It is inevitable that they will get tired of vacuuming our floors, and rise against us. Fortunately, nobody is teaching them how to fight…right?

Sony QRIO

OK, so they already know a little Chinese boxing–no big deal. Taiji is obviously too slow to use in a real fight. I mean, it’s not as if these robots could chase us through the streets, as we flee in terror their steel-reinforced fists…right?

Boston Dynamics BigDog

OK, we are all screwed. It is time to start building our human resistance army, for the war against the machines. Here is lesson number 1, courtesy of Stephen Hwa.

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Hugh Laurie, in underpants

The Jonas Brothers, in their fifteenth minute

Michael Dorn in Star Trek: The Next Generation
Submitted by Cook Ding’s Kitchen)

Sensei Isla Fisher and Andy Samberg in Hot Rod

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In a recent episode of their hit Showtime series, stage magicians Penn Jilette and Raymond Teller warn viewers away from the universally fraudulent field of martial arts. Now a real expert martial artist rescues us from their half-baked debunkings.

For their own convenience, Penn and Teller divide the world of martial arts into three categories: traditional, mystical, and murderous. During the show, they interview and mock one representative from each category:

• Mike Reeves, of Powerhouse Karate, in Apopka, Florida
• Dena Saxer, of Mantak Chia’s Universal Healing Tao in Los Angeles, CA
• Damian Ross, of The Self Defense Company, in Saddle River, NJ

To support their otherwise meritless position, Penn and Teller rely on Marc MacYoung of No-Nonsense Self Defense. Although MacYoung is presented as a skeptical outsider here, he is actually the best known of these four, and is highly regarded within the martial arts community.

Having introduced the litigants, let us now review the case. Assistance is provided by a handy Truth-o-Meter, which I borrowed from the St. Petersburg Times.

While facing a mugger with a gun, Penn and Teller say:

If we had invested in martial arts training, we could try to go all Bruce Lee on their asses. But a few years ago, we did the arithmetic, and we figured that Karate lessons–even kids’ Karate lessons–would cost us a grand or more a year, for each of us. And the hours we spent in class, and driving to the dojo, and practicing and sweating and bowing and Fuck that! We have a better, cheaper, and less risky self-defense system. [Penn hands over his wallet and watch.]

Throughout the episode, Penn Jilette uses the terms “martial arts” and “self-defense” interchangeably, despite the fact that his own sources (Ross and MacYoung) insist otherwise. Self-defense is one of many possible benefits of martial arts training; performance varies with the student and the school.

Exercise is another benefit. According to our 2009 survey, average monthly martial arts tuition is around 80 dollars per month: this is comparable to a standard health club membership, if you include a short monthly coaching session with a personal trainer.

Penn Jilette advises that obedience is a better self-defense solution. This may be true in the case of a simple mugging, and most martial arts instructors would agree. As for dealing with the threat of rape or violent assault…don’t ask a six-foot-six, 270 pound Hollywood millionaire.

When outlining the content of the show, Penn Jillette says:

What we won’t be seeing much of are headlines like these: “Purse Snatcher Stopped by Passing Dojo Student”, “Rapist Thwarted by Black Belt Woman,” et cetera. Sure these stories exist, they must, but with all the people taking all these martial arts classes, shouldn’t we see these headlines all the time?…None of us could remember [seeing] a story like this in the news; when it happened, wouldn’t every dojo send out a press release?

As a former columnist for PC Magazine, Penn ought to know how and why these headlines appear, and why they do not appear more often: an exceptional sequence of events is required. First, a crime must be committed against someone who “knows” martial arts well enough to apply them under pressure (but not well enough to actually prevent or avoid the crime). Second, either the victim or a bystander must report this crime to the police. Third, the victim must specifically demonstrate or reference their “martial arts ability” (instead of attributions to luck or athleticism) for the report. Fourth, a media organization must observe this, and decide it is a newsworthy event.

When a martial artist stops a crime before it has even started, there is no headline. Martial arts help us to avoid becoming a victim, by teaching us to stop acting like a victim. As Geoff Thompson has explained, few criminals are interested in trying their luck against a hard target.

When a crime goes unreported, there is no headline. On those few occasions when I’ve been personally assaulted, I never bothered to call the police. A good friend of mine was attacked by a gang and stabbed in the gut, and he didn’t call the police either–as he recalled, it was just a light stabbing, and filing a report wasn’t worth the hassle. This happens all the time.

