GreenDragon

Yes, that is a big part of it. But it wasn't movies for me as much as the TV show Kung Fu. GD

Having practiced a little karate and a little Muay Thai, I feel I can give an objective opinion. Karate ramps up slowly, several years down the road a dedicated karate practitioner may even be better than a Muay Thai fighter who has been at it for a few years. On the other hand Muay Thai ramps up very quickly. I feel that a Muay Thai fighter after one year would be far more prepared for a real life fight than a karate practitioner after only one year. Obviously this is debatable based on the schools and the individuals, but all those things being equal, I believe my assessment is fair. One of the main differences between my Muay Thai training and my Karate training was the physical conditioning part. And I don't just mean the workout, because as an example my Tang Soo Do class gave a much better workout that the karate class and this level of exercise will vary from school to school. I mean the method of conditioning that is standard at every Muay Thai school. Not only is the workout intense, and many other arts will have intense workouts as well, but I mean the training method of holding thai pads while someone else kicks them. It is this feeding your partner and watching him try to hit/kick/elbow and knee you as hard as he can with only some pads offering a bit of protection that gets you used to taking a hit. Sure some other arts spar, and some even spar hard, but every night in Muay Thai class you take somewhat of a beating. In other arts if you've gotten hit hard, it is a result of sparring and a mistake you made, (or maybe you are Uke and your teacher is hard on you ) in Muay Thai getting hit hard is just part of the training and you are there to take every hit your partner dishes out and encourage him to hit you harder. I imagine some people who are very dedicated to Muay Thai feel that if they are going to be beaten and hurting after every class, they must justify their participation in what seems at first like insanity by putting other arts down. Seriously, I had no idea how difficult Muay Thai training is until I tried it and many times have thought about quitting. Oh, and other than people being jerks about it due to them justifying their participation in something so hurtful, there is also the spiritual aspect. In Karate class and even more so the Tang Soo Do class, respect was taught as part of class. I don't know how to say this, but imagine a boxing gym, those guys are there just to learn to fight, nothing else. Muay Thai gyms are like that too (I imagine to varying degrees) whereas practitioners of most other arts have been taught some very subtle things that develop respect for others (like bowing before stepping on to the mat, calling your teacher sensei, my Tang Soo Do instructor would even get on us about using first names with other students unless they were kids, I had to call other students Mr. This or Miss That). I'll probably get flamed by some Muay Thai folks now, but I have to somewhat agree that some Muay Thai practitioners are a little arrogant sometimes. I may even sound arrogant in saying that they do have a bit of an excuse because of the difficulty of the conditioning they go through. But they also could be a little more humble and show some respect for other arts. Everyone here is doing some kind of fighting art and that makes them far more prepared than the average Joe on the street, regardless of the specific art we are learning. GreenDragon

Gotta agree with Boxeador. Muay Thai is nothing fancy, it is simple, and that is what I love about it. Less time spent learning a broad range of different things that may or may not be useful in a street fight, more time spent training and and perfecting a limited amount of techniques that are all very useful in a street fight. No katas = simple if you asked me, and that does not mean ineffective. Alright Kicky: Your Juijitsu teacher sounds like he was more concerned with avoiding lawsuits than teaching effective self defense. Any art will seem weak and boring if taught with kid gloves on. Juijitsu is great for self defense if taught the right way. Fortunately Mauy Thai is almost always taught in a brutal manner and although quite difficult for the first couple months, it will make a very good fighter out of you very quickly in comparison to other arts like Karate. Other arts are highly effective after a couple years. Boxing and kickboxing will get you used to taking a hit much more quickly. BTW - almost no-one in America kicks in a street fight either. But that is why I wanted to learn Muay Thai instead of boxing, if you can kick and they can't, chances are they will have no way to defend it. I imagine a couple devastating low kicks to the knee would end most fights before they start. GreenDragon

Not so fast! I can and will tell you what to do. Seriously though, if you are really looking for opinions you should give us a little more insight as to what your reasoning is for even thinking of quitting Wushu. Make it possible for us to imagine ourselves in your place, then we might be able to imagine what we would do once there. Give us the pros and cons if you would like assistance weighing them. GreenDragon

