Martial Art Recommendations

December 18, 2003 1:02 PM

I would like to start taking classes in some kind of martial art. I'm interested in something that will help me get in shape and also provide a little self defense. What flavor should I pursue?
posted by LittleMissCranky to sports, hobbies, & recreation (14 comments total)

Go with something that includes grappling. Like a good Judo, or Jiu-Jitsu. Full body workout. You'll be sore in muscles you didn't know you had.

The flashy "striking" arts seem to be all heat and little light (no offence to the practitioners).
posted by cadastral at 1:11 PM on December 18, 2003

I'm a bit biased, but if there's a school of Tukong Moosul near where you live, you might enjoy that. There is a large portion of self-defense incorporated into it. I quite enjoyed my two plus years studying it.
posted by pizzasub at 1:15 PM on December 18, 2003

When I was in fourth grade, my dad decided to enroll me in a karate class. He went with the local United Karate Studio that specialized in Tae Kwon Do. It was a balanced mix of forms and exercise and self-defense, with more than a little emphasis on discipline.

I loved it.
posted by grabbingsand at 1:18 PM on December 18, 2003

You'll find all practioners biased (like myself). But I practice Uechi-Ryu. I work out about 4 hours a week (2 days at 2 hours). It depends on the Dojo but Uechi-Ryu is based on Okinawan practice and does not stress the "flashy" stuff. You will not see breaking boards, bricks, death grips, etc. There is little competition, but there is an element of hand-to-hand. You will get a good workout, a sense of confidence through self-defense and decreased stress levels.

This site at the University of Virginia gives you some background.
posted by jeremias at 1:25 PM on December 18, 2003

Consider Boxing.
posted by willnot at 1:45 PM on December 18, 2003

i'd second the recommendation stay away from striking arts as well. moves in those kinds of arts often rely on the capacity to oppose force with force (which is not such a great proposition if you're diminuative as your username suggests). judo isn't very useful for a similar reason since it relies on leveraging your mass. I'd go with jiu jitsu or aikido both of which have joint locks (which don't require a lot of strength or mass).
posted by juv3nal at 1:45 PM on December 18, 2003

yeah... western boxing is good, as well. If I was going to endorse a striking art, it would be boxing.
posted by cadastral at 1:54 PM on December 18, 2003

others have already pointed out that we'll all be biased, but hapkido, which is what I practice, is a nice combination of the hard and soft forms - we do yin techniques very similar to aikido, and yang techniques more like tae kwon do. The master I train with is also open to (and trained in) multiple arts, and I consider that a big plus.

I would try out a few schools - usually trial classes are offered - and see what feels most natural to your body. A friend of mine does a form of kung fu, which seems to be about precision and stability; hapkido, on the other hand, is about flow and reaction. One isn't better or worse than another, but it's very likely that a particular art will be more suited to your personality and body type, and to find out what that is, the best way is to see what they feel like to you.

Although there are certain things you'll be able to predict based on your size and strength, it's really good to experiment. I'm not built for Judo on any sort of competitive level, but I discovered that I'm actually not bad at leveraging my weight, and the additional training I got in judo thanks to a visiting sensei was really useful for my hapkido training.
posted by mdn at 2:06 PM on December 18, 2003

Drunken Boxing is an art form that must be mastered.
posted by Keyser Soze at 2:23 PM on December 18, 2003

OK, this will probably be kind of long, but I'll try to edit it down as much as I can. As a reference point for my ranting, I've been studying various martial arts for 23 years and have been off-and-on teaching for the last 5 years.

LittleMissCranky - I'm going to assume from your screen name that you're female. If I'm wrong, please disregard any comments related to gender.

Fitness - if you're not a regular athlete or fitness buff, then most martial arts will offer you some benefit. If you're already in pretty good shape and want to be pushed harder, you may have good luck with the grappling arts (i.e. judo, brazilian jujutsu), or contact striking arts that have you hitting heavy bags or pads (i.e. boxing, muay thai kickboxing), or the flashy high-kicking arts (tae kwon do, northern shaolin kung fu). Within any given art, there's a huge range in how intensely a given teacher will run the workout, so visit the dojo before signing up to see how hard the students are sweating. Systems that are typically not so great from the fitness workout perspective would be wing chun, aikido & ninpo taijutsu.

