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Have you noticed the amount of martial arts related videos that do not seem to be related to fighting? I won’t show the extreme examples here but if you have been on youtube, you can find a lot of videos of bikini clad women demonstrating karate moves.
Now I do not believe that is necessarily a problem because what if it is nice day out and the girls live in a warm climate? Who am I to say how one should practice their martial art? That being said, I do think the demonstrators in the videos ought to actually know some martial arts!
In this post we will look at how sex appeal might help or hurt overall martial arts. First I’d like to show one funny video I found of how the presence of women in the dojo might seemingly affect some males. 
Its almost as if we are back in the cave man days? In the preceding video, whatever strikeback TV is, was trying to use attractive young women to get males attention in this video spot. Do you think it was effective?
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I think the preceding video was done in good taste and probably was an effective video for Strikback TV. I have also see a lot of videos of bikini clad young women that apparently have no skills, trying to demonstrate some martial arts move. Here is one video.
I saw this video while I was looking for fighting stance videos the other day. My first reaction was what! This girls obviously have no clue about fighting stances or any other facet of fighting. What was the point?
Do videos like this (and there are far worse examples) help or hurt martial arts? Or are they so ridiculous that they have no effect? Here is a video of Sexy Girl or Hot Girl showing a self-defense technique.
I’ve watched Sexy Girl before but the reason I never put her videos up on the blog was because I did not want people to miss the message of self defense. Now that there are far more blatant videos using sex appeal, I’ve come to appreciate women who use sex appeal to get their message out. In this preceding video I think the technique would have worked well.
In this final video (picking on Sexy Girl again), she attempts to get out of a rear grab. Watch her technique and I will review it.
What did you think of Hot Lady’s escape? I don’t think she pulled it off this time. The stomp was good but the I don’t think she bent him over on her own and the elbow and kick were weak. That being said they certainly could have worked with more practice.
So back to the original question, assuming martial arts promotion is really the object in the videos reviewed; does sex appeal contribute , have no effect or detract?
I tend to think that men and women are still not that much different than our cave man days. Men and women will still respond to attractive counterparts (sorry ladies – I did not really show off any hot – men demonstrating martial arts other than Blake, but he was the dummy).
What really bothers me is the bikini clad women doing the karate videos – that did not understand what they were doing! Come on girls – if you want to demonstrate karate, learn some moves! Luckily these types of video are in the minority if you input the search words of karate, or martial arts.
September 27th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
I would think that, while attractive enough to et attention, they would draw the crowd that any respectable instructor would NOT want to show up in his dojo/dojang. Sex appeal to sell cars or liquor is one thing. Once that sle is made, who cares what the buyer does later. But, martial arts is an ongoing process and relationship between instructor/student and training partners. Would you want the individual training next to you thinking “When do the chicks get here?” (especially if you are a female student) the whole time you are practicing kata? If someone is not brought training for legitimate personal reasons, it is, at best, a waste of everyone’s time and, at worst, just plaing creepy.
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September 28th, 2009 at 6:56 am
Martial arts is essentially a ‘man’s world’. I know a lot of women do martial arts these days but you have to adopt one of three ways to be accepted. 1. Be overtly sexy like in the videos above (you’ll be accepted but for the wrong reasons and not taken seriously),2.Be ‘butch’ and accepted as ‘one of the boys’ but we don’t all look or want to be butch or 3. Be genuinely good at martial arts by practising hard and taking it seriously – anybody doing this will at least earn respect (male or female). I’m working on option 3. Hopefully if I can earn the respect of my fellow martial artists (male or female) I will also be accepted for the woman I am – not a sex kitten, not some ‘honorary male’, just a woman.
I don’t have any great objections to the portrayal of women ‘martial artists’(well girls really)as in the videos above because I actually have faith that most men (though they may enjoy watching such videos) can see through them and do have respect for more serious female martial artists.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Hi Marc, I agree with that because I did not like going to the meat market, er I mean health club sometimes because it seemed to be a dating game more so than a workout oppertunity.
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Hi Sue, Yep I think women should be there to learn just like the guys… it is kind of tough when there are distractions (as far as learning anything). Thanks for the insight on women in the dojo.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:08 am
The first video was ludicrous: that girl wouldn’t know a proper fighting-stance if it bit her in the ass. Looked more like some sort of weird fetish or a MA-related photo-shoot than true martial-arts. On a simple haha-level it was sort of funny though: ‘you have to turn your body so you can protect ALL of this’. Yes, never mind the kidneys (who needs kidneys when you’re pretty?) or the fact that your face won’t look so cute anymore after he’s done breaking your nose since from that position you have no defense whatsoever. Hard to believe this is meant as serious instruction. The second one was actually far better (hot girl, how aptly named) but still not great. To me the bearhug wasn’t very realistic: in reality he won’t just run up to you, grab and stay static. If someone attacks you like that it’s either to pick you up (transport you to another location) or throw you and if you don’t drop down into a low stance (your center of gravity below his means he’ll have a hard time throwing you) or hook his leg (makes it impossible to pick you up since he’ll have to lift both your bodyweight and his own) most likely his attack will succeed and you’ll be in trouble. I’m always wary about using kicks (even a stompkick like she showed) when the opponent controls your body since he can push or pull you off balance (rendering your kick ineffective) and throw you to the ground quite easily. That being said she has some skill although her elbow and sidekick were indeed rather weak (more of a push than a hit), my guess is either she hasn’t been training for very long or she hasn’t practiced them with a heavy-bag or focus-mitts/kicking-shield.