Treebranch, yup, it is fun, and thanks for all the helpful advice while I was searching. For me, whether it is the gym or at home, I am just not motivated enough to do something that requires self motivation, like lifting weights or using an orbiter by myself. In class I am paired up with someone else and driven by my partner or the teacher and feel obligated to go the full 3 minute round whether I want to or not. It's just what I need to get in shape. We will see after another 6 mos. or so whether it has worked or not. GD

I got into martial arts recently because I needed to do something to get in better shape, and working out at the gym is not interesting enough to keep me coming back. I always wanted to learn some kind of martial art too. So I got into MAs primarily for the workout, but also for the self defense and fun factor too. I tried several different styles and found that the quality of teaching and level of workout I received varied wildly from school to school, even within the same art. With so many schools to choose from, I thought finding one in my area of town would be easy, but it was not. I ended up having to completely discard driving distance as one of my criteria in order to find a place that worked for me. After lots of research and watching classes and trying classes I chose Muay Thai (Thai kickboxing). The workout is unmatched in my town. The self defense aspect (rather than the sport aspect) is highly stressed and in the more experienced students appears to be frighteningly effective. I don't have to learn any katas (there aren't any in Muay Thai). Not that there is anything wrong with learning katas, I personally just don't like the increased mental requirement of remembering all the moves of the katas after I have had a 10 or 11 hour work day, I just want to go pound something . Although the drive is a bit farther than I'd have preferred, the price is right, and I am not legally bound by a contract. GreenDragon

Katas and Forms are like a dance. A kata is a pre-determined set of defensive and offensive moves done in succession as a way to practice those moves. I'm sure you have seen it in movies, where the martial artist is moving around by themselves in a room while practicing their moves. There are lots of different katas in each martial art and at each belt level you will need to know a certain number of katas to pass your belt test. Another little known fact to those new to martial arts: at martial arts competitions there is sparring (fighting for points a la karate kid movie) but there are also kata competitions to determine who has learned their katas well and can execute them with great precision. In Japanese martial arts (like karate) they are called katas, in Korean martial arts (like Tae Kwan Do) they are called Hyongs and in Chinese martial arts (like Shaolin Kung Fu) they are just referred to in english as forms (don't know the chinese word for it). Not sure what they are called in kenpo classes, but I am guessing forms. GreenDragon

A Phoenix, kewl...I took the how evil are you test (which apparently takes past deeds into consideration rather than only using current mind-sets ). Turned out, both my wife and I were 49% evil, kinda scary. Didja do that one? GD

