I begun judo a few weeks ago. The teacher was clear: it may not be useful in actual fight, but we don’t fight often in the real life. But it’s great for your body, spirit and it will teach you how to fall without hurting yourself. And these things are way more useful than self defense.

Not like against a bear, mountain lion, or gorilla no

MMA has an interesting trajectory where people actually didn’t know which style would win at first. Dudes in gis would actually fight some dude in kickboxing gear. Look up some old MMA fights and you’ll see the fights were usually awkward and bad.

Someone else called out in this thread that the rules of MMA influence what wins. I think that makes sense. They can’t just immediately kick each other in the balls.

I say join a gym and try out a few fights just so you know what it feels like to get punched in the face, and then do like everyone else says and get good at cardio. If you have asthma carry concealed I guess.

Getting to black sash in northern Shaolin is a personal challenge. It’s great excercise, good community, gets me out of the house.

6 years in and 2 forms away from black. I’m almost there

Fighting seems cool in movies.

In real life, it’s police, lawyers and prison.

There are few stupider life choices one could make other than fighting in public.

no, if you want to hurt someone, a gun is better. If you don’t want to hurt anyone, running away is better.

If you want something that could actually be useful in real-life situations, pick up running.

My two cents having practiced several.

Almost all of them are useful in that they are a form of physical activity. They can keep you in good shape, and can also help you develop discipline.

Many are more art than practical. Arts like krav maga or kali are more geared towards practical use (self defense).

There is also a thing you can generally think of as “energy” that arts may have that often trend to make them not very practical against arts outside of themselves. For example, if a wing chun practitioner attempts to trap with you, and you’re a boxer, it just doesn’t work. It’s somewhat about range, but also the general “feel” of the art as well. JKD attempts to deal with this by teaching different arts that can be used within different ranges.

My one instructor also likened martial arts to technology, saying that they must evolve over time or just end up becoming ineffective for self defense.

The best thing to do in a situation, if you can, is to just escape. Your wallet is not worth your life.

all of the “real” Martial arts from back before guns were about using weapons. those aren’t really practiced as much anymore because they’re all useless in the face of firearms anyway. why spend years training with a knife when the same time could be spent training with a gun. if combat effectiveness is your goal then you need to learn modern combat techniques.

that said, there’s plenty to be learned from it, and it’s not like it can’t help you in a fight. but as another commenter said, the real way to win every fight is by avoiding them. so really the best thing to learn is de-escalation and recognizing danger.

It’s pretty useful for looking cool.

I feel like I read somewhere that if you can’t run away the best thing to do if in arms’ reach is run into them as fast as possible. Fuck trying to hit anyone in the jaw with a punch, just run into them, knock them over and keep running. Third best thing (eg they have a knife) is to continually evade without even trying to retaliate as it’s a lot easier to keep dodging out the way than it is to attack and they’ll tire quicker.

I’m not certain, given your use case. As someone with a deep passion for martial arts (judo > Jiu Jitsu > Aikido > Tai Chi), I would say while they can be useful in certain situations (even tai chi chuan, which is certainly the most inner one). Self defense classes with actual teaching about fighting a guy with a knife/gun would be more suited, maybe.

useful for what? when I was doing martial arts I was in the best shape of my life. as far as fighting? Fuck no.

The board breaking is just a small grift to increase your confidence. When you start out the person holding the board does most of the work to break the board. It’s several belts before the board start getting thick enough to put up a fight. All those boards are cut across the grain leaving short fibers that are able to snap.

You are training to dodge and block, Even redirect your opponent and use their actions against them. That’s not nothing. A lot of places will tack on a little disarmament and self-defense or run a class with that is the primary goal, But honestly you don’t want to use martial arts to try to take on someone with a gun or a knife unless it is absolutely necessary because there’s a high chance you’re going to get got.

Combat training is extremely useful, even play combat training, It puts you in a situation and has you react a certain way taking out some of the uncertainty and worry out of the situation. You start planning instead of reacting. But for the most part if somebody is threatening you with a gun or a knife you’re better off not trying to take it off of them and beat them up.

Yes, but not for what you may think. Ritualized shouting and flailing is cathartic and great cardio. And when you’re doing it in a regular group, you don’t look as dorky (see: Line Dancing) and peer pressure will influence you to stick with it – and that’s the biggest failure mode of any workout plan.

Also, stretching is neat. Sometimes there’s meditation. Always there’s making noise and angry faces.

Somewhere, in there, you may learn two things: how to dodge something coming at you; and that you should always try to flee if you can, flee if you almost can, or negatively reinforce the person hurting you until they stop and then you can flee. The cardio helps with the fleeing.

And I can’t under-state the utility in fleeing. I’ve done the hi-ya, twirled a stick, played shooty-pow-pow and rat-a-tat; and, still, fleeing is the option with the best outcome.