Crossroads of Martial Arts.

[Baudelaire]

I've recently started doing tae kwon do but it isnt really fun, so then one day I walked by a chinese martial arts academy (tae kwon do is korean) and i saw the difference and it looks a lot more fun to me, the thing is though i dont know how to break it to my instructor that im quitting his school to go learn at a different one because im one of his only students. my questions are:

Am I being selfish?
Is this ok to want to switch?
How do I tell my instructor i'm quitting?

[sebbie]

Tell him with all due respect that you do not feel tae kwon do is working out for you, and you want to learn different techniques or a different style of martial art all together.

You are not being selfish and it is perfectly fine for you to switch in the past I have done training in several martial arts hopping from one to another and now I am fine with MMA, you need to find what is right for you.

Just wondering what style are you thinking of going too :) ?

[Baudelaire]

thank you for the input, and I'm considering a mixture of Kungfu and Chinese Kenpo.

[KaelKaos]

I've recently started doing tae kwon do but it isnt really fun, so then one day I walked by a chinese martial arts academy (tae kwon do is korean) and i saw the difference and it looks a lot more fun to me, the thing is though i dont know how to break it to my instructor that im quitting his school to go learn at a different one because im one of his only students. my questions are:

Am I being selfish?
Is this ok to want to switch?
How do I tell my instructor i'm quitting?

You're most definitely not being selfish, and it's perfectly ok if you want to switch. Tell your instructor you don't think Tae Kwon Do is working out for you and you need something new. He shouldn't be offended, you won't be the first kid to quit. But make sure switching is something you REALLY want to do. Maybe sit in on a class or two of Chinese Martial Arts and really see what goes on and if it's something you'd like.

[OnceMoreWithFeeling]

If you are swiching i recomend the M.A.S.T.E.R. System. It is a combo of most of the arts. I really injoy it. I used to do tea con doe also i was a green belt

[Charleigh]

i do ju-jitsu and am 3 or 4 belts frm black =]

[Baudelaire]

you go girl!!

and thanks everyone for all the advice everyone!

[overcome.]

There is absolutely nothing selfish about wanting to better yourself doing something other than you're already doing. It's called moving on. I'd recommend any kind of martial art that could incorporate striking. Muay Thai is excellent, it's the art of 8 limbs. Your hands, feet, knees and elbows. A martial art focusing on elements of fighting on the ground are very useful and also very underated at the same time. This can be jiu jitsu (traditional or Brazilian), Judo/Sambo (very similiar, judo is aimed at 50% throws for takedown methods with submissions/immobilizing your opponent).

This is where MMA (mixed martial arts) comes into play. Like I said with Muay Thai, the amount of skills you can learn beats in my eyes a combination of boxing or kickboxing. Ground elements can teach you submission holds and well as methods of takedown if you chose to take a fight to the ground, not advisable on the street. MMA, it's a combination of all different martial arts. I'd recommend it, you'd learn a bit of everything. It's the fastest growing sport in the world and I'm a huge huge fan myself. Meaning as it's growing, especially in America there are tonnes of places teaching all elements of fighting under one roof. Look into it. You cannot go wrong.

[XxHaViiK]

I got to a double red stripe in Tae Kwon Do, then switch to a martial art called Wushu. I only took Wushu for about a year.

[Jean Poutine]

I got to a double red stripe in Tae Kwon Do, then switch to a martial art called Wushu. I only took Wushu for about a year.

If you can call Wushu a martial art. Modern wushu is a dance with movements vaguely looking like strikes. It's definitively not meant to be used.

I've recently started doing tae kwon do but it isnt really fun, so then one day I walked by a chinese martial arts academy (tae kwon do is korean) and i saw the difference and it looks a lot more fun to me, the thing is though i dont know how to break it to my instructor that im quitting his school to go learn at a different one because im one of his only students.

Loyalty to one's teacher is one of these pseudo-oriental concepts that really has no place anywhere, not even oriental culture. If it suits you, it suits you, if it doesn't, it doesn't. You don't even have any real obligation to tell him. You don't need his blessing, he's not your mother.

