Recommend me a martial art!

My shoulder, which I injured 2 years ago, should be fixed in the next couple of months. I was planning on taking up rugby but at 33 I think I'm probably too old and will end up injured. I'm therefore thinking of a martial art.

Requirements:

- practical self defence
- preferably less kick-orientated
- suitable for a late starter
- not bothered about the 'spiritual/meditation' side of things
- potential to do belts etc if I enjoy it and am any good

Cheers

Jim

Ju Jitsu - it is rough on the floor fighting full contact

Krav maga - Excellent all round self defence trained to cia agents and the like

dont bother with karate its like learning dance moves and putting them all together in the kata

Krav Maga.

This thread is now finished

Wrong....

Ninjitsu......imagine telling people your a bona fide ninja...

Or failing everything else...write a letter to Chuck Norris asking if you could be his 'daniel san'

On a serious note,don't go with karate as mentioned above it's tedious.

Some forms of karate are fine; i did shukokai style for 5 years and it was a no-nonsense full contact, belts and competitions orientated. Kyushinkai is very traditional but brutal, no pads used - shotokan is rigid and dull.

If i was to start martial arts again i'd go to a mixed martial arts academy and cherry pick the best of each of the main styles. Brazilian ju jitsu, kick-boxing, grappling/wrestling and boxing = unbeatable for exercise and real fighting

No need, Chuck Norris all ready knows and has declined. For there can only be one...

Juan King. A wrist discipline.

Krav Maga

Fuw King. My wife took this up when we were courting. Unfortunately once we got married, she gave it up and took up No Fuw King

The one Steven Seagal does, Aikido with the Aikikai style

Boxing. simply the most exhausting activity I have ever done. It also give yiu a different respect for even the worst professional. after two minutes I could bearly stand and in the 2nd round I was willing my opponent to deck me as that would be less painfull than the grief my legs, arms and lungs were giving me!

Instead of Rugby have you considered Hockey. Great way to get that fix of running that will keep osterparosis at bay

I agree with nearly everything already said. Karate gets better the longr you do it.

Bockers, know what you are saying. Didn't realise how fit I was when I was a boxer. Had to retire through injury. Decided to get fit again many years after stopping. After less than a minute of sparing my lungs were bursting. Going back to it again when my 2 year old is old enough. He is big and strong for his age and will teach him respect. He is a little bugger. My mother laughs and says it is revenge on how I was for her.

I did consider boxing - my brother does a fair bit and have sparred with him so know the incredible all-round fitness required. However I'm after a bit more contact.

Re. hockey - my mates wouldn't let me live it down




Krav maga it is!

Do boxing and keep your guard down. You will get plenty of contact

Don't knock it so quickly. Remember there is also mixed hockey, the changing rooms are very interesting

In 10yrs or Rugby I was concussed once and had 36 stitches to re-attach an ear.

8yrs of Hockey = 3 broken ribs, broken foot, brocken hand twice, cracked cheak bone and a thumb that exploded all its fat and flesh through a 3mm cut

Game for girls?

Ninja Ping Pong

Some of them girls are more like a bloke than a lot of blokes though

Hockey is an evil game played by psychos whose only aim is to prove that despite being physically less cumbersome, they are harder, nastier and more insane than rugby players. Maybe it's just me, but isn't there a clue in the fact that the ball is made of rock and they are all ARMED WITH STICKS?

What about hurling, hockey played at head height

Good point, well made.

Jeez i'd forgotten about Hurling - as a boy i used to watch the mad Irishmen playing it in the local park and stand amazed at the injuries sustained that never even paused play, let alone stop it. Absolute nutters and hard as rock

It's not about the style of karate , it's about the way it is taught. Shotokan probably has the largest amount of students worldwide of any karate style but this very fact means that there are a lot of different associations and ways of teaching Shotokan and from direct personal experience quite a few of the people teaching it around the country are crap and don't understand the style.

I was a Shotokan instructor before "old age", marriage and kids put paid to my free time and in my particular association we learned and taught a hard style, no nonsense Japanese martial art. It was'nt about competition although we did a lot of competition fighting, it was about learning how to fight in the real world. To that end my Shotokan training taught not only punch, strike and kick techniques, but throws, locks and grappling together with weapon use.

Traditional Japanese martial arts are about being able to fight for your life at the drop of a hat using whatever was available to you and making sure that your body and mind were trained and attuned to allow you to do so.

