Evolution, Not Revolution

PICTURE THIS; it’s Sunday morning and off I go for a game of football (soccer).

- David Lampert

I turn up wearing my 1920s retro Arsenal kit, complete with hard leather boots and laced leather football. Why? Well, I want to play traditional football, of course. Any version of the game past the 1920s is just some modernised nonsense that has completely lost all the traditions and values of this world-famous sport.

Although my teammates are embracing new or newer training methods/drills/ exercises, I am sticking with my traditional ones. After all, I’m a traditional footballer! “Madness”, I hear you all cry! Any sports fan amongst us would be in an uproar if they discovered their favourite team’s manager had swapped all modern approaches to their sport in favour of outdated and improved upon “traditional” methods and tactics.

This is sometimes where I feel Traditional Martial Arts are at; clinging on to outdated and improved-upon training methods and ideas out of fear of being seen as nontraditional or disrespectful of the past. When, in fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Every time you refer to the head of your school as Sifu, each time you greet your fellow student with a hand salutation, every minute spent training your forms/ Chi Sau, you’re upholding traditional ways. I would bet a large sum of money we all do the above actions. Whether this is done wearing a traditional uniform, or spats and a rash guard, is irrelevant. The fact is, we are training in traditional ways.