I can't count the number of times people left my judo dojo after the first few classes because they were expecting to play pretend ninja, not getting thrown full-speed onto thin mats. We start every season with more fresh white belts than we have advanced kyu ranks. 85% of them are gone by the end of the semester, never to be seen again. Judo has an horrible attrition rate.

You should go with something that spars with a good amount of contact and realism. Anything else amounts to playing pretend warriors.

Realism in this case, meaning : medium to full contact. Not point sparring. Not one, three, or five step sparring. As few rules as possible. Resisting opponent.

Muay Thai/kickboxing/boxing are all good, realistic martial arts that do a great deal of sparring when taught well, however I suppose not everyone likes getting clocked in the face on a regular basis.

That is why grappling arts are cool, because you can go full-speed, full resistance against an unwilling opponent and get out of it with few bruises. Besides, there are pluses in self-defense also because humanely restraining someone will make you look like less of a douche to the police's eye than headkick KOing someone.

Also you get to choke out people which is cool.

Judo, sambo, BJJ, wrestling all fall into this category.

Also as overcome said MMA gyms are also good, but they tend to be on the expensive side.

Look into what I named, don't go playing foot tag or punching air.

[overcome.]

"Air don't hit back" - Bruce Lee.

I'd love to wrestle, there's somewhere I can go to wrestle and train in submission grappling, but it's going to cost me a lot to get there regularly and that's not even including the amount the actual training costs. That's what you get for not having a regular schedule, heh.

I know uchimata agrees, grappling is just as interesting, if not more interesting than stand up fighting half of the time. More aspects, skill sets and fitness requirements come into play. Calling it a game of human chess is the most appropiate and well fitting comparison I've heard.

[sebbie]

A key point: If you are looking to keep fit, learn something traditional and have fun then almost any style of martial art can be suited to you, just find what appeals to you. If you are looking to learn how to fight self defence, take self defence class or Krav Maga.

While a person who trains in things like MMA /Muai Thai / Boxing may be better than the untrained person for self defence in theory. A real life incident is a whole different ball game, there are no rules, people use weapons, more than one opponent. Being trained can make you over confident etc.

Self defence classes are specifically designed for learning how to defend in a real environment. Krava maga is a recently developed combat art - It has non of the tradition and is all about how to take out your opponent and protect yourself, I would recommend it to anyone.

[Jean Poutine]

A key point: If you are looking to keep fit, learn something traditional and have fun then almost any style of martial art can be suited to you, just find what appeals to you. If you are looking to learn how to fight self defence, take self defence class or Krav Maga.

While a person who trains in things like MMA /Muai Thai / Boxing may be better than the untrained person for self defence in theory. A real life incident is a whole different ball game, there are no rules, people use weapons, more than one opponent. Being trained can make you over confident etc.

Self defence classes are specifically designed for learning how to defend in a real environment. Krava maga is a recently developed combat art - It has non of the tradition and is all about how to take out your opponent and protect yourself, I would recommend it to anyone.

Let me be honest with you. I think you're deluded. That's ok, a lot of people are deluded about martial arts. You generally give good advice but I simply can't agree with you from experience.

I've never heard of an endeavour in which you can perfect yourself solely through pretending. If we had as many pretend doctors, pretend teachers and pretend mechanics as we do pretend fighters the world would not go round smoothly.

Look the "there are no rules" angle has been done times and times before. Why do you think there is no Wing Chun, Krav Maga, TKD in MMA? It's not because of the rules, first of all the early UFC allowed groin shots and the "in the streets there are no rules" crowd still took a serious beating. Second, if you can't stand your ground at all without groin shots and eye gouges, something is very wrong with your style.

If someone has trouble punching your face in sparring do you really think he stands a chance of gouging your eyes out? If another trained fighter has trouble delivering leg kicks or body shots on you, you think a groin shot will work? It's the same movement except the targets are much smaller.