I have seen far too many guys turning up and thinking that after a few weeks they will be Bruce Lee but not having the self discipline to actually put the hours in to learn and train and then they go away saying things like "dont bother with karate its like learning dance moves and putting them all together in the kata" and not understanding at all what kata are or why they exist. They probably don't understand what libraries are either.

The main thing I always told people looking for a martial art was to ask themselves exactly why they wanted to do it , ie, to fight or to be fit, and then to try various different types and styles within that area to find one that "fit" their outlook and body type.

We also used to have quite a few Israelis come over to train with our Japanese instructors - where do you think they farmed the unarmed parts of Krav Maga from? Answer , traditional martial arts styles.

Still playing at 56!! Made some lifelong friends as well

Yes i think i'd agree with that - i went to 2 Shotokan dojos in Birmingham, the Temple and Suzuki. Both were highly rigid in their approach to both the training and the way you were treated and expected to behave in the dojo. At Suzuki particularly (4th dan i think back then) you were NEVER allowed to speak, were made to sit and meditate for ages and out of your lesson time you'd probably spend at most 50% actually learning anything.

Shukokai was more relaxed and the Sensie Eddie Daniels (7th Dan then) spent much more time on practical skills, things that would work in the street. There were people who wanted the ultra traditional styles and fair play to them, but most of us wanted a dynamic teaching style leading to plenty of action and success in belts and competition. In case it appears Eddie operated a sloppy dojo, nothing could be further from the truth and in fact whilst i was training there one of his students was the World Full Contact heavyweight champion. It was fun on the bags when he was training with us, bodies flying everywhere but hugely enjoyable. Norman Mckenzie, hmmmm, great fighter. And yet, Eddie insisted the first and best form of defence was to leg it and avoid confrontation. Any indiscipline he heard of and your license was revoked, no appeal!

What? No mention of Capoiera? For shame, senhors...

Brazilian Ju-Jitsu if you want the best. Everything else is second best in terms of self defence. Just look at any of the best mixed martial artists, 90% of them come from a BJJ background.

And still the number one sport in Ireland. Great game of fitness and err skill !

I did Aikido for a few years, lots of fun and zero kicking. Genuinely fascinating martial art.

Judo.

Potential to earn belts, no kicking/punching, more sedate than Karate, but equally as effective.

Used to do it when I was younger, got up to a brown belt - highest you could get before you were 18 and could get a black one.

Highly recommended.

No one's mentioned Wing Chun?

It's one of the most effective martial arts out there and one of the quickest to learn.

It does look a little messy but it can be lethal.

2nd for wing chun. Very easy on the joints, and the kicking doesn't get much higher than the knees. Friend teaches a slightly modified version to the SBS because the premisis is to take down your opponant asap with no messing about. Therefore uses a lot of eye gouging, groin strikies, arm breaking etc. It's a pretty nasty discipline if you want it to be. And it involves a lot of body mechanics where doing things like making simple shapes with your arms gives you incredible strength, and can result in a much smaller person taking down a much larger stronger one. Also where the 1 inch punch came from. After 6 months I was breaking through boards of wood with no more than 1 inch of back lift. One small girl who's black sash can break through 2 of them! Quite amazing to watch. The more advanced people can break pieces of wood hanging from strings. Having a powerful punch would not help in that situation, it's all about technique.

Watch the movie Ip Man. It's very very good. He was the chap who bought wing chun to the masses. He was also Bruce Lee's first teacher (wing chun was Bruce Lee's main style which he modified to create his own jeet June do style)

... breaking wood is of course incredibly easy and requires no training whatsoever , it's all in the grain!

Yeah, very true. Does get a bit tricky when a small bit is hanging from a piece of string or you're only allowed 1 inch of back lift though.

That's brilliant! I was going to ask for some tips on the best practical self-defence discipline when attacked by an immobile small bit of wood dangling on a string in a confined space, no need for a separate thread now.

It may just be me, but it seems to happens suprisingly often.

I would disagree whilst bjj is very important in mma the best guys tend to be black belts in it but use it as defence rather than there main attribute look at anderson silva who is mu ti. GSP all round expert wrestler.

Guys that focus on the bjj like bj penn as talented as he is he would benefit from a stronger striking role.

The only one guy who has evolved karate into the mma scene is macheda which seem to make him harder to hit from the karate stance.