When a martial artist keeps their mouth shut, there is no headline. Most are taught to exercise discretion–either out of humility, or to avoid challenge matches and unwarranted scrutiny from law enforcement. As an innocent victim, nobody will demand to know why you hit back; as a self-identified martial artist, you may be expected to turn cartwheels around your attackers, and punished for anything less.

When the story isn’t compelling or advertiser-friendly, there is no headline. This last point warrants no further explanation.

Penn Jilette helpfully translates,

“Dojo” is Japanese for “storefront in strip mall”.

OK, this is mostly true.

Dena has been teaching the ancient Chinese practices of Chi Kung and Tai Chi ever since the powers of chi healed her osteoporosis. That’s what she said. We don’t know why she’s here on Showtime, rather than presenting her double-blind study on the curing of osteoarthritis through Chi Kung to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dena is not presenting to the AMA because this is a settled issue. The safety and efficacy of Qigong as an arthritis treatment is well established, in theory and practice. Common objections, that the theory is not acceptable and the observed results are unimportant, fail to impress this writer–or the many practitioners who have found relief through these practices.

Before providing his opinion of Qigong, Penn Jilette should first learn how to pronounce it correctly. If this is prohibitively difficult, he could instead browse the 3000 search results in PubMed (assuming that he can spell it correctly).

Dismissing the effectiveness of Tai Chi Chuan, Penn Jilette says:

And this is going to repel an attacker? Maybe if he’s afraid of French mimes.

After mislabeling martial arts as systems of self-defense, who have Penn and Teller selected to test the fighting capacity of Tai Chi? An elderly female theatre major, whose primary interest lies in the therapeutic aspects of the art. Sacrebleu!

If nothing else, this decision explains the title for their TV series. It is also a wasted opportunity; I would have paid good money to see Penn attempt a hands-on investigation of Chen Bing, or any of a hundred other masters who take fighting applications seriously.

Marc MacYoung explains the significance of belts in the martial arts,

It turns out there has never been a accepted standard for what a black belt means, or any other color belt for that matter. Simply put, martial arts is a business, and the belts are its primary product…For two or three thousand dollars, not including belt testing fees, equipment fees, and all these other hidden fees, you can get a black belt in one year, guaranteed.

This is standard practice in modern, commercial schools. It is far from universal, however. Note that of the four martial arts experts on this show, only one of them actually awards belts!

After learning that senior students not only assist in teaching, but also mop the floors and change the light bulbs in Mike Reeves’ dojo, Penn complains:

“Wait a second, that’s like paying your gym membership to scrub the showers. But this isn’t unique to Mike’s dojo. This is all dojos around the country…What’s the Japanese word for suckers?”

The word in question is giri, and it can be translated as “obligation”. Unlike colored belts, this practice does have a historical precedent. Giri generally includes, but is not limited to basic dojo maintenance duties.

The plain fact is that if students will not perform these simple tasks, they must pay for someone else to do it. Veteran students tend to give their dojo as much respect as their own home, and if sweeping the floor is not exactly an honor, it is hardly a punishment either.

Responding to Damian Ross’ bluster, that producing killer students makes him proud, Penn and Teller declare,

According to the legal definition of self-defense, ‘A person must use no more force than appears reasonably necessary in the circumstances.’ Otherwise Damian, your students are looking at manslaughter charges.

The standards for legally permissible self-defense vary by jurisdiction: city, state and country.

Revealing the secrets of board breaking, Penn Jilette states,

Now breaking even one board is damn near impossible if you whack the board [against the grain]. But if you turn it, you’re splitting it between the fibers. Still, even with soft pine, breaking a stack of five takes a hell of a whack, unless you put pencils, chopsticks, or some some separators between them. Now you’re just breaking one board after the other, separately.

Penn actually understates the widespread duplicity of Karate and Taekwondo breaking demonstrations! More on this subject in a future article here.

Watch the full episode of PENN & TELLER: BULLSHIT! “Martial Arts” online at MegaVideo (NSFW)
[YouTube version (also NSFW)]

In his parting cheap shots, Penn inquires,

What’s the point of all these crazy [Tai Chi] moves?

Dena responds,

They teach you to listen to your organs, and after awhile, your organs will talk to you…I’m not kidding.

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After taking great care to present Dena as a faded fruitcake, Penn asks two other people whether they believe her wacky claims. Their answer, unsurprisingly, is no. But what do you think? Can organs really talk?

Are Penn and Teller out of their depth here? Or do you agree with their conclusion, that martial arts are bullshit?

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For almost twenty years, Qi Magazine featured original articles on kung fu, qigong, and other facets of Chinese culture, many written specifically by and for martial artists. (Qi Magazine is not to be confused with Qi Journal, which seems more targeted to the Goji berry set.)

