All excellent points. And, in addition, you get many other beneficial side effects: improved sense of balance and body awareness, situational awareness, realistic appreciation of how dangerous fighting is and how easy it is to get hurt, stamina, and more.
I could support kids learning boxing if it was limited to body blows. With what we are learning about concussion, it seems to be more and more understood that blows to the head are never OK. Maybe you still need to teach defense against head blows, but they should probably not be allowed in competition. Getting battered in the head until you cannot stand up or respond should be right out.
One of the biggest misconceptions about boxing training is that it involves repeated blows to the head.
Boxing _competitions_ may. But boxing _training_ involves form, combos, reflexes and defense drills, and lots of conditioning. The most contact is "touch" drills, where you may touch your glove to someone with no force behind it. These drills are for intermediates to prepare for sparring, and I've never seen someone get hit too hard there.
Imagine if karate involved untrained people just kicking eachother hard enough to injure themselves / someone. That seems silly, yet that's what we imagine with boxing.
Thanks for clarifying. I don't have experience with boxing myself, but yes I was mostly talking about competition (i.e. fight to knock-out) and it makes sense that training is more about the skills you mention.
Totally agree. And some other sports, especially soccer (football outside the US) are also risky for the brain, because practice involves repeated heading.
The problem is that out of this concern, some martial arts disallowed head blows in competition, only to fall out of grace due to how "unrealistic" they are in terms of self defence.
A large number of people who start practising martial arts, does that out of a self defence concern, maybe they have been bullied at school etc.
I don't have a solution to this problem (possibly head gear, but recent studies seem to indicate that it's not effective and might even make things worse)[1].
Of course one possible solution would be to mainly promote grappling-based martial arts, like BJJ or amateur wrestling, but then in a self defence optic you would still need some striking practice, at least in order to learn striking defence.
Replying to myself: in striking arts, one great solution is promoting a culture where light sparring (e.g. Thai style sparring) is preferred to hard sparring (e.g. Dutch style sparring). In most combat sports, competition is not that frequent and more than 99% of the time a practitioner would be doing either technical training or sparring.
You've perfectly described every martial arts gym / training session that I've been part of. Touch / light sparring is reserved for intermediates, and reflex / defensive drills are a strong prerequsite, and under no circumstances is anyone allowed to go "full speed".
Even in the grimiest of boxing gyms, unless you are explicitly training for a competition, I have never seen this rule violated.
There are martial arts where even in competition, concussion is relatively rare. E.g. grappling sports like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu don't usually involve impacts of that intensity, to the head or otherwise.
Football has more concussions than boxing, because it has more full speed competition than boxing. Almost nobody does in-the-ring boxing, they just learn.
And soccer has the most injuries of any sport, according to an ER doc (who treated me for a football injury).
Is it possible that it's the most widely played sport (and some of the least protective equipment) so they'll see the most people but it might not be the highest per capita?
That said, I know a kid who somehow lacerated his kidney and had to spend time in the ICU. At least two others with concussions.
Masahiko Kimura was famous for knocking people out with his osoto-gari.
Helio Gracie thickened the mats for his match with him to prevent this. By all reports Kimura threw him around the ring before finally switching to ground-work for the win (And after winning with a reverse-keylock, that submission was named after him in BJJ).
BJJ has another problem -- at least for little kids who are taught to choke. That could lead to death if they try applying the skill they learned in an unsupervised setting.
In principle, I want to agree. In practice, I think the vast majority of martial arts schools are nothing more than glorified day care facilities with a side of calisthenics.
They don't constructively do anything to actually teach those issues of control and discipline to the students. It's not enough to give people the skills and then expect them to learn from experience the restraint necessary to not use it. They don't do anything at all to prepare their students for the realities of what it means to use violence against another human being. It is an emotionally traumatizing experience.
Nothing like that was ever mentioned in any of the schools across multiple styles that I attended. All that was discussed was the potential of an "unfair" legal ruling if your attacker decided to press battery chargers against you. There was always an implication of "be careful when looking for a place to use these skills", not "avoid it completely, except on completely unavoidable threat to life and limb."
