Krav Maga - stick defence, bat defence, bottle defence, brick defence, razor blade defence, 2x4 defence, gun defence, kick defence, punch defence takedown defence, submission defense

Great right?

if you train 8 hrs a day 5x a week it's brilliant!

Most of us cant, there is too much to learn to become competant, i suggest anybody who wants to know which is the 'best' martial art go and watch the early UFC's

Hey guys, I've dabbled in a few martial arts and have had the distinct honor of training under some of the world's best. (International gold medalists, 9th degree black belts, etc.) Note that I'm not close to being a world class athlete, but I have been around a little bit, so I thought I'd pop in here and distribute my 2 cents:

Don't fall for the hype that "X is the best martial art". If it was clearly the best, everyone would be doing that, and it would be the end of it.

First of all, understand what it is that you want to achieve from your martial arts training. Be 100% honest with yourself.
* Do you want to be able to defend yourself?
* After you defended yourself, how do you want the scene to look when the cops get there? This is VERY IMPORTANT. There's no point in celebrating how awesome you are at defending yourself if you straight to jail afterward.
* Do you want to be able to break bricks?
* Do you want to be able to punch guys in the face that touch your girl?
* Do you want to be able to do fancy looking high kicks?
* Do you want to be able to score really high on rate-my-punch-power machines?
* Do you want to be able to put on choke holds and joint locks on people?
* Do you want to just learn the techniques, or do you want to learn how to actually use them against a resisting opponent?
* Do you want to focus on striking, throwing from a standing position, or grappling on the ground?
* Do you want to use martial arts as a mantra to increase your discipline, confidence, and leadership abilities outside of the dojo?
* Do you want to push your body to the limit, or do you just want to go in, learn some stuff, and go home?

OK, now that I've talked that much, I might as well offer some real information, right?

Here's how it goes. You have your striking arts, such as Karate, Tae Kwon Doe, Kung Fu, Wing Chun, Boxing. Then you have your grappling arts, such as Judo and Brazilian Jujitsu. Then you have your mixed arts, such as Jujitsu, Hapkido. Then there's the modern ones like Krav Maga, MMA. Oh, and there's the fancy acrobatic ones like Wushu and Capoeira.

Striking Arts:
Let's talk about karate.

Most people knock karate, but that's because there are so many McDojos out there that teach poor karate. I don't know why people say karate is "useless". Have you ever been kicked in the head? Have you ever been punched with a perfectly executed punch in the diaphragm? Trust me, you don't keep fighting after that happens. Doesn't matter if you have a flabby gut or a 10-pack. You go straight down. Not back, not left, not right, just down.

Karate is very effective, but usually requires a bit of space to move around. If I were to fight someone in an open space, I would just stand back and go for karate, even though I can grapple. Why fight when you can evade?

It works with all body types, so you don't have to be extremely strong or well built.

Overall Pros:
* Take a man down quickly
* Very effective especially if you're light & fast
* It's easy to assume a defensive position in an open space
Cons:
* Looks brutal, and injuries to your opponent are very distinct, hard to explain your innocence.
* Not useful in a tight space

Other striking arts such as Wing Chun are better suited for closer quarters.

Tae Kwon Doe is similar to karate, but emphasizes more on kicks. It gets knocked even worse than karate for being "useless", but I haven't trained in it so I can't say much about it. I do know that Tae Kwon Doe practitioners are some of the calmest, most level-headed people I have ever seen. They never engage in fights with others, they never brag about their martial arts, and they never even get involved in arguments about "which martial art is better". Very cool guys.

Grappling Arts:
Judo is an amazing art. You are never without a weapon if you can slam someone with a planet. I've been kicked in the head plenty of times, and I've been thrown on my back on a mat. I can confidently say that there is nothing that shocks you to the core more than being thrown on your back, even on a mat. I can't imagine what it must be like on concrete. The entire experience of being lifted, spun in the air, and feeling a shock through your entire body is comparable to being hit unexpectedly by a truck.

It's very effective for when people are coming up to your face, because you can use their forward motion against them.

The best thing about Judo is that unless you slam someone hard enough to break their vertebrae and/or ribs, it leaves no marks and breaks no bones, and looks genuinely more innocuous that punching or kicking the guy. You also have a variety of holds, chokes, and locks that you can use to incapacitate/hold someone without hurting them. So you're much less likely to get in trouble for using excessive force.

