Calling All Martial Artists!

I've been practicing for 7 weeks

BJJ 3x per week for an hour
MMA 4x per week for 45 min (NoGI BJJ/Muay Thai)
Boot camp workouts before BJJ on Sats for 45 min

Did Shaolin and Wing Chun(Kung Fu) for approx 2-1/2 years, loved it, great workout, and great self-defense. I have looked, but can't find anything I like near where I live now.

We were traditional, so, no ranks or belts. We did have to declare belts for a tournament once, but the school didn't promote it.

When I was a kid I did kung fu. But I would love to take martial arts up again one day

Krav Maga, level 3 (Orange Belt). I've been doing Krav for about a year, training a couple of times a week. Where I train, the standard levels run 1-7, or White, Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue, Brown and Black, with Black and above reserved as invite-only tests, typically for instructors. As a self defense system, Krav emphasizes strikes and blocks that rely on large muscle groups over fine motor skills. The classes are typically broken into some combination of strikes or blocks, and then the application of that material (as a choke defense and counter, or in sparring for example). It's probably the most effective system I have seen for basic self defense, partly because it is so readily adaptable.

Here are some of the things we're covering in this level:

- Offensive back kicks
- Heel kicks, slap kicks
- Headbutts
- Bearhug defenses
- General defense, high and low
- Inside and outside defenses
- Advanced combinations
- Falls and rolls
- Ground fighting
- Sparring

If you're looking for ground, you might want to consider Judo or BJJ - but remember they're competitive sports. If you're ever in the kind of situation that would force you to defend yourself, the ground is not where you want to be. Period.

Edited for grammar. :blushing:

Im in the UK, doing non competitive, non contact, Kong Sudo. Its an excellent work out and I have trained in it for 9 year, I am a 3rd Dan and as fit as I have ever been. The last 12 months have been great, I had to take time out for a knee op, 12 months on about 1 stone 7lbs off without being too careful what I eat, just work out hard at Karate!

Prior to this, never exercised.....

I trained in kickboxing for about 10 years. My club also focused on karate-style katas and kumites and had a belt system. I earned my black belt in 2006 - about 9 months after my first son was born. I trained for a kickboxing ring fight, but couldn't make it my goal to knock someone out. I knew if I couldn't go in with that as my intention, I'd probably be the one with my lights out. Stuck to tournament sparring instead and loved every minute.

I just started doing Les Mills Combat workouts at home just for something to add to my running and lifting... they're SO FUN!

Capoeira... for sure looks awesome. In my experience, though... many who train in Capoeira fight BJJ... grappling etc. At least at tournaments.

Now this is my thread.

I started martial arts a 9 years old. im now 33. this is my story:

Started doing a WTF (no not what the f..., world tkd federation, which is what they do in the olympics) and did it for 2 years and got to 5th Gup (half way to black). Then we moved and i took up an ITF (international tkd federation) style, which was a bit more traditional and (so i thought at the time) more self defence based. I got to 1st Dan in that style but left over a series of disagreements with my instructor, the main ones being that after 5 years at 1st Dan, there seemed to be no intention of grading me to 2nd Dan, some of the people achieving 1st Dan were not good enough IMO, and he was letting them teach before me.

so i quit, and did nothing again for 4 years (worst decision ever). I then took up Shotokan karate and learnt that what i thought was self defence based before, reallywouldnt have done a lot for me in the real world due to the way they trained it (learn all the self defence techniques, but trained with no realism). i got to 1st kyu in shotokan, which is 1 under black belt. At the same time i too up ICHF Combat Hapkido and got to 6th gup in that. ICHF is Hapkido with all the flashiness taken out of it to make it a more street defence style. Once again, i thought the street value of what i was doing was great.

My instructor (for both shotokan and hapkido, he has BB's in multiple styles) started looking at a style called Koryu Uchinadi Kenpo Jutsu (ancient okinawan karate). 2 years later he stopped teaching shotokan and hapkido and started teaching this (after getting his yudansha, which is a black belt but not quite shodan). No for me, this is a real self defence style. It teaches more on principles than specific techniques. Its main focus is Habitual Acts of Physical Violence. ie, learn to defend yourself from the more common attacks, not the super attacks that only other martial artists will do. Also, rather than teaching 'this is a defence against a punch' it teaches defence against straight attacks. ie a punch and a push are the same thing, so you can defend the same way etc. We also train realisitically. Learn the techniques, then train with resistance.

the other thing i like about it is it teaches ALL ranges. ground, stand up grappling, in close striking (elbows, knees etc), punching range, kicking range and weapons range. Majority is taught in 2 person flow drills, so you can get a lot of repitition of a lot of techniques done in a short time. this is good because the sylabus is huge.

for an idea of what it is about there is a video on martialartsadelaide.com (im the larger guy in the video, and this video is the reason i decided to lose weight)

sorry for the long post. but i could go on forever about martial arts. i didnt even go into the seminars and training days i have attended.