Formalized Tactics

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In reading up on Sun Tzu along with references to Clausewitz there came a quote or meme that is used throughout the arts of war, formalized tactics. Formalized tactics was the conventional form of war and is still used in many places even today. We used it in WWI and partly in WWII but who knows what was in effect during the Viet Nam era, to confusing and much like Sun Tzu states, if the campaign is too long then you have lost the battle. We lost that one bad.

What does this have to do with karate, martial arts and self-defense or self-protective disciplines? Well, the arts of war, especially that of Sun Tzu, are such that they can be applied to any conflict and any from of violence used so it can be used at this low level of fighting, combat and defense (Note: don’t get caught up in the use of the term defense, read Mr. MacYoung’s latest eBook on defense). 

In karate as well as many of the Japanese forms of karate and martial arts the training and practice tend to lean heavily on “formalized tactics.” Yes, this is my view, my perception and the distinction I see in things like basics (use of ten or so upper and lower techniques in warmups and practice), kata (formalized patterned sets of techniques and combinations chained together and often defined under the heading of tactics or particular techniques based actions, reactions, attacks and counter attacks, etc.) and various drills or what some call kumite-drills (set pattern kata applications in response to attack like kata applications set in certain patterns). Needless to say, this could go on and only in contests/competitions do you see a straying from such training and practices but often in a very limited and formalized set or sets of combinations, i.e., combinations consisting of a set of particular techniques found by the applicant to work with some consistency in the contests/competitions, etc. 

Some karate-ka will see this as just plain stupid, not karate, but hey, isn’t there a lot of subjects, topics and training not done that is karate because of expediency and instant need for gratifications, i.e., rank, recognition, status, etc.? I like to think that even some of the more obscure and seemingly insignificant subject matters actually contribute toward a better understanding and hopefully a better application of our disciplines especially when it comes to self-defense or self-protective disciplines. 

Formalized tactics as I describe are a good thing, to a point. I have written about this a lot and it does require a change in the status quo of modern karate and martial arts in all its practiced forms but seems to my mind a necessity much like Boyd’s Patterns of Conflict (OODA stuff, etc.) where modern arts of war need to move to maneuver warfare over the conventional formalized versions of war previously used and found to be lacking even in ancient times.

In all the arts of war it is believed in some circles that the only author to date who is literally timeless is Sun Tzu and I feel, to date in my studies, that Colonel Boyd has achieved that status if for no other reason then his studies analyzed and then synthesized into his modern art of war. 

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p.s. some of the professionals I study have indicated that the more formalized tactics many try to train and apply to self-defense tend not to work ergo why I  tend to stress breaking away from a formalized training discipline to one that is more creative in nature and use the formalized training to learn about principles and methodologies, etc., “A training Tool!”