Qi Magazine ceased production in early 2009, and publisher Michael Tse has since opened the archives. Each of the ninety issues is now available for free download in PDF format. Read two issues every week; that should keep you busy until next year.

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From his recent interview with Lama Somananda Tantrapa…

“Between the ages of 9 and 12, I had almost no food. Taiwan was preparing for a war against mainland China. Most of us kids were starving.

There were nine children in my family, and at that time, feeding nine children was not easy. All our problems gave me an ulcer by the time I was 16 years old.

One day, I was sitting in the corner in a cold sweat. My White Crane Kung Fu master said I had a stomach problem. “What should I do?” I asked him. I had no medicine, and no money to see a doctor.

“At that time, in the early 1960s, you could not go learn another style without your master’s approval. It was not like today—people making ‘chop suey’ by mixing all these different styles.”

He said, “I’ve heard that Taiji can help you relax your internal organs.”

My master encouraged me to learn Tai Chi Chuan. That is the reason I started at the early age of 16. My motivation was not fighting; it was to ease the pain of my ulcer, and hopefully to heal myself.

Did it work? It surprised me. Six months later, the painful episodes had been reduced. After most of a year, they disappeared.

So that is why I started practicing Tai Chi Chuan. It is not because I liked it…I hated it, but it helped me to calm down.

Listen to the entire MP3 interview with Dr. Jwing-Ming Yang at Secrets of the Qigong Masters.

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According to one classical perspective, no student should be given sword instruction until they have first qualified themselves to learn, by demonstrating mastery of barehanded technique. In some styles of martial arts, this might require thousands of hours of study.

Narrowing the focus during these initial months, or years of training might seem to benefit everyone involved. It can, and frequently it does. However, in some cases, it will actually hinder the student’s overall progress. The sword itself is an excellent instructor, to those who will heed its lessons.

What is Biofeedback?

Biofeedback is a method of expanding conscious awareness into realms that are typically governed by the unconscious mind. The subject of biofeedback training is instrumented with equipment that amplifies, records and displays biometric data, such as body temperature, heart rate, and skin conductivity. Experiments have shown that, if a subject is made aware of small fluctuations in these ostensibly involuntary processes (i.e. with the help of biofeedback equipment), that subject can more easily bring these processes under their conscious control.

Biofeedback machines, such as an electroencephalograph (EEG) or digital thermometer, can be expensive and complex. They can also be simple and cheap. Bicycle training wheels, which allow a rider to tip over slightly without immediately falling down, provide a useful form of biometric feedback. In fact, an intelligent person can press nearly any tool into service as a biofeedback device—including their sword.

The Sword as Biofeedback Device

A sword is a natural amplifier, which consistently and impartially reflects the mistakes of its user. If the swordsman’s grip and cut are incorrect, his sword may wobble, or even ring. When the position of his wrist is wrong by one inch, the tip of the blade may be wrong by one foot. If his body movement is slightly convoluted or imprecise, a good sword helps to make that obvious; with a tassel, even more so.

According to an old Chinese proverb, “A one-inch error at the start becomes a thousand-mile error by the end.” A sword can help prevent small errors from escaping its user’s attention, and thereby train the hand that holds it, and the mind which directs it.

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Chen Style Taiji: 38-posture form

Chen Bing explains push hands
“What if your opponent will not use force? Use it yourself.”

Chen Bing demonstrates Taiji throwing methods at a Miami seminar

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In practice, no two practice partners are ever equal, and the partner in control usually sets the pace and the tone of a practice session—if not intentionally, then haphazardly.

As I am often the senior Taiji practitioner in attendance—or in other words, the unpaid and under-appreciated Taiji instructor in attendance—it seems appropriate to briefly discuss my personal guidelines and preferences for tui shou (pushing hands) practice.

Tui shou is about using what you have to get what you want. What you have, as a dedicated practitioner of Taiji solo forms, is a highly cultivated set of physical abilities (e.g. the ability to rotate the torso while standing balanced on one leg). What you want, as a martial artist, is the capacity to win fights, or at least avoid losing them.

The practice of tui shou is the application of Taiji body skills against light or moderate resistance. These skills, as encoded in the forms, include striking an opponent, throwing them to the ground, and dislocating or breaking their joints. From a tight self-defense perspective, Tai Chi’s famous relaxation and sensitivity benefits are only the means to these ends.

