Any addvice on martial arts (or similar) classes
 

I want to take up some kind of martial arts as I feel it will help me loosen up both physically and mentally. There are other reasons aswell but the reason why I haven't started a class yet is simply because there are loads of possible classes, I don't know where to start.

Can anyone give me any pointers to what classes they would go for through experience or your own reaserch.


Thanks

Where do you live?

Middlesbrough, its closest city is Newcastle. If it was a good class I'd be prepared to travel a little but idealy I want something close.

I'd personally recommend Brazilian JiuJitsu. This sport changed my life. Over the years it's helped me lose weight, gain confidence, make friends, get fit and learn a real world skill set.

Gracie Barra Newcastle is headed by Dave Elliot who is a very good coach and competitor. I don't know much about the Dungeon guys but I've seen them at comps and their guys always do very well.

Gracie Barra Newcastle

The Dungeon

If you'd rather do a striking art than a grappling one then you can't beat Muay Thai or western Boxing.

Hope this helps.

Muay Thai for me - awesome work out and knowing that I can defend myself against the average joe has given me a lot of confidence.

BJJ is excellent but was too harsh on my back (I'm old). Would also recommend Krav Maga

I will definitely contact the guys for Brazilian JiuJitsu. I really want to gain an understanding of all the different options I have and pick 1, or more, that suit me and help me achieve my goals.
What do you mean when you say, a real world skill set?

Right now, I'm not sure if I'd want to compete, I definitely want to train but competitions and stuff like that I'm not sure if I'd want to do that. I have competed before in Fencing among other sports, I'm half decent at it and I also have the qualies to instruct it. But I suppose, in these kind of sports, to develop properly maybe competing is the only way.

I think grappling arts would be best though I do want to learn other thing's. 1 thing I do want to try though is a striking art, maybe something like Kali but not boxing.


I'm not really a big lad either so whatever I choose to do will be to increase my fitness but not decrease my weight. Gave me some great pointers there dude, thanks.

Themaxx - Thanks. Krav Maga looks awesome but the videos I've seen for it are quite theatrical. I'd like to see some sort of training session. I'm very new to all this so I'm trying to work out which would be best for me to practice. Didn't realize how many variations there are but I think the major thing is that I want to be able to transfer the skills and techniques I've learned so that I can use them for a self defense purpose whilst boosting my confidence.

I totally recommend Krav for the self defense side of things, best option hands down. I don't know of any Krav gyms in the North East, but the Krav instructor I work with is pretty well connected, I could ask them if there are any gyms or instructors they recommend.

What I mean by this is that most traditional style Martial Arts will teach you techniques that have no real world application. Shit like defending against multiple attackers and fending off knife attacks without getting maimed yourself just does not happen. I have seen middle aged overweight women who genuinely believe they could fend off a 22st attacker using some bullshit wristlock that they've only ever tried on a compliant opponent in their tong po wang fu class.

Whilst I wouldn't say BJJ will help you in these situations either it does give you an amazing understanding of body mechanics and how to apply leverage to overcome larger opponents, it will improve your balance and movement which can be essential in certain situations. I personally do it for sport than self defense but knowing something simple like a rear naked choke has got me out of a couple sticky situations when I've been out in the past. The law don't look too favorably on you if you knock seven shades of shit out of someone but if you incapacitate them with a choke and make them go to sleep they don't seem to mind in my experience.

Don't worry about not being a big dude either. Jiujitsu was founded by a 60kg Brazilian dude called Helio Gracie. He was so confident in his technique overcoming his opponents physical advantages he would challenge all comers of all sizes and styles in Gracie challenges. You can see the footage on YouTube today.

I am slightly biased as I love jiujitsu and think everyone should do it but at least try it man and then make your own mind up from there.

You should consider other things as well, e.g. circuit training, which is what I do. They might run that at a local gym or school hall in the evenings. It's a group thing so it's good fun and motivational. It's also quite intense so it gets you fit which gives your confidence a boost. I was there tonight and there was me and another guy and four women. One of the women was chatting me up after the class haha.

Yes dude please ask them. Even if I end up doing Krav and BJJ it can only be good for me. My self defense is quite poor, granted the last time I was in a fight it was me against 6 other guys but I spent most of the time on the floor, for a good 5 minutes without being knocked out before the lads ran away. Though they didn't break a single bone I felt from that moment on, that I should really work on the area of self defense, as soon as I gain the full confidence level I think I'd be really good.