Last time people had their hand even remotely around my face while on the ground in judo, I had them in an armbar before they even thought of grabbing my gi for a choke. If they tried to gouge my eyes it would have been the same story. As I said, the act of simply extending your arm while in someone's guard is a house of danger. From the general position (you between my legs with one or both of your arms extended towards my face) there are a bunch of things I can do to your elbow joint and none of them would be pleasant for you.

Anyone with half a brain knows self defence against multiple attackers. It's called run as fast as you can and call the police. And weapon fights are the same. Even people highly trained in knife arts like kali say that you're bound to get cut in a knife fight no matter how good you are. An unarmed disarm is lunacy, unless you enjoy being stabbed.

And Krav Maga is generally a load of bullshit. I say "generally" because I can't exactly prove that the whole thing is bullshit. It's not really the techniques themselves (although I've seen a lot of dubious material), it's how it's trained. Rehearse the moves in slow motions without contact because they're "too deadly" as much as you want. In the end they will fail you because you fight how you train. If you train Krav Maga I would suggest you put your training in perspective.

Do you spar? If yes, with contact? If yes, what amount?
Do you drill with resistance or is the partner going along? That's easy to check, verify if you can say "please stand there while I hurt you" while you do your stuff. If it makes sense, you do not drill with resistance.

To learn self defence either you get clocked in the face all the time or you're rolling on the ground with sweaty men at full speed. You can't learn to fight by pretending to fight.

[sebbie]

Let me be honest with you. I think you're deluded. That's ok, a lot of people are deluded about martial arts. You generally give good advice but I simply can't agree with you from experience.



From the tone of this it sounds like you are assuming I have no experience at all :rolleyes:


I've never heard of an endeavour in which you can perfect yourself solely through pretending. If we had as many pretend doctors, pretend teachers and pretend mechanics as we do pretend fighters the world would not go round smoothly.



Did I say there was one perfect art which would allow you to beat anyone or did I just give my own personal recommendation.


Look the "there are no rules" angle has been done times and times before. Why do you think there is no Wing Chun, Krav Maga, TKD in MMA? It's not because of the rules, first of all the early UFC allowed groin shots and the "in the streets there are no rules" crowd still took a serious beating. Second, if you can't stand your ground at all without groin shots and eye gouges, something is very wrong with your style.


If you look at the main styles used in MMA, and then compare them with techniques of other martial arts you could argue that that there are elements of other syles all linked in. Take Judo, Ju-Jitsu and Karate all would be classed as three different styles but there are elements in each which are exactly the same, some Karate techniques are exactly the same to Ju-jitsu and Judo techniques.

Also the no rules argument for self defence does not relate to no rules in the street. When going to MMA will they teach you how to deal with weapons ? Arguing if " you can't stand your ground at all without groin shots and eye gouges, something is very wrong with your style. " is stupid, what happens if someone attacks you and you hit them in the face and it does nothing? Learning how to defend yourself means to learn many different techniques as possible.


If someone has trouble punching your face in sparring do you really think he stands a chance of gouging your eyes out? If another trained fighter has trouble delivering leg kicks or body shots on you, you think a groin shot will work? It's the same movement except the targets are much smaller.


This is a massive generalisation by you that if you struggle with kicks you will not be able to kick someone in the groin. Different people will have different limitations and options. Taking the example, suppose someone has grabbed your neck, they very close to you: so attempting to punch is not going to be the best options here so you may resort to: breaking out the grapple, use elbows/ knees or other techniques like gouging at the eyes.


Last time people had their hand even remotely around my face while on the ground in judo, I had them in an armbar before they even thought of grabbing my gi for a choke. If they tried to gouge my eyes it would have been the same story. As I said, the act of simply extending your arm while in someone's guard is a house of danger. From the general position (you between my legs with one or both of your arms extended towards my face) there are a bunch of things I can do to your elbow joint and none of them would be pleasant for you.


Do you train in anything other than Judo? You sound like you are trying to make it out to be the best thing out here. The way you are talking is if you are facing an untrained opponent, if I end up on the ground I am immediate going to try and get in guard position how I choose to act will depend on what I think you are going to do and what position I am currently in.

Also you are talking as if there are no ways to counter arm bars, reverse the hold etc.


