The Spirit of the SFUK Open Mat

SFUK Open Mat 5: A Case Study in Community Spirit and Collaborative Learning
John Hopton

Department of Applied Social Science

University of Manchester

e-mail: John.Hopton@man.ac.uk

PREFACE

When the media focus on the martial arts, they focus almost entirely on what goes on in the mat or in the ring/cage/octagon. Furthermore much, of this coverage reflects considerable ignorance of what the discipline of mixed martial arts is really about. This is reflected in headlines such as "Caged Beasts" (in an otherwise more or less fair article in "The Sun" on the day of UFC 38). However, when you look beyond the tournaments and consider the wider culture of martial arts, it soon becomes apparent that the practice of mixed martial arts is a creative pursuit sustained by a cohesive and supportive community. This article examines how SFUK's Open Mat 5 exemplified this spirit.

INTRODUCTION

development and education reference is often made to the concept of "community". This is usually meant to evoke thoughts of people working together to achieve a common goal and/or support each other. The reality, though is often very different. For example, "community health care" really means any alternative to hospital care (most of which still leave the client/patient and his/her family fairly isolated); "community safety" refers to initiatives to reduce crime and nuisance in specific neighbourhoods but often has very little to do with collective action, and terms such as "the gay community" and the "black community" do not usually describe groups of people actually working or living together but simply reflect assumptions that people who belong to so-called minority groups all share the same hopes and aspirations. In other words, despite the political rhetoric, true communities in the sense of people interacting with each other and who are committed to helping each other out are not that common. True community spirit can probably be found in some pubs, social clubs, churches etc, and — to a certain extent — a real community spirit is evident in some of the virtual communities found on the Internet. In this article, I will argue that the spirit of SFUK Open Mat 5 may have been the reflection that SFUK amounts to more than a virtual community in cyberspace. In order to do this I will draw on what I learnt from my last academic research project which focused on so-called "therapeutic communities" in mental health services.

The therapeutic community exists on the fringes of mental health services, but has a long and somewhat curious history. It has its origins in a military psychiatric hospital near Birmingham during the Second World War. (Before and after the War this was actually a civilian psychiatric hospital known as Hollymoor, but for the duration of the Second World War , it was known as Northfield Military Hospital). Progressive army psychiatrists at Northfield decided that the best way to get soldiers fit enough to return to normal military duties was to organise them into groups who would work together and take responsibility for themselves, each other and their environment¹. From the 1950s onwards, some of these psychiatrists led a movement to apply similar methods in civilian psychiatric hospitals, and although the movement hit a peak in the 1960s to 1970s, therapeutic communities still exist today.

COMMUNITY SPIRIT

Over the years, people involved in therapeutic community work have tried to identify just what characteristics these self contained communities should have if they are going to efficiently and effectively provide psychological and social support for their members and foster their personal development. There are various ways of describing this, but two of the most recent alternative methods for determining whether something might be called a therapeutic community are as follows. One set of criteria² is: 1) that people have a sense of 'belonging' to the community, 2) the creation of an environment in which people feel emotionally and psychologically secure, 3) a culture of openness, 4) a culture of participation, and 5) a culture of empowerment. An alternative set of criteria³ is: 1) a culture of enquiry, 2) communalism, 3) democracy, 4) permissiveness, 5) reality confrontation, and 6) the notion of learning about oneself through living alongside others (aka the living-learning experience).

Looking at Open Mat 5, there seemed to be quite a close fit between the features of therapeutic communities and the experience of participating in the Open Mat. While this might sound a bit fanciful, consider the following. Several people involved in mixed martial arts have told me how you learn a lot about yourself in mixed martial arts (not least because it requires strength of character not to give up when you spend your first few months of training literally "being sat on"); that it involves the development of problem-solving skills (how do I get out of here; how do I get that submission from this position etc); that it is non-hierarchical; while I have seen myself how helpful many leading figures on the mixed martial arts scene can be to beginners and researchers. Also, while therapeutic communities have their own specific independent history, there are links between the therapeutic community movement and the movement for progressive and democratic education. This may be relevant inasmuch as there may be similarities between such approaches and the way in which mixed martial arts are often taught. For example, in mixed martial arts there is often equality between a teacher and his/her students and there is a culture of students being able to challenge the teacher's teaching when what is being taught doesn’t seem plausible, without being made to feel foolish or unworthy.

