To Enworld martial artists: Hung Gar vs Muay Thai vs BJJ.....

[Drakmar]

get him to do the Kung Fu...

then he can say..

Whoa... I know Kung Fu!!!

Personal.. all the good advice has been said. But for me.. the real decider would be, do I have a friend I can train with? That makes things easier.. someone to talk with it about.. extra training on those days you are feeling realling pumped..etc.

 

[LGodamus]

I agree with takyris one one of his two major points...Mostly that people fool themselves on what they want...they say they want self defense or combat effectiveness but what they really want is what they see in van damme movies .
On the part about spreading yourself between two arts I believe Tak is partly right ,but if you take an art like taekwon do and then add something like chin na or or any combination of forms you are screwing yourself...If your art is a stand up fighting art and you just supplement that with a grappling art or vice versa you are not doing yourself anygood. The two were not designed to go hand in hand and will not mesh well. You should dedicate yourself to the art and the teacher that fit you and stick with it. For example : You are a kicking style fighter and you try to learn to wrestle by training in that also......you have taken away time you could have devoted to your original art to become a mediocre grappler. Now you arent as good at your original art as you could have been and are not good enough as a grappler to be another grappler if it comes down to it...in short you have wasted your time. Now if you had stuck with your original art you could have had your teacher point out your first styles grappling weakness and how to avoid playing into them........

 

[Number47]

aikido

Aikido

AIKIDO!

Seriously, aikido is great if you want to defend yourself without necessarily injuring the other guy. Lots of police take it.

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

A teacher can make or break a style--I agree 100% I studied Isshinryu Karate for 5 years and loved it. Practical, a decent workout, and the sensei and other instructors all had good advice to give on self-defense etc. The class was also very balanced--a bit of sparring, some drills, some kata, some fun stuff, some self-defense.

 

[Kail]

I won't bother restating most of what has been said by people above, but I will add just a bit more to the discusion. With your friends size, MT has some definate advantages in applying his reach and, by his weight once in good shape, power. MT also has a very "hands on" approach to training, you train it like you would use it. This is a real advantage if your friend is looking for a slef-defense type art. While traditional arts work great in real confrontations, the level of dedication and training to really understand and apply those arts is very high, and something not too many people are willing to put into their training.

If your friend is looking to compete BJJ is what he should look into. The entry cost is low for gear, the copetition levels are variable by desire of the competitor and the areas with copetitions are spreading constantly it seems like. The style offers solid ground work with a varity of technique. Yes, early BJJ success in UFCs was over blow. In a tournament organized by the Gracie family, with a rules set they were already used to competing under, the results were as they should have been. Lately the family has taken some loses because the level of competitor they face is higher than it was in the early UFC days.

If 90% of fights end up on the ground it is only because 90%+ of people in fights don't know how to fight. And, throwing in my rather worthless{research wise} personal experience, all but one of the fights I've seen have staid up and doen damage. Going to the ground, close grappling is the reaction of many people because they think its safer, harder to get punched/hurt in a grapple. My pointless point for the day.

The Hung Gar I would recomend if your friend is looking into a long term style. It will be something that, because of its depth, he can train in for a life time and not get to a point where all he has left are a few competitors skills and an old man's body. Plus if you train in the same style, you can push and inspire each other, pull each other through the low points where you really don't feel like training etc. Of course, if he trains in a different style, you can share what you learn and broaden the knowledge base you are working from.

Always enjoy what your doing, support each other and train hard for the right reasons.

Kail

 

[kengar]

Wow. It's nice to have my advice about the instructor so soundly validated.

I'll toss one other piece of advice in one a different note. Read (and have your friend read) "Living the Martial Way" by Forrest Morgan. Probably the best book on martial arts training I've read. Not particular to any style, but an incredible amount of practical training ideas and attitude/motivation for anyone who wants to go beyond "Supermarket" karate/kungfu/etc.

 

[olethros]

Lineage

Another corollary to the find a good instructor portion. Ask about lineage. Find out who the instructor's instructor was. If it's Hung Gar, find out who brought it over from China. If it's BJJ, find out who brought it from Brasil. Make sure the instructor studied the art for a whiole under someone authentic.

Also, I've been told that any KungFu school worth it's salt should have at least 18 weapons that they teach. This goes back to the fact that there are supposidly 18 core weapons of kung fu (I have no idea what they are but I suspect staff, speak, broadsword, and straight sword are in there) There are obviously exceptions to this rule, Wing Chun I think has fewer weapons.

 

[Leopold]

This probably isn't the kind of answer you're after, but when I started training in the martial arts years ago this was the advice I was given:

"Choose a teacher not a style."

It was some of the best advice I've ever received on any topic.

A good teacher makes all the difference. They can also tell your friend whether their classes will focus on the kinds of things he's interested in. He sounds physically fit enough to begin any of them. His personality and how well he "clicks" with a teacher and/or school will matter more.

i concur completely...you know the style you like go find a school and listen and watch the teacher. A good teacher instructs and talks more than acts and will show you were you go wrong. You don't want a cocky arrogant teacher to pound on you day and night and not give you thought and reason behind everything. mind over body, go and find a good teacher and then startl learning..