Anyone with half a brain knows self defence against multiple attackers. It's called run as fast as you can and call the police. And weapon fights are the same. Even people highly trained in knife arts like kali say that you're bound to get cut in a knife fight no matter how good you are. An unarmed disarm is lunacy, unless you enjoy being stabbed.


If you have no option to run? No help what will you do just lie down and let whatever happens or will you try to defend yourself ?

Almost every combat class I have been to have said the the best thing to do is walk away from a fight, escape if you can.

Yes in every fight controlled or uncontrolled there is a risk of injury but in self defence you need to try to reduce this risk or stop it all together.


And Krav Maga is generally a load of bullshit. I say "generally" because I can't exactly prove that the whole thing is bullshit. It's not really the techniques themselves (although I've seen a lot of dubious material), it's how it's trained. Rehearse the moves in slow motions without contact because they're "too deadly" as much as you want. In the end they will fail you because you fight how you train. If you train Krav Maga I would suggest you put your training in perspective.


I will agree with you on this point, when it comes to any kind of combat art it is how it is trained, when I suggested Krav Maga and Self defence classes they are obviously from my own opinion which I have developed from my own experience


Do you spar? If yes, with contact? If yes, what amount?
Do you drill with resistance or is the partner going along? That's easy to check, verify if you can say "please stand there while I hurt you" while you do your stuff. If it makes sense, you do not drill with resistance.


I take part on a regular basis in full contact sparring, of course certain areas like the back of the head / groin and a few specific join locks are off limits as they will cause injury.

The sparring I take part in is free style each fighter will use their own set of moves and I will try to defend/fight back it is not pre-set or choreographed. Usually we do this in 5 minute rounds.

When we are training for endurance we will not have the 5 minute rounds we will just spar until submission a person concedes or in events where we have a first aider present and fighters are willing we will go to knock outs.


To learn self defence either you get clocked in the face all the time or you're rolling on the ground with sweaty men at full speed. You can't learn to fight by pretending to fight.

This is so naive, to just get hit in the face and have no idea how that happened will teach you a lot less then showing someone how to defend from a variety of angles then practising freely in sparring sessions. Also where did I say you should pretend to fight ?The idea with many combat arts is you look at what you have learnt then think how it can apply to different settings etc.

I will be back to edit this post to clear up a few points maybe add some more in but I am out of time at the moment

[Jean Poutine]

From the tone of this it sounds like you are assuming I have no experience at all :rolleyes:

I've seen people with many years set in dead martial arts that harbor an incorrect view of fighting. Most people call them form fairies.

Did I say there was one perfect art which would allow you to beat anyone or did I just give my own personal recommendation.

Recommendations can be critiqued.

If you look at the main styles used in MMA, and then compare them with techniques of other martial arts you could argue that that there are elements of other syles all linked in. Take Judo, Ju-Jitsu and Karate all would be classed as three different styles but there are elements in each which are exactly the same, some Karate techniques are exactly the same to Ju-jitsu and Judo techniques.

No argument. Maybe because there is none to be had. What was your point?

Also the no rules argument for self defence does not relate to no rules in the street. When going to MMA will they teach you how to deal with weapons ? Arguing if " you can't stand your ground at all without groin shots and eye gouges, something is very wrong with your style. " is stupid, what happens if someone attacks you and you hit them in the face and it does nothing? Learning how to defend yourself means to learn many different techniques as possible.


A untrained person will always stagger when hit in the face. It's one of these things that you have to endure frequently to become accustomed to. Even a trained fighter can be fazed by a good one in the face depending on the chin of that person. Therefore to train assuming that someone would not be hindered by a correctly thrown punch in the face is useless, unless you like fighting meth junkies.

Besides, I knew how to gouge eyes and kick groins before I did martial arts. There's no need.

If you want to deal with weapons then take a weapons art. That's obvious enough.

This is a massive generalisation by you that if you struggle with kicks you will not be able to kick someone in the groin. Different people will have different limitations and options. Taking the example, suppose someone has grabbed your neck, they very close to you: so attempting to punch is not going to be the best options here so you may resort to: breaking out the grapple, use elbows/ knees or other techniques like gouging at the eyes.

