alsey

i considered doing aikido a few years ago, and i checked out a few dojo. none of them did any sparring of any kind. there were drills where people would run at one guy, and the guy would throw them one after the other, but it wasn't sparring. i'm not sure if this is true of all aikido, but if it is, that's probably why you don't often see aikido 'working'. a lot of modern JJJ schools have the same problem.

yeah, sometimes i kind of wish someone would just attack me to see if i can still handle it.

they're vastly different. real fights generally happen unexpectedly, which combined with the fact that you can really get hurt means your whole mind set is different. on top of that you have adrenaline going ballistic which makes it difficult to perform techniques accurately. and of course, there are no rules. you can end up somewhere outside of the range of combat you practice in sparring, whether that be on the ground, in a clinch or whatever. there may be weapons involved, there may be other people involved. real fights are usually either very one sided or very hectic and scrappy. a lot of the differences are mental more than anything. the objective of the fight is different; you're trying to survive, not score points. the list can go on and on.

lol, true

i suck at languages. other than english, i can speak fragments of german, italian and japanese. i really mean fragments; i couldn't hold a conversation in any of those languages.

skill! one of my friends opens them with his teeth.

that sounds awesome. i'll look forward to it.

i go to jujitsu twice a week, and kendo twice a week. i also meet with a couple of other karateka for informal practice once or twice a week, and i practice everyday on my own.

if you want to learn karate as an effective self defence system, you need to find a school that practices it as such. if its the long range striking-blocking style of karate, i wouldn't bother. if you can find somewhere that teaches close range combat with striking, grappling, throwing etc that's a lot better. in my experience, karate-do as it is usually practiced today isn't that great a fighting system, but the older okinawan styles are extremely effective if you train in them correctly.

from my own fighting experiences, and from what i know of the two arts, i would say judo. many people will say BJJ though. really, if you get good at either of them you'll have some good skills which you can apply in real defence.

here's a bunkai for the stepping punch following the downward block: your opponent throws a right punch or reaches out to grab you with their right hand. you catch their wrist and draw it to your waist with your left hand while stepping forward into the front stance. your right leg lands behind their right leg, and your right arm is thrown forward across the top of their body or their neck (the 'punch'), causing them to lose balance and fall. when studying kata, i consider the following things: every movement is significant. for example, you don't hold one hand at your waist just because it looks nice. directions and turns in kata have meaning. they're not just turning to face an attacker coming from an arbitrary direction, the turn is part of the combat technique. stances are important. they're not there just to give you good balance, they're there to give your opponent bad balance (as in the above example). each movement (each big step and associated hand movements) should defeat the opponent.

i was 19 when i had my last fight. i was walking home with a friend, and we ran into what was a gang i guess of youths probably two or three years younger than us. we were walking down this road that is hardly used and there's these guys walking towards us, i don't know exactly how many, probably about five or six. they were sort of line abreast across the whole road so me and my friend had no choice but to just keep walking towards them. they were shouting and stuff, i think they were at least slightly drunk. anyway we were just about to pass them when one of them moves across so he's directly in front of me. i didn't change direction and we walked straight into eachother. he was shorter than me, and i tried to force my way past him. he grabbed my shoulders, so i grabbed him around the back of the neck and was about to knee him in the groin, but then thought i better not because of the other guys in their group. i said sorry and let go of him. then me and my friend carried on walking, and the the other group went the other way. now it gets interesting. after we had walked away about 50 yards, a bottle smashes just in front of me. my friend said we should make a run for it, but i told him to stay. i turned around and another bottle lands near us. they're walking towards us again. i thought screw it and shouted 'come on then' to the group. this actually seemed to put them off a bit. when they were quite close up, one of them walked up to me. at this point, my adrenaline levels were absolutely mental and i felt like i was about to explode. anyway this guy asks me if i want to fight him. i punched him across the jaw and he fell. i'm pretty sure i knocked him out. a few of the others started to move towards me, but i picked up half a broken bottle and threatened to kill them all. they were kids really; probably about 16. anyway they all backed off. i don't like the way i handled the situation; i'm sure i could have gotten out of it without anyone getting hurt, but that's what i was like back then. also it may seem pretty harsh considering they were pretty young, but they were certainly capable of doing me and my friend harm, especially since they were carrying bottles. i've had a two other serious fights, but i'm ashamed to say that i can hardly call them self defence situations and i won't describe them here.

yes! i currently practice three different bunkai for the basic karate 'lunge punch' oi-tsuki found in kata, and none of them use the movement as a punch!

the martial artist i would most like to speak to is miura takeyuki, the grandmaster of eishin ryu iaijutsu, but he's not really a big name. i would love to hang out with the gracies, they're all heroes. particularly royce, rickson, rorion and helio. there's also this random karateka, ian abernethy; he wrote the best book i have ever read on karate. but again, not a big name.

i think with TSD and judo you'll be fine. they're very different styles...you're not going to get confused between a roundhouse kick and a hip throw.

they're fillipino. i'm not sure if fillipino is related to spanish, but i know 'esgrima' means fencing in spanish.

that would be sweet

judo contains plenty of ground work. i'm thinking of taking it up myself actually since i'm don't get to do much sparring at my current jujitsu school. judo would be a good art to combine with TSD as it covers a different aspect of combat.

you'll find a lot of people here practice more than one style. i think its a good idea if you have the time and the will to practice. if you find its too much, you can always quit one of them.

judo is very effective, because the training is based around fighting with a resisting partner. judo, from observation, seems to involve a bit more stand up clinch stuff which i think is very important for street fighting. from what i've seen of BJJ the clinch is pretty much bypassed and you're straight on the ground. judo seems to give you more skills to put your opponent on the floor and get out of the situation, which IMO is the priority in a street fight. BJJ teaches you to finish the fight on the ground. while this often works, its not the most favorable street option IMO. so i would say judo, but then i don't actually practice either of these styles.

depends on what exactly you want to learn. different martial artists like different martial arts. for example, if you want to learn ground fighting, mantis probably isn't the way to go. as far as i know, southern mantis is quite a combative style. and that's about all i know.

as others have said, they're all much the same. or at least, i can't tell the difference between one brand and another when it comes to gloves or gum guards.

to be honest i think you're making a big deal out of nothing. if a woman is seriously attacked by another woman, she's either going to defend herself or not. if she's been trained to kick to the groin, then she will kick to the groin if the opportunity is there. she's not going to think 'ah damn, i havn't been told that i can kick women in the groin too, so i better not'. if a man or a woman is properly trained, he or she will do what he or she has to do in a combat situation. if someone is still at the level where they can only do what they have directly been told to do, they will lose the fight anyway. there is also the fact that kicking a man in the groin is considerably more effective than kicking a woman in the groin.

i really don't agree with that.

never encountered racism in any form anywhere in MA. but then, at the dojos i've been to just about everyone has been white european, so there hasn't been much opportunity for racism either.