Looking for some opinions on my choice of Martial Art training

No good answer

Which gun is best for home defense? A. The one YOU can use effectively.

Key word, YOU. You will find all sorts of answers, but the short answer is look around at your local schools and judge for yourself.
It's not really the style, but it is the way the style is trained. To me they should train in all ranges: Clinch (up close and personal), ground, and striking distance. You will not be effective if you don't have an idea of how to handle all three.

Also, being on the same page with your instructor is a big plus. If he's some turd in it for the money, go elsewhere.

Hints: If they have 'tiny tigers'...run.
If they promise a blackbelt in two years....run faster.
If the guy who calls himself 'master' is 25yrs old...run real fast.
If they have 14 colored belts.......run.
If it starts with ATA....don't even go in.
If they have a 'blackbelt club'...run.
If they give patches for 'best splits' or 'highest kicks'....run.

GojuBrian said:

If it starts with ATA....don't even go in.

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We have to talk sometime. I know the ATA better than I would like to admit. They used to turn out some exceptional martial artists...those of us who were genuinely professional. Now that the ATA offers every color of belt under the rainbow (including "camo"), it has become a martial arts sham, and not much more than drop-off child care.

Here's my two cents, based on being a professional martial arts instructor for about 30 years. Watch their sparring. If they wear body pads, hand pads, foot pads...run like Hades. You need to know what it feels like to hit, and to be hit. You have to learn to overlook the trauma of full-force attacks.

If you want to learn to geninely defend yourself, then you need to practice genuinely defending yourself...and frankly that's gonna hurt. Better to allow your friends to beat on you than the enemy.

Geno

I want to master a very effective tactical art, but want to take some jeet kune do on the side. I don’t want the base of the art to be self defense.

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I don't understand. What's wrong with Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai or wrestling? You do know that the foundations of all three come from actual warrior's training?

I'm feeling that you are spending more time looking for a system than spending dedicated time training in one. Even if there was one "best" system, you only get out what you put into the training.

(btw: it is spelled "Muay Thai", and I've never seen any real practitioners manage to misspell both words before.)

I have always loved Scottish martial arts. It's called []. It's mostly just head butting and then kicking people when they're on the ground.

I studied for 20 years with Koyama, Nishyama, and Ohshima in Shotokan, Coached H S wrestling for 30 years.
I have several of my most effective wrestlers who are advocees of Ju Jitsu and I would advise my own grandsons to stay with one of the Japanese styles that has old fashioned solid contact, then wrestle folkstyle in middleschool through high school. If a good Ju Jitsu school is avalible do it.

Krav maga

I would highly reconmend Krav Maga. I am a Marine and Krav Maga has saved my life, and I truly love it. I have been an instructor of Krav Maga since the age of 17 (im 20 now), and its very easy and quick to learn. This is by far the best martial arts Ive trained in for self defense. I train in Muy tai, Bjj, Boxing, wrestling etc, and this is by far the BEST! Krav also incorperates weapons training into the program, which is a must if you or your attacker has weapons. Feel free to email me at [email protected] - Good luck- G

I like Kenpo

I'm partial to whu-pass myself

a jack of all trade, master of none.
i'd say learn some serious jiu jitsu, stick with it, and then keep up with the Muay thai. there is nothing in those arts that you wont find anywhere else

“I want to master a very effective tactical art”

Mastery of one martial art, probably requires too much focus on one particular style. Figure out if you need instruction or a sparring partner, or possibly a new combat fighting fitness routine. I would say the best would be to partner up with a number of different instructors with a mastery in a variety of training and tell them you want private instruction on only their top suggestions regarding close combat and tactical fighting.

Best martial art to study?

1. Boxing
2. Judo/jui-jutsu
3. Muy Thai boxing

Why?