"They don't constructively do anything to actually teach those issues of control and discipline to the students."
At least when I was growing up, it was always the kids who took karate that were quick to fight, or talk smack. So I think I agree. Although one caveat is that it's not appropriate for everyone, or that some kids need to be much older than others. So maybe it has to do with the parents and facilities not denying those kids based on their ability to control themselves.
On a side note, if a kid uses martial arts skills in real life, it could result in increased liability. That's something people don't think about.
The Society for Creative Anachronism is one option, but you'd have to find someone willing to teach youngsters about heavy weapons combat.
There are other heavy weapons martial artist organizations out there. Jill Bearup (on YouTube) is a stage combat person, but she's also had contact with people who do martial arts in the space.
Of course, if you want to learn Japanese style sword combat, go down to your local Kendo Dojo.
For people wanting to have a bit of fun and handle things that feel like weapons, I'd highly recommend searching out a contemporary Wushu (Kung Fu) school. It's the modern sport martial art of China, is sort of a combination of traditional Chinese Martial Arts, Kickboxing, and Gymnastics and weapons are a very big component. It's very close to becoming an Olympic sport even though it's not incredibly well known.
For reference, it's what movie actor Jet Li was trained in and performed when he came to the White House in the 70s as part of the U.S.-China opening up.
I can't disagree, but I offer I hope an amusing counterpoint I heard from my uncle. It was Korean war or earlier and during basic training they were learning bayonet fighting. One soldier protested and said he did not need to learn bayonet fighting as a knife wound to the ass is not fatal.
My counterpoint being, it's good to know the skills but avoidance when possible is best.
It is really hard to safely create space in a fight if your opponent is right on you and there's any kind of obstacle around. Or, if they have a hold on you.
At least, I assume so given how much time is dedicated to creating space and moving away in my boxing and krav maga training.
not sure how anyone can recommend boxing now ; all those interactions require the right social environment, things can go wrong quickly. I reflect on learning about places in the USA where they take wrestling seriously, which at the time seemed like low-income, blue collar sort of places.. but now I realize that the social interaction between men there was rugged, but they had norms and ways to regain equilibrium. Meanwhile multi-cultural urban school, really a bad idea to have regular and repeated situations where students strike others, IMHO.
This is not written from a place of experience, i think.
Boxing is a perfectly fine sport, with reputable, kid-friendly gyms all over. My favorite gym, where I trained for years, had an after-school program for kids, in fact.
And I always take the opportunity to dispel a common misconception: You can study boxing your whole life and never have anyone throw a real punch at you, or strike you violently. Just like you can study karate your whole life, and never have to kick anyone in the head. You should look up videos of boxing training techniques (not sparring) and see what it's all about.
Technique, conditioning, mental preparation, combos, footwork are what you learn. Sparring is for those who want to compete.
Honestly, why do people still believe this? Movies?
> Meanwhile multi-cultural urban school, really a bad idea to have regular and repeated situations where students strike others, IMHO.
I see it as a chicken and egg problem.
It can be hard to manage situations where people from different background and culture have to intensely interact with each other, especially as they are pushed to their limits. But it is also by having multi-cultural people regularly interact with each others that you help improve their relations and make these situations better.
If it seems hard to enter the cycle, a smaller first step to have the kids get used to be around each other could help.
I'm just thinking back to my time in scouting and can only imagine what it would be like to teach a bunch of 14-16 y/os the 1920s equivalent of MMA. Probably about 30min of fun until kids just start hitting each other as hard as they can with sticks.
Still sounds more fun than the basket weaving merit badge though.
Hey man, my first year at summer camp all I did was basket weaving, leather working, and pottery. I originally planned to do swimming and some other adventurous stuff but was too overwhelmed by the swim test to be allowed in the lake and had a bit of a meltdown before changing course. I spent the whole week chilling in camp or the crafting grove working with my hands - it was great.
A few years later I went to a different summer camp as a senior patrol leader and finally got my swimming badge along with canoeing and rock climbing - that was a great week too. Point being: there's value in the "boring" stuff, maybe even more so now that I'm established in my career and looking for a little more peace these days. Lately I've been strangely interested in weaving and am thinking of making a simple loom - maybe this goes back to my basket weaving experience when I was 10?
