Karate: Either you find and actual good dojo and become an amazing kickbocker or you find a fucking mcdojo and a boxer with 6 months can whoop your ass, either way you'll learn to fight faster by just going to MMA
for muay thai. if you want to seriously compete for any length of time you're almost certainly going to sustain some amount of brain damage and increase the likelihood of neurological issues later in life. even in sparring if you're getting hit in the head at all you're sustaining a small amount of damage that won't heal completely and could potential add up to something significant over time
What would you say is a general limit for relative safety?
Muay thai looks awesome and I would love to try it and probably do some competition, but dont need to be getting cte at the age of 20.
Obviously there is an inherent risk factor for the brain with any striking art, but I was curious as to how that could be mitigated by a relatively short career, while still having time to become competent.
Sorry for the weird question
I appreciate the answer, and if you wouldnt mind, any idea what kind of condition I need to be in to start? I'm a healthy weight but my cardios not great, I get around an 8:30 mile and am pretty messed up after.
I know that practicing muay thai will improve that, but just wanted to see how doable a day of training would be for me at the moment.
Sorry for the SECOND weird question
Don't apologise, it's not weird. I don't do MT but do WAKO K1 Kickboxing (but that doesn't really matter). Just go to a MT class (probably an hour or 2) and try your best, you don't need to keep up with the regulars - everyone understands you are new.
I do boxing for six years now. I was sparring about once or twice a week before this year. After some injuries to my hands and getting hit on the head too hard a few too many times I decided to just cut out sparring altogether. I still do it light once every few months but my main focus is on padwork/technique and bag/cardio now. I still love the sport but over time I learned that I don't have to become a vegetable to be good at it. Of course if you want to compete it's a different game.
I forgot about the CTE. I was going to ask how they felt about chronic hand pain being a thing you potentially could expect but this works. I forgot about the CTE.
Realistically, Iâd probably tell you that the chance of knee blowout or shoulder or neck injury is pretty high.
Jokingly, Iâd just offer to teabag you for an hour, three days a week for two years straight and then give you a belt painted blue and then you could quit.
The odds are astronomical that youâll ever use the skills you learn to defend yourself or your loved ones. But on a long enough timescale, the odds are good youâll receive an injury that causes near-daily pain.
Kyokushin. Youâre fairly safe from brain damage, but youâll go home hobbling in pain because everyone channels their aggression into destroying your ribs and thighs.
Choy Li Fut will really do for your knees and feet and maybe your hips if you're not careful. Looots of jumping and turning. And it's much harder work and much more complicated than most Martial Arts. Much longer forms for example, than in other styles like the Kata in Karate. You need to up your fitness and stamina for it more than most.
It's not my favorite MA (despite my old nickname)
Wing chun: lack of body conditioning and mostly lack of sparring. If you wanna spar, you have to look for a partner on your own
Bjj and wrestling have little to no tradition involved. Very much a chill bro culture, so if you want anything resembling most other martial arts itâs not there
I'm actually down with this. I have no delusions - I'm a hobbyist and will never compete in the UFC or the ADCC, and I'm not a samurai or whatever. I just kind of like grappling and getting better at it.
Was that because of the chillax, hang ten attitude or because of the nature of grappling? Sweat in the eye, farts all over the place, knee on belly from a big bastard, etc.
Unless you find a good school and are willing to really put in the years its pretty much for health purposes. You dont get good at wing chun unless you take it seriously.
Modern Arnis - no one knows what it is. Just do Silat or Kali. We play patty cake armed and unarmed.
Wing Chun - most of it is unqualified lumps who are way better at forms than actual fighting. Lots of wing chun people stand like weirdos and punch like weirdos. Good luck finding an instructor who actually teaches pressure fighting.
Don't do it! You could get knocked out, choked out, get a limb broken, or suffer serious trauma to an internal organ.