It's not so much the "style" per se...but the method of training. Many of your larger commercial schools (Karate, TKD) have such huge operating costs that they have to cater to children and non-combatant types (that are afraid to get hit). Thus, the training is comprised of doing hours of kata (that is, prearranged forms where you are hitting empty air) or sparring matches that resemble a game of slaps. The punches are "pulled" so as to not bruise anyone.. and the person who can throw the fastest "tag/slap" punch wins.

Well, that's recipe for disaster.

You know why they do this... Its about business survival. If train too hard, there will be bruises, cuts, bloody noses...and that will scare 90% of the membership to quitting. Also, the school owner does not want to get sued for injuries...so...he has to water down his training.

Find yourself a good boxing school or muy thai school. You will find a different crowd there. They are more combat oriented. More time is spent on sparring (not kata). They train on heavy bags, etc.

A good judo/jui-jutsu school would also work. When they train, they don't pull their techniques. (It's kinda hard to throw someone over your shoulder using half force.) When judo guys practice, each technique is used with full commitment.

Remember, if you train in a school that uses "tag" sparring (that is, quick but powerless techniques...that resemble a game of slaps), you will clobbered in the streets. In combat, you will revert back to your to the way you train.

A word of caution on arts like Ninjutsu, Jeet Kune Do, Krav Maga... Since these are your "trendy" arts, there are many illegitimate instructors out there. Basically, its your starved tae kwon do instructor that read a book on Jeet Kune Do. And all of the sudden, to add membership to his school, its now a "Jeet Kune Do" school.

Ok... Just to clarify, I respect traditional arts like Tae Kwon Do and Karate. I was trained in those arts. Love it. Highly effective arts. My comments above reflects the 80% of your commercialized martial arts school that give Tae Kwon Do and Karate a bad name.

they train on heavy bags

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Heavy bags are boxing kata... Seriously.

I agree with everything you said, but I also believe that kata is incorrectly taught. It is an extremely useful training device (esp self training) and helps you develop mushin (translated mind no mind - basically it is reacting without having to think about reacting). When I say it is incorrectly taught, I mean you are supposed to practice kata with a HIGH degree seriousness. Instead it is almost like the multiple choice part of a test on your way to "black belt".



You are right at least 80% of the martial arts out there (schools / teachers) are cashing in on some version of a trend or junk teaching.

Anyone serious in the warrior ethos is (sadly) going to have to cultivate it himself.

I recommend reading In Search of the Warrior Spirit, Akido and the Dynamic Sphere, Living the Martial Way, The Book of Five Rings, The Art of War. Don't just "read" them. Read them multiple times, think on them.

well many things can help but real competition is the greatest thing to teach actual effectiveness
if you look at the ufc wrestlers fair so well because they have a very solid competitive base they are put into actual competition frequently
but on wrestling or ju jitsu alone they are great for one on one but if you must fight two guys i dont recommend going to the ground with one as the other will whup you
mixed martial arts training places are popping up all over go to one and you wont have to limit yourself as much

id rather have 2 or 3 moves/strikes that i have down really well than a nonapplied understanding of 1000

Most martial arts have become so stylized that it is almost easier to tell you what is wrong with a particular school / discipline and then you compensate for it personally in your self training.

The internet is absolutely LOADED with fight videos, sucker punch videos, mugging, shooting, stabbings and all that. Watch some of those videos.

MOST folks have no idea how to fight. So they bum rush and tackle or grab clothing and punch for the face. Their center is in front of them and the "victim" / guy getting rushed always goes backwards and his center gets raise up to high and is behind him.

They either go down or "victim" gets pummeled for awhile. 1 minute after it begins the attacker is winded and most likely so is the victim.

What's my point? Sparring against people that know BJJ or Karate ain't the same as what happens out there.

Just throwing that out there for discussion.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-v7PMp-yXHT0/unbelievable_street_fight_1_boxer_vs_3/

For instance, the "victim" here knows some boxing. He moves back, but keeps his center and throws punches. The idiots attacking him, completely sacrifice their own center and numerical superiority in a stupid effort to, I dunno, crush the dude or whatever. Anyway, watch his footwork, classic boxing movement to keep your center under you.