I wasn't at all worried BEFORE that swim test, but afterwards I can safely say that was legitimately difficult and pretty terrifying. Especially when you realize the lake we did it in was full of leeches, which was completely foreign to me at the time.
Ah summer lake leaches. Stuff of nightmares. My understanding was as long as you didn’t touch the mucky bottom you were in the clear? I swam in New England lakes for 20 years and never had one myself but saw several.
Probably why I did the mile swim several times, treading water to keep leach free builds endurance.
Did you do basket weaving? Basket weaving was super chill and could make you feel like an adult in some important ways. My baskets were a disaster but talking to friends about favorite video games while weaving them was like free therapy.
> Probably about 30min of fun until kids just start hitting each other as hard as they can with sticks.
BB gun fights were a regular feature of childhood where and when I grew up. I never took part myself - my mom had already instructed me in the correct use, care, and safe handling of actual firearms, for one thing, and for another I knew she'd take my own Daisy air gun away if she heard of me doing anything so foolish - but lots of kids I knew did, and regularly had the injuries to prove it. Their folks never fussed so far as I knew.
That was in the late 80s and early 90s. So I feel like in the 1920s kids hitting each other with sticks is going to be about 50% "builds character," and the balance "well, it'll help get them ready for the next war".
Hey, basket weaving and leather work were super fun, and I have all cool ones like shotgun, archery and rifle. The most boring are probably your citizenship badges. Don't knock it till you try it.
Safety was the most boring badge, and quite a bear too. Lots of memorization. It was required afaik too, at least back in the 90s. Had a reputation as blocking advancement to a higher rank, I think Life.
Oh I have the leather working merit badge, I loved it! The particulars of how to work with hide and stamp it was a neat arts-and-crafts activity that I hadn't realized.
Basket weaving was considered the slacker badge (for my troop at least) to work on during summer camp because it had 2 requirements and it generally took a day to complete. I was more interested in rock climbing / canoeing / forestry etc - we're in the wood for a week, why waste it?
I get it but when I took martial arts as a kid it didn’t devolve into a free-for-all so I guess it would depend on the effectiveness of the teacher to maintain order.
Some merit badges involve strenuous physical challenges, such as hiking (multiple long-distance hikes including a 50-miler). The canoeing MB requires learning how to get back on an overturned canoe while in deep water, which is bloody hard.
They still have badges for shooting and archery, too.
There are also some badges that were unexpected - plumbing, fixing farm equipment, computer game design.
I remember getting my computer badge- in the late 90s, iirc. I had to write up a document in a word processor, create a simple spreadsheet, and one or two other things I'm probably forgetting. Even then it felt a bit basic and behind the times, but I was happy to get an easy badge!
Ah yes, the canoeing merit badge. Accomplished by yours truly and one other scout because I found an underwater stump in the Sewanee river and told him about it. LOL.
I had a habit of collecting unusual merit badges that few had seen before: Animal Science (hey, it's got a cow on the badge, and besides I had cows), Atomic Energy, etc. I got my Entomology merit badge at the National Scout Jamboree from a team of highly motivated active duty Soldiers who had the job of eradicating potential disease vectors from areas where our troops would live and work, even during wartime. They were so happy I stopped at their little booth — I'm guessing the majority of Soldiers treated them like the bulk fuel folks (or other unsung jobs) rather than the people who keep you from contracting some horrific tropical disease.
The head of the team was a full bird colonel with a PhD from IIRC Cornell who revelled in the fact that .mil is exempt from EPA regs. They got to use the heavy artillery of insect control means. He flatly stated, with no small amount of pride, that not a single Scout at the National Jamboree that year would get Lyme unless they went into the (untreated) woods. My father was a staff physician for the Jamboree, and as best as he could tell the colonel was right — now, they did have Lyme infections from kids going decidedly "off piste", this being Fort AP Hill, VA, in the summer.
The lifesaving merit badge was the hardest for me. Lots of swimming and you have to lift a weight out of the deep end of the pool. Didn't help the camp that we did it at was at a high elevation in Colorado.
