When someone who has never trained in martial arts before makes the decision to do so the first thing they ask is “which martial art is the best”. That’s a fair enough question. Obviously no one wants to be doing something that is a waste of time and not practical. The true answer to that question is that there is no martial art which is the best. But there is a martial art which is best for YOU.
To find the right martial art for you, you need to ask yourself a few questions. Firstly, what type of martial art catches your eye. Do you like the flashy kicks of teakwondo, the dynamic throws of judo, hitting the bags in a Mauy Thai class or maybe the rough and tumble of submission wrestling. You need to know, because you’re never going to excel in a martial art if you find it boring. You’ve got to want to go training, not go just because you’ve paid your annual fee at the start and you don’t want to lose out. Secondly, you need to be realistic about yourself when choosing a martial art. A small guy weighing 150 pounds with very little strength may go to a sumo class a few times and find that he is getting belly flopped all over the place where a big 250 pound hulk may find he/she is doing well in that martial art. On the other hand, both guys may go to a kung fu school, and because of his/her quickness and mobility, the smaller guy may love it and the big guy may find it hard to move as fast as the others. You need to look at what God gave you physically, and match a martial art to what you are suited to. Lastly, you have to be opened minded. To find the best martial art for yourself, which should lead to the best way of fighting (for sport or street) for yourself you need to understand that each martial art has something to offer. No matter what anyone says about some martial arts being practical and others not, you will always find something that other martial artists do differently and you may be able to include this in your personal repertoire to achieve better results. There will always be those also who stick to what they know as being “the be all and end all”. Some martial art teachers claim that all they learn in there own gym or school is all that is needed, but that is far from correct. Start out with one martial art, train in that for a while, then go and cross train to gain further knowledge. These are some points that should be reflected upon when trying to establish the best martial art to take up. It all depends on the person, there is no one martial art that stands out above the rest, and there never will be.
Marks
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Which Martial Art is the Best to Learn
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Judo,
martial arts,
mauy thai,
submission wrestling,
teakwondo
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3 comments:
I agree that there is no martial art which is the best. My instructor would say that there are two types of karate - good karate and bad karate. The difference is that good karate works and bad karate doesn't. There is no mention of style just function.
When people are looking for a school, I tell them to visit several locations. It is important to get a feel for the style and the instructors and gauge what is the right style/school for them.
Good point. It is worth visitng many school sbefore taking up training. If you dont feel that the a certain aschool will benefit you, why train. Many Thanks for your comment.
For sports/fitness/fun: whatever you fancy and depending on your body-type/age/fitness-level. For self-defence: whatever art that is a) non-competitive (competition equals rules and rules is what is going to get you killed in a street-fight: most likely he won’t abide by any rules so why should you?), b) practical and meant to be practical (in my opinion this means relatively simple techniques that become second nature fairly quickly, along with true combat-intent and basic awareness-training) and c) not too specialised or alternatively: as complete as possible.
This means defences against a wide variety of attacks (again realistic attacks: it doesn’t make much sense in this day and age to learn to defend yourself against a swordsman, which is fairly impossible anyway), especially weapon-defences and multiple-attacker type situations (which sadly are all too common these days).
I do not agree with Marks' relativistic position: while it is true every martial-art will have something to offer some have more to offer in certain area’s than others. Aikido or Tai-chi may be great ways to develop spiritual insight, benevolence and a host of other good qualities but I highly doubt they’ll be of much use in a combat-situation (unless you’re really, really good and that’ll only come with at least a decade of training). Every martial-art has its upsides and downsides but some are inherently more practical than others.
Another problem with most of the more traditional martial-arts is that they’ve become stale and fairly ineffective over time: while I’m sure they worked in the old days of warfare and violent crime (otherwise they wouldn’t have survived this long) alot of that invaluable knowledge has gotten lost and in this day and age of relative peace and quiet they just don’t get updated and improved anymore. Attacks these days will be different than those in ancient Japan or China (if it was custom to wear swords a smart attacker would first of all try to prevent the sword being drawn, for example by grabbing both wrist, before attempting anything else), why still study the old defences against those old attacks instead of focussing on what’s happening in today’s streets?
There are objective criteria: when science is able to prove that of all the punching-styles boxing offers the most effective and hard-hitting punches then it would make sense to incorporate those into your arsenal (there are only 6 after all). This doesn’t mean everyone should take up boxing (although a basic iniation in boxing would be a blessing for anyone interested in true self-defence), it just means you should think long and hard before ignoring the facts and selecting a style whose hand-techniques are obviously inferior (and the hands are your primary and first line-of-defence: in almost any given situation at least 90% of the work will be done with the hand, and most of that in the form of punching or striking).
Even if you chose a grappling-style that has proven its mettle it’ll still be necessary to at least learn basic striking, especially so in a self-defence context. Another thing would be to practice punch defences against boxing punches or combinations thereof (instead of those long-winded step-through punches of karate and certain kung-fu styles): you’ll quickly find alot of the more traditional defences simply will not work (grabbing the hand and locking it is a virtual impossiblity against an even remotely good boxer) and its infinitly preferable to find this out in the dojo or gym than on the street.
If you can defend against a boxer you can pretty much defend against anyone (excluding the use of weapons and multiple attackers which is an entirely different chapter).
Greetings,
Zara
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