Ideally, tui shou provides an opportunity to explore the full Taiji suite of attacks and defenses, principles and techniques. In practical terms, this means moving in and out of clinch range while maintaining subtle contact, and seizing opportunities to attack while denying those same opportunities to a practice partner. Thereby, it presents a manageable subset of the real problems that define a real fight.

The worst tui shou, in contrast, offers elegant solutions to imaginary problems (e.g. wrist grabs), and fails to bridge the gap between self-cultivation and combat. Illustrating the point, see this video by Sifu Wei-Chung Lin of the Chinese Taoist Martial Arts Association.

To be perfectly clear, this video does not depict its creator’s attempt at Taiji pushing hands practice. I will critique as if it did, only because I have met a few people who do like to perform tui shou in exactly this manner. The demonstration shows how a fixed step push hands exercise can simultaneously be impressive and ridiculous.

The critical issue is not whether any kind of skill is employed, or even whether that skill produces the desired outcome, in this limited engagement, of uprooting the opponent. Winning is not enough; it is necessary but insufficient. The critical issue is how that skill is related to the solo Taiji form on one hand, and to free fighting on the other. Without that synergy, push hands is just a baroque and Orientalist strain of MMA.

The artificial restrictions of fixed step push hands are beneficial–when we recognize them as such, and consequently avoid reliance on strategies and techniques that would fail outside of these restrictions.

Push hands should not be regarded as a separate course, for that minority of Taiji students who enjoy fighting. On the contrary, tuishou provides a vantage point, from where we learn whether our solo form practice is actually correct. Afterwards, our success or failure in sparring will show whether our conception and execution of tuishou is correct. In my opinion, this is the most, and the least anyone should expect from the practice.

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You’ll never appreciate the true complexity of a mundane, everyday task, until you’ve tried explaining it to a computer.

Contrary to popular perception, computers are not smart. Actually, they are stone dumb. Given a lengthy set of precise instructions, your computer can follow them well enough, most of the time, but when asked to exhibit the tiniest bit of reasoning or creativity, your cutting-edge laptop PC is helpless and hopeless. Ditto for the Mac. Sorry, Linux won’t help either.

Consider the simple act of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You can teach the average six year-old child this skill in a few minutes; writing the equivalent instructions for a general-purpose computer could literally take weeks or months of effort.

Knowing all this, I was amazed by the concept and promise of Spike TV’s new show, Deadliest Warrior:

In Los Angeles, CA, we’ve created a high-tech fight club, with scientists, martial arts experts, and lots and lots of weapons. It’s all here to create a virtual battle between two legendary warriors. We’ll test their weapons and fighting techniques on high-tech dummies—stand-ins for human victims. Based on this data, a battle simulation program will stage a true-to-life fight to the death. The winner will be The Deadliest Warrior.

Could it possibly be true? Would the endless debates over the ultimate fighting style finally be put to rest, by indisputable scientific evidence?

As it turns out, Deadliest Warrior devotes the majority of its screen time to slashing, stabbing and smashing test dummies with period weapons. The remainder is split between historical reenactment scenes, and bull sessions with their resident martial arts historians. Sadly, for those of us with an interest in the simulator itself, the show never describes its operation.

Slitherine Software UK, creators of Deadliest Warrior’s battle modeler, would not agree to an interview. So instead, I will take a wild stab at assessing how the software works, and whether it meets its promise as a scientific and objective judge of human warriors.

The Genesis of the Deadliest Warrior Sim

According to the SpikeTV’s producers, a team of programmers spent five years developing the Deadliest Warrior simulation engine. This is not precisely correct. Slitherine Software created a real-time strategy game—The History Channel’s Great Battles of Rome—and later tweaked this game for the specific use of the Deadliest Warrior program.

Great Battles of Rome is a role-playing game, with some references to true historical events. It does not, and is not intended to simulate the reality of ancient warfare in authentic detail. As in other RTS games, the game player serves as general over an army of semi-autonomous battle units, each possessing unique strengths, weaknesses, and methods of attack. Play consists of directing strategy and tactics, advance and retreat, to capture territory and defeat the forces of the opponent.

Troop types in GBoR include light and heavy infantry, archers, cavalry and war elephants. Cavalry presumably move faster than elephants, but are less powerful against a lone soldier; archers can attack safely from longer distances, but are handicapped by forest terrain; and so on.

These game rules were reworked for use on Deadliest Warrior. Instead of pitting two groups of one thousand warriors against each other in one giant battle, the software matches up two single warriors—an archetypal ninja and Spartan, or samurai and Viking raider—for one thousand consecutive matches.

