JusticeZero

It's real. Though certainly not easy to do, it's not as hard as it appears to be to a layperson. There's physics and such involved. It's a challenging feat that calls for precision, focus, and good body dynamics but which, because of people's perception of the materials and such involved, looks downright superhuman. In ways it falls into a similar category as ripping phone books in half in that regard. Once you've learned the focus, precision, etc. and as long as you are able to maintain those aspects - which is a reason to practice breaking - it's mainly great for convincing the yokels that you're Goku, Johnny Cage, and Dhalsim wrapped up in one, IMHO. =) I don't break, by the way, i've already had enough people get angry at me for denying magical mystical supernatural powers in doing basic tumbling without actually -trying- to do something that appears superhuman in public.

I Know i've been in the roda with a pretty darned skilled guy who happens to be blind. He has to control the other person more.

Nah, the post is valid.. "I got in a fight. I didn't do all that great and this is why." I do agree that you should try to find some way out other than fighting, but if they push a fight, take them -out-, since you're still in school, which is freakish and IMO more violent than prison in some ways. In school, unlike any other time in your life, a reputation as a savage thug will keep you out of stupid and pointless conflicts. Relax, keep your posture solid, breathe, keep calm. Smile. RELAX. Close your mouth so you don't bite your tongue. Realize that if they fight you, you WILL get hit. In a rainstorm, you can either walk to your destination, or scamper cowardly around.. neither will reduce how wet you get. In the same way, you can either cower away from the other guy's hands and waggle your hand cowardly at him, or you can advance courageously with solid defenses - either way you'll get hit.

Dunno. I consider fighting from prone and seated positions to be vital, too, and you didn't mention those. Those haven't really hit the imagination of most MAists, I suppose.

I've heard of $300/mo before. It was certainly an outlier, but it exists. Point being that I don't know how many places were shopped around.

Frankly, what Capoeira is good for varies from style to style. There is admittedly a lot out there that is very physical Regional acrobatic flippity-ness, I will admit. And at the best of times it is highly esoteric. But not all styles of Capoeira are that way. Mine and one other common one I can think of, for instance, does not do jumping movements, does everything at actual range, and regularly uses a number of throws. The same applies to some other things. Is your friend in the class at the university?

I agree that that sounds pretty dodgy. I'd give it a miss. What ryu of Aikido? Would it connect well to the Aikido mentioned below? What teacher and what lineage?It's not like Capoeira is one monolithic art. Plus, you're the one who wanted fitness. I'd contemplate linking the Aikido classes, but you wanted fitness and Aikido isn't all that known for that, or flexibility. You get thrown around and shown how not to use muscle from narrow standing positions. You might also consider starting the aikido and going to the jiu jutsu (which will build rather more stamina etc, though being very situational in a self defense situation as jiu jutsu tends to focus on a range which is often a bad place to be), as they are related arts and should thus mesh to some degree. Neither the wing chun nor the capoeira mixes well with either of the pre-uni arts at all, nor any of the others listed, but they might be right up your alley, you'll have to try them out and see. Both of them are very atypical in their structure.

Look for less "flashy" teachers, and spread your net wider. Plus, you may have plenty of financial leaks you can patch up if you look for them. I'm not sure how low you are trying to get the cost or why - if you're eyeing some $300/month trendy place with their own facilities and such, you can probably get better value than that somewhere, but below a certain point it's just getting petty to bargain hunt.

It appears realistic but isn't. For one thing, while sparring, a lot of the time you will see people held away by kicks. In such a situation, the only reasonably realistic thing to do is to move in through the kicks. If there is a call to break, IGNORE IT, and go for close range techniques, because a snappy tag kick certainly isn't going to end a frame. If someone turns their back to you, punish them brutally for their insolence. There's a few others, but you can see that all of them would make most sparring types pale in horror. Basically the problem is that people are learning dysfunctional rules, and furthermore are acting in a nonagressive way unlike people who actually want to hurt each other.

Documented how? What is documented exactly? Those are exercizes, as I recall, to increase the ability to withstain impacts, yes? But some of the ways that one would 'show invulnerability to damage" are known stage magic tricks.

16 is a great age to get started. One pitfall at that age - make sure to keep balance in your life. Don't stop practicing, but don't be consumed by it either.

I want a woman who doesn't need me to protect her and have me do the 'dirty work', and that whole *ee! I can't possibly kick!* thing is a serious turn-off, so yes. Plus, i've been told by a woman or two that if they go to the gym and start hitting the bag, guys instantly swarm them.

That's probably going to get the post removed as offensive.. Say again? I can't parse that sentence at all. The JJ guy took down the attacker, who tapped, they both stood up again like they do in the training hall, and the crook proceeded to break the frame with a weapon. Capoeira at it's finest, imo, which is why I remember the story. The point was that your habits in training will stick with you. One of the people I trained with recounted an early fight he got in relatively early in his training in his youth. Theybasically squared off, then the MAist unloaded his full arsenal into the other guy, who just froze up as a bunch of kicks and punches flew at him and stopped an inch away from him. Then he stepped up and beat up on the MAist, who then realized that his sparring training had just worked against him. How you train is how you fight; this is one reason I get so upset at the girls in the class who won't throw a kick through me.

If you're still in public school, i'd keep it secret, especially from teachers and the school. I've heard stories of people in public schools studying martial arts, being attacked, doing something mellow to harmlessly defend themself without injuring anyone (such as a block to a restraint), and being expelled for using "fighting with potentially lethal force". Since you get physically attacked on such a regular basis in public school - more times in one semester than you will experience over the rest of your lifetime, I would estimate - it's not worth the risk. Once you're out of hell, it doesn't matter so much.