Haha yeah dude that is the problem people face if they don't perform skills and the techniques they've been taught in a competitive environment because quite obviously in real world situations, the other person isn't going to be as cooperative as the demo opponent.

To me the law is dog shit anyway. I've had confrontations where the cops basically knock on a few doors, people say they seen shit all and then investigation closed. Most watched country in the world and apparently there "wasn't a camera around that corner".

I looked at some of the videos and read the history dude, it's really quite impressive. Honestly dude, I think I'll try both if I can (depends if Krav is taught near my area).


I did advanced circuit training a few years ago, 60 minutes, 4 minutes per base, 1 minute rest every 15-20 minutes. The gym is a cool place to meet new people aswell, I'm not currently registered to a gym because I have gym equipment at home but this means that sometimes I lack the motivation since it's at home I just think "I can do it later" whereas if it's a class it gets me out at a certain time and that in turn will give me motivation.

just do an MMA class

easy

Muay Thai, Boxing, BJJ, Wrestling, MMA.

All are great and more about getting a better teacher than which discipline is better per se.

If you want to learn true self defense then something like Krav Maga or JKD is a better choice.

Martial Arts wise I think a mix between grappling and striking. E.g. Boxing and wrestling or Muay Thai and BJJ. Or vice versa.

Good luck.

Or piss me off when I've had a few.

Paul Vunak 4 life.

Paul Vunak Headbutt - Self Defense - YouTube

The only form of true self defence is the 100m sprint.

Phil - I'll be honest dude, I had absolutely no idea there were so many different types of Martial arts, grappling and striking. I thought there was only MMA. But me being a relatively smaller guy (in terms of weight), I thought enrolling for an MMA or boxing class would be near enough laughable.

I know quite a few moves and techniques, years ago I started to teach myself kick boxing but with all the techniques and stuff I learned, they don't mean shit in real world application, as Phenom said in relation to the woman who thought she could fend off attackers.

Haha it's worked out well for others in the past. For me, I have a weird thing of never giving up. If someone knocks me to the ground, my only thought is to get back up on my feet and repay the favour, I'm resilient and determined. I really believe I can do anything if I work at it.

Not at all, there are tons of lighter guys who do MMA. In fact I think lighter fighters are generally way more fun to watch. The weight classes go down to flyweight which is like 57 kg, and everyone gets treated exactly the same regardless of your weight class. You've got nothing to worry about.

I love MMA and BJJ as martial arts and having some knowledge and experience of them can be nothing but good for you, but in terms of street fighting both are lacking in quite a few ways.

They can both make you habitually feel a bit too comfortable with going to the ground and looking for submissions, when in most real life situations that's a very bad idea for quite a few reasons. Being sports martial arts they tend to focus too much on 'winning' a fight, whereas in a street fight you're just looking to control the situation to a point where you can get the fuck out of there. You may think you'd behave differently in a street fight regardless of training but these things some reflexes that are hard to break, especially under pressure. Very little in either martial arts is particularly helpful when dealing with multiple or armed opponents.

The main reason why sports martial arts like BJJ, Kickboxing and MMA aren't that useful in the street is because they just aren't fucking brutal enough. Street fights can be dirty as fuck, so there are tons of techniques you might need to use or have to defend yourself from that just plain aren't accounted for in sport fighting. This includes groin attacks, headbutts, eye gouges, strikes to the back of the head, knee stomps, weapons, incidental weapons, multiple opponents, strikes to the throat, limb destruction etc. These come up a lot in street fights. In any fight the person with the most options generally winse, so if you're in a situation where your opponent is a real threat you have to be ready to defend yourself from dirty fighting and fight back as dirty as they do.

And that's just from the girls.

How so jaz?

I always thought it was good under the assumption that Israeli special forces would of been practical. I've never seen it used though.

Merry christmas Jaz.

I think its more a mentality. So pick whatever martial art that lets you develop that; aggression, close-to-real (Sparring) and not to fiddley (realism) etc.

Like when you've been in fights would you say 'the training kicks in' or you just fucking go nuts because you know you can handle yourself which isn't a DIRECT result of the martial art itself, more the training (if that makes sense).

From growing up around it, most of the 'hard' guys were just the psychos and mental like that. Being a psycho,to me, is an extreme end of 'self belief'.

Okay, seeing as I actually teach Krav Maga I might as well weight in on this.