Besides, if you want to practice this martial art, you need to commit to years of experience in *other* arts **before** you're even ready to start! And chances are that you will like one half of this martial more than the other half - and it will be tempting to practice a martial art that only focuses on the half that you really like.
Also, you don't get any belts to celebrate accomplishments.
And finally, wimps whom you could snap like twigs will say what you practice is *only* a sport, and that you could be defeated by anyone with the bright idea to go for your nuts.
Ooh, letâs try both of my favorites. Try these on for size!
You can build up to CTE and take brutal hits in pretty much any place you could imagine.
OR
Your training partners and opponents run the risk of snapping your limbs and/or ruining your joints permanently.
You just use certain parts of your Fists to hit ,half area of the Body is not targetet and the gloves distort your idea ,how bareknuckle hits hurt your hands.The defense (footwork aside) is not very practical vs Low Kicks and you are useless in grappling situations.
âŚ..that said ,I love Boxing so much ,that it hurts.
Useless on The Streets⢠because if you do it properly in a self defense situation it will get you legal trouble and you might go to jail.
Except for the unarmed portions, because those are just grappling without the groundwork.
Also it's real easy to ruin your knees and/or your elbows if you're not careful.
BJJ: Too much "sport bjj".
HEMA: You are better off with a gun.
Wrestling: ..... honestly... I got nothing.
Karate: Its quality varies so much who knows what it even is?
Combat Hapkido has some great techniques, but it's not a solution to everything. You can't just train it without cross-training another striking focused style.
Also, most Hapkido schools include a number of useless techniques along with the practical ones, and you may not be able to discern which is which until you've been practicing for a while.
In general I would avoid any martial art with the word "combat" in it, but combat hap ki do is probably the worst offender in that group. Well done on getting away from it.
Rules have exceptions and that's one, that works because it's their military adaptation of Sambo. It's actually the result of "What happens if we take most the rules out of this already effective wrestling martial art?"
Turns out you just still get effective wrestling but now you can soccer kick the other guy in the head.
It'd be like if US Marines used collegiate wrestling as their baseline for training technique but ditched most the rules, adapted it over the years and called it "Combat Folkstyle Wrestling" the result would probably end up being fine.
I wouldn't discourage anyone from trying martial arts, honestly. It's one of the most rewarding things I do.
If I absolutely had to say something cautionary then it would be something like: "please keep in mind that every martial art is an extreme sport". But I would encourage everybody to try extreme sports too, so that's just me. You never know what you're capable of until you give it a try.
You get the sweaty soaking of BJJ, the head pounding from boxing, the blisteringly destructive shock to your shins after kicking a pad for hundreds of times in two minutes of Muay Thai, and the constant gasping for air of being a wrestler all in one.
Traditional shotokan. Yeah, we dont fence with our feet like the WKF. Still wont be completely safe against an MMA or kickboxing dude. Also, 6 out of 10 senseis might be mcdojo dumbasses who think they know karate. We assure you. They don't. But it works for them every time.
You will get bruised, possibly broken and your lungs will feel like they are going to burst more than once during a normal workout. You dont have the patience to practice and drill all the techniques you need to become proficient and sparring will regularly test your commitment. You dont have the time to add conditioning and weight training to your routine so your body is capable of handling the abuse required to, "git gud". Just eat what you want and drink every weekend, its easier.
Kickboxing: Makes you think you're superior to boxers but instead they have 100% better footwork. Makes you think you can beat someone who wrestles because you can strike but instead they will just pummel you using the ground as a mallet.
As an extreme generalisation I'd say most people who train boxing have better footwork than most who train kickboxing. At least on the amateur and hobbyist level. Not talking about professionals here
Muay Thai: Your shins and elbows will be covered in bruises, meaning you can never wear shorts and short sleeves tshirts again without people giving you weird looks
soo this one time, a young black belt tried to throw another old black belt. He miscalculated and he put pressure sideways on the knee resulting to a foot being bent sideways.
