Categorizing Martial Arts

from snorgtees.com

The martial arts have been categorized every which way. Any new way is merely a variation of another way. The following won't be any different, but it provides a quick explanation to understand different martial arts styles and what they generally offer.

There are two major categories, each broken down into two subcategories:
Classical, or Technique-based, includes Traditional and Hybrid:
Traditional - These are martial art styles that have been passed down through the centuries or maybe even in the past century.  They have not changed much since their creation.  Many Asian martial arts are like this - some styles have manuals with pictures from the past century where the moves and techniques are almost exactly the same as their modern versions.  Traditional styles were created by people who systematized the kind of fighting from that particular culture and time period or from an individual's way of fighting.  

Hybrid - These include most martial art styles like modern karate. Gichin Funakoshi, founder of Shotokan Karate, said  times change the world changes, martial arts must change as well. Many of the modern branches of karate and kung-fu are merely combinations, variations, and improvements of older styles.  They generally retain many of the same movements.  This also includes the XMA phenomenon, where quite a lot of the moves resemble the classical arts.  Hybrid includes most MMA practitioners' approach to training, where they take the strengths of any system to incorporate it into the sport, and yet the different systems are still distinct.  For instance, in the stand-up portion of the fight, the competitors look like Muay Thai fighters, then on the ground they look like collegiate wrestlers or BJJ students.

Progressive, or Principle-based, includes Eclectic Blend and Universal Movement
Eclectic Blend
This includes the more elite mixed martial arts training, most of JKD, Krav Maga, etc.,.  Even though Bruce Lee's approach leaned toward the next category, Universal Movement, the present state of cutting edge martial arts is more concerned with gathering the practical and effective techniques and ideas from various martial art styles and adding them into the student's repertoire, which is one way of describing Lee's approach.  From there it is the student's responsibility to blend it into his own style.  Or in the self-defense category, students practice the most effective techniques generally culled from many different approaches and instead of just focusing on the technique, they practice the principle of the technique to make it work for their unique body type.

Universal Movement
This is where Bruce Lee intended to be, to see the totality of combat by practicing the art of expressing the human body. While the Eclectic Blend approach takes from the outside and brings it in to create style, the Universal Movement approach goes from the individual and brings it out by utilizing the best movement for combat.  There are no set techniques or formulas because true combat is unpredictable.  How you train will differ from person to person, moment by moment.  At the same time, there are the universal principles of human physiology and principles of mechanical physics that will not change.  These principles are at the root of all martial arts, but is normally overlooked in favor of tradition and technique, and most of the time, only used to explain a technique.  Rather the technique should be the expression of the root, so that the technique can be abandoned or changed while the idea or root remains absolute.  Simply put, movement-based martial arts emphasizes the principles of efficient body movement for effective combat.