I think a lot of this is based on the people you have met who do Krav Maga. I'm genuinely curious where you saw these guys, I'd like to check it out. It's true that Krav Maga has an overblown badass type reputation due to the way it's marketed sometimes. As a result of this you get a lot of people who attend a weekly class for a short while and brag like they're tough, the same way you see guys who join an MMA gym for a couple of months and walk around telling people they're a cage fighter. I agree, some of the marketing is fucking stupid, but that's a fault of the marketing, not the system.

We do spar. A lot. We also do pressure drills (weapon attacks, multiple attackers) with fully resistant partners, though the amount of fucked up illegal moves we do requires some pretty heavy padding to avoid injury. Anyone who has spent any time with an instructor who knows what they're doing will have done this.

The key thing that people take from pressure drills like this is that they a nasty, messy and a lot of the time you won't make it out safely if at all. One of the main reasons we do this is to drive home the reality that you're not superman and situations like this should be avoided at all costs. We make a point of teaching peripheral awareness, compliance as a first step and focus on how to diffuse situations with self defense as a worst case scenario. It would be irresponsible not to make a point of that. I used to do muay thai and MMA primarily, and despite the fact that I feel more safe now that I know Krav, I'm a lot less likely to get in a fight now.

There was also nothing in that knife attacks video I saw that I disagreed with, or that flies in the face of how knife defense is taught in Krav. Our knife drills look all hectic and fucked up like that most of the time. We also at no point say that the knife defense drills we teach will work 100% of the time because frankly that's fucking ridiculous. No technique works 100% of the time. But it is possible to survive a knife attack using the stuff you learn in Krav, it's happened tons of times, and provided the person who is taught it understands that it's an absolute last resort it's certainly a lot better to know it than otherwise.

I get what your saying Stein and I'm sure that the Krav Maga you teach probably has some real world applications and your honest with the people you teach about its functionality and reliability in certain situations.

The problem is that Krav Maga seems to be such a martial art where charlatans are allowed to flaunt absolute bullshit and have it taken seriously like in the vid below.



For someone who practices Boxing, Thai, Judo, BJJ & MMA this shit never goes down because people who preach bullshit get found out very fucking fast. The martial arts I've just listed have been tried and tested in street and sporting environments and each one has proven its usefulness. I think because Krav has a reputation of being too deadly for sport or whatever, practitioners of it hide behind that veil and never really test out what they've learnt in all scenarios. It's all good and well holding your own sparring sessions with people who have been taught the same thing as you, but what happens against a good grappler or an awesome boxer?

I'm sure there are some really great proponents of Krav Maga who are able to handle themselves in a variety of situations. But from my experience I believe they are the exception rather than the rule.

Lol that guy in the video is called Moni Aizik. He's a compulsive bullshitter, isn't licensed by any Krav Maga association and ironically the only decent martial arts background the guy has is in Judo. He used to compete nationally in Judo competitions when he was younger or something. He tried to get around this by calling his system 'Commando Krav Maga' instead of 'Krav Maga' and has had tons of legal issues with different Krav Maga associations and and has got in trouble over false advertising several times. He is not representative of Krav Maga and that bullshit takedown defense has never been part of any Krav Maga association's syllabus.

commando krav maga sucks - the real story behind moni aizikBritish Krav Maga Association

The thing is that teaching martial arts isn't regulated, so you get bullshitters in all schools. I've seen Muay Thai instructors before who were bullshitters and had no business teaching, the same with MMA instructors, the same with more trad martial artists etc. Is that the fault of the system, or is it just instructors who are out of their depth and trying to make money?

A lot of the people I know who train with be are from grappling or boxing backgrounds. A lot of them use it as an add-on to what they already know. They tend to take to it easier because when you closely look at Krav you see that it's essentially a combination of boxing and wrestling with some illegal moves thrown in.

I think you guys have the wrong impression of Krav. I get that there are bullshitters out there, but if you spent a while a decent, qualified instructor I think you'd be surprised.

Theres only one way to settle this. You guys have got to fight. Unless you're scared.

Let's all get together and have a PUA Forum open mat.

I do remember some guys telling me once they did krav maga and after just 3 lessons. you where more equipt in a fight that 6 months of any other marshal art.

tried it once, who lot of eye gauging & kicking in the balls and running away.

I decided to let my mum teach me how to fight instead.

i call it. 'Kravmyma'

Think street. Train sport.