One of the most important lessons to learn is to make your strikes count (i.d doing damage) by using speed (in the delivery and especially when retracting) and putting body-mass behind the strike. A good way to test this is to punch or kick the heavy-bag: if it swings wildly it means you pushed instead of hitting, when it stays relatively stationary it means you were quick enough on the retraction causing the energy to go through the target (doing damage) instead of just pushing him back. I’m curious as to how others feel about this but to me the stompkick is a risky technique: yes the top of the foot is a good target since it contains a lot of small bones which can be broken but if he happens to be wearing heavy footwear (boots) it’ll have no effect whatsoever and you’ll have wasted valuable time (not to mention the risk you took when you decided to lift your foot to kick). On light shoes it’ll work but since you won’t know beforehand and you don’t have time to check during the attack it can be a liability. A better alternative would be to target the knee and/or scrape his shinbone with the edge of your shoe before stomping down on his foot (very painful). Unless he’s a conditioned thai-boxer you’ll get his attention and no amount of conditioning can protect you against a hyper-extension of the knee.
After viewing sexy- girl’s videos again my beef with this would be unrealistic attacks (in the one about choke-defense the guy could have easily pushed her to the ground before she could break free since her balance was so terrible) and this is what makes or breaks the defense. I’m not saying you should try to really hurt your partner but you shouldn’t go lightly on them either. This is why it’s probably not such a great idea to use your boyfriend as an uke: he won’t want to hurt you for fear of having to sleep on the couch (lol). All in all I have no problem with sexy women teaching MA or self-defense as long as they know what they’re doing. In the dojo the correct outfit is a gi though and not a bikini or other kinds of clothing that leave little to the imagination (man, I really am shooting myself in the foot here), I very much doubt there’ll be any clubs or dojos that would tolerate or even promote such clothing on the mat, probably more appropriate for a tae-bo or another type of pseudo MA/fitness-class.
As to her appearance: she is indeed hot, thanks for the visual entertainment John (lol). I’ve got nothing against gorgeous women taking up MA (they’ll be the ones most likely to get raped after all), especially not when they show up at our dojo, but in training or fighting looks don’t matter. Man or woman, plain or beautiful: you’re there to learn and train as hard as you can and looking pretty or cute won’t make your attacker go away or protect you from harm. When I teach I do not really treat the women differently than the men although when I train with them I do have a tendency to be a little overprotective at times (I know I’m not doing them a favor so I try to refrain as much as possible). The only thing I emphasize for them is adjusting the technique to fit their body-type and ability: if a small woman can’t reach a man’s head to elbow I tell them to elbow the solar-plexus or floating-ribs, if they’re afraid to hurt their hands punching I tell them to use the palm of the hand. Luckily I do not have to adjust a lot since our style is designed to be effective for nearly everyone, without using a lot of power or relying on body-mass. At first I had my doubts but now I do think women can be great at MA but they need to be willing to work hard at it and steel their body and mind and this is something most women are either unable or unwilling to do. Women in general are used to be treated gently (as they should) and even if they play sports they tend to avoid body-to-body contact, thus it is more difficult for them to get comfortable doing MA-training, especially ju-jutsu since it does emphasize close contact with the opponent (especially on the ground). Punching is another problem for most girls/women but they do tend to be better at kicking (more flexibility) so there’s an upside too. Their lack of strength can actually become an asset (with time) since they’re forced to rely on technique instead of strength, this works especially well with locks which are all about technique and positioning.
December 5th, 2009 at 12:51 am
John,
I ran across this the other day and it reminded me of your post. I just had to send it your way. So…here’s 1 more disgrace for the martial arts world.
http://actionkaratearts.com/videos/self-defense/#Self-Defense03
December 8th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Hey Marc,
There are no shortage of sites like this. My main objection is this is just not called for… people should not be hoodwinked into seeing girls butts. It is just another bait and switch con.
I must be getting older because as a young man (with lots of empty space in my head) I may not have objected.
December 8th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Zara,
I’m with you on sexy girl’s unrealistic defenses, while there is some value – it should be done realistically.
I kind of like Chrissy Russo’s fighting on Fox 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_whP0z_d6Hk
At least she is really trying to do the moves.
Thanks as always for your insightful comments.
April 10th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
The lack of real defensive value is evident. It’s nice to look at but lets get real.
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