help chosing a martial art

[King of Fighters]

For about a year now i have been taking muay thai. I love it, its a great, effiective martial art. The only problem is that to go to the muay thai classes you need to pay the full price gym membership and it is very expensive, and once my contract runs up i dont think that my parents will pay for it again. I still have like 10 months on my contract, so i have lots of time to think of what other art i would do. These are the other martial arts tought im my city. there are about 5 different karate dojos, and only 1 is good from what i have heard and besides i dont really want to take karate, judo (i took it for a few months and didnt like it), a class that combines tae kwon do and hapkido, kickboxing, boxing, traditional jui jutsu, brazillian juijutsu, kobudo, tai chi and ki kong ho hup (a korean version of tai chi) . Which do you think would be best for me? Im fairly tall for my age, skinny (but not like really skinny), and i want an art similar to kung fu, wing chun, muay thai or jeet kune do. Am i too picky? anyways tell me what you think i should do.

[King of Fighters]

also i think that there might be an aikido dojo.

[GreenDragon]

Tell us again what is available in your area. You kind of mashed a whole bunch of styles into one sentence there and it was hard to tell if you meant those were all different schools availble or if it was one school that tries to teach all of those things. If you've got someone teaching Hapkido, I would recommend that, it seems like a very complete art. But of course it depends on the school and the instructor. The Hapkido in my town is way across town and very expensive, and the instructor sounded like a jerk on the phone, not very helpful, so I ended up going wih Tang Soo Do instead.

 

GreenDragon

[King of Fighters]

sorry, i didnt mean to make it hard to understand. here are the different styles at each schools.

 

there is 1 school that teaches kobodu, tai chi, karate and traditional juijutsu. im pretty sure all the arts are taught by different instructors.

 

1 school that teaches karate, brazilian juijutsu and kickboxing.

 

1 school that teaches a tae kwon do and hapkido mixture, and ki kong ho hup (korean tai chi). i think the tae kwon do/hapkido school focuses more on tae kwon do and tournaments than self defence and hapkido, because i know someone who goes there and i watched a class.

 

1 gym that teaches boxing.

 

and like 4 other dojos that teach karate.

 

and i think there may be a place that teaches aikido.

 

I dont know what styles of karate and jui jutsu are taught at each place, and i dont know if the schools that teach several martial arts have different instructors.

[GreenDragon]

Although Aikido, juijitsu and Judo are very different from each other, they are much more similar to each other than they are similar to something like karate or Kung Fu. Chances are that if you didn't like Judo, you probably won't much like aikido or juijitsu. But then again, it does depend very much on the instructor and classroom setting. Keep in mind, generally a *do (judo, aikido) is going to be more of an "art" that will attempt to develop you as a person, and an *itsu (juijitsu) will focus more on the fighting aspect and very little on the spiritual or anything else.

 

If you liked muay thai, then you probably would like a hard art that is very no nonsense. That is why it is confusing that you say you would prefer kung fu, depending on the style, it can be taught as a very soft art. Karate and kung fu probably would not suit you as you are probably not used to doing forms and they might seem tedious and boring if crossing over from something as combat oriented as muay thai.

 

I would suggest a visit to the second school you mentioned. As long as the kickboxing they do is not cardio kickboxing, it would be a good crossover. If it is american kickboxing, that will be a good transition, you will just need to remember no kicks below the waist in sparring. At that school you could throw in some bjj and be very well rounded...as you have probably heard on this site a great deal of real life fights end up on the ground so you may want to be ready if you ever end up down there.

 

GreenDragon

[King of Fighters]

Thanks for your help GreenDragon.

 

kickboxing sounds ok but im not sure if i want to take it though because it would be like taking a step backwards from muay thai because there are no knees, elbows, low kicks or grappling. Also its not so much that i didnt like the grappling aspect of judo, its just that i didnt like how it was more tournament based, and when i tried to use it in real fights it never seemed to work, and i didnt like it because there were no strikes. Your right, i dont like forms and katas and that kind of stuff, but i still like kung fu because it is very effeictive for the street.

[theswarm]

i'd say from muay thai go to hapkido /tae kwondo mixture

 

although i'm wondering why you'd need taekwondo to mix with hapkido since there are adequate kicks in hapkido

[King of Fighters]

I dunno why they are mixed, its just the way the classes are, but i watched 1 and they to be more like sport tkd than hapkido.

[SaiFightsMS]

With 10 months remaining I think I would spend my time soaking up as much knowledge and doing as much work on my technique as I could in my remaining time.

 

For the younger crowd sometimes things look really different in 10 months time.

[paolung]

i want an art similar to kung fu, wing chun, muay thai or jeet kune do

 

what is it about these systems that attracts you?