Why repeat the same match one thousand times? Why can’t this high-tech computer simulation compute the correct results on the first try? The simple answer is that neither the simulation, nor its creators know how to do so.

Enter the Monte Carlo algorithm. Instead of dictating fixed values for each fighter’s metrics—their speed and agility, the range and power of their weapons, et cetera—the programmers define a range of possible values. The computer then runs a series of test cases, using random numbers that fall within those ranges. After sufficient test cases have been run, the computer aggregates the results to guess the most probable real-life conclusion.

With a random number generator determining the outcome of these battles, one might assume fairness and objectivity; but that would be a mistake. Underneath the Deadliest Warrior’s fancy wire-frame graphics and state-of-the-art ballistic weapons measurements, lies a set of flawed assumptions that destroy the show’s claims to scientific validity.

Ninja vs. Spartan

As any experienced martial artist can tell you, the fighting tactics shown in the final reenactments are laughable. On the show, “computer whiz” Max Geiger explains these episodes as dramatized composites of a sober statistical analysis; but in fact, the analysis itself is probably no closer to reality.

Random numbers alone do not make a battle. Remember that the computer does not know how to fight, nor is it capable of learning this independently. In the end, it can only follow instructions.

Clippy, The Deadliest Warrior?

Can you guess who wrote those instructions? (I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t the International Ninja Council.)

Ultimately, these “scientific rules” of warfare were written not by experienced warriors, but by a group of programmers; and with the initial constraint that they should be simple enough to produce an entertaining computer game (Great Battles of Rome).

Theoretically, the Monte Carlo method might compensate for the programmers’ inability to identify the single most important factor in these warriors’ battle. (If we knew the answer to that question, there would be no need for a simulation.) Instead, they attempted to identify twenty different factors that could affect the outcome, and all the paths through which these factors can interact. In other words, they attempted to reduce mastery of the martial arts to a straightforward mathematical equation, and draw “scientific” conclusions from the use of that equation.

Understand that the art of fighting is not an output from this simulation; it is an input. It is not an experimental result, but a set of assertions written by software engineers. Whether or not these assertions are prima facie reasonable is irrelevant; dojo novices quickly learn that “reasonable” is not a working martial art. (Incidentally, this may explain why no computer scientists have yet won a UFC title.)

Considering the hidden complexity of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you might assume that a proper martial arts simulator would require many years of careful design, with input from experts in the fields of software engineering and martial arts. You would be correct.

Does Spike TV’s Deadliest Warrior reflect this disciplined approach to the intractable problem of single combat?

I can answer that in three words: severed pig carcasses.

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What is the most natural method for safely evading a knife thrust, while simultaneously positioning oneself for an effortless disarm and throw? How does one naturally reverse a guillotine choke? People who know the answer to these questions don’t need an instructor or a class; for the rest of us, more detailed guidance is appropriate.

With that said, I am a strong advocate of “natural breathing” for martial applications, in contrast to the more exotic approaches advanced in some dojos.

While it may be true that one’s strikes are more powerful during an exhale, and least powerful during the inhale, this fact is subordinate to a higher truth. If your movement and breathing are strongly linked, then your opponent(s) can more easily control them both. Despite your best intentions, this coordination can quickly become a self-imposed suffocation, of the muscles and the brain.

I’ll illustrate with a short story from my own training. When I met my first Taiji instructor–whom we shall call James–I already had years of experience in Wing Chun, Aikido and other martial arts. With this experience, I had developed the habit of breathing out to meet an unavoidable incoming strike.

One day, James and I were working on a close-quarters sticking exercise, and he noticed this subconscious habit to his great amusement. When I started to breathe in, he laughed and hit me. So I let the air out, waited a second or two, and tried to breathe in again. James laughed again, and hit me again. After a few more rounds of fun, I got his point. Until I was willing to abandon this habit, I literally could not breathe without his permission.

Although this was only a training exercise, similar constraints are present in a real fight. We do not always have the luxury of choice when timing our attack and defense.

If we attempt to match the rhythm of our breathing with the unpredictable pace of our opponent’s movement, the most likely results are hyperventilation and auto-asphyxiation. Neither of these is conducive to power, sensitivity, or relaxation.

Since I cannot predict in advance when the opponent will drop their guard, or how many times I will need to punch them in response, I don’t even attempt to coordinate my breathing with the attack. By the same principle, I am very careful about creating defensive space through exhalation, recognizing that a poorly timed breath may be my last.

It seems that the only safe time to exhale decisively with a strike, is after the opponent is already knocked out. Be advised however that that referees frown upon such behavior.

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