Help me pick a martial art

[Peter666]

Most effective? Hands down Russian martial arts. http://www.russianmartialart.com/

Go the Philipino or Jeet Kun Do route if you can't find the Russian stuff in your area.

[troymclur]

I'll vote for Kung-Fu, but i say this because it's much more than a tool to kick ass (which you WILL NOT be able to do unless you have a good teacher). Kung-Fu isn't really a style anyways, its more of a realm that has a bunch of different styles that you can learn, however it's completely dependent on the teacher (much moreso than any other Martial Art), and you really need to find a quality school before you go in, otherwise you'll learn almost nothing useful to apply in the real world. This is why most people dog on Kung-Fu styles as useless in a practical setting, but if you do find a good teacher, you will be amazed at the skills you learn.

Also, American Kenpo is quite interesting as well.

[turnipmonster]

I really recommend doing a lot of research, visiting different schools and figure out what exactly you want to get out of your martial arts training.

I recently started doing kung fu, and really enjoy it and am very happy with my school, but I did a lot of research first and visited lots of different schools before deciding where to train.

--turnipmonster

[nicky g]

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If you want to learn something useless in a street fight learn karate, kung fu, or taekwando.

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O Rly? (A bit long, but has some great clips)

UFC/Pride has made a lot of MA snobs out there...

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Most knowledgeable MMA fans will give Kyokushin its props. Those guys are good because they spar properly with reasonable rules. Most people's criticisms of "karate" are that so many schools teach complete nonsense that involves learning endless forms and keeping your hands at your hips when not punching, but that's not to say they don;t realise there's good karate out there.

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The generalization was what I objected to. There is good karate and bad karate, good kung fu and bad kung fu, and good tkd and bad tkd. Telling someone who doesn't know much about martial arts that those three styles are useless is wrong.

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Honestly I don't really agree, especially with TKD. It isn't just a question of good and bad instruction; the whole rule set of TKD and focus on dubious kicks and lack of focus on hand work makes it of very limited value IMO (in terms of self-defence and fighting, I'm sure it's great for lots of other things). Similar for WC. To an extent its about the school itself, but I don;t agree that no styles are superior to others; the ones that focus on sparring and as limited as possible within safe margins a rule set will always pwn. The ones that give you three points for your spinning toe jab will not. The fact that nothing ever resembling TKD appears in MMA is testament to this. Kyokushin gets props because it has a good combat record; most of the other styles don't.

[turnipmonster]

I am very surprised to see WC lumped in with TKD, when I did WC a long time ago it was very focused on real world situations. when I first went there for training, one of the sigongs offered (in a very nice way) to let me basically attack him any way I wanted to (I had done MA for a long time previous to that).

[nicky g]

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I am very surprised to see WC lumped in with TKD, when I did WC a long time ago it was very focused on real world situations. when I first went there for training, one of the sigongs offered (in a very nice way) to let me basically attack him any way I wanted to (I had done MA for a long time previous to that).

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I think they both have severe defects, although in very different ways. WC may focus on real life situations unlike TKD but IMO it is based around dubious theories and is simply much too complicated. It seems to take aeons for anyone to be able to use it to fight and uses bizarre punching techniques. Its failure to provide any kind of competition record speaks against it. It also has by far the biggest geek quotient of any martial art, which is perhaps the main count against it.

(I realise I am making few friends here. I await Blarg's angry response).

[BCPVP]

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Honestly I don't really agree, especially with TKD. It isn't just a question of good and bad instruction; the whole rule set of TKD and focus on dubious kicks and lack of focus on hand work makes it of very limited value IMO

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So you don't think there is any good TKD out there? Certainly some dojangs focus too much on flashy kicks and weak punches, but not all of them.

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To an extent its about the school itself, but I don;t agree that no styles are superior to others

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Totally subjective statement.

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The fact that nothing ever resembling TKD appears in MMA is testament to this.

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Never seen a spinning back kick drop someone in MMA? I have. This is more MA snobbery that comes from thinking that everything in the UFC = the best and everything else is crap.

[Bulletproof Monk]

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Its failure to provide any kind of competition record speaks against it.

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So any martial art that wasn't designed as a sport is worthless. Gotcha.

You do realize that most people that might want to learn a martial art aren't 250-pound, steroid-using, former wrestling champions that will be fighting other 250-pound, steroid-using, former wrestling champions?

[nicky g]

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Honestly I don't really agree, especially with TKD. It isn't just a question of good and bad instruction; the whole rule set of TKD and focus on dubious kicks and lack of focus on hand work makes it of very limited value IMO

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So you don't think there is any good TKD out there? Certainly some dojangs focus too much on flashy kicks and weak punches, but not all of them.


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The fact that nothing ever resembling TKD appears in MMA is testament to this.

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Never seen a spinning back kick drop someone in MMA? I have. This is more MA snobbery that comes from thinking that everything in the UFC = the best and everything else is crap.

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TKD hardly holds the copyright on spinning back kicks. You see many successful fighters in kickboxing and MMA whose stand up is built entirely around Muay Thai for instance. You very rarely see TKD fighters do the same.

Why is it snobbery to test things against each other and see what does best? At least the WC and RSBD people have their "but that wouldn't work on the street" theories. TKD is largely a one on one stand up art that has a completely dismal record against other one-on-one stand up arts.

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To an extent its about the school itself, but I don;t agree that no styles are superior to others

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Totally subjective statement.

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Yes. I'm allowed to express an opinion aren't I?

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So you don't think there is any good TKD out there? Certainly some dojangs focus too much on flashy kicks and weak punches, but not all of them.

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Perhaps I'm not making myself clear. There may be some good schools out there that go under the name TKD. But the styles that trains to fight under the rules of the various official TKD organisations (and not just Olympic TKD by the way) are more or less doomed against other stand up martial arts IMO because those rules are too restrictive and emphasize useless things.

[turnipmonster]

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I think they both have severe defects

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my next question is of course which style doesn't have severe defects?