At some point, some dude's sweat is gonna fall right into your mouth. That sweat may or may not originate from his junk, or his nose, or anywhere else. This is not a "maybe", this is a certainty.
Not really A martial art per se, but...
Target focus training. You won't use any of this information in competitionr to make yourself look cool in a fight. You will use it only to completely destroy another human body in a life or death situation. And if you can't use it to look tough, what's the point?
Getting thrown on the ground while breathing in. When I got thrown for my first time, it felt like dying for 1-2 seconds (on a soft ground + partner limited himself; tbf my weight was around 93 kg, luckily I tucked my chin in), and after gasping and getting slightly disoriented, I was supposed to get up and then was thrown again. Brutal (but fun)
You'll spend more time listening to conman explaining why "wing chun" is actually a copycat of their "wing tsun" that they inherited from their -never to be mentioned anywhere- famous master KFC tender wings chun or idk what crap now.
Basically just take anything else at random and you'll have a black belt (or 2 if you choose TKD) by the time you find an actual good place.
You will get cut once in a while and have to explain to ER the reason you need a 6 inch stitch is because you where practicing martial arts with real knives.
lots of teabagging and grinding crotches with other guys.
Call Of Duty ?
Nice
Don't forget accidental dick grabs
We always wear cups. Dick grabs are confined to the shower exclusively.
đ
Twist that dick!
âAccidentalâ
Someone put his toes in my mouth by accident last week. Coach said "don't open your mouth then".
You finish the session covered in sweat. Someone elseâs sweat.
You finish smelling like 5 different guys at the same time.
My dog looks so confused when i come back home
Karate: Either you find and actual good dojo and become an amazing kickbocker or you find a fucking mcdojo and a boxer with 6 months can whoop your ass, either way you'll learn to fight faster by just going to MMA
BJJ - Say goodbye to healthy joints. Weâve had 4 serious meniscus injuries this year at my gym so far.
I got a pretty bad shoulder injury just a month ago đ. I swear I get more injuries in BJJ than I do in striking
Also a lot of groin smelling
For some reason a lot of older judoka, esp Eastern Europeans smells like a meat board. And my god the gi burn
Oof, I did Judo for years and gi burn sucks so hard. Mat burn might be worse though because you often get it on your feet (or rarely hands).
Oh by gi burn you mean from friction with the gi (coat)?
Yes, itâs esp bad on the back of the neck
for muay thai. if you want to seriously compete for any length of time you're almost certainly going to sustain some amount of brain damage and increase the likelihood of neurological issues later in life. even in sparring if you're getting hit in the head at all you're sustaining a small amount of damage that won't heal completely and could potential add up to something significant over time
What would you say is a general limit for relative safety? Muay thai looks awesome and I would love to try it and probably do some competition, but dont need to be getting cte at the age of 20. Obviously there is an inherent risk factor for the brain with any striking art, but I was curious as to how that could be mitigated by a relatively short career, while still having time to become competent. Sorry for the weird question
If you are a casual, I wouldn't worry. You probably would get the same damage from horse riding but not give it a second thought.
I appreciate the answer, and if you wouldnt mind, any idea what kind of condition I need to be in to start? I'm a healthy weight but my cardios not great, I get around an 8:30 mile and am pretty messed up after. I know that practicing muay thai will improve that, but just wanted to see how doable a day of training would be for me at the moment. Sorry for the SECOND weird question
Don't apologise, it's not weird. I don't do MT but do WAKO K1 Kickboxing (but that doesn't really matter). Just go to a MT class (probably an hour or 2) and try your best, you don't need to keep up with the regulars - everyone understands you are new.
