The martial arts developed out of practical need – a village’s need to defend itself, a kings need for professional warriors, a community’s need for effective law enforcement, a caravan's need for security. And that practical need ultimately produced practical methods, means of fighting which are efficient, easy to learn and profoundly effective. As a result, every warrior tradition studied techniques for attacking the body’s weak points. Initially, the weak points targeted would be the obvious – eyes, throat, ears, groin. But, because these are obvious, the human body is particularly good at guarding and protecting them, so the arts needed to progress to the study of less obvious, but not less effective, targets.

As a result, ancient warriors adapted medical knowledge of pressure points (the same points used in acupuncture), into fighting methods, crafting specialized techniques which were unexpected and sublime. Pressure point fighting methods are widely attested in the histories of the martial arts, including marma adi (India), diǎnxué fǎ or dim mak (China), and kyusho-jitsu (Okinawa).