Here’s a message I received on FB yesterday about reputable martial artists apparently talking badly about tricking/extreme forms that. I decided to lend my thoughts on why Tricking gets hated on.
“Hey Steve,
Sorry for the random message, just wanted you to know that John Graden is talking sh*t about ‘you’ over on his wall. He’s basically using one of your youtube clips to bad talk Extreme Forms. Coming from someone in his position I find it really sad and hard to understand if I’m honest. Yet another sad case of ignorance I guess?
Just wanted to let you know in case you wanted to have the video removed.
Regards
Chris J.”
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Hi Chris,
I think in general most “haters” of extreme forms/tricking haven’t seen the evolution of sport karate tournaments and how tricking has also become its own entity. What people need to know in tournaments these type of divisions were full of forms made with the same movements as traditional forms. Why did all of this change?….Competition. This is the main reason why any of these moves have come to fruition. To edge out the competition one had to up the difficulty and innovate while making sure the judges understand what you were doing. Instead of doing a tornado kick you do a 540 when someone can do that they do a jackknife (540 hook kick) etc. Someone that hasn’t seen this evolution would not be able to see or know its martial arts origins NOT gymnastics origins. Every tricker knows that the martial arts combat application isn’t very high but if you think about it when you see martial arts fights in movies you don’t really see effective martial arts application…it’s choreography. That’s what forms are.
I don’t know John Graden but I believe that he is only looking at extreme forms and tricking from an outsiders perspective. You almost can’t blame him for thinking in that way.
Thanks for the message! I don’t own the video that that was posted so I can’t take it down but I think its important to let the controversy of commenters ensue. It’s just making tricking more well known. Hopefully one day people will read enough about it to understand. Feel free to post this if you like.
~Steve
hah … so this isn’t me still?