I don't, but I once took Yang Taiji lessons, and some of the students of that class had been in an altercation. Apparently also there was once an altercation in front of the class when it was taught in the open, and the teacher defused it physically. In all the cases I heard, they just popped out a movement or two from the form in relaxed manner and either pushed or unbalanced the attacker, which was all that was needed in those cases, as most attackers flee if they encounter a coordinated resistance and these were no exception. As an aside, while moving classes outdoors in summer can help stem the flow of students dissapearing, it's important to be up on self defense 'drunk uncle' techniques before doing so.

*shrugs* I've heard success stories of self defense with TKD. It's important to realistically assess the vulnerabilities you have and be on guard against any bad habits you might be getting from your training (turning one's back on opponents, locking out punches to make them more visible to judges, etc.. there was a news story someone posted somewhere once about a BJJ stylist taking down a criminal once - the criminal tapped out, the BJJ guy stood up and let him go, the criminal pulled out a weapon and put the BJJ guy down.) In any case, most people can gain all the self defense they realistically need pretty quickly; most attackers on the street won't be highly skilled and a show of resistance will drive the majority of attackers, who want easy prey, away.

TKD isn't Karate, by most definitions - it's Korean in origin, rather than Okinawan or Japanese. I can't speak for all TKD stylists, but the ones I have trained with have had a tendency to be very vulnerable to the techniques that most martial artists use to deal with kickers. I believe the reason is because virtually all of one's practice time is spent in learning to fight someone of the same style, as that is what is readily available. If the structure of one's style does not lend itself to certain attacks, then one has to create special drills to train defenses against it; in my experience, it is easy for a teacher to just not get around to doing those drills; I hardly ever find time to get students to swing their hands at each other, for example, there is always something that seems more important. In many arts, including mine, typical reactions to a kicker include moving in close to use close in attacks, or using timing to sweep the kicker while they are on one leg. According to the TKD stylists I have worked with, they do not typically do these things. The dynamics just don't seem to work well with their specialized stancework from what i've seen. Many of them also studied in schools which strongly emphasize sport rules which allows for unrealistic applications such as defending against an attack by turning one's back on their opponent - this exists in any sport MA with rules about 'hitting someone from behind'; many MAist associate such 'dysfunctional' rules with TKD, but the same problems exist in some schools of Karate, Gong Fu, and some european martial arts. The cure for such "weaknesses" is to make a point of first learning practical application, discarding 'game-pragmatic' tricks like turning one's back on an attacker or, for an example from Fencing, flicking one's sword in an impossible curve in order to click the button at the tip against the opponent's back; and second, training against people who will do the common counters to your preferred techniques even when you don't yourself do them. Most martial art students do not do this. As for your second question.. Jujutsu is basically medieval Japanese police training in some form. Lots of locking, throwing, takedowns, joint locking, and the sort; excellent for "Drunken Uncle" situations. Judo is a filter of Jujutsu which removed the more damaging techniques such as joint locks in order to facilitate a much more intense form of sparring training, and has strong sport connotations. Aikido is a filter of a certain form of Jujutsu which focuses on pure defense and flow, though their 'defense' can knock the snot out of someone. (Their idea of "defending" themself from a punch is to catch your arm, twist your elbow backward, and sling you over their head into the concrete all done with some little limp-wristed looking move that looks so feeble as to be unreal to an untrained observer) It's famously slow to develop practical application, but is nonetheless quite functional.

Right.. Just because you want to have two good abilities doesn't mean you can take the two best and use them. It's a bit like cooking.. "All the nutrition and fiber of bran flakes in milk, with the bite of thai foods provided by this spoon of cayenne powder!" Mostly the arts that have the "best X" have specialized their structure and training to achieve it, and their techniques will start to fall apart as they change their form to adapt to other arts' and techniques' demands, leaving the cross-trainer with techniques from the art which is 'the best at X' which, once adjusted to fit their base structure, are no longer better than, and likely worse, than the techniques they could have found inside their own art.

I've heard dancers try to shift the muscle use from their thighs to their glutes for vertical jumping, though it takes awhile to 'click'. But it was some time back and i'm hazy on the details.

None in my art that i've heard of. Probably there's one in some style of Capoeira, but i'm not aware of them. (Capoeira, as a term, isn't any more descriptive than a term such as Jujutsu, Karate, or the like. There's what amounts to ryus and such divided all over the place.)

I do flip-like movements, I don't lose sight of my target, I can usually put a good kick or two into it which are, and I end in places I couldn't as easily have reached on foot. I'm used to having people kick at me when I do them. Mind you, modern handsprings are a no-go because I have to be able to stop the movement in between starting it and committing my weight to my hands; full modern flips are an aerial and aerials are suicide.

Er.. most any of them will do that. If not it's pretty worthless. Do you have any other criteria? I mean, training long and hard for something that might happen to you once or twice is pretty silly to me.

Ow. I don't train barefoot myself, and the idea of trying to spin on rough concrete and gravel barefoot makes me wince.

Tumbling? Sure, if you know how to apply it. I know plenty of ways to turn a tumble into an attack. If it isn't part of your art and standard tactics, probably not so handy. Most people this is not part of your art. Aerials? No. Touch someone in the air in a way other than they expect and they drop crashing to the floor, often injuring themself. I have yet to hear a convincing reason why one would do it.

Every doctor will tell you to stop doing that. One, they're wrong, because once you go to being a couch potato, everything goes to hell. Two, the best response I can think of to the doctor is to just tell them that quitting is not possible and ask for a referral to a specialist in sport medicine or similar who can give you advice you won't have to ignore.