please delete this topic since i dont want to compare schools or mention names

Edited December 14, 201015 yr by kamahlthedruid

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Edited December 14, 201015 yr by kamahlthedruid

What do you want out of martial arts? Do you want to study mostly for fitness, mostly for self-defense, mostly for the social, spritual or mental aspects of it, mostly for its value as a historical/cultural activity, mostly to fight professionally?

There's no such thing as a school of martial arts that will be perfect for every student. Tell us what kind of student you are so we can give you better advice.

I want to learn how to protect my family and myself with self defense, and I do not want a false sense of security. I am obsessed with martial arts, and I will study diligently once I find the best school for getting into shape and for learning superior fighting skills.

All those styles you listed over at MOTW sound interesting but I can't find anything about them on the actual Web site. It has a great deal to say about its founder's credentials in neuroscience and comparative religion, which strikes me as decidedly beside the point. I'd avoid it.

The ISDC people look okay. They sell themselves enthusiastically but not to the point that it raises red flags for me.

The credentials of the guy running Defense360 look a bit weak to me: the Marines care much, much more about marksmanship than about unarmed combatives, thus a background in Marine combatives isn't terribly impressive from a technical point of view. He'll know how to get his students in shape, though, and the marksmanship training is a good idea.

Roy Harris has an excellent all-around reputation: if the school you can get to is a legitimate Roy Harris affiliate then that would be the one I would pick.

Whatever you end up doing, I would supplement it by buying a gun and taking some classes in how to use it. Not just standard work on the range- combat marksmanship classes, stuff that teaches you how to use a firearm under pressure.

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Edited December 14, 201015 yr by kamahlthedruid

Looking over the Web site further I'd have to say that it would be the one school out of the list that you gave me that I'd avoid at all costs. They seem almost exclusively focused on the spiritual and esoteric over the physical, which is a bad formula for effective self-defense.

I wonder how a school like that would treat a free thinking atheist! I am scared of cultish schools! Shamanism! Spirituality!

Edited April 26, 201016 yr by kamahlthedruid

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Edited December 14, 201015 yr by kamahlthedruid

There are some unspoken assumptions in that question that make it impossible to answer simply- mainly that there's a meaningful and useful distinction between a 'simplified' or 'accelerated' style and one that 'takes years to master'. I'm not really in the mood for the long version.

Get to the Roy Harris school, man. It's head and shoulders over everything else you're looking at.