Self-defense: Here's where the pitfalls are much greater. Many, many dojos out there range from weak to useless in preparing students for an actual self-defense situation. This problem is typically much worse for women. There's a common misconception among students and some teachers that learning a few self-defence "tricks" will enable someone to defend against a larger, more aggressive opponent. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. The winner of a fight is typically determined by attributes. By "attributes" I mean size, strength, experience, aggressiveness, determination, speed, skill, agility, good tactical instincts, reflexes, etc, etc. Notice that "skill" (which would typically include the techniques you are learning) is just one item on the list. Notice also that the average female is starting out with a disadvantage on several of those attributes compared to the average attacker (who will typically be male).

What does this mean? It means that if you want to be able to actually defend yourself you need to a) improve all these attributes as much as you can and b) compensate for those attributes where you may be lacking (such as size) by becoming exceptional in others (such as skill and reflexes). You can't just learn techniques, you have to actually be transforming your body and mind. In addition, the techniques you learn need to be the most efficient possible, to compensate for an attackers advantage in other attributes. Many arts have techniques which rely on a certain amount of superior strength or speed to work at all.

As far as which systems actually offer both that transforming type of training and techniques that will work against a larger, determined, skilled opponent - I would recommend muay thai kickboxing, western boxing and brazilian jujutsu. Training in any of these can be pretty rough, so you might need to find a teacher who is willing to break you in slow. Of course the right teacher can make even an inferior art into a superior training experience, so look around.

One last thought, applicable to both training goals: If you don't enjoy the training, you won't show up consistently enough to either get into shape or learn real fighting skills. Therefore you need to find an art and a dojo environment which are fun for you. Better a 60% art that you train 100% in than a 100% art that you only train 5% in.

Okay, that's a pretty long post. If you have any more questions, just add them to the thread or email me.
posted by tdismukes at 2:54 PM on December 18, 2003

One more comment. As you ask around, you'll find plenty of people who are expert in one form of martial art express all sorts of nonsensical opinions about other arts in which they are completely ignorant. This can particularly be true of teachers trying to run down what they see as "competing" arts. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt.
posted by tdismukes at 3:00 PM on December 18, 2003

To qualify my own comments in light of what tdismukes just said, I've done ~2 years of judo and ~2 years of a hybrid jkd/wingchun/eskrima/kali. The only art I keep in practise with is tai chi which is crap for keeping you in shape *and* for self defense, but has the key advantage that it doesn't require you to be in shape to do it; I've been doing that for ~6 years.

I actually have experience in the arts I was dissuading you from and no experience whatsoever in aikido and jiu jitsu.

also, to comment on:
There's a common misconception among students and some teachers that learning a few self-defence few self-defence "tricks" will enable someone to defend against a larger, more aggressive opponent. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. The winner of a fight is typically determined by attributes. By "attributes" I mean size, strength, experience, aggressiveness, determination, speed, skill, agility, good tactical instincts, reflexes, etc, etc. Notice that "skill" (which would typically include the techniques you are learning) is just one item on the list. Notice also that the average female is starting out with a disadvantage on several of those attributes compared to the average attacker (who will typically be male).

This is true enough but the point of tricks is never to win a fight, it's just to delay your opponent long enough for your screaming bloody murder to attract attention. (One ought to presume in the typical self-defense situation that you are *not* quicker and more agile than your opponent because the combination of those should already sufficient to run the heck away).
posted by juv3nal at 5:30 PM on December 18, 2003

Krav Maga, maybe?
posted by cmonkey at 9:26 PM on December 18, 2003

juv3nal - I think that you inadvertantly provided a good example of my point about the pitfalls in discussing arts outside one's experience. I started out & spent many years studying one of those flowy - use the opponents force - wrist locky arts. They advertise themselves as not requiring size and power. They even appear to work well, when you demonstate the techniques on a cooperative partner. If you ever get to the point of actually trying to use them against a tough, non-cooperative opponent who's doing his best to beat you, you'll find that the techniques don't work nearly as reliably as your judo or kickboxing would. (This is why I moved on to other arts.) Judo and kickboxing involve actual sparring, so if you're not skilled enough to beat the guys who are a lot bigger, you'll find out right away. That's frustrating, but it's better to find out in the dojo then on the streets. Eventually, you can get good enough to beat the big boys - you just have to work harder and longer.
posted by tdismukes at 8:22 AM on December 19, 2003