I am really interested in taking martial arts lessons. However, I'm really interested in Shaolin fist Kung Fu and not much else. It's kinda hard to find a decent school around where I live; one of my coworkers gave me the low down on all the Shaolin centers around here and they all don't focus on one distinct style but mix the styles. I want to learn traditional.


Anyways, have any of you guys taken martial arts lessons, if so what style and what is it like?

Pretty sure SF_GoldG could tell you all about kung fu... If you're still lurking, I miss you D:

I just like to kick within a couple inches of peoples faces or do flying kicks towards people... It would be fun to actually learn martial arts.

Yeah I did karate from 3rd grade to 5th grade and achieved a yellow belt.

Yeah, you should invest some of your times looking for a right place because you don't want to end up in a crap place.

I found out most places with monthly memberships were better organized and had better instructors to teach rather than the 3 month, 6 month, 1 year, or 2 year contract crap places I've been too. Contracts mean you have to pay up front a certain amount of money (usually large amount) to receive training from the chosen time period. The thing with contracts, is that the master is usually aiming to make more money in big bundles so even after a week you signed up, you won't get your money back if you quit. This was all just from Tae Kwon Do, which is why I disliked it after a while. By the time I found the right place I moved to a different place and sort of stopped there.

If they have like a "demo" you should go for it.

learn kali it is the best, like Jason Bourne



the people you use it on probably won't be impressed, but that is because they will be dead

I've taken Kali/Eskrima, it's actually very interesting because if you get really good at it, you can use all of the techniques you've learned while empty-handed.

I can't say I have any experience in a "traditional" martial art, but I would suggest you watch out for "McDojos." Any school pumping out a lot of "8 year old 3rd degree black belts" is a waste of money. Why are you insistant on traditional anyway?

Probably to increase his inner chi and maintain traditional dragon within heart.

Jeet Kun Do is great.

If you really want traditional, you should join a taichi group filled with elderly Chinese peoples who can teach you the stuff.

As long as you learn how to fight properly, I think that's what counts the most.

Numbarz: I like how the first guy he's fighting against is so bored at being owned that he's chewing the whole time.

I'd be interested in sparring with a "master" like that so that I could be all, "alright, let's fight -- what the hell, how did I end up on the ground?!"

Uh, JKD is about as far from "traditional" as you can get. Why bring it up?

warlockmish read about it once on these here internet and thought it would make him sound like an accomplished martial artist for sure!

I did Judo for 6 years, really wish I could go back. It's not much of a "martial" art as it's basically Ju Jitsu with most of the brutal and dangerous bits ripped out of it so we can go full contact on each other with out snapping each others wrists all the time. It's basically in many ways a form of wrestling, we throw, pin, armlock, choke and strangle. It gets you fit as hell though and I doubt there are many martial arts that let you fling people around a room all day and conduct it in "full contact" as it were. I was frikkin' lethal with Harai Goshi.


and this one is mostly just really good groundwork. Watch the strangle at 1:05

I can say that all I know is Tai Chi, but that's enough for me.

If you want to learn traditionally, you can spend an hour every morning meditation, then have a small breakfast, then go spar with your "shaolin masters" at a monestary for seven hours. That's how you'd learn traditionally...not by some building with a bunch of blue mats on the ground and some guy in his 20's teaching you how to do a kick while occasionally going out for a quick smoke while you're doing a "kata" that he just made up

We used to have the kid of a survivor of when the temple was burned down back in the 1920's, but he's out in Washington now. He taught what we would call Praying Mantis". Neat guy.

I was unaware jiu jitsu had brutal or dangerous bits.

Where's Gold when you need him.

LOLOLOL

Schming- What is your goal? Do you want something active and a little bit different to do? Do you want to learn how to fight and defend yourself?

Let me/us know, and then I can taylor my response to what you're looking for.

Jiu jitsu is meant to be the hand to hand combat of the samurai, so it's focus was on maiming and killing. I've been to a few lessons and they concentrate on a larger number of joint locks than we see in judo. A lot of it starts out with hypothetical situations: "This guy grabs your wrist / Someone swings at you in this manner" etc and then ways of dealing with that: Break his grip this way, lock his wrist and then his whole arm by twisting that way, now use your free hand to repeatedly punch him in the head and drop on his arm to completely wreck it if you need to. (I'd call that brutal!)

If we were using wristlocks like they do in Ju Jitsu in the competitive and full contact nature of Judo most members would be nursing wrecked wrists. Armlocks are relatively safe because the elbow is a more stable joint. For similar reasons we don't do finger, shoulder or neck locks which all exist in Ju Jitsu. I reckon ankle locks could've been retained in Judo much like Sambo but those aren't used either. It's still bloody scary what they do at Olympian levels. There they apply armlocks so hard and fast that the victim often doesn't really have enough time to tap out before some damage is done.

Well, I know all about the locks and everything, I was just under the impression that since we AREN'T samurai, you'd just not try to break it, instead apply pressure and let them tap out.

I want something to get me back to being active and something that will take up a lot of my time, heh. I haven't really done anything for the past year and I'm not getting fat, I'm getting skinnier so I'm freaking out.

I also want something that's mostly in the hands and not so much throws/takedowns (I wrestled for 3 years, so I know how to do those).

The Kali looks interesting.

If you have any remote interest in Kali, and can find a place to do it, do it.

Kali is so rediculously awesome.

