What is the best form of martial arts for self defence and why?

Question

Would also like to know of where I can go to learn the martial art that you suggest - considering I live in London?

I live in Putney and work in near the West End - so the closer the better really :)

Answer 1

Forget that crap about instructors that have learned from training in the far east... what a load of bullsh!t.

Krav Maga is great, if you get good instruction.

Aikido is a joke. If you choose that you better be good at another human defense mechanism... running. it has no practical street self defense. practise for practise sake, but dont believe the Steven Seagal movies, they are choreographed. yes it is aikido, but sculpted for the audience. I tried it for 4 months and did not feel safe thinking about using what I saw on the street. I was a bouncer in town and control & restraint was better. sure, 4 months isnt long enough to master anything, but you have to use your common sense folks, and smell defeat before the battle. why train for decades to master it when you can learn something else that CAN help you... like muay thai

Muay Thai is an awesome and extremely effective Martial Art, fitness, skill, power, viscious, simplistic enough to understand. try that.

TKD is too limited. Korean propoganda

Traditional Martial Arts fail to provide the street protection and skills of the age we live in. life has changed since japan/ china 300 years ago.

Bruce Lee, was a philosopher of martial science, not a majic bullet of fighting. great understanding of fighting, but overstated. understanding his ideas is better than trying to follow him. his whole belief was to create your own theme in fighting, a no- style of bits and pieces of everything you study. not just one thing.

what we need is adaptable systems, systems that upgrade and change to suit the auidence.

most of the people here are full of crap. dont listen to them. in fact, dont even listen to me, go out and try them, and tell me what happens when you need to protect yourself. a kick to the head is worthless outside of trying to score points, but a kick through the knees drops the best of them.

go combat orientation, like Krav Maga, or CQC. or anything that challenges you to assess it, to whether it is suitable for your needs. there is crap in all styles, or systems, just filter it down and get what works for you.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Be aware of your surroundings. Best bet in the world, no matter what martial art you take up, your unlikely to upset a 6ft tall stocky man with your build. At best, you may disable him temporarily, like knocking him to the floor etc. or hit a sensitive part. That is unless you are armed in some way. To come to a point where you can confidently use technique instead of strength to cause harm will take years of training, which I doubt you have if you have already met the person you are fearful of. Ideally, you need to be aware of your surroundings, go to a few lessons to learn how to put someone on the floor fairly quickly and make a hasty get away.

Answer 4

IMHO the Jeet Kune Do concepts of fighting works because they are purely conceptual. Finding a good teacher is another problem as many JKD instructors favour systematic drills and pad work over the concepts. These should aid your training, not become the training. Big difference.

Primary targets are eyes and groin, which can be trained with a box/groin guard and welding goggles. JKD is all about effective combat, towards the later stages of development Bruce Lee simplified his own Jun Fan kung fu system and was interested in how fighting works.

He recognised that JKD was just a name and he knew JKD would be exploited in the future but many people have the same attitude like Bruce Lee had. Geoff Thompson being one of them.

Find a club that practises sparring because this will help you no end with distance and timing. We train street fighting only and everything we do is based on urban survival. Psychological tactics are vital too, not many clubs train this.

Also make sure your sparring partner breaks the rules and comes at you in unconventional ways. Being overwhelmed by an unpredictable opponent in a safe environment will help you apply yourself physically. Trust me you'll learn quickly and in a good club it's only your pride that gets hurt!

I have trained this way for many years and have had a few situations on the street where it has worked. I knew my distance and could find the openings instantly (keep your hands up and don't move into your opponents striking distance, let him come to you). A street opponent usually precedes an attack with certain displays of emotion and body language. A good teacher will help you recognise the signs.

And if I haven't made it apparent enough, spar, spar and spar again.

Answer 5

Martial arts can be classified into 2 broad categories:

Striking: Tae Kwon Do. Karate, Shaolin boxing
Good: Can handle multiple attackers, can engage at long range, enables you to be pro active when necessary.
Not so good: Ground, hard to control an attacker without inflicting serious injury.

Grappling: Hapkido, Judo, etc.
Good: effective in close, good on the ground, can control an attacker without inflicting serious injury.
Not so Good: Not good at long range, You must wait for the attacker to make the 1st move. Not effective against multiple attackers.

Look for a traditional rather than modern or sport school. In a traditional school, toy will learn not only how to fight, but when & when not to fight.

Avoid schools with jitsu in the name, they are all about fighting, no philisophy, no respect, no self discipline. Getting trained in that manner is like having a gun loaded & cocked with no safety.

