Do you study martial arts?

[Magic Rub]

This is why "Which style is better" arguments are so facile. What matters is the teacher, not the style.

Very true!

I am by nature very (VERY!) passive. The fact that I'm in a Martial art at all is (or was) a mind boggle to my friends & family. The reason I started taking martial arts was to stay in shape (didn't want my desk job getting me fat!). I tried looking at the more spiritual/passive arts first, & then almost everything. I looked at Tai Chi, Kung-fu, Kendo, & tried out Aikido for about 6 months (4 classes a week) but nothing really grabbed me, & I pretty much gave up. Till a guy I knew insisted that I come down & train in (ITF) Taekwon Do. He was, at the time, a 3rd degree black belt (now 4th), & had a small club. He'd bugged me to come down for about a year before I snapped a told him yes. I didn't think I'd like it, it seemed far to KILL KILL KILL aggressive (Jock-ish), & I wasn't sure that He would be a good instructor. In fact I thought he'd suck. I was so very wrong, after the first class I was hooked, & it wasn't so much the art, but this mans instruction & character as such. I'm sure that I wouldn't be involved in Martial arts currently if it wasn't for his initial persistence & further teaching (other then watching movies ). Thanks to him, I now love the art, & have attained my first degree black belt. I'm a pacifist hippy/death machine . The ITF style serves me well, & I enjoy my time spent practicing it. Sure someone else in some other style may be able to kick my ass but that's not the point now is it

 

[ranix65]

OK, I've got a really stupid story for ya. Me and a few of my friends were cruising through a town(not sure which one exactly, I was half asleep with my girlfriend curled up against my chest sitting in the back seat of a dodge dynasty, but somebody said it was Bayonne, NJ) in our home state of New Jersey when the Dynasty broke down. We all got out and, seeing no real stores that we would actually risk going into, walked into a karate school(not dojo, this place ate so bad that I won't even refer to it as a dojo) that we found, asking for a phone.
T
he one assistant instructor got nasty with us when we tried to get her attentions, so after saying such lovely comments as "shoto-scrubs" and "Tiger Schullman B*tches", we finally went to a pay phone across the street and called a tow truck.

My girlfriend left her purse inside the karate school, so me and my buddy Rick went back in(Rick, Sumo Whitey, about 375 pounds of pure white Christian goodness, and a real student of Sumotori, something not usually seen around here) to get it, and found the assistant high instructor with a student pointing a bow and arrow at her face. Apparently, she was teaching the students how to deflect that all to common assault weapon used by gangs in Jersey, the bow and arrow.

Well, to make a long story short, when she went to deflect the arrow bare-handed, she, um well, MISSED. IT nailed her in the eye and stuck there. So following the prescribed first-aid method, she and the student who shot it pulled at it, wrenching both arrow and eye from the socket. Me and Rick just walked out in disgust at this display of idiocy. Let em call the EMTs themselves.

We saw it in the paper the next day. It said that the instructor was "giving a demonstration on how to defend against common urban weapons." Yeah, right. What a bunch of morons.

 

[barsoomcore]

Being able to stare at someone with the confidence of knowing you could spray them across the wall if necessary, and then telling them that this is silly and that there's no need to fight about it, is a whole lot more of what martial arts is about than going into a stupid fight you could have avoided, coming out with bruised knuckles, and thinking you're a badass.

I got into one fight just after I started Aikido. I showed up for training with some cuts and bruises and Skoyles Sensei asked me, "Did you hurt anyone?"

"No." Okay, I got whipped good. But there were two of them. Two are hard.

"Good. Next time, don't get yourself hurt, either."

It's been a long time and I know a lot more than I did then. I still don't want to hurt anyone.

How about doing this with a format?

Unfortunately your format doesn't really work for KSR. But here goes:

TENSHIN SHODEN KATORI SHINTO RYU -- SUGINO DOJO

FOCUS: SAMURAI BATTLEFIELD TRAINING
Not much "use" for self-defense, but like Skoyles Sensei told me on my first day, if I ever meet a 16th-century samurai he's going to get the shock of his life! Heh.
We start with the katana, practicing long paired kata, moving on to bo, naginata, yari, short sword, throwing spikes, and at very high levels they teach empty hand fighting and grappling -- all designed to work while wearing armour.
Iaijutsu is another part of what we do -- the art of drawing the sword in such a fashion as to make an attack part of the draw. It's a meditative practice in a sense, though we're jumping about with lots of energy. It also provides practice with a real sword rather than a bokken, which is important for learning to respect your own weaponry. No cutting your thumb off putting your katana away!