Hi, I have already received a great deal of help in choosing an art from this site, but never came here to do the introduction thing...so here goes. I am a 32-year-old graphic artist who makes money doing management. I have never been able to get into the working out thing and quite frankly until a couple years ago never felt the need to. But alas, my metabolism has finally slowed to the point where my inactivity has caught up with me. When I was in my early teens, a friend of mine was going to kenpo and I thought that was just so cool, but my mother would never let me do anything that was stereotypically thought of to be dangerous (like football or karate). But I always played baseball and soccer, and up until a few years ago, my buddies and me would get together and play basketball and volleyball. So finally with my gut growing and my wife taking an interest in us getting fit, I decide it's time to go ahead and try karate. My primary motivation being I wanted to do something that would be active enough to get me in shape and would be fun at the same time...learning some self defense couldn't hurt either, and the wife approved, so off I went, woohoo! I live in sunny Tucson, Arizona (it's getting hot already) where MA studios abound so the choices were many even though the levels of quality and availability for working into my hectic schedule were limited. I tried a free night of TKD and although the workout was great, the instructor had a bit of a Latin accent which made it very difficult to figure out how he wanted me to pronounce the Korean he was speaking...if I said it just like him, it wasn't quite right and he would keep correcting me by saying the exact same thing, frustrating. But after the wife heard about my TKD night she thought she might like to try something like that. So we went and got a family rate at a place where I could do karate and she and my stepdaughter could do cardio-kickboxing. Well after a few lessons, it was apparent that with her bad back (car accident) a workout with that high of an impact level was going to do more harm than good, but that wasn't stopping me. She came to watch my white belt test at the end of our first month and the class was a little more tough than usual (because the head instructor who was rarely there had to re-teach us the basics that we had learned incorrectly from his son and drill us to make sure we had it down so he could give us our belts and charge us for them). When I said to my wife "tonight was tougher than usual" she laughed and said "that was tough?" clearly comparing it to the workout she got in the cardio class. But it made me think, so I came here searching for opinions and quickly came to the conclusion that I had been attending what turned out to be a MCdojo for a month. My search continued...I then found a great Tang Soo Do dojang, I did his $35USD two week trial period and liked it a lot. Then he dropped the contract bomb on me, calling it an agreement, and implying that if there was some reason I could not attend, like being laid off he would not hold it against me (then why have a contract at all!). Although contracts are a good thing from a business perspective, I just didn't feel comfortable with the idea that if I got laid off, I'd be legally bound to put food on his table while my family ate ramen. So again the search continued...and I was surprised at how much I had learned from this forum and other sites about the MAs and just how difficult that knowledge made it to find place to train that would meet my new high standards and give me the workout I was looking for without having to sign a contract or breaking my bank and also had classes late enough in the evening that I could attend. I thought I had looked everywhere, tried every search site (martialinfo.com, etc.) and called every place in town, so I was about to settle on an excellent local bujinkan and learn budo taijutsu. However, admittedly one of the concepts of this art is that anyone can do it so physical fitness is not trained for nor is it required to excel. So on a day that I had planned to go and do a trial class, I used some Tucson Recreation site to try and see if I could find the number to some Goju Ryu place someone told me about that wasn't in any phone books. While on this site, I found a place simply called kickboxing at Tucson. Turned out to be just some guy who rents a room in the upstairs of a gym and teaches Muay Thai and Brazilian Jui Juitsu up there. It was in the evenings, the workout would be intense, and the price is unbeatable (lowest anywhere in town for any art). So I've been doing that for a month now, and although the class is a little informal, and we sometimes start a little late because some people show up late...when we start, it is dead serious. So, that's my story...I finally found something I am enjoying, even though some nights I get a little more bruised than I'd prefer. Part of my successful search is due to the excellent advice and friendly replies I have received from a lot of very knowledgeable folks on this site, so thanks everybody, glad to be here. GreenDragon

I had recently taken a couple silly web based personality tests. One was to find out what kind of mythical creature you are most like. I came out as a dragon, and another was what color dragon your personality most fit (like goody-goodies were white dragons, pure evil people were black dragons etc.) and I came out green. Then I got a cool plate cover of a green dragon for my phone and became the GreenDragon on this forum, but I already had this nicely formatted pic of Brak from other forums so I used that...ok now I am getting inspired to go and find a nice pic of a green dragon.....heh, I got one, it took a little editing to get him formatted right, but there he is...a little green dragon. GD In case anyone was interested, here is a link to some guy's test results that he made into a web page, he has links to all kinds of silly fun tests including the what kind of mythical creature are you and the inner dragon test. Have fun: http://www.geocities.com/mytearsofmercury/myquizresults.html

The way my instructor explained it to me, the leg closest to where you are going is the first to move. Moving forward? Move the lead leg first. Moving back? Move the back leg first. Moving left? Move the left leg first. Moving right? Move the right leg first. Although easy to remember, is difficult in practice. When moving forward I tend to natuarally want to move my rear leg forward first, according to my instructor, this is the wrong thing to do. I imagine the reason is that when stepping forward first with the lead leg, you are widening your stance while moving, which in theory lowers your center of gravity, and makes you more stable. If you move your rear leg forward first, it almost comes up and meets the lead leg before the lead leg moves forward, making your stance very thin and weak in the middle of the move. That is the only reasoning I can think of. GD

Well, when you train as hard as we do to use other weapons like elbows and knees, there really isn't any reason to risk injury to your hands/wrists in a street fight. I'm not saying it isn't possible to hurt an elbow, knee or shin when using them as weapons, but the fact is, there is much less risk of injury due to how small the bones in the hand are compared to the others. And on Monday morning when I have to go back to work, would I rather have a bruised/cut elbow or a sprained/broken hand? Personally I couldn't work with a hand injury, so palms or not I would try to resist the urge to hit with a fist. GD