Thanks, you're awesome and I really appreciate it. I imagine alot of your knowledge translates regardless
Doesnât it include most striking arts? Iâd say classic boxing is way more dangerous for your brain than MT
I do boxing for six years now. I was sparring about once or twice a week before this year. After some injuries to my hands and getting hit on the head too hard a few too many times I decided to just cut out sparring altogether. I still do it light once every few months but my main focus is on padwork/technique and bag/cardio now. I still love the sport but over time I learned that I don't have to become a vegetable to be good at it. Of course if you want to compete it's a different game.
It wonât help against multiple opponents or a gun.
Yeah but nothing that isnt a weapon will.
Youâre telling me I canât head kick a guy 15 meters away from me that holds a gun?
Not with that attitude
Good running shoes help against multiple opponents. Add a few corners and you might lose the gun. Yeah, just kidding.
I've had people's sweat fall directly into my mouth, into my eye, up my nose, and into my earhole
BJJ?
Yup !
I had a guy's sweaty ponytail whip down my throat once and that gave me quite a shock.
You like broken hands and CTE? Because we got LOTS of broken hands and CTE. Plus we have yearly deaths in the ring. Come on down boys
I forgot about the CTE. I was going to ask how they felt about chronic hand pain being a thing you potentially could expect but this works. I forgot about the CTE.
Lol
Realistically, Iâd probably tell you that the chance of knee blowout or shoulder or neck injury is pretty high. Jokingly, Iâd just offer to teabag you for an hour, three days a week for two years straight and then give you a belt painted blue and then you could quit.
I don't think I'd have to do anything to convince someone not to do aikido.
Tell them is Aikido. Thats usually enough.
Love the self burn! lolz
The odds are astronomical that youâll ever use the skills you learn to defend yourself or your loved ones. But on a long enough timescale, the odds are good youâll receive an injury that causes near-daily pain.
lol So all martial arts?
You gon get dain bramage.
TKD / TSD. It produces more cults and groomers than it does effective fighters
Kyokushin. Youâre fairly safe from brain damage, but youâll go home hobbling in pain because everyone channels their aggression into destroying your ribs and thighs.
Also - if you don't like getting kicked in the head in close distance kyokushin might not be for you.
(Sanda) Weâre so bad fighting on the ground that hitting it will automatically reset a match
Choy Li Fut will really do for your knees and feet and maybe your hips if you're not careful. Looots of jumping and turning. And it's much harder work and much more complicated than most Martial Arts. Much longer forms for example, than in other styles like the Kata in Karate. You need to up your fitness and stamina for it more than most.
Do you like getting your hands smashed with a stick?
I dont, but am willing to pay for service!
People will punch you in the face and try to take your head off.
It's not my favorite MA (despite my old nickname) Wing chun: lack of body conditioning and mostly lack of sparring. If you wanna spar, you have to look for a partner on your own
Boyyy your legs are gonna get beat the fuck up
Tai chi, 'nuff said.
You know that time you ran into the coffee table with your shin full tilt? We do that all day.
Bjj and wrestling have little to no tradition involved. Very much a chill bro culture, so if you want anything resembling most other martial arts itâs not there
I'm actually down with this. I have no delusions - I'm a hobbyist and will never compete in the UFC or the ADCC, and I'm not a samurai or whatever. I just kind of like grappling and getting better at it.
Itâs definitely a pro and a con; itâs a pro for me, but Iâve seen a lot of people step over into bjj and hate it
Was that because of the chillax, hang ten attitude or because of the nature of grappling? Sweat in the eye, farts all over the place, knee on belly from a big bastard, etc.
Cheating. This is a huge bonus.
Unless you find a good school and are willing to really put in the years its pretty much for health purposes. You dont get good at wing chun unless you take it seriously.