Additionally, it just looks cool. If you're out with your friends/girlfriends and you get a douchebag in your face that you end up having to take out, what do think looks better:
Option 1: punching/kicking him until he goes down
Option 2: Taking him to the ground in one beautiful acrobatic movement, and then walking away. (He won't be able to get up for a few minutes.)

Judo is much more skill based than striking arts, and progression is more absolute. A yellow belt in karate may get a lucky punch or two against a black belt, but that will never ever happen in judo.

Actual grappling is very important in Judo. Unlike almost all other martial arts, you simply cannot progress in judo if you cannot fight or if you cannot apply the techniques against another opponent.

Strength does play a part in judo, so if you want to be good, you will have to hit the gym and work on your shoulders, chest, back, arms, and legs.

Pros:
* Very effective
* Easy to learn
* Easy to control a situation without people getting hurt/going to jail
Cons:
* Many techniques will not work against an opponent that isn't wearing a shirt
* No striking/blocking

Brazilian Jujitsu is based on judo, but focuses more on groundwork. Judo is about a 50/50 split in standing/ground work, but BJJ is more like 20/80.

BJJ practitioners claim that most fights go to the ground so you might as well just spend most of your time working on that, but I don't agree that this is always a good strategy. If there is more than one opponent, going to the ground just means you're going to get stomped to death by his friends. Additionally, if you can execute a good throw, you can ensure that the fight is over once you hit the ground.

Mixed/modern Arts:

It's hard to generalize these, because every club is different. Ultimately, you have to go to the specific dojo in question, watch a class, talk to the instructor, and see if it has what you're looking for. (See list of possible questions to consider at the beginning of this post!)

Note that if you want to get a mix of disciplines under your belt, you don't necessarily have to go to a "mixed" dojo. Many of the best UFC fighters trained in distinct disciplines one by one. (E.g. Karate for a while, judo for a while, BJJ for a while, etc.) It is common practice to train in a grappling art and a striking art at the same time.

What bothers me about some of the modern western arts like MMA is that they incorporate the techniques but they've lost the discipline and respect of martial arts. Some may disagree with me, but I believe that martial arts is not just about fighting, it's about mastering your mind and body, learning calm in the face of fire, and learning respect for others, as a reflection of your respect for yourself. You will not learn this in MMA, and I personally believe you are missing out if you go through all the sweat, tears, and blood spilled in training, without learning some of these traditional values.

I'm not much into yoga and zen shit, I don't read poetry, and I am by no means a vegetarian or tree hugger, but believe me, this martial arts mind-and-body thing is the real deal.

Bottom Line:

The single most important thing I can say is: If you want to actually learn how to fight, MAKE SURE you find a club that does ACTUAL FIGHTING EVERY DAY. No shadow-boxing BS, no taking-turns applying techniques BS, no "We only fight for 20 minutes on Fridays" BS, and stay away from places that say "Our techniques are lethal and dangerous so we can't actually practice them".

There is absolutely NO SUBSTITUTE for real practice against a resisting opponent, and any technique that you learn without this is USELESS. How do you know if it works if you've never done it? You need to have practiced a technique hundreds of times, to the point that you can do it without thinking in order to have a chance of being able to pull it off in a less than ideal situation.

I find it funny and yet also disturbing when someone claims to "know a technique" and then asks me to grab his neck like so, and subsequently has to think for 1-2 seconds before he can remember what to do. That's not going to work. You have to have it drilled to the point that it's second nature and completely automatic, otherwise it won't work.

This means that finding a good club has higher priority than finding the perfect art. It could be the case that all dojos teaching art X in your area, don't have the practical aspect of the art and so you need to find another art.

Of course, if you just want to learn the art and progress for discipline/lifestyle reasons or just to get some exercise and don't care about actual fighting, that's fair enough. Like I said, you have to look at what you want to get out of it.

_________________
"I'd tell her to go shove her face in the pig pen, and go out and find another one who'll kiss you without askin for the earth. You're bound to find one. You can hardly throw half a brick back in the lands you come from without hittin one."
Stardust

jiu jitsu, cuz no ones really gets hurt. Its the best for the street. But i would just join a mma gym and do Mui thai and bjj

My vote would be for either American Kenpo or Krav Maga. But in all honesty the best way to block a punch is to get the fuck out of there.