First let me say that the post on page one by 100% saying that a palm strike to the nose is deadly is not true, it is an old wives tale that the nose gets pushed upward into the brain causing instant death. That is not to say that a palm strike to the nose wouldn't be effective and painful. 54Oldsman hit the nail on the head. Boxers and kickboxers do not wear wraps and gloves only for the protection of the person they are hitting, it is primarily protection for their hands and wrists. With a palm strike there is very little chance of the wrist being sprained or broken when the hit lands on a moving target. A good palm strike is to the chin/lower jaw; if executed properly with enough force it slams the bottom jaw backwards causing concussion and/or KO. Many boxing mouth guards on the market now are designed specifically to prevent this. Personally since I train in Muay Thai, our instructor teaches us not to even make a fist in a streetfight, but use open hands to help control the attacker and use elbows, knees, low kicks to strike with, never a fist in a streetfight. GD

Previous posters have made some excellent points, however, my experience has been that certain things will be quite difficult. I took two hard styles Shuri Ryu Karate and Tang Soo Do and am now learning Muay Thai. An example if previous experience being a good thing...my round thai kicks are already pretty strong while still being able to be balanced. Example of previous habits being bad: I tend to still try to half chamber a punch when doing combos instead of keeping my guard up. And blocking in Muay Thai is much differnt than a karate/TSD block...sometimes when I see a punch coming and I am fatigued, I will revert and try to meet the punch out in front like a karate block. Truth is you will have certain advantages and there may be some fundamentals that will have to change for you to be proficient in another art. An important question for you to ask yourself will be are you cross training or crossing over. If you are crossing over, then you should make every effort to throw out whatever doesn't match. Deep inside you will still know the core moves of JJ and will be able to use them if necessary. If you are going to truly be cross training i.e. training in something else while continuing to train in JJ, you will have a tougher time of it and should make both of your instructors aware of this. Specifically to your situation, learning a primarily striking based art will go well with jj and there shouldn't be a whole lot of confilct. After nine years of JJ I would say go for it and have fun with the challenge. GD

Ringside has some excellent articles specifically written with nutrition for boxers in mind. Start with this one, and check out the links to the right of this article: http://www.ringside.com/archives/nutrition_for_boxers/faq2.htm This article touches on your specific question of how to maintain energy in the ring and how that relates to Carb consumption: http://www.ringside.com/archives/nutrition_for_boxers/lowcarb.htm And there is an article there about the importance of water consumption for boxers. GreenDragon

The toughest part of our warm up is the squats. My quads always burn after that. Then during punching drills we do a thing called burn out. that is where you just repeatedly punch focus pads alternating hands for a full 3 minute round. I never knew three minutes could be so long until I felt my shoulders burning 1.5 minutes into a burn out. But by far the toughest thing I have had to do as part of class is holding the Thai pads while my partner practices round thai kicks and switch kicks. Now that is tough conditioning. My forearm is still sore and a little bruised from a shin kick over a week ago. GreenDragon

Same question...more answers: /viewtopic.php?t=7560&start=0&sid=bcc84af15280a88402d0eac6747625a9