Anyway, he wins.

Other fights show someone getting bum rushed, like a football tackle. They don't "train" you for that in anything but MMA I don't think.

For me training with Koyama and Nishyama the important thing is mindset. I wrestled at the U of AZ with Bill Nelson and mindset was important. Technique of course, but simple technique done thousands of times. I quickly incorporated my knowledge with how I drill in shooting. I trained my Scouts Platoon the same way, my wrestlers the same way. I am a nut for finding the fastest simplist techniques.
I can learn from anyone and love sharing with others. I think I got this from Koyama and Nelson who were always studying. I'm older, in excellent condition, and am going to LFI II to continue learning from another Combat Master, Mas Ayoob.
Later I'm looking forward to a training session with Brownie in Phx.

I’ve had some training in jiu jitsu,mui tai, and have a little wrestling expieriece.

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Those (presuming you mean Muay Thai) are the top three things to train in. The only ones I would add to the least of consideration are Judo and boxing, meaning if the BJJ gym sucked and there was a good Judo gym I would go there. If the MT gym sucked and there was a good boxing program I would go there (some people out rightly prefer boxing to MT I am just the opposite).

Psyproffesor's post has some solid points in it. I would add in addition to cream puff training the rules of a style's competition are telling. For example, I have never met a TKD guy who kept his hands up. I could go on with examples of other arts and the holes they leave, largely because of the rules of competition, but I wont.

As to Katas, they are more like shadow boxing than the heavy bag. The idea behind them is the same, you are ingraining a move and committing it to muscle memory. There is one giant and very important difference. Boxing/MT foot work, punches, etc that is being ingrained work. Horse stance punching from the hip BS does not. One is ingraining impractical stuff and bad habits. Another difference is why they are being done today. In many places katas are done for their own sake, ie you see kata competitions. Can you even imagine a shawdow boxing competition or a heavy bag workout competition? The idea is absurd. It is just as absurd for Katas but people do it.

There is something to the idea that the individual matters more than the style, ie someone who simply is not tough can't take a punch, is out of shape, will probably get mauled by a tougher physically superior opponent irrespective of their professed styles. I have been involved in wrestling, Muay Thain and BJJ for over a decade and I do believe style counts for a lot. It is a matter of both what those styles teach and how they train. You wont meet someone who is a decent wrestler who is a wuss. Those guys quit. Same for boxing and Muay Thai (if we are talking about people who actual fight). People who can't hack it get weeded out. I have met many tradition martial arts people that thought they were genuine bad @ss dudes and were exposed for the paper tigers they were the moment they got popped hard in the face. It is amazing to me that in their years of training they had never been hit hard before. Things like that matter, a lot!

If you seriously want to learn to fight, find a good muay thai gym and a good BJJ gym (these days they might well be in the same building together).

MT will give you conditioning, striking, clinching, and teach you how to get hit without falling apart. It will give you sparring and some gut check moments. In Muay thai you will experince extreme fatigue and pain, you'll get beat up a bit. As a result you'll learn to fight through pain and learn the importance of conditioning. Boxing could do all the same thing save the clinch, which I love.

BJJ is essential to knowing how to fight. I wouldn't opt to go to the ground in a street fight but you might well find yourself there for one reason or another. With a relatively limited skill set it is easy to destroy someone on the ground who doesn't know anything. The biggest problems I see in BJJ training (at many but not all gyms) is three things: 1 a lack of hard training. I see a lot of pot bellys with purple belts around them. The pace is not pushed, guys take breathers the instant they start to feel tired etc. This is a matter of how some people train and not a knock on BJJ itself. One can run a BJJ workout like a wrestling practice (which is shear hell) just as easily. 2. There is often little emphasis placed on wrestling. This is a problem because all those ground skills mean nothing if you can't get the person to the ground. I have trained with a lot of guys who are amazing on the ground but had almost no ability to get the fight there. 3. There often is no striking and thus no ability to learn to take shots.