If we take the first set of criteria used to describe a therapeutic community, they seem to describe the Open Mat as well as they describe a therapeutic community. In general terms people at the Open Mat seemed to see themselves as belonging to something. Most of the people I spoke to were active members of the SFUK Internet Forum, had attended previous Open Mats, or both; while people went out of their way to make those of us who might have been new to the experience feel part of it. There was no competitiveness and no obvious hierarchy and, in very broad terms this perhaps has come kind of relationship with helping people feel "emotionally and psychologically secure". There was a culture of openness in the sense that there was a lot of sharing of knowledge and skill in evidence. Finally, in the sense that everyone was encouraged to participate but no-one was put under any kind of obligation to participate in anything that they didn’t want to do; it could be said that there was a culture of participation and empowerment.

Arguably, though, the second set of criteria for describing a therapeutic community, has an even closer fit with the culture of the Open Mat. Commitment to finding out what works and what doesn’t is central to the culture of mixed martial arts, and is clearly evidence of a culture of enquiry as well as being a form of reality confrontation. These concerns with reality testing and enquiry were evident in just about everything that could be seen on the mats at Open Mat 5. Communalism and democracy were evident in the absence of visible hierarchies arts and in the willingness of people at the Open Mat to share knowledge, skills and the benefit of their experience. Permissiveness was clearly in evidence in the sense that one could participate as much or as little as one wanted to. As regards the idea of the Open Mat being a living-learning experience, this necessarily involves a stretch of the imagination, as the Open Mat focused on one specific activity: the art of submission fighting. It also involves subjective judgement (unless of course someone formally interviews a cross-section of the participants). However, the content of positive comments and the absence of negative comments about the event on the SFUK Internet Forum could perhaps be construed as evidence that the Open Mat was structured in a way that was socially welcoming and maximized participants’ opportunities to learn.

CONCLUSION

self-knowledge. Typically, this can come from recognising one’s own vulnerabilities; confronting one’s fears; letting go of one’s ego so that one can learn new techniques instead of using tried and tested ones which ensure that you always look like the best fighter; or sharing knowledge with others rather than keeping your best techniques to yourself so that you always have the edge. All such learning activities/opportunities were in evidence at the Open Mat. What marked the Open Mat out from many similar events which occur in the martial arts world, though, was its context. There was no guru/sensei/ sifu directing everyone’s learning; and the admission charge reflected the collaborative nature of the event as it was clearly intended to cover costs rather than to result in profit. Until people started rolling together, talking with each other or publicly sharing expertise with the group, there was no way of distinguishing the experts from the novices. Even the belts worn by those in gis were no real clue because it was not immediately obvious who were experienced in mixed martial arts and whose background was wholly in traditional martial arts. Furthermore, people were generally as willing to teach a novice as they were to further their own learning by rolling with someone more experienced. The whole event was characterised by a spirit of comradeship, commitment to collaborative, co-operative and supportive learning , the sharing of knowledge and skills and the acquisition of self -knowledge through controlled and disciplined sparring.
I have been involved in mental health care as a nurse, as a teacher and as a researcher (not all at the same time!) since 1975 and I have been involved in the professional and academic education of adults since 1984. In all that time, I have often been involved (as a teacher and as a participant) in events which are supposedly structured around collaborative, co-operative and supportive learning. In my view Open Mat 5 was one of the better examples of experiential co-operative learning. It may have only lasted for four hours on a hot Sunday afternoon in July, but for that short time it existed as a true community. Perhaps the question for those involved in mixed martial arts is whether that same community spirit can be nurtured and sustained via the SFUK Internet Forum.

References

1. Harrison, Tom (2000) Bion, Rickman, Foulkes and The Northfield Experiments,

Jessica Kingsley, London.

2. Haigh, Rex (1999) The Qunitessence of a Therapeutic Environment: Five Universal Qualities. In Campling, P. & Haigh, R. Therapeutic Communities: Past, Present and Future,

Jessica Kingsley, London

3. Kennard, David (1998) An Introduction To Therapeutic Communities, Jessica Kingsley, London.
4. Kennard, David op.cit.

Note:

Fort further information about Northfield Military Hospital and Progressive and Democratic Education, see http://www.pettarchiv.org.uk

article published 7 August 2002