerns are certainly valid: for instance, in karate one trains to essentially "pull" a punch, stopping a couple inches short of contact.

Similar to shield training in Dune, such training can be difficult to reverse in practice, as one tends to use as trained.

However, this is not necessarily insurmountable.

On the other hand, the "hard" martial arts have their own serious drawback: high likelihood of serious injury. Both boxing and bjj are notorious for their impact for serious, long-term practitioners.

In my view, for anyone who doesn't face a high likelihood of needing to actually fight, facing such injury (in particular repeated blows to the head) is too great a cost for higher combat effectiveness.

Instead, the priority should be on a practice which doesn't damage.

But we can still gain *some* combat effectiveness through these "soft" techniques without taking damage. While overcoming the "pulling the punch" type training in practice has an impact, it's still better to have the punch be trained and need a minimal adjustment, vs untrained.

This is why I think emphasizing "soft" martial arts for a broader segment of the population is a good idea: to gain some combat effectiveness, to build a security mindset, and as a positive, non-damaging form of exercise.

(Note: I don't actually practice this myself currently)

I've thought a lot about this in respect to judo, because so much of its philosophy is along these lines: judo is "the gentle way", in comparison and in response to Japanese jiu jitsu it descended from (and as opposed to BJJ which didn't take that softer route).

But judo is in my view still on the border between "soft" and "hard": while it certainly does emphasize minimizing injury, in practice it's still often quite competitive and does involve doing full throws which can cause injury.

This is rather personal for me as my last judo play was in a randori (random practice) where an experienced brown belt threw me and I broke my clavicle. It was an accident, but one which the style was prone to. In my view, there was no way to train without that possibility.

The only way would be to have an evolution of judo to a gentler form, "jujudo" in my imagining of it, somewhat analogous to the softest tai chi vs the more martial art style, or non-contact karate.

To practice as much as possible without actually throwing.

That would be heretical to traditional judo, from what little I know, because so much involved falling practice and throwing practice.

But it is in line with my understanding of the philosophy:
- maximum efficiency through minimum effort
- mutual benefit and welfare

Anyhow, I've thought a lot about that since. I've never been arrogant enough to walk into a judo dojo and try to explain my white belt thoughts to a sensei and ask for a non-contact program but someday I'd like to play judo again, or "jujudo".

For now, I walk, row, etc.

Note that the entire point of this thread is that fighting is not the primary purpose: minimizing risk of injury to non-existent is.

I think it's unfortunate people cannot talk about wanting to exercise without injury without responses involving "you need to injure yourself".