RANGE: ALL
One of the things we specifically train for is distance and manipulating it for advantage. Choking up on hafted weapons is common, as is reaching out with a katana one-handed in order to force the opponent to withdraw his wrist.

STYLE: PRAGMATIC
Very much focused on using samurai weapons to defeat samurai. We cut for specific points because the armour is vulnerable there (underside of the wrist, just above the hip and so on).
Not so much useful for self-defense these days, true, but the focus is definitely on battlefield application rather than what looks best or provides the best workout. Or at least that's what they say. I mean, who really knows anymore? There were a number of folks who actually owned armour and went out and performed the kata in full kit, and it looked like the moves made sense, but there's just no way to prove it short of actually trying to kill each other. Which is frowned on.

Oh, and one last thing: What bugs me worse than anything else about some martial artists is the idea of how Master X studied Karate, Aikido, Jujitsu, Savate, and Kung Fu, and created a new martial art that uses the strengths of all the styles -- and Master X is 30.

Really? Why on earth would that bug you? Is there something about shameless dorks preying on those who don't know any better that you find offensive? Hey, me too!

 

[ranix65]

(Please note: I'm trying not to load this one. I consider TKD to be very graceful and athletic and extremely cool-looking, for example, but the jumping kick was designed to work against opponents on horseback, and there aren't a ton of muggers on horseback these days. And it varies from school to school -- some TKD schools can be very pragmatic, but most are more into having a good workout and doing cool acrobatic stuff that is more into art and less into practical application, or into getting set for the next tournament -- none of which are bad things.)

Oh, and one last thing: What bugs me worse than anything else about some martial artists is the idea of how Master X studied Karate, Aikido, Jujitsu, Savate, and Kung Fu, and created a new martial art that uses the strengths of all the styles -- and Master X is 30. I completely agree with everyone who talks about one year of martial arts being good to get you into trouble. And practicing ten martial arts for 1-2 years each is like trying to string the first two chapters of ten different novels together to get a complete story. The best thing that anyone can do is study one martial art consistently and then augment it with a complementary style on the side. Do ten years of karate and three years of aikido, or ten years of jujitsu and three years of escrima. Think of it like multiclassing.

-Tacky

Well as for the Jumping Kick, all I can say is: Motorcycle. Maybe it's just really weird coincidence(in fact I'm sure it is) but me and Rick were having this conversation the other day after we left a bar around the corner from my apartment and a bunch of guys on motorcycles tried to start in on Rick's weight(at 375 pounds, Rick practices Sumo, I would have loved to have seen him break one of those guys, they're jerks), and so when we hit my apartment, we were having a conversation about how we would take on somebody on a motorcycle. Rick could probably just plant both feet and grab them right off the bike(they ride rice-burning street bikes), but we agreed that the best option for me would probably be a Jump Kick.

As for the "completely new style" deal, yeah I agree that I hate that. I've seen some guy putting up ads at my college for his "Brazilian Kickboxing" bull, we found out what it is, it's "a fusion of traditional Muay Thai with Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jutsu, to create an unbeatable martial arts style" boy do I ever feel like showing up and teaching him what's up with real "traditional Muay Thai", I've seen this kid, he's like 25(shouldn't call him kid I'm only 21 but oh well ) there's no friggin way he coulda "mastered" Muay Thai AND BJJ(I've heard him around campus claiming that he a "master" of both styles, it's like, uh huh, sure, I'm 21 and been doing Muay Thai since I was like 14, I don't claim to come near having mastered it, let alone 2 completely different styles!).

 

[Magic Rub]

(Please note: I'm trying not to load this one. I consider TKD to be very graceful and athletic and extremely cool-looking, for example, but the jumping kick was designed to work against opponents on horseback, and there aren't a ton of muggers on horseback these days. And it varies from school to school -- some TKD schools can be very pragmatic, but most are more into having a good workout and doing cool acrobatic stuff that is more into art and less into practical application, or into getting set for the next tournament -- none of which are bad things.)