Unfortunately I didn't stick with it long enough to go on any of the famous backpacking trips. That being said, Boy Scouts was a valuable experience that offered some cool experiences no other organization offers around that age.
Hiking requires one 5-mile hike three 10-mile hikes, one 15-mile hike and one 20-mile hike.
None can be overnight.
The Backpacking MB requires a 30 mile trip over at least 3 days or nights (3 overnight stops).
None require a 50 mile hike, though there is a “50 mile” award that requires at least 50 miles over 5 days with no motor vehicles. Some troops (units) make a 50 mile trip compulsory in order to attend the High Adventure base trip (e.g. Philmont.)
I am most impressed that the grappling techniques are almost all legitimate and taught today. I tapped people out with two of those techniques (cross collar choke and arm bar) in the last week as a BJJ practitioner. Same with the throws. The scissor takedown is also known as Kani Basami and is stupid dangerous for the person being taken down. Can easily tear knee ligaments and most gyms do not permit its use in most circumstances. It is effective, though.
1925 in Great Britain? So, this was published just a few years after the end of World War I. I presume it was written by people who actually fought in the war. I wonder how much of this reflected the skills they had learned or used as soldiers in that war?
> I wonder how much of this reflected the skills they had learned or used as soldiers in that war?
Even today, Marine recruits are trained to fight with pugil sticks and padding — part of the idea is to get them accustomed to being hit without losing focus on the mission.
Sparring with quarterstaff is a bad idea, regardless of age. A 7' lever is no joke.
Anyone who thinks that's a hot take, infantilization of kids, politically motivated, or whatever else has been going on in this thread should probably watch e.g. https://youtu.be/3bmcpjBO4a0?t=270
The photos at the tops of the the second two links are great. All the sailors in the last one, facing off in lines with their stick-swords, and the dudes in boater hats posing with their sticks like they're LARPers who accidentally put on a costume for the wrong setting, at the second link.
Holy smokes! Reading this over, I'll bet there were more than a few injuries among the groups that practiced it.
Imagine sending your kid off for a fun weekend and then watching them come home Sunday morning with an acute elbow injury from an arm bar...
Scouting was dangerous enough without that stuff. You could get lost and even die in any number of unexpected ways. I watched a friend take a full swing of a wood axe to the top of his head. It didn't make any of us stronger or more interested in the outdoors. Plus everybody told us the Eagle Scout looked amazing on a resume when you become an adult, but they didn't mention that it could have the complete opposite effect depending on where you're applying...
Edit: I see the typical pro-danger, pro-learning-through-injury realism-posturing replies, but these quick takes are inappropriate for beginners, which merit-badge-earning scouts definitely are.
Sheesh. Some of the best things I ever did involved the risk of getting hurt. And yes, I guess I could see someone very left-leaning hating on an Eagle Scout but it would still probably be rare thankfully.
There are certainly complaints to be made about the BSA policies as an organization but I wouldn’t hold that against someone who went through scouting.
Hmm yeah, one of those seems a lot more rational than the others... but I suppose if I were to say which one someone would claim that it's just my partisan bias.
Part of learning to defend oneself is getting injured along the way. It's part of the learning process. You can't learn to fight by reading a book about it. If you start to participate and learn through that participation, sometimes your efforts (or someone else's) will lead to injury.
> You can't learn to fight by reading a book about it
Just to say that this is untrue, as long as your opponent has not read any books or had any training. A lot of scouts or just bullied kids who visit the library will tell you that.
When multimedia was a huge thing in the late '90s and early '00s, you had a lot of small businesses with tight groups of graphic designers, illustrators, developers (full stack web + Flash & Director), and animators. Usually one of the creatives was in charge of hiring. It was totally obviously not a pro, and in many cases they'd make fun of it outright, or politely advise to take it off.
Well, sure. I was a quiz bowl captain, president of the national honor society, and placed yearly at the state science fair and I didn't list those on a professional resume either.
It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout. I completed all requirements including the community project aside from the board review before I turned 13.
