Martial arts and you: What and the why? Whats your story?

[chrissyp]

So why did you get into martial arts, and why did you choose the style you did?

For me, it started after getting violently attacted at 14-15 years old, and I wanted to learn how to hurt someone, not nessesarly for self defense. I had bad intentions, and wanted to learn to fight to get even.

I eventually got over that young and angry phase in life, but still loved to compete, and wanted to fight competively. I always was fascinated by MMA, but didn't know which style, way to go...Standing or Jiu jitsu?

That was until I seen Wanderlei Silva fight, and then I decided muay thai was for me, and have been doing that until recently.

I've decided to reinvent myself as a martial artist/fighter.... start over from scratch, open my mind up to new ideas, style, techniques, and now i'm doing Shotokan Karate, and hopefully going to learn more traditional boxing. I still want to compete kickboxing and now knockdown karate, but due to health (i have pretty bad degenerative disk disease) I can't really grapple much anymore.

So that's my story. What's yours?

[sensei8]

I was bullied quite a lot when I was in the first grade, and in that, I had my lunch money stolen from me each and everyday at school.

My mom enrolled me in a local karate dojo; thus, I didn't choose the style, my mom did because the dojo was close enough to the house that I could either walk there or ride my bike.

[ninjanurse]

I got talked into joining a Judo class by a friend and fell in love! It was destiny-and here I am 37 years later still sharing the passion.

[bushido_man96]

My dad had introduced me to the MAs as a young boy, probably 8 or around there. He took me to a few of his classes, but nothing really stuck then, but the seed was planted. As I got into middle school, I was bullied some, and had low confidence. My 8th grade year in 1993, a buddy invited me to his TKD class, and that was that.

[lowereastside]

My Uncle got me into Western Boxing at 9/10 years old. Then came the Green Hornet TV Series - and then the fantasy started - and the rest is history.

[DWx]

My parents wanted me to do something active so I tried lots of sports as a kid but didn't really like any of them. Also got bullied so they asked if I wanted to try the local Tae Kwon Do school. Fell in love with it and haven't stopped training since.

[JusticeZero]

Got beat up a lot at school when I was young, usually by more than one person at a time. Couldn't go anywhere to learn to do anything about it because we lived out in the country. Read a lot of books.

When I got old enough to travel, took some ninjutsu classes. (it was very pragmatically written about, which was different from most of the books.) Travelled back home again. Had to recover from a car crash.

Finished up and wanted to get back in practice. Knew that I needed to learn to be effective in the places I am normally at. Tried to do so.

Fell on the ice. Realized there was nothing there for me to respond to that with. Hit the books to find what would work against multiple opponents on unstable surfaces. Found three arts, two of which were very rare and one that had a study group in the next town.

I've moved a bit since then and found different teachers and such. I'm happy with what I do.

[Harkon72]

My Dad was a British Army Instructor, I started training in Shorin ryu at the age of 14 with his friend, Sensei Symmonds. I trained in Ju Jitsu at University, then some Shito Ryu and Wing Chun. I studied Shotokan for 5 years, had an 8 year break then started Shukokai Karate two years ago. I have a Nidan in Shorin Ryu, 3rd Kyu in Shotokan and am going for my 5th Kyu in Shukokai next month.

[Lupin1]

I was 8 and wanted to be a Power Ranger. We were poor and couldn't afford an expensive MA class (still can't), so I got enrolled in the free program at the local Boys and Girls Club and that's how I "chose" Isshinryu.

A few months ago I was looking for a grappling art to complement it and really wanted to try BJJ but all the classes were the same nights as my Isshinryu classes, but then I found a pretty cheap Judo program with perfect class times through the local rec center and that's how I got started with Judo.

[blacknebula]

We have had membership at the local YMCA for over a decade. My then 7 year old daughter was taking swimming lessons, and every time we came out of class we passed a room full of people doing some sort of martial art. She said "I want to try that". I looked into it and it was ages 6 to adult and I thought it was pretty cool that I could learn something at the same time as her, so I enrolled both of us. It happened to be shotokan karate. It was only an introductory class though, so when the four month session was over we moved over the dojo run by the same instructors at a different location and continued on there.