Bjj is a must but not the best it is the second best or more of a base art in my opinion.

I'd tend to agree with that, hence my recommendation for mma in all it's aspects - which includes striking, grappling and defensive techniques

That sums up the self-defense argument for me

I was thinking about getting back to kickboxing after two years off fixing my knee but I don't think it'll stand up to it in the end. I was going to go for UsainBoltokan but after the posts above and a bit of research, Krav Maga it is. Looks like it'll tie up well with the kickboxing skills I've already learnt

For anyone thinking of a martial art from the purely self defence aspect , I would never suggest an art that depends ( although you should always know how to do this if and when the need arises ) upon allowing close contact between you and the attacker or deliberately going to ground and I'm afraid judo, BJJ and jujitsu all share those problems.

First off, judo is a sport and not a martial art so engrains rules from the start and when the brown stuff really hits the fan, there are no rules.

Secondly, rolling about on the ground is never a good idea in a real fight. The ground is hard and often covered in broken glass when fights start.

Thirdly, and probably most importantly, it is rare nowadays for a violent incident to involve only one aggressor and whilst you are demonstrating your best strangles and locks on the tarmac, the bad guys mates are stamping on your head and hitting you with bins.

Thirdly, and probably most importantly, it is rare nowadays for a violent incident to involve only one aggressor and whilst you are demonstrating your best strangles and locks on the tarmac, the bad guys mates are stamping on your head and hitting you with bins. [/quote]


This^^^^ If my mrs hadn't got stuck in i would have ended up in hospital at best.

Which is why wing chun is very good for self defence. It's not a competition style so no rules, and 2 (or 3) on 1 attacks are practiced most lessons to get you familiar with being attacked by more than one person. Like you say, head locks/holds etc are seen as a waste of time in street fighting because it keeps you tied up.

I agree again, mostly - hence my oft stated opinion that a ROUNDED set of skills across several disciplines id ideal. Maybe its just round here that some fights seem to end up with drunks rolling about scrapping after trying and failing to land any meaningful blows, but only 8 days ago i witnessed two in burton!!!! The ability of a good BJJ artist to snap and disable limbs in seconds is a very useful skill in those circumstances and i'd never hesitate to use it should the occasion arise

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-truth-about-violence/

Very interesting read Barnacle.

Yes Neil, excellent article thanks

Bear in mind that I have little experience in that sort of violence. I've been in some hairy places, but not the bits of the USA where this sort of thing is thought to be common. But he seems to speak sense...

Rule one of unarmed combat: be somewhere else when it's happening.

if you don't want all the fancy Karate / kung-fu kicking & punching etc & want a true self defence martial art, try Ju-jutsu (the art from where Judo was formed) I trained this for 14 years & it's a great range of techniques

a true self-defence martial art, escaping from an attacker using throws, strikes locks, trips, atemi (nerve point) strikes etc also weapon kata's & most dojo's run full belt grading system

Alot of ground-work though, But no 'competition/sparring' etc as its a martial art & not a sport. although we had to do non-stop attack for a set length of time in our gradings! - which were very hard, the belts were not 'given' to us like you see In a lot of modern fancy clubs

I might be a bit late on this one....

but i can definately recommend, Keysi (ive been doing it for 12 months now)

It tends to concentrate on close quatered combat, realistic scenarios (multiple opponent observation, night club scenarios are fun ), body control/manipulation/disabling (standing and ground work) and what some might consider 'dirty tactics'.

It descrete and brutal in the right hands, there are only a handful of clubs in the UK that teach it.

It fairly new in terms of martial arts (ie not had hundreds of years tradition) and is constantly evolving. It does not use Katas, and can be very 'freestlye'.

There is a grading system, ie white through black

It also features in the latest batman films, batman begins, dark night and the upcoming dark night rises (although slightly over emphasised movements) if you want some examples

Just to elaberate - after reading through barnacles link, this sentence;

"attack explosively for the purposes of escape......Your goal is to get away with minimum trauma (to you), while harming your attacker in any way that seems necessary to ensure your escape."

I think sums up what ive learnt so far quite well

Ninja

You lot have got it all wrong..

The only martial art to learn is hoovering. Master that and the world is your lobster

krav maga. My housemate is an instructor and it trains REAL situations where there are no rules and multiple attackers. very effective!