No, it is not. If you can't kick someone in the legs then you won't be able to kick in the groin. Period. The importance of the delivery system cannot be over-emphasized. According to you, it's possible to write a dissertation without speaking a word of English.

This is what is hilarious in RBSD. When was the last time someone grabbed you by the throat? Rapist choke style? Glad to know that you're training against even the most improbable street aggressions. How do you counter a 360 jump kick?

Do you train in anything other than Judo? You sound like you are trying to make it out to be the best thing out here. The way you are talking is if you are facing an untrained opponent, if I end up on the ground I am immediate going to try and get in guard position how I choose to act will depend on what I think you are going to do and what position I am currently in.

Also you are talking as if there are no ways to counter arm bars, reverse the hold etc.

I used to train savate but right now my interest is 100% on judo. After a long enough time I'll look for a full contact karate style, like ashihara or kyokushin.

There are no counters or reversals to properly applied submissions, which is why they are so effective once properly sunk in. And I doubt anyone attacking you for real in the street is going to try to pass your guard.

And the only appropriate counter to reverse armbar from guard once your arms are outstretched is don't stretch your arm. The submission is so stupid easy and quick to set up that it's almost an instant win move in this situation. That's why nobody goes for rapist chokes in MMA or gi chokes in BJJ inside someone's guard. And that's also why live grappling is paramount in today's self defence, and no I did not drink any Gracie kool aid.

And yes if I'm ever in the ground on my back I'll pull guard. Contrary to popular belief, the streets aren't covered with glass, needles or lava.

If you have no option to run? No help what will you do just lie down and let whatever happens or will you try to defend yourself ?

Almost every combat class I have been to have said the the best thing to do is walk away from a fight, escape if you can.

Yes in every fight controlled or uncontrolled there is a risk of injury but in self defence you need to try to reduce this risk or stop it all together.

There is always the option to run, not piss off people or disengage. Always, always. We're not talking about fucking military combatives here. If you piss off somebody enough to kill you then you've probably pissed them off enough to send other people to kill you. Unless you've pissed off the wrong people there is absolutely no need to learn how to disarm knives and guns. If you get mugged you fucking give them what they want. Don't play the hero.

Even if there was a need, such moves are utter lunacy. Almost every gun disarm I have ever seen and that includes the Krav Maga curriculum would get you shot. You were talking about overconfidence. This is overconfidence.

I will agree with you on this point, when it comes to any kind of combat art it is how it is trained, when I suggested Krav Maga and Self defence classes they are obviously from my own opinion which I have developed from my own experience

Elaborate. What's your experience?


I take part on a regular basis in full contact sparring, of course certain areas like the back of the head / groin and a few specific join locks are off limits as they will cause injury.

The sparring I take part in is free style each fighter will use their own set of moves and I will try to defend/fight back it is not pre-set or choreographed. Usually we do this in 5 minute rounds.

When we are training for endurance we will not have the 5 minute rounds we will just spar until submission a person concedes or in events where we have a first aider present and fighters are willing we will go to knock outs.

Sounds ok to me. People usually do their moves on air or on willing partners. You'd be surprised at how many think they can fight because of half-speed ineffective pistol disarms or pretty forms, for that matter.

This is so naive, to just get hit in the face and have no idea how that happened will teach you a lot less then showing someone how to defend from a variety of angles then practising freely in sparring sessions. Also where did I say you should pretend to fight ?The idea with many combat arts is you look at what you have learnt then think how it can apply to different settings etc.

No it is not naïve. You're misunderstanding. You need to get clocked in the face. When you do you won't forget to raise your hands up ever again.

When I was still new to judo the same old man kept footsweeping my ass with the same move every time. I got the message and corrected my footwork. This is how we learn, from experience. If nobody really tries to hit you and ravage your ass then you train incorrectly.

The pretend line refers to LARPing martial artists that pretend they're ninjas or God knows what else, or that their moves are way too deadly to spar with.