For street survival, the style needs to be violent, and teach you how to actually kill people. A number of styles fit the bill, in that they deal with actual death and dismemberment, in the real world without any referees or rules. Some styles have more notoriety than others and a lot depends on the quality of instruction in the particular place you're at. Don't get sold on the style, look at the instructor and the students. Styles can get watered down if they don't take the death and dismemberment seriously.

Krav Maga has been mentioned many times in this thread; it is a perfectly good "real world" style. I would add Russian style fighting aka "Systema," that is my own background. Here is a representative sample; they are not the only school, but they are the best known. http://russianmartialart.com/ I'm also impressed with the Indonesian style known as Pentjak Silat.

I'm sure there are others. The important thing is the style must deal with real killing, real weapons, and really getting mauled by multiple people. Sport fighting is good for honing some skills, because you can go all out within some boundaries of safety, but the real world is not a ring and if you are not trained accordingly, you may not survive.

I am a big martial arts enthusiast and my FAVORITES are BJJ and Boxing.

With that said I would say Boxing is moderately effective and BJJ is not so good for real life situations.

Boxing is good but it leaves a "punchers chance" and some guys just don't go down.
BJJ would be good except if there is more than one guy you are totally fucked and if you aren't good enough you will end up getting your head stomped on.

The art that I have seen that is the easiest to learn and use in real life situations is actually Ninjitsu (I know the countless jokes about it. I actually one time told a guy that did ninjitsu who came into our BJJ school "no way your a ninja, you can do more than 5 pushups")

Here is why I think it's the best

A) It is all about structural damage. They basically focus on vicious attacks to weak areas of the body (eyes,knees,throat). It is one thing to hurt somebody but leaving them unable to attack is a completely different thing. It's actually really easy to do.

B) They borrow the basics from everything. The basics are the basics for a reason.

C) It really isn't that hard. It's not overly complicated or pretty it's just really mean.

D) They are one of the only martial arts that repeatedly states that having a weapon on you at all times is one of the best ways to win a fight. That shit is just true.

E) At a ninjistu seminar I went to with my buddy a guy asked "what would I do if I were attacked by multiple opponents and didn't have a physical chance of winning" and the response was "If you don't have your gun on you then you should pick the leader and quickly cause as much gruesome facial disfigurement as possible. It's easiest to remove eyeballs or bite off the nose or ears. This will generally make the other aggressors less willing to participate." I thought that was pretty bad ass.

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You can't forget about me, stupid. Everywhere I go ima have my own theme music.

You really should read Fireball's post, contains a lot of useful information.

Now, I've been training martial arts for a good while and it's basically the activity that i care most for in life. This means I am consistently reflecting on what styles and exercises are helping me become better at defending myself and what's helping me in competitions.

I reckon you won't be doing this for the sake of competition, so my advice is to first think about what arts you think you would enjoy doing.

Personally I train in ITF Taekwon-do, which I would personally say is very effective if used correctly, but not recommended. As you said in your OP you need to train for quite a while to be able to use it (it's also pretty boring at times).

I sometimes go to Judo classes and this is the art I think might be the best for you. It quickly helps you to gain an upper hand over your opponent. You'll learn how to grab whatever limb someone throws at you and use it to throw your opponent to the ground.

Also, if you are willing to push yourself in training I'd like to recommend MMA as well if there's a decent gym close to where you live. You will to some extent learn the whole package - how to get hit, how to hit and how to avoid being hit, which is probably the most important stuff.

In the end you need to think about how to apply your art to effectively defend yourself in the streets. Remember, if you get into significant trouble (multiple opponents, people with weapons etc) the best solution is always to run, so try to create space with whatever techniques you know, and run.

Hope it helps!

Compare Pentjak Silat. It is a bladed art. Nasty little story about a Guru who went into a bathroom somewhere in Indonesia, with a razor blade hidden in his mouth. It seems it's pretty common to get jacked in the bathroom over there. So... someone came to jack him, and he whipped his razor blade from his mouth into the other guy's face, slicing him from ear to ear. True story, kid you not. That Guru fought the Dutch; yeah, he's old. There are some old people in this world that I would never want to mess with! How would you know, he looks like nothing.
Except that I'm told it doesn't work with Hispanics. For some reason they have a pack mentality that if you hurt one of them, they all try to kill you. At least, so I have heard. I don't care to test it. I wonder if there was more to the claim than that. Consider it an anecdote.