Answer 6

I see a lot of Krav Maga answers here, and those usually include Muay Thai and BJJ. The latter two however include most of the useful actual hand to hand combat stuff from Krav, and are better at them, which makes it redundant in that respect. However, Krav does spend more time on the THEORY of self-defense in the real world. Rather than take it for specific techniques, if you take it do so for lessons on environmental awareness and staying in safe situations, which it spends a lot of practical time on. But grappling/ground fighting in Krav will be inferior to grappling/ground fighting in Judo or BJJ, and striking in Krav will be inferior to that in Muay Thai or boxing. It's a jack of all trades and master of none when it comes to actual hand to hand combat. The exception is the environmental survival stuff- what is going on around you, how to avoid danger, using trickery, etc. That is probably where it shines, and if you're going to take it, THAT is why you would.

Answer 7

It depends. In most bar fights for example the place is too packed to throw a proper kick and so leg techniques are pretty useless. In such a case I would prefer Wing Chun which is mostly hand techniques or simply boxing.

If you have space then the leck is a powerful weapon but beware as the leg is easily caught and before you know it you are on the ground which is where grappling comes into its own.

Answer 8

There is No "best" Martial Art, because no Martial Art is better than another.

The only difference between two fighters trained in different disciplines of Martial Arts, is whichever one trained to perfect their techniques on a regular basis, and/or has the best strategy to win.

My suggestion to you, is to find out in your local phonebook what schools are local to you, find out if they have a trial time (like a week or two to try the class out) and find out which one's interest you the most. then find out the background of the school, like how long the school's been there, how long the instructor has been there, how long the instructor's been teaching, do they know (studied it) their Martial Arts discipline well? do they know the history of where it came from.

concerns about how quick you'll get a blackbelt or how many tournaments you'll win or trophies you'll garner is of no consequence be cause these are the least needed aspects of ANY Martial Art.

Find a good school, train often and perfect your techniques, and be consistent with it.

good luck

Answer 9

Hey there,
I couldn't afford a self defence course so I decided to learn some tecniques and moves from the internet. This a good system I bought http://www.downloadita.it/r/rd.asp?gid=423
Cheers.

Answer 10

Krav Maga? Tai Chi? Karate? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahaha!!

All shite and uneffective 'on the street'. Watch Pride / UFC. This is the closest you'll get to seeing a fight with little or no rules. The karate, kung-fu (including Wing Chun) and karate guys all get their butts kicked in the cage. Also try to get hold of a DVD - 'Gracie's in Action' showing the Gracie's (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu experts and founders of the art) fighting so called black belts in Karate, Kung-Fu, Hapkido etc. (in their own dojo's) and dominating them before choking them out or submitting them within minutes. Train BJJ (for ground work) and Thai boxing / Western boxing for stand-up or go to a dedicated MMA class. Honestly, don't train in the traditional arts (with kata) etc. and forget about Krav Maga - all crap!!

Answer 11

Krav Maga, Thai boxing, or Brazilian jujutsu, in this order.

First, you need to know the environment it will be used and the intended purpose of learning one.

What you will be looking at is self defense/street fighting scenario where no bar holds and anything goes. You primary concern is to remove yourself from a situation of threat to relative safety as fast as you can, preferably without fighting in ideal situation.

Therefore, FORGET all about martial arts of karate, tae kwon do, aikido and any of the 'do' and so on. There are called 'arts' for a reason. They look good and you look good in them, but have you ever seen anyone one fights in real fight using one, such as any of the ultimate fighting programs. NO, because they are completely useless in real fight. If you ever watch Pride or Ultimate Fighting, EVERYONE uses a combination of variant of Muay Thai( Thai boxing) and Brazilian jujutsu. They are professional fighter fighting in realistic street fight scenarios, they choose this style for a reason.

NO ONE uses any of the martial arts for the obvious reason - they just don't work in real fight. First, there are moves you have to be very very very proficient via many many many practices. Even after that, those moves require you to move into certain positions of body and extremities and then execute moves at a certain sequence; they take time to do so and your enemy most likely already delivered a fatal blow before you even begin.

In street fight, your ONLY goal, if it comes down to fighting, is to deliver maximum, preferably fatal or incapacitating, blow in the least amount of time. Krav maga does exactly that, so does Thai boxing. Brazilian jujutsu is more ground fighting, but has a lot of elements of that. What makes krav maga ideal is that it is pretty much common sense, instinctual of make a person would do. There are no moves, each technique is a swift, highly economical( meaning or complex, time consuming) blow for a particular attack. They don't usually teach military Krav Maga, but the civilian version taught in schools is more than sufficient.

www.kravmaga.com, there is an international directory of certified training centers.