It is awesome, but he'll have to be careful. A lot of places that teach Eskrima are Jeet Kune Do schools, and while I thoroughly enjoyed JKD, there are plenty of bunk schools with instructors that are more interested in bragging about how many SEALs they've helped train rather than teaching basic safety or basic kinesiology. (Like a lot of Krav Maga, or Systema schools.)

Jeet Kune Do isn't even a real form of martial arts according to late Bruce Lee.

It's more like an ideal or a mantra.

Which is why I told him to beware of a lot of schools. Some schools teach what Lee used to teach when first starting out but later abandoned, others will teach the concepts more along the lines of the "backyard boys" era, and others will teach some ****ty karate and call it JKD.

I've done some Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as well as Kenpo. Theres the same deal around here with the Kung Fu schools that your finding. They aren't traditional at all around here either (most places where I live either teach just Tae Kwon Do or mixed martial arts, though there is an aikido place near me as well).

BJJ FTW EL OH EL

By the way, to avoid confusion most people use Jiu-jitsu ((mis)spelled with the 'i') to refer to Gracie or Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and Jujutsu (properly romanized) to refer to Japanese Jujutsu.

But anyways yeah I'm actually being serious. I trained JJJ for three years, saw BJJ's groundwork, was like OMG and now BJJ's my sport and I love it. I would love Judo too but I never had really proper training for it (I learned my Judo throws in my JJJ class). I also started training Muay Thai for striking but unfortunately have only had three or four classes (it's pretty rockin', though, and I recommend you check it out).

Man I nearly signed up for Krav Maga lessons when I briefly lived in Helsinki but then I decided to sign up for Sambo lessons instead because they were cheaper but then I just ate burgers. Oh the burgers!

Krav Maga > *

The closest Krav Maga school is about 45 minutes away and the closest Shaolin center is a 5 minute walk from my apartment. This makes a big difference, even if Krav is badass.

I just really don't like driving my car if I don't need to; I can usually fill up my car 1x a month and be fine. I live in a bubble of 5 sq. miles in downtown Atlanta.

FEAR

Well the main difference between Shaolin Kung Fu and Krav Maga is that Krav Maga is actually useful.

For what? An actual fight?

What the hell do you guys plan on doing anyways? Learn how to defend yourself in real fights?

If that's what you're looking for, good luck finding a good school to do that. Most of the martial arts out there teach only one on one combat for sparring and winning tournaments and such. Haha...days of respect are gone, folks. If you're planning on defending yourself in a real situation, chances are you'll be confronted by more than just one guy. And I doubt you'd wear a cup, mouthpiece, and headgear all day. Good chances he or she has a firearm too.

Or are you talking about health benefits? Shaolin Kung Fu practices a form of zen buddhism that combines both mental and physical aspects of the body into one. Chi is gained by meditation, and released by the martial arts aspect.

Whatever.

This is probably a good thing, seeing as how I doubt you'd let someone beat on you every time you screw up.

As well as about a half dozen other forms of pain and torture traditionally inflicted as part of training.

"I reached my first dan of Kung Fu in about a year, which is less than most people." :downs:

Dud knows what I'm talking about. McDojoodurrrrrrr

Hey, if you want something to do just to do, go to the "Shaolin" place.

But if you want to learn to fight, look for the following qualifiers;

-The training must hurt. Badly.
-The sparring must be full contact.
-You should be insulted routinely, but still be able to make friends.

There is a difference between a good training group that fulfills those requirements and a beat down club. Don't get too involved before you learn to tell the difference.

Krav Maga.

Sadly, I ended up with a trainer who was a little more traditional then most around here. Of course, even he doesn't go to the extremes that they do, but getting beat up when I screw up or just to toughen me up isn't uncommon with him.

Except, I dunno, last time I checked, you wear pads in Krav Maga.

But that's the point. The person isn't going to hold back and you're actually going to learn to absorb more major blows, as well as give them.

If you don't want to wear pads, don't wear pads. If you want to learn to fight for real, go into a bar and call a big guy gay.

Yeah, too bad you can't really do full contact sparring without pads. At least not without hospitalizing yourself.

There's a difference between learning how to fight and being stupid.

There's also a difference between wanting to learn a martial art, and wanting to learn how to fight.

Whatever you learn in a class isn't necessarily going to help in self defence. Whichever style you learn, its bascially going to consist of guidelines for combat. When it comes down to an actual, real-world fight, no one is going to be paying attention to any guidelines and certainly not contact rules. It's like my teacher always told us, the best fight is finished before it starts. I know that sounds pretty cliché, but its true. Avoidance is always the best option. Of course, not all fights can be avoided, so for that you want to finish it as quickly as possible and you want to win.
If you want self defence, I would recommend avoiding a contact style and go with something more central to locks, holds and throws. Naturally I'm going to suggest ju-jutsu because it's what I learned, but there are a lot of options. But just learning an art regardless has a lot of positive benifits. Physical fitness, confidence in your ability to kill someone impress chicks battle ninja, relaxation, and forming new friendships. Also, it can be very cathartic to throw another person around a padded floor twice a week.

Those are important but it is important to cross train. If you only know BJJ you will get ****ed in a real bar fight.



Yes this. But yeah, not a lot of chicks seem to be genuinely impressed by beating people up. Well, chicks that listen to ICP might be but come on...

I absolutely agree. That's what I mean about there being no rules or guidelines in a real fight. But even for a bar fight, locks and holds are going to be more useful than straight punches. Whoever your fight is probably going to be somewhat drunk and wont feel most of the punches. They wouldn't feel a hold, either, but at least you'd have a way of getting them on the ground quickly.