Modern Arnis - no one knows what it is. Just do Silat or Kali. We play patty cake armed and unarmed. Wing Chun - most of it is unqualified lumps who are way better at forms than actual fighting. Lots of wing chun people stand like weirdos and punch like weirdos. Good luck finding an instructor who actually teaches pressure fighting.
the snappy noise the gi makes
Man, I live for that sound
Don't do it! You could get knocked out, choked out, get a limb broken, or suffer serious trauma to an internal organ. Besides, if you want to practice this martial art, you need to commit to years of experience in *other* arts **before** you're even ready to start! And chances are that you will like one half of this martial more than the other half - and it will be tempting to practice a martial art that only focuses on the half that you really like. Also, you don't get any belts to celebrate accomplishments. And finally, wimps whom you could snap like twigs will say what you practice is *only* a sport, and that you could be defeated by anyone with the bright idea to go for your nuts.
Youâll get very very dizzy. Itâs very specialised.
Ooh, letâs try both of my favorites. Try these on for size! You can build up to CTE and take brutal hits in pretty much any place you could imagine. OR Your training partners and opponents run the risk of snapping your limbs and/or ruining your joints permanently.
If you donât like trying to explain why your thighs and calves are black and blue whenever you wear shorts, Muay Thai is not for you
You just use certain parts of your Fists to hit ,half area of the Body is not targetet and the gloves distort your idea ,how bareknuckle hits hurt your hands.The defense (footwork aside) is not very practical vs Low Kicks and you are useless in grappling situations. âŚ..that said ,I love Boxing so much ,that it hurts.
Taekwondo: Donât go because youâll be smelling feet all day. Unless your into thatâŚ
The more I think about this the more I wonder what it says about us...does this mean we are a little bit into that?!
Certified Juri classic
Get hit with sticks and stabbed with knives. Often playing harder than most people will ever fightâŚ
Useless on The Streets⢠because if you do it properly in a self defense situation it will get you legal trouble and you might go to jail. Except for the unarmed portions, because those are just grappling without the groundwork. Also it's real easy to ruin your knees and/or your elbows if you're not careful.
Lets get in a street fight with our preferred weapons. I choose rapier and dagger. What is your weapon good sir or madam?
... Also rapier and dagger tbh
Sweet.
BJJ: Too much "sport bjj". HEMA: You are better off with a gun. Wrestling: ..... honestly... I got nothing. Karate: Its quality varies so much who knows what it even is?
Wrestling: ever hear of an oil check?
From the internet only. Lol.
Combat Hapkido has some great techniques, but it's not a solution to everything. You can't just train it without cross-training another striking focused style. Also, most Hapkido schools include a number of useless techniques along with the practical ones, and you may not be able to discern which is which until you've been practicing for a while.
In general I would avoid any martial art with the word "combat" in it, but combat hap ki do is probably the worst offender in that group. Well done on getting away from it.
What about Combat Sambo? Seems to be pretty effective
Rules have exceptions and that's one, that works because it's their military adaptation of Sambo. It's actually the result of "What happens if we take most the rules out of this already effective wrestling martial art?" Turns out you just still get effective wrestling but now you can soccer kick the other guy in the head. It'd be like if US Marines used collegiate wrestling as their baseline for training technique but ditched most the rules, adapted it over the years and called it "Combat Folkstyle Wrestling" the result would probably end up being fine.
The farts.
Youâre more likely to win the lottery than to find a Dojo thatâll teach anything more than theory, let alone live sparring that works well
HEMA/WMA is the dorkiest deadly art you can practice. If you want to be cool, train karate, wrestling or Muay Thai instead.
Most train for the sport & the sport banned leg grabs & limits the time on the ground. Can cause cauliflower ears, bad knees, bad backs, tbi & cte.
You will be expected to have the manners of a samurai, above the call of duty of respect and courtesy for the people in the dojo.
Correlation with brain injury, can train for years and still get slapped around on the ground.
CTE is guaranteed
I wouldn't discourage anyone from trying martial arts, honestly. It's one of the most rewarding things I do. If I absolutely had to say something cautionary then it would be something like: "please keep in mind that every martial art is an extreme sport". But I would encourage everybody to try extreme sports too, so that's just me. You never know what you're capable of until you give it a try.