Our scoutmaster suddenly quit on us to attain his MS in engineering (his employer surprised him by funding his education) right after I attained the final required merit badge and none of the adults wanted to take over, so it would have required me to go to another troop in the area: one was full of bullies, and one with a gigantic asshole of a scoutmaster. I decided to go fishing instead.
> It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout. I completed all requirements including the community project aside from the board review before I turned 13.
It really varies from troop to troop. Ours is old-school, by the book, multiple leadership positions required for half-year terms. No one got an Eagle who was under 15 and the projects are very involved with construction or logistics. Tearing down and rebuilding a long wooden fence at a women's shelter, constructing display cabinets at a nature center, working with a local charity to collect hundreds of food boxes. Someone built a real footbridge over a stream, which not only required decent carpentry skills but also driving rebar through 8x8 posts into the stony bank with sledgehammers. I got poison ivy twice while clearing brush to make a nature trail and rebuild a garden at a local temple.
These projects are often the first time many youths have ever picked up a power tool or project managed anything.
The bureaucracy associated with the service project and application was stunning.
This was also our troop. You couldn't make Life Scout before you were 15 thanks to the leadership requirements, and that meant that the earliest you could get Eagle was sometime at age 16. The vast majority of them got it just before they turned 18. The projects were intended to be ambitious and demanded that the Scout do the bulk of the planning and dealing with the bureaucracy.
Imagine my surprise when our troop went to SeaBase and ran into a bunch of other troops where everyone got Eagle at age 14.
That's the way it is for our troop. Most of the kids aren't able to get Eagle before they are HS juniors and are 16 or 17. A few just made it in before turning 18.
The bureaucracy is a mistake. I know why Scouting does it - BSA organizational culture, abuses in the past, trying to apply standards across local troops - but a lot of it falls on troop volunteers to and parents to nag scouts to death and fix the inevitable problems that crop up. It's not right.
that's me and my friend: we both made eagle scout at 17, and the ceremony for me was after I turned 18.
My first troop was very by the book, and the last eagle scout in the troop was the scoutmasters son, maybe 5 years before I joined. That troop disbanded, and I finished my award at another troop were it was a bit easier, but still a lot of work.
For me, earning Eagle scout required me to stay active in scouting through age 17, and do one (or maybe 2) extra weeks at summer camp to earn enough merit badges. Once I was older (16/17) and in my second troop, I already had the leadership requirements, so I just went to meetings and help out with the kids that were much younger than me while I planned my project.
I am an Eagle Scout. I would never put it on my resume, and I roll my eyes when I see a resume with it on there. Ignoring the always present "it was harder back then" (fwiw, in my day average ages started to plunge from 15/16/17 to 13/14/15), my point still stands.
I can see it being okay as a first job out of college or similar. I got my Eagle at 17, and I could imagine someone with no real work experience thinking that's something to help pad the books. But once one hits 30, 40, 50, beyond there's no reason having done an Eagle project should be cited as a major accomplishment in their life. At least not from the perspective of seeking employment. I'm 100% in favor of people feeling proud about what they did, the whole point of that project was to have done right by people.
Probably. I think I lucked out because my service project was clearing and installing seating and paths in a new, small park from land donated by a family who inherited it and didn't want to deal with the taxes because there were technically about 30 owners.
> It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout.
The actual requirements aren't that demanding for reasonably-intelligent kids. As in so many areas of life, one's work ethic and persistence matter a lot because of the time-in-grade and position-of-responsibility requirements for each of the upper ranks, namely Star, Life, and Eagle, and those requirements must be completed for each rank in series, not in parallel.
> I completed all requirements including the community project aside from the board review before I turned 13.
I was an assistant Scoutmaster, and then the troop committee chair, in my son's troop, which we think is the largest in the U.S. (some 250 boys and around 50 registered adult leaders during my time). The troop is known as an "Eagle factory," but the Scouts have to put in the work. Hardly any of them make it to Eagle before about age 15 or 16 because they also do sports and other activities and eventually get distracted by the scent of gasoline and perfume (as the saying used to be in the days of all-male Scouting). Not a few Eagle Scouts, including my own son, complete their final requirement, a Scoutmaster conference, with just a couple of hours to go before they age out at 12:00:00 a.m. at the start of their 18th birthdays.