I believe those major weakness are dealt with by cross training in a practical striking art such as Muay Thai o boxing.

As someone else said train to compete. Fight a few MT fights do some grappling tournaments, eventually fight an MMA fight if you like. The comepetition will go a long ways in getting you to where you want to be.

As one last aside I personally believe in compartmentalizing training to begin with and then after a sufficient degree of proficiency has been reached blending them. This means train and learn muay thai, train and learn BJJ, then start working them together in MMA type training. I could go one about why I feel this way but I leave it at that.

No training is just the same as a street fight, but certain types are much better for preparing one for that type of scenario than others.

What's my point? Sparring against people that know BJJ or Karate ain't the same as what happens out there.

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I agree and would underscore the point that if you know how to wrestle and some fool tries a bum rush tackle dealing with it is pretty friggin easy. So is cathing them in a guillotine if you know BJJ or gaining the plum clinch and driving a couple of knees into their face if you are decent at MT. If you know how to box and some one comes in windmilling with their head down the same footwork and defense works and it is much more simple to counter and drop someone who doesn't know how to defend. The more fights I see the more I realize that, as you said, most people cannot fight worth a damn.

Another important point you mentioned is conditioning. It is pretty easy to beat someone down who is dead tired. It is also easy to get your butt handed to you if you are gassed. I have seen a great number of fights decided by conditioning. This is the idea behind Karl Gotch's line "Conditioning is the best hold" (forgive me if that is not the exact quotation; it is the essence though).

As to sucker punches (or multiple attackers, weapons etc) yeah if you get sucker punched you might well be screwed. This is where situational awareness and doing your best to keep your nose out of trouble is of great importance. I actually believe it is the most important thing. The vast majority of fights can be avoided by awareness and not letting your ego get the best of you.

It depends on what you're training for, what you want to be able to do, and how good of an attorney you have.

I took 8 years of korean martial arts (kook sool won or kung jung mu sul) almost 20 years ago, which is very heavy on holds, redirection of force, controlled falls & pressure point work. There are of course kicks & punches too, but those are really only useful against another trained fighter. Like someone pointed out earlier, most people have no idea what they're doing, and will simply try to tackle you. This form is very good for that kind of work.

Nowadays, there's too many McDojo's out there for my taste, and I want to avoid a$$-kicking related lawsuits, so I'm now a student of gun-fu.

Remember, everyone's a tough guy until they get hurt - then it's "call the cops - this man is beating me up".

Krav Maga would be a great pursuit for good self defence but unfortunatly the closes classes that hold acredidation are more than 100 miles away from me

I have always loved Scottish martial arts. It's called []. It's mostly just head butting and then kicking people when they're on the ground

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If I could wear my kilt all of the time, I would not need a gun... lol

Women flock to you, men shrink away... being a 250+ heavy athlete helps too... but I do like the Scottish wrestling technique if you are unarmed.

Dimis, learning self defense doesn't have to be "taught" by some esoteric warrior monk.

Even if you live out in the sticks you can get in shape and build a workout gym and practice punching and short kicks. Watch some of the aforementioned street fight videos and learn how to slip to the outside and hook to the body.

• Ross Enamait's never gymless

• Get a heavy bag and reflex bag and adding some other striking targets over time

• Freddy Roach / Jack Dempsy / Joe Fraser all have books and DVD's about boxing, there are some other MT and Kick boxing books and DVD's out there.

It isn't perfect, but that is where kata comes in. IF YOU TRAIN SERIOUSLY, your technique will improve. There is a saying from Kendo. "Every time is the last time". If you took that to your training and throw punches each time trying to throw the perfect punch and keep your hands up and constantly drill the fundamentals you will be able to handle MOST of what comes your way.

Being in good condition is the key.

I like the boxers... Does he need the safety glasses though?

DHJekins Thank you! McDojo's he said!