American Martial Arts Character Achievement Program
of the United States Martial Arts Association
(AMCAP)

Preliminary Outline

American Martial Arts is a tremendous industry. Throughout the country, there are approximately 200 listed martial Arts schools or clubs for every million people in our population. This indicates that there are over 50,000 Martial Arts clubs, with over 25,000,000 participants. With this preeminence in size comes a tremendous responsibility for leadership in teaching character achievement. Character development materials, and assistance must be made available to the teachers and students of all Martial Arts. The USMA now awards ranks in 70 Martial Arts, and the number is growing steadily.

We do not seek to unify American Martial Arts technically. We hope many organizations and technical styles will continue to flourish. What we are after is unification in our American Martial Arts philosophy, our goals for the spiritual and moral purpose of the Martial Arts. We believe, after over 50 years of teaching the Martial Arts and observing how they change the lives of their students, that we can and should define the moral purpose of Martial Arts training for all the practitioners and teachers of America.

Briefly, this purpose is the perfection of human character. As Dr. Vincent J. Wacher writes in "The Monograph," published by the Martial Arts Program, University of California, Berkeley: "The defining element of Judo is the search for perfection." This defining element of course applies to all Martial Arts. Our certain knowledge is that "perfection" should be further defined as perfection of character. From this we derive our USMA mission.

THE MISSION OF THE UNITED STATES MARTIAL ARTS ASSOCIATION IS TO CREATE A UNIFIED AMERICAN MARTIAL ARTS ALLIANCE COMPOSED OF ALL AMERICAN MARTIAL ARTS ORGANIZATIONS AND PARTICIPANTS WHO WILL WORK TOGETHER TO MAKE THE MARTIAL ARTS THE FOREMOST FORCE IN AMERICA IN BUILDING THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH OF ALL AMERICANS.

But our USMA actions must go far beyond stating the purpose of the Martial Arts. We must be, and are, the national leaders in the development of systems, methods, and written materials which will help all Martial Artists accomplish this great moral purpose.

The AMCAP materials, which we will describe briefly here, are our way of providing Martial Arts teachers and students with a definite, carefully planned character training program.

If we of the USMA expect to be trusted as philosophical leader of the American Martial Arts community, we must follow our own preaching. To do this, our USMA Martial Arts teachers must actually deliver to their students the services our character development programs are designed to provide.

One of the steps in providing character development services to our students is a clear understanding of the basic requirements needed to achieve growth toward essential humanity. We therefore publish here the basic outline which we consider essential for the conduct of an effective American Martial Arts Character Achievement Program (AMCAP).

Ten Services Provided By The USMA American Martial Arts Character Achievement Program (AMCAP)

Outline to be completed soon!