The problem is that people who become Eagle Scouts tend to be successful enough individuals that the jobs they apply to don't understand why they would put such a low-grade achievement on their resume (compared to the other higher achievements they most likely have).
It's like putting that you won an Olympic Gold in gymnastics when applying to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Yes, it's impressive to everyone, but at some point it's not necessary.
I'd say the same applies to high school Honor Societies. If you're a member of one, chances are that it's never going to professionally benefit you.
I understand what you mean, but I think you chose a terrible example. I will never be in the Olympics, but if I was I would definitely have that on my resume.
Hell yes. If I were on the search committee, an olympic gold medal would make the candidate very interesting. It tells you you’re probably dealing with an extraordinary individual.
When you look at the direct benefit over the course of your lifetime I agree the benefit of things like Eagle Scout of Honor Society are minimal, but I think that's missing the indirect benefits.
Speaking personally, I firmly believe that being an Eagle Scout and HS Honor Society student helped me get into a good college.
I frequently discussed being an Eagle Scout (and scouting in general, which I was deeply involved) during engineering internship interviews and the interview for my first job out of college. I do believe this contributed to starting off my career strongly.
Now about a decade removed from college I don't bring these topics up, but I do still feel the positive contributions they had on my trajectory. Not even to mention the benefits they had on my soft skills.
I'm an Eagle Scout (note the use of present tense) and I've had that on all of my resumes my entire adult life. When I got my Eagle, an uncle who was a senior executive at a Very Large Bank said that he would always give an Eagle Scout at least an interview.
Not going to lie. If you submitted a resume for a job I was hiring for and you
1. Pass the HR check
2. Had some of what I was looking in skills
3. Had Eagle Scout on your resume
You are going to get an interview. Might not get the job but I would give you a chance.
Just like anything in life the Eagle Scout Rank is not the same to everyone. Not everyone put in the same amount of effort. They all should have met the same requirements but in the end what did you personally learn? Some scouts learn and grow in leadership others it was just a thing they did.
As an 11 year old scout I was almost immediately introduced to conflict resolution, setting and achieving goals, leading groups in small tasks. Looking back most of the lessons didn't really take root until years later when I got a real job. Then I had a group of concepts that some of my peers did not and I was able to take the early lessons and build on them more quickly.
As a Scoutmaster for 7 years I introduced the axe and other subjects to over 200 11 year-old boys without a single injury other than 2 semi-minor burns.
I, OTOH, suffered an ascending aortic dissection that terminates in my left iliac. I survived (obviously), but it did stop me from e.g. Philmont afterwords.
Grew up playing hockey and just assumed the point of having children was to set them against one another for sport. It's as though nobody here is from Canada. Did you not have lawn darts, potassium nitrate, and licorice cigars? I was a generation or so late to get a duelling scar, but grew up about 20miles from the site of Camp X (where we invented the CIA), and it seemed the american kids were given guns willy nilly where here it was just expected you would use the tools at hand to plan a night mission take them yourself in the event of an invasion. I'm a bit out of the loop as I have only recently become an uncle, but presumably a boy today can at least still have a pet bobcat?
Between all the sugar cereals and cartoons, it's a wonder the people of the US aren't speaking Canadian...
I am a firm believer in everyone studying _some_ martial art (player's choice).
For the following reasons:
- It teaches an insane amount of respect when two people have to hold themselves back to practice
- It teaches self-discipline, mostly in the long-forgotten art of keeping yourself from becoming so angry you cannot function with form.
- It gives a crazy amount of confidence to know you are at least a little bit prepared for bad situations
- It removes a lot of the panic instinct in all kinds of intimidating situations, from actual fights, to presenting to a review board.
- You quickly learn to operate through pain and discomfort and intimidation, even if you are not being actually injured (e.g., not actually sparring).
- Everyone should feel that they are legitimately their own first line of defense. Even if that defense is to create space and get away.
My sport was boxing. I'm a knowledge worker, still.