http://www.rossboxing.com/thegym/thegym3.htm

I don't think it really compared "boxing to TMA". It generalized about TMA being too complicated to be functional, and he alluded that their exponents are unconditioned and don't spar enough. Granted, what he says has some truth (how some are not conditioned enough and don't spar enough), but they are generalizations. After all, Judo is a "TMA", Muay Thai is a "TMA", Shuai Jiao is a "TMA", Xingyiquan is a "TMA" etc... The irony is that he prefaces by saying he's not trying to dis "TMA", and then goes on to dis it by talking about how his experience at that one school showed him that Boxing is superior to "TMA". I think his article would have done better to point out that it's more to do with how you train as oppose to what you train.

It would behoove you to listen to Ross. One of the preeminent coaches in boxing. Indeed generalizations abound, but none the less his generalizations are spot on! Especially if we are talking specifically about CMA!

It's true that arts like Muay Thai and Shuai Jiao are "traditional," and certainly produce conditioned fighters with applicable skills. They are also sports (just like boxing), and that is the fundamental reason they produce fit and capable athlete-fighters.

Perhaps Ross should have qualified his definition of "TMA" by only including "traditional, non-sportive martial arts."

Tim is correct about Muay Thai and Shuai jiao. They are taught from a place of conditioning and real time application. "Two man drills" can be be tiring but often they are technique apications that are done slowly and with little force. "You punch me and I will block it, push your arm away, and pretend to hit you back"

Jake, I'm not questioning Ross's qualifications, and I'm not one to dismiss combat sports (I've trained in them and see their value), and I also agree that his generalizations ring true for the majority of cases for "TMA", but I think his statements need to be contextualized a bit. Alluding to things like TMA techniques are too complicated to be useful, could be meaningful if he was giving a specific example, but doesn't it come down to the person using the techniques? One could say the same for complicated variations on BJJ techniques, it depends on who's using it. I'm a firm believer in the idea that if a technique has proven to be applicable, and the person has trained realistically with it, it has value.

I think there is a difference between judging a martial art based on the material it contains, and how one school of that martial art decides to train the material. "Traditional" CMA schools that train their material with conditioning and sparring can make their stuff work, and the people who didn't have conditioning and sparring can. Does that mean that specific martial art was useless because the latter group trained unrealistically?

I know I'm probably preaching to the choir to a certain extent, and I also understand that the majority of non-sportive TMA today don't train very realistically (which I think is maybe the point of Ross's article), but I think that point gets a bit lost when he starts judging all TMA as ineffective without talking about the variables that make specific martial arts in specific situations ineffective.

I see where Ross is coming from, but at the same time I think the article would have be better if he was more specific.

Just a quick aside...Ross didnt write the article. A guest author wrote it ok his site.

Ok, to whoever wrote it then.

Honestly, the author probably hasn't studied much non-sportive tma. He sounds like he mainly boxes. I've mainly studied non-sportive tcma in my career and they are the way the author describes them. Very little conditioning(the mentality is that you can do that at home so why waste class time), two man drills , forms, technique drilling, very little sparring. A funny side note is that forms can be done at home as well but we spend a lot of class time on form.