Fads come and go in martial arts as in any other domain. Here is a quick and dirty run-down of what seem to me like the most popular martial arts fads for the past several decades. What do y'all think is coming next? What will fade to obscurity? Which of these will last forever? What was going on in the martial arts world in the decades before the 1950's
- 1950’s – judo
- 1960’s – karate
- 1970’s – kungfu
- 1980’s – ninjitsu
- 1990’s – UFC, Gracies, aikido
- 2000’s – cqb, kravmaga
At first, I didn't think I'd participate in this thread; I just thought I'd watch to see what others said.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I don't know what's coming next. I rather doubt we'll see any significant interest in "ninjutsu" again, and while there will be a certain number of people interested in learning MMA and krav maga, if I had to guess what will be "big" in the future, I'd say that what's going to happen is more interest in the older systems, as people begin to realize that part of the reason they didn't seem so effective is because they didn't learn enough, sometimes even at the higher black belt levels. (In their defense, it often wasn't--and isn't--there to learn. I can't blame my old Taekwon-do instructors for not teaching me tuite if their instructors didn't know it.)In other words, as people increasingly understand that there is a whole lot more to karate and kung fu than kick-block-punch, and that Brazilian jujutsu is not all that different from judo, I think people will revisit the older systems and try to figure out what they've been missing.