I agree with Immolation, and although Tommarker's post was excellent, many of the things mentioned in his essay are points which are easily disputed by your would be attacker once they are beaten. The strike first mentality is very effective and is certainly a safer tactic than waiting for an attack and trying to block/counter it. However, legally speaking that is a very easy (and prudent) attitude to have as a woman. I would warn men against taking this mentality too literally and striking someone who is merely threatening you. A golfing story: While golfing with my father on a public course we were paired with a couple guys who were nice. Ahead of us were some folks who were playing slow and one of them was being very loud, clearly he had been drinking. When we teed off on the 17th (which runs opposite and alongside hole 18 ) one of the guys playing with us had hit into the trees left of the fairway. The half drunk idiot on the hole ahead of us had hit his ball on the 18th left into the same trees. The guy with us went right to the ball that I knew was his. Almost on queue, the idiot drives his cart right up to him and starts telling him to leave his ball alone, after a heated exchange, the guy with us turns to walk away, leaving his ball, then the idiot spits on him and threatens to kick his ass. So the nice guy turns around and apparently having had enough, advances on the idiot, and as a previous poster said, there was no first strike. The idiot saw the guy coming, assumed an attack was coming and came back at him as well and before being able to see who had thrown the "1st punch" they were in a fight. After subdueing the idiot and beginning to walk away again, the idiot goes and grabs a club and starts after the guy, ability, opportunity and imminent jeapordy clearly is established. So the guy's friend decided to get involved to keep his friend from getting clubbed, end result, the idiot got pretty well beaten, but not excessively so. What happens when it's all over? The idiot is yelling how he is going to sue them, and is telling the police what a victim he was. Every witness agreed that he deserved what he got, but the police didn't care, the idiot was assaulted, and even after being verbally threatened and spat upon, the guy with us could have continued to walk away and nothing would have happened. The idiot denied making the the threat and spitting too. So, my advice, even if you think you may be in danger, if you have MA training and think you will end up hurting the other person, making the first attack and not waiting to be in actual physical danger could land you in serious legal trouble when you are fine and the other person is beaten senseless after repeatedly trying to attack you. The attacker will take advantage of the obvious one-sided-ness of the fight and say that they were the victim. Any police to come on the scene afterwards would have a hard time knowing who to believe. Witnesses are key. If you use self defense and there are no witnesses, it might be best not to call the police, because unless you have some wound on you or are female, the police may take the other person's side and you could go to jail for assualt. But better in jail than a hospital, hmm, maybe not. This sure turned into a tough nut to crack about legal use of force in self defense situations that probably didn't have much to do with the original poster's question. The original poster probably saw some ad or heard an instructor mention self defense as being PART of a Martial Arts class and didn't know what that meant, assuming the entire MA was self defense. So if that is what you meant by "what is self defense?": Most MA schools will go through their regular MA training, then near the end of class once or twice a week will do what they call "self defense". This consists of showing you how to counter a lot of moves common street thugs will use, like grabbing you by the wrists to drag you into a bathroom and rape you, or choking you, or coming up behind you and grabbing you in a bear hug, etc. This is the part of a lot of TKD classes where they will teach some hapkido moves (locks, throws, etc), because they are very effective against untrained attackers for self defense. Hope that answered you question poster ;P If not, I hope I get this month's longest rambling post that didn't really help anyone award. GreenDragon

Maybe I am about to come off as a lazy arse here, but here goes. I need protection to make my wrists more sturdy during class (when I punch hard, my wrist hurts). The obvious answer hand wraps. The problem is, in Muay Thai class we are constantly switching duties, for a couple rounds, I might be doing punching drills, but a few minutes later I will be holding pads for my parter while he does drills and the wraps would get in the way when I am feeding my partner. Plus I am lazy. Anyway, I see everyone pulling these ankle guards over their feet and on to their ankles, they help stablize the ankle and protect it, etc. So my natural thought is "there must be something like that for the wrist that will provide protection and slip on & off quickly". But I didn't see anything like that on ringside.com. Does this product exist and if so where can I get a pair? GreenDragon

To be honest, you are probably better off learning almost any other martial art from an experienced instructor than you would be teaching Muay Thai to yourself using some books/tapes. The value of an intructor in a classroom setting is high, and in my Muay Thai class it has become apparant that it would be impossible to train alone. Conditioning is a big part of Muay Thai, that means getting kicked by someone else and getting your body used to being punished. You can not get this alone, nor can you get the little corrections in technique that all new students need. If you have other martial arts in your area or even a standard boxing gym, you should try them instead. GD

I believe most of the pads are ThaiSmai and some are Fairtex. GD

Ok, well last night I was paired with someone completely different and I still had a point where it felt like my forearm was broken when he was doing roundhouse kicks and I was holding the thai pads. This guy kicked like a mule too, right through the thai pad, it felt like my forearm was broken, of course it wasn't, but I have a knot on the bone and a big bruise this morning. It appears that either thai pads are not as protective as I would hope, or I've just got some serious toughening up to do, because all these guys are experienced and are kicking the cr*p out of me. GD

Well, in my town, that is a good price, perhaps it is ok that he is charging a belt fee to certify you as an instructor as you go. But ultimately that decision is up to you. Like I mentioned, if you have no intention of teaching at a later date, then the certification fee would be considered unneccesary and you should approach you instructor about not paying for the certification tests. GD

Well, it wasn't the head instructor that was choosing that night, he was out. It was an experienced student who seems like a nice enough guy, he is very encouraging, after class he said, "don't worry about it, we just started you off in the deep end, that's all". So I guess I would choose A). I'm gonna be there again tonight, we will see if it goes any better. GD