Remember that TaeKwon Do, not unlike most other martial arts, has many Sub-classes.

- World Taekwondo Federation (is a Martial/Olympic sport, the most well known, & the most practiced form)

- International TaeKwon Do Federation (is a Martial art, 2nd most practiced form, & different from WTF)

- TaeKwon Do (XXXXXX) (Independent masters & practitioners with varying styles all over the map)

- Tie Kyon (Traditional Korean foot fighting, one of the "parent" styles for TKD)

You would probably be most familiar with, & would be referencing to WTF. The jumping techniques (though yes originally intended for horsemen ) in ITF, the style I practice, are quite an asset in the range, deception, & power aspects of sparring. Depending on the jumping kick you're referring to of course, they have served me quite well against "Unmounted" opponents lol.

 

[takyris]

Yeah, that was one of those "Say and then backpedal" things. Hadn't thought of using them against a motorcycle. I'd probably still just step to the side myself, but then, I only do jump kicks every once in awhile as a fitness requirement thing, whereas you guys do them a bit more often and might have better application.

You're definitely right in that there are different styles, and I haven't seen many of them. What's also true is that TKD is hugely popular, and when you have a ton of schools for any one style, you're gonna have some bad schools. It happened with TKD, it happened with Ninjitsu -- to some extent, it's happening with my art, too.

But in terms of pragmatic versus artistic versus sport, is it true that TKD is more sport-oriented? I have seen some very good, very disciplined schools that teach people not to throw punches at the head, because that's not tournament-legal. How much time is spent in sport-oriented training compared to "kick the groin, gouge the eyes" training? Again, I mean no offense. The "history" of TKD that I had heard was that it was a sport derivation of Tang Soo Do, much like Judo is Jujitsu minus the stuff that's hard to do in tournaments. I could be completely and totally full of it on this, however.

-Tacky

 

[Magic Rub]

My style: ITF - International TaeKwon Do Federation

FOCUS: Kick, Punch, misc. jumping & spinning techniques (a minor amount of grappling is also involved in this style)
Initially keep opponents at range & take em down as fast & effectively as possible. At med & short range it's the same deal, pick the best weapon you have, do the most damage you can, & do it as quickly & effectively as possible so you can go home & relax. Any part of the body is fair game in a true combat situation, however during sparring in class we're allot nicer to each other (we tend not to beat on all Vital spots ). It's very reactive fighting, opponent does X, then you avoid & react with the most effective counter. Fighting is like playing chess, use every advantage you have especially your mind, deception is a wounderfull thing

RANGE: All
As above, initially keep opponents at range, so you can hit them but they can't hit you. Speed, max damage, & deception is what your going for at all ranges.

STYLE: Pragmatic & Artistic
This is definitely based on individual opinion. Our patterns (Tuls) & parts of our theory are definitely Artistic. I've seen some beautifully choreographed fights, & amazing breaking demo's. But at it's core, & when I've seen it used in "reality", it is a devastating tool for self-defence.

 

[Wolfen Priest]

Not to try to jump onto the "I'm really tough as well" bandwagon, but I studied "American" Karate for about 2 years when I was in high school; I was pretty good. I got my red belt and have 3 trophies all from the same tournament. I've attended a few Aikido sessions at my local University (this was also years ago).

What made me lose interest was when I saw two huge seniors at my high-school get into an utterly blood-spattering, brutal fight. I literally had blood spattered on me from just watching it. At the end, both guys' faces were covered in huge purple, puffy welts, and both of their mouths' were crimson with blood. I gave up martial arts then and there, seeing it as an interesting pursuit to an idiotic end. Fighting is for morons.

On a more positive note, once during a sparring match me and another guy sort of got 'into it.' It ended amiably, however, and I joined his D&D group! That was probably one of the best D&D groups I've ever been in.

 

[barsoomcore]

Fighting is for morons.

Agreed. There are any number of martial arts, however, that are studied for reasons other than learning how to fight.

And even learning how to fight is a very different thing from WANTING to fight.

 

[Don21584]

I took two years of Tae Kwon Do. After awhile, I wasn't able to make it there because of what time it was and when I got out of school. It seemed just like a big ploy for money anyway.