Al ittle bit of racism great way to end a thread!

If you don't pay attention to the kinds of people who will actually assault you in various parts of the world, you're a fool. You don't have to be a racist to find out about a cultural pattern. You ready to pick up books on how people in prison fight with shanks? If you're doing this to survive and not just for personal confidence etc., then you'd better get real.

Agreed. Racism has to do with race. Cultural differences are just a fact. Consider what is culturally acceptable as punishment in the middle east (my heritage). The level of acceptable violence is different in different cultures. If you plan on calibrating and surviving it is best to understand the opponent. Read "the art of war". It is also a good thing to remember that their are individuals in every culture that are prone to bouts of extreme violence. That is why I just assume that a mother fucker is out to kill me and act accordingly. One more ninja quote from the same seminar "It is better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6" Words to live by.

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You can't forget about me, stupid. Everywhere I go ima have my own theme music.

Deleted

The problem is the original Capoeira has been watered down, to become in many places "dancing disguised as fighting." On the positive side, for this reason Capoeira is far more gender balanced than other martial arts, so it's a good compromise between fitness, learning fighting skills, and getting laid. I'm sure "serious" Capoeira is around in various places, where if you step into the hoda the wrong way you get your head knocked off, but you have to be in the right geographic location for that. Probably more likely in South American and Caribbean countries. You can't go to just any old Capoeira school in North America and learn something useful for survival, whereas you probably could go to any old Krav Maga or Systema school.

Blasphemy! Go rinse your mouth out!

You cannot learn to fight while thinking about your penis. "Compromise" in this case is like trying to swim and keep your hair dry at the same time. It just doesn't work.

Gender balance does more harm than good in a martial arts setting. Fighting a girl is like fighting someone half your size: You look like a pussy if you lose, and if you win you look like an ass (if you're lucky), or otherwise if you manage to hurt her you look like a rotten bastard.

They are a major distraction, with their giggling and with you staring at them and trying to figure out how to get into their pants. Additionally, barring a few rare exceptions, they just lower the standard of training in the club.

If you want to mix gender while exercising, do it at a dance class or a gymnastics class.

_________________
"I'd tell her to go shove her face in the pig pen, and go out and find another one who'll kiss you without askin for the earth. You're bound to find one. You can hardly throw half a brick back in the lands you come from without hittin one."
Stardust

It has kept me from taking up Capoeira. Every time I start getting that impulse, I do a few cartwheels on the grass to build my upper body strength, until I get over it. I take my bone breaking pretty seriously. Thus I do not see martial arts as an activity for picking up women. The farther I have gone in it, the fewer women there have been. I might try T'ai Chi or Ashtanga Yoga at some point, not for fighting, but for fitness and meeting women. At present I don't feel like paying the class fees, so I go straight to a bar with a sketchbook in hand. I don't feel like paying for art classes either.
It's a non-issue if you're both working on killing each other and how not to be killed. With a blade in her hand she is your equal. Better: 2 blades. On a firing range her bullets kill the same as yours. Let's not forget that the gun is a martial art.
We never had that problem in Russian fighting practice. But of course, that is because the instructor previously trained bodyguards in Moscow, and had certain standards and expectations for students at a community college. Very few women ever wanted to stick with it, but some occasionally did. Apparently one even became quite good at it, before I was around.

I would expect a military town like Fayetteville, NC would have more serious training halls where serious women can actually do stuff. That town's nickname is "FayetteNam" because of Ft. Bragg and all the marines there. I would also expect women who are training for police work or the FBI would be serious.

I don't know much about Krav Maga but I have my doubts they'd put up with any bullshit. Israeli women fight, shoot guns, fly planes, and kill people. Their population is so small they couldn't possibly afford to do otherwise. The US military's ideas about who should do the dying are rather quaint, especially in a theater like Iraq where there was no such thing as being behind the lines.

I almost forgot the various Women's Self-Defense courses that use the full body attack suit, and generally don't have men in the class except as instructors, so that gender games aren't an issue. Apparently one of the biggest difficulties with some of the ladies, is getting them to feel it's culturally ok to hurt someone. A lot of 'em don't have it in them.