 

[Darius101]

To martial art or not to martial art

I have been a martial artist for about 20+yrs and I must say that
#1 Picking the correct teacher is essential to success in your art.
It is not the end all be all for getting in the door to the closed door schools however. That requires skill and a good teacher.

#2 No martial art no matter what it is.....will help you in a street fight unless you yourself train to fight to the point that it is reflexive and reactive not just Dojo style going through the motions for competition. Cometition is different than real life.

#3 Muay Tai is more of a sport - kinda like boxing or kick boxing. To me it was somewhat limiting in scope and that may have been my teachers fault for that I cannot say.
About the groundfighting thing- the reason most fights end up on the ground is that many Americans grab and try to take you down to wrestle with you. My experience has been to not let it get to that point. None of my streetfights have ever gotten to the point where we were on the ground fighting. Part of this may also be because of my training.

Ok out of the three martial art listed and asked about I would pick Gracie Ju-jitsu as the best for self defense here in America with Hung Gar a close second. I have met a number of people who teach that are not very trustworthy at all. One of the best elements you can look at is the lineage of the art that your teacher is teaching you. Where did he learn? who was his teacher? And did he merely learn from seminars or actually live with his teacher for a time?
As far as the best martial art goes there is no martial art that is better or worse than any other it is the skill of the practioners that determines the level you can attain in the said martial art. To a much larger extent your atitude will determine what your teacher will teach you and how far you can go.

Both of my teachers were 30+year practioners of the art.
Both said not to limit yourself to one single style. You should never put limits on yourself no matter what you do.
Both were Asian.
Both were masters in their respective arts and one really didn't want to teach but we talked him into it as a friend.
Most martial arts places are in it for the money not for the art, I wanted to learn the art and it took me about 1-2years of watching artists before I picked my teachers. I thouroughly checked out their credentials.

Remember that most if not all martial arts today have their roots in the shaolin temple. Many of the grappling arts such as Hung gar and Juijitsu have the common root of Chin-na. Wing Chun was created to combat this art and those like it. Aikido is a derivitive (but different form of) Aikijitsu. Aikido is the soft side of it. Aikijitsu is what the samurai practiced for many years and Juijitsu became judo when Kano began that art in the late 19th century. I am not giving you a history lesson just pointing out that Martial arts are not all that different, they all came from the same tree at some point.
There are a pletheroa of books I could tell you to read on these subjects but some of the best are:
**Autum Lightening By Dave Lowery
Perssimon Wind By Dave lowery
**Akido in America By various Authors
The Way of the Warrior by Howard Reed
The Tao of Tai-Chi Chuan by Jou, Tsung Hwa.
**Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere by A. Westbrook and O. Ratti
Also if you can find some of the works of Don Drager those are a great read and history lesson on the worlds martial arts.

I would list what martial arts I took but that is unimportant to this disussion. My first blackbelt was obtained in 1991. All a blackbelt means is that you have mastered the foundations and are now ready to learn your art. Chinese arts do not have belts you just learn them. Belts are a big part of American martial arts though.
Enjoy,
Darius

 

[Darius101]

Also, I've been told that any KungFu school worth it's salt should have at least 18 weapons that they teach. This goes back to the fact that there are supposidly 18 core weapons of kung fu (I have no idea what they are but I suspect staff, speak, broadsword, and straight sword are in there) There are obviously exceptions to this rule, Wing Chun I think has fewer weapons.

Wing Chun has these weapons:
"Bot" Jam Doh
Long Pole - Taught to Leung Yee Tai and Wong Wa Boh and is essentailly the Shaolin long pole techniques. it si actually called the "Look Deem Boon" (6 and a half point pole)

Yes the Shaolin teach 18weapons and 74 styles to their practicioners at the temple. They teach a wider variety than just 18, but the core learning is 18 weapons and 74 martial art styles. Why do you think they start so young? You have been watching too much Kung Fu the T.V. Series with David Carradine. They opened their doors to Americans for a short period of time in the late 1980's and early 1990's. I was asked to go train with them but due to family obligations and my wife I was unable to trian with them. They Are coming to U.S.A. for demonstrations in the next few months if you would like to go watch them. They will be in Cleveland, Ohio in February.
Chinese arts have over 2000 documented styles of martial arts and of these not all have weapons. So to make a statement that any Chinese school worth it's salt will teach weapon training is an insult based on ignorance. Any chinese arts intructor will know his lineage and will refer to it as a family.
Example being:
I have trained in Wingchun and was taught by ------- whose teacher was Yip Man and I am a second generation practioner from Yip Man the last grandfather before Yip Chun his son.

Grandfather and Grandmaster are interchangeable at times at least with my teacher it was.
Poison Hands is always a fun thing to learn along with Dim-Mak both of which teachings were hidden in other arts for many many years. Some people did not even know they were being taught these facinating arts.
Enjoy,
Darius