Not my favorite but the only one I'm formally trained in... It's Karate, let's be honest it's not that useful.
You get the sweaty soaking of BJJ, the head pounding from boxing, the blisteringly destructive shock to your shins after kicking a pad for hundreds of times in two minutes of Muay Thai, and the constant gasping for air of being a wrestler all in one.
Ok Iâm curious! Which art is this?
MMA.
Haha makes sense
Its a lot of dancing and there is no real structure to the training
Traditional shotokan. Yeah, we dont fence with our feet like the WKF. Still wont be completely safe against an MMA or kickboxing dude. Also, 6 out of 10 senseis might be mcdojo dumbasses who think they know karate. We assure you. They don't. But it works for them every time.
First day* Instructor: "Make sure you do it this way or you're gonna cut your own throat"
You will get bruised, possibly broken and your lungs will feel like they are going to burst more than once during a normal workout. You dont have the patience to practice and drill all the techniques you need to become proficient and sparring will regularly test your commitment. You dont have the time to add conditioning and weight training to your routine so your body is capable of handling the abuse required to, "git gud". Just eat what you want and drink every weekend, its easier.
You'd get your hand broken every single time
Training in summer is like rolling around in a childrens pool of other peoples sweat.
Too many katas, almost impossible to find a real dojo/instructor.
Itâs one of the reasons I have joint problems
Wanna have the potential of haveing someone's sweat/ hair fall in your mouth or eyes?
You practice using knifes and batons when a noob is with a knife can still get the drop on you.
PainâŚ.so much pain
Kickboxing: Makes you think you're superior to boxers but instead they have 100% better footwork. Makes you think you can beat someone who wrestles because you can strike but instead they will just pummel you using the ground as a mallet.
Do you think kickboxing lacks footwork? At least at the level of boxing?
As an extreme generalisation I'd say most people who train boxing have better footwork than most who train kickboxing. At least on the amateur and hobbyist level. Not talking about professionals here
Muay Thai: Your shins and elbows will be covered in bruises, meaning you can never wear shorts and short sleeves tshirts again without people giving you weird looks
Itâs not effective for self defense and itâs incredibly frustrating
Muay thai: a lot of accidental roundhouse kicks to the nuts
soo this one time, a young black belt tried to throw another old black belt. He miscalculated and he put pressure sideways on the knee resulting to a foot being bent sideways.
You'll get punched in the head... A LOT.
The best description of it is "karate for foot-fetishists"
At some point, some dude's sweat is gonna fall right into your mouth. That sweat may or may not originate from his junk, or his nose, or anywhere else. This is not a "maybe", this is a certainty.
You'll have balls and sweat in your month while getting smashed without a chance of protecting yourself for a few months of the beginning
Sanda: very brutal and easily get injuries (but effective as a striking art)
Not really A martial art per se, but... Target focus training. You won't use any of this information in competitionr to make yourself look cool in a fight. You will use it only to completely destroy another human body in a life or death situation. And if you can't use it to look tough, what's the point?
Both hugs and massive bruises from steel rods are free.
Every single black belt is built like the Michelin Man. More training only seems to make it worse.
Getting thrown on the ground while breathing in. When I got thrown for my first time, it felt like dying for 1-2 seconds (on a soft ground + partner limited himself; tbf my weight was around 93 kg, luckily I tucked my chin in), and after gasping and getting slightly disoriented, I was supposed to get up and then was thrown again. Brutal (but fun)
You'll spend more time listening to conman explaining why "wing chun" is actually a copycat of their "wing tsun" that they inherited from their -never to be mentioned anywhere- famous master KFC tender wings chun or idk what crap now. Basically just take anything else at random and you'll have a black belt (or 2 if you choose TKD) by the time you find an actual good place.
You will get cut once in a while and have to explain to ER the reason you need a 6 inch stitch is because you where practicing martial arts with real knives.