Just as hand drills develop hand skills, and legwork engrains fighting potential into the legs, forms training provides a total body integration and coordination approach that goes beyond all other tool-specific training methods.  Forms, like techniques, teach principles -- principles you might not pick up from doing, say, bag work.  Forms training also allows you to think outside the box as you explore various movements, stances, and fighting strategies.  These and other benefits make forms training a valuable learning tool.

Still, some contend that forms are little more than prearranged fighting scenarios and that no fight is going to happen so prescribed.  They are correct -- on both points.  In fairness though, isn't that what most self-defense "techniques" are as well: prearranged defenses that tacitly assume a specific attack and its defense will go a certain way?  Despite the reality that techniques are also "prearranged defenses," few would consider eliminating them from their training curriculums.  Let us consider then, how both, techniques and forms, along with other accepted training methods, fit into a complete martial art training program.

As hand drills train the hands, so leg drills train the legs.  Techniques, in turn, integrate the previously trained arms and legs into a coordinated defense.  All of that can be accurately described as fighting tactics.  By "tactics," we mean that for the most part, the student practicing a technique -- either with a training partner or solo -- is focused on the immediate "battle" before him.  Tactics are the "how" to implementing battle strategy.  Like the platoon leader in the field, the defender's focus is rightly limited to the methods needed to overcome the adversary immediately before him.  Training drills and techniques are really only suited to equip the martial artist to effectively fire using his arms and legs, and that only toward the threat he faces.  Little thought at that level is given to protecting his flank or preparing for other potential threats.  As the platoon leader moves up to company commander, his vision must expand to see beyond the immediate threat before him.  His thinking must broaden from the narrower focused battle tactics to the broader campaign or war strategy.

Strategic training goes beyond techniques or tactics, assuming, among other things, a longer running conflict with multiple assailants.  Combat on such a field requires more than just trained arms and legs.  It requires more than tactically coordinated techniques designed to defend against a single anticipated assault and lasting only a few seconds (the length of a typical martial arts technique).  Combat in that field requires total body and mind integration and coordination -- something forms training is well designed to provide.

Forms study and training teach you  HOW  to move from man to man; to smoothly transition through different assaults in a variety of ways without tripping over your own or someone else's feet.  With a reasonable number of good forms then, one can easily imagine how many different defenses are presented for say, kicking attacks: kicks coming at you from your left, your right, in front, at varying angles,  and  to different targets (groin, body, legs, etcetera).  Sure, the attacks are choreographed, but the order of the various attacks is really unimportant!  What is important is training your ability to move from man to man, to actually flow from one defense to another, effectively using the variety of stances available to you along with all the other tactical skills acquired through all your other training.  What other training tool teaches you that?  Or, perhaps, a better question is, "Do you even see a need for such training, and if so, how do you meet that need?"  For us, forms training more than adequately meets that critical requirement. 

Lastly, forms training should be seen as part of a complete martial art system.  Think of it like this: Just as the human body has certain organs that we can live without -- there are other critical organs we really cannot live without and still function.  For example, while the body  can  survive the absence of the spleen, one really does not want to do that unless absolutely necessary because  no spleen  means that the individual suffers with an extremely poor and highly vulnerable immune system -- a  system so weak that a common cold can result in death.  A similar case can be made with regard to forms training in the body of martial arts instruction.

One may eliminate forms study and training from the curriculum (indeed, many have already), but it is really unwise to blindly do so.  It is unwise not only for the reasons already cited, but also because doing so actually weakens the individual's overall defense capabilities!  Taken together with drill training, technique study, bag work, weapons training and others, forms training remains a significant contributor to the development of effective fighting skills.  Eliminating  good  forms training ¹ from one's curriculum simply makes the practitioner's knowledge and skill incomplete.  If you train for self-defense, do you really want to pass on anything that can make you a more formidable foe?  I know I don't.

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Footnotes:

1. For an indepth look at what constitutes good forms training, checkout our online copy of  Chapter 7  from Martial Arts America -- A Western Approach to Eastern Arts.