Making sense of martial practice: training orientation as an analytical lens for embodied leisure

As martial arts have become increasingly prominent within leisure studies, scholars have examined their contributions to wellbeing, identity, belonging, and lifelong participation. Yet the concept of martial arts remains analytically unstable. Existing classifications typically distinguish practices by institutional status, historical development, or stylistic tradition, but often fail to capture the diverse pedagogical purposes and embodied experiences that coexist within the same practice. We argue that this ambiguity reflects a broader epistemological challenge concerning how martial practices are understood, organised, and studied. Rather than proposing another taxonomy, this article introduces training orientation as an analytical lens. We develop three ideal-typical orientations—disciplinary, competitive, and combative—understood as dynamic pedagogical logics rather than fixed or mutually exclusive categories. These orientations may coexist, shift over time, and vary across instructors, organisations, and practitioners. The framework is illustrated through a critical reading of Turkish academic literature, treated as an analytically revealing context where classificatory ambiguities become especially visible. Foregrounding training orientation, we argue, enables more nuanced analysis of embodied learning, gender, ageing, and lifelong participation. The article therefore proposes training orientation as a heuristic vocabulary for more reflexive and context-sensitive research into how martial practices are organised, experienced, and made meaningful within contemporary leisure contexts.