What Martial Art?

Grappeling is dangerous, some people draw knifes when they are losing. Before you know you are bleeding alot, and you have no idea how that happend. Safer to fight on your feet. Hit them with a stick.

I'll definitely agree with the stick part, but I think I'd rather make sure it was a staff I'm used to. There was a reason no-one ever managed to steal alcohol off of the Friars in England.

I don't advocate taking a fight to the ground, but with MMA as popular as it is, it isn't as simple as "i'll just stay on my feet."

When they're in top mount beating you senseless, you may be rethinking your policy on ignoring a large part of hand to hand combat.

Train aikido for now. It will learn you more than nothing. If the sensei start BSing (they sometimes lose their contact with reality around 4rd-5th dan), train fencing instead. You can train something more relevant later if you get the chance.

Have fun.

Your school doesn't have any kind of martial arts, or boxing club or anything?

Not anymore. It's a small private college and the physical education classes are limited to what the teachers feel like offering. As of right now Aikido is actually not offered, but if I talk to the instructor I'm certain I can convince her to get re-certified so she can offer the class again.

My school was rubbish like that. Most American schools Ive heard of have clubs for everything, we had football, rugby and a chess club for a year

Yeah, we had several martial arts clubs. I lucked out.

My best advice with learning a martial art is this:

Don't learn a martial art.

Learn how to beat the living shit out of anyone, and likewise, learn how to defend yourself when someone wants to beat the living shit out of you. This doesn't mean I'm advocating you ever beat the living shit out of someone. I am advocating you know how.

You need to know how to throw, block, avoid and if necessary, TAKE punches and kicks.

You need to know how to perform and escape from joint locks and holds.

You need to know how to defend and attack pressure points and vital organs.

You need to know how to take someone to the ground and fight, and also how to survive and win if someone takes you down first.

You need to know how to manipulate the distance between you and your target.

You need to be able to survive when someone comes after you with a knife.

Work on upper body and core strength. Work on being able to strike with precision. Work on flexibility. Get punched in the face a few times so when it happens in real life, you don't freeze up as bad. Work on strategies to avoid violence if at all possible, and the correct timing to apply it when a situation has deteriorated to that point. Work on having a "wolf" mentality in a fight, as opposed to a "sheep" mentality.

None of this can be learned overnight, and especially not in a classroom.

Gotta agree. Unless you're talking learning from a book or getting in a lot of bar brawls...martial arts IS how you learn.

Yeah. Tae Kwon Do and Karate and such is generally bullshit in the US.

So are people who teach themselves to fight.

Learn a modern, proven combat system. And one where you fight full contact. If you're only doing forms, or point sparring, GTFO.

If you're fighting full contact, you'll know for real whether you know how to beat the shit out of someone or not.

When I train newbies with zero fighting experience i always pair them with a skilled fighter and tell the newbie to develop a "new" martial art on their own. The results are usually very predictable, but sometimes people have very good natural instincts, and fast reflexes to go with them. They still get their asses kicked, but the exercise does two things: it shows them the value of training and it shows us in part how best to train them. It gives us a starting point and tells us what to work on or discourage in terms of aggression. It's never about whether they win or lose, but they never win. I've never let two newbies do this exercise together, for fear one or both would end up injured or dead. Invariably someone tries to be Jet Li and makes themselves look like a fool. Don't teach yourself how to fight if you have any other resource.

Reflexes suck. It don't take much MA training (with a unusless style and right attitude) to take somebody fighting on reflex. Many martial art styles take advantage of predictable reflexes.

MA is still not an automatic "iWin-card", street fighting need a killer instinct (which is totally trainable).

Please reread my post if you think I am saying reflexes make up for a lack of skill. If you were simply seeking to clarify the point, then we are in agreement. The newbies with the fastest reflexes still get hit almost exactly as much as the slower ones.

Don't worry, I red you post.

Dogman wrote:

My best advice with learning a martial art is this:

Don't learn a martial art.

Ok...

Learn how to beat the living shit out of anyone, and likewise, learn how to defend yourself when someone wants to beat the living shit out of you. This doesn't mean I'm advocating you ever beat the living shit out of someone. I am advocating you know how.

It's not natural for most of us to hurt others. Can be learned with cognitive therapy.

You need to know how to throw, block, avoid and if necessary, TAKE punches and kicks.

You need to know how to perform and escape from joint locks and holds.

You need to know how to defend and attack pressure points and vital organs.

You need to know how to take someone to the ground and fight, and also how to survive and win if someone takes you down first.

Yeah, that's not martial arts...

You need to know how to manipulate the distance between you and your target.

Train with weapons. Jo, bokken and stuff.

You need to be able to survive when someone comes after you with a knife.

And that adds first aid to the list.

Work on upper body and core strength. Work on being able to strike with precision. Work on flexibility. Get punched in the face a few times so when it happens in real life, you don't freeze up as bad. Work on strategies to avoid violence if at all possible, and the correct timing to apply it when a situation has deteriorated to that point.

I'm a bit confused here, should we or shouldn't we learn martial arts?

Work on having a "wolf" mentality in a fight, as opposed to a "sheep" mentality.

Cognitive therapy. It's all about "programming" your automatic thoughts.

None of this can be learned overnight, and especially not in a classroom.

Alot of it can be trained in a gym or a dojo. And I've learned a few technices in classrooms and auditoriums that have helped. Put everything you know into it, and you'll only get better. Fighting is anatomy, behaviorism, sociology, psycology, triogemetry, psychiatry and I'm sure there is alot of stuff I have no clue about that can improve your own personal expression of voilence.

Really good advice

Tai Chi is easy to access. You can just pull it up on Youtube.

Just do that little routine every day, one time.


Tai Ch is an all-defense Martial Art.

It is the quickest way for you to roll away from what ever comes at you
if possible.

It takes about six weeks to form new nerve endings.
THAT is what helps to build the new reflexes.

I am happy to answer any questions.

We have Tai Chi offered at my school. I know that I'm going to take that eventually, and there are quite a few incoming freshmen interested in Judo so I think that I can persuade the teachers into offering a Judo course with enough sweet talking.

You can start Tai Chi right away through the beauty of youtubery

My point is that there's a very huge difference in knowing a martial art and being able to defend yourself against a thug. Confusing the two is not to your benefit!

It's true there's a world of difference. Even full-contact sparring isn't the same because your opponent isn't actually trying to kill you, so we don't feel the same fear as an impromptu encounter brings. There's no way to know 100% whether you will fight or flee until you're faced with a real potential life-or-death encounter.

Maybe not 100%, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't attempt to prepare yourself. There's a huge difference between throwing a picture perfect punch and doing it while being punched.

And if your martial art doesn't even acknowledge facing multiple opponents, ballistic weapons, edged weapons, blunt weapons, etc., you aren't even in the right mindset, let alone sufficiently trained.

Putting one round of the whole Tai Chi "dance" in your head can be done in 20 minutes
and you will be closer than you were yesterday

ain't nuttin' wrong wit all-defense

Nemesis that is a big part of why we train. So that we gain co fidence a d when the time comes where we do have to defend ourselves or another we are hopefully more likely to fight than not. That's not to say that flight is never the best option mind you.

Learning Tai Chi off of youtube as a reliable form of self defense is far more dangerous advice than the criminological theory I posted that got the mods all in an uproar.

I've fought people who have talked about Tai Chi like that. They usually call it quits after 10 seconds of full contact.