Well the first big thing that I took from it is the use of illegal moves and targets. Some of the main targets in krav are things like the knee caps, the groin and the back of the head. These areas are never targeted in sports martial arts, but they are some of the best areas to target if you want to disable an attacker quickly and efficiently. In the same way that a change in rules allowing kicks below the waist completely changes the dynamics of how you have to approach kickboxing, having new targets available changes how a street fight should be best approached. In with that comes stuff like eye attacks and gouges, limb destructions, headbutts and so on.

The obvious question after that is probably 'well why not still just do kickboxing and wrestling, then just do that stuff when you get attacked?'. The thing is in a high adrenaline situation like a street fight you'll do what's been practised into a reflex. If you're a boxer, you probably won't throw kicks or try and wrestle, and if you've not practised fighting dirty, you probably won't to that either, even if it's the most efficient option.

The other thing is that even with moves like an eye gouge, there's a right and a wrong way to do it and a right and wrong time. It's the same with any kind of move. A very obvious example of this that everyone has encountered is headbutts. Everyone's seen a shit headbutt in their time. There are a good few effective ways to use it, but a lot of people who attempt it end up doing more harm to themselves than the other person. There's a right and a wrong way to fight dirty basically.

I read some stuff online about street fighting. It was training stuff for the US police. It talked a lot about choosing the area. Like in the first contact getting the aggressor over to a place of your choosing, e.g. grass where you can then put them down and avoid being hurt by objects on the ground, etc if it turns into a wrestle. That sounds specialised for the police.

The article also said the most common thing with untrained people is when someone swings out a kick, e.g. aiming for the groin area the other person, as a reflex, puts their hands out, either to deflect the blow or maybe to try to catch the foot (not usually a good move). This lowers their guard, brings them in range and leaves them open to the punch that usually follows. Once a punch has connected it's scrambled brains time and the attacker has time to follow up with more. I can't remember what the article said about defending against that.

I've been training since I was 13. I started with Judo and a bit of BJJ. After I got my BB in Judo when I was 17 I moved to a different area and took up Boxing at the local ABC. I boxed til I was 19 then had a few years of drink, drugs and the like. I got back into BJJ when I was 22 and have kept that up for the last 4.5 years. 3 years ago I started MMA and Thai. I no longer train formally in all those areas. The only formal classes I do are MMA, Boxing & BJJ. I train the rest of the arts at open mats. I have a set of keys to my gym and my housemate is my training partner so we go down a lot to just mess around and train whatever we feel, whether that be Wrestling, Judo, Thai or just to fuck around with some crazy moves we've seen in a Bruce Lee movie.

I just make it my priority mate. When I finish work I go straight to training. I pack my bag up the night before put it in the car so it's all set. I'l send my instructor a quick txt explaining I might be late to class from work and I just go, even if I'm fucked and spend the class getting destroyed, It's what I love so I always make sure I do it. On the flip side I get 4 days off at a time so I use this time to smash 2 or 3 sessions a day. I'm quite lucky in that pretty much all my friends are into one form of MA or another so whoever's around we'l get together and train whatever we feel. So long as I'm getting to use my body and move around I'm happy.

I hear ya bro. My goal this year is to generate enough passive income so I can either move abroad to Brazil or Thailand or reduce my hours at work so I have even more time for training. It's what I love to do so I want to spend as much time doing it as possible.

Coincidentally if anyone's in Leeds on March 15th I'l be fighting at Elland Road on a show called Caged Fighters. It's an awesome night out with some great fights on display.

There is some truth to this man. Because to do BJJ you need a Gi there are a lot of people in Brazil who just cant't afford one. I wouldn't say it's classed as a ponces sport over there as it is a tough sport and with the Gracie's fucking everyone and anyone up on the streets of Rio from back in the day it is legit and respected but it does have the connotation of being associated with the middle class. A popular insult in Brazil is to call someone a Playboy. This is aimed at someone who has had things handed to them and never suffered like someone from the favelas might have, and it's associated a lot with native BJJ practitioners over there.

That being said there has been a lot of community project work over there where BJJ schools run scholarship programs for kids in poor areas. So BJJ is becoming more for everyone, although there is still some disparity and it does have a rep for being something for the middle class. I guess a bit like Rugby Union is over here.

This video sums up perfectly how I feel about Jiujitsu and Martial Arts in general. How it makes me feel and my thoughts on how it can help yourself and others.