Help for beginner

[sam5935]

Hello
I posted this a few days ago on the help section but got few replies so I thought I'd try again here. Thanks for your help!

I am looking to start classes in a martial art. My main goal is to find a style that will relatively quickly enable me to enhance my skills at defending myself in a real-world situation where someone assaults me. I am also looking for a physical/spiritual fitness component as well. Can anyone give me their opinions on where I should start looking as far as styles? Thanks!

[RobertG]

There is no system that is going to give you the skills to fight on the street (or in the ring even) rapidly. Its a matter of logging the hours with hard training. Now there are classes that will help teach you avoid trouble--that is, teach you street awareness so you don't have to defend yourself. But surviving--not winning, just living through--a real street attack is a matter of a lot of attributes. Some people are just natural fighters and do fine with or without any training (that is, at least against other relatively untrained individuals). For the rest of us, there is no real short cut.

Given all that, some styles give you more per unit time of training than others.
Boxing/Thai Boxing would fall into this. You've only got about a dozen or so offensive techniques to learn. If you drill a handful of techniques over and over again, you might actually be able to use them when you need them. On the other hand, something with 300 offensive techniques all thrown at you early on is likely to dilute your skill over each technique. Secondly, some sort of grappling art is probably a good use of your time. Yes, BJJ has hundreds and hundreds of techniques. But just spending time being comfortable fighting on the ground is worthwhile--without worrying about learning every submission under the sun.

I'm not of the school of thought that BJJ/MT are the end all, be all of martial arts. So I don't want to get into that sort of debate. But using them as a base might actually give you a feeling of competence more quickly than say trying to master some form of Silat or Kung Fu.

[Manufest]

yea everyone here says take the MA that you feel most confortable , but in reality, only MT boxing and BJJ are accepted, and aikido i think is accepted a bit,

I'm not an expert but, look at what's available to you before you make your decision, i 'm in a similar situation, just tryin to find a good MA around.

But don't rush into the closest, or cheapest one,

and, MT/boxing don't have testings, so usually their monthly rate is all that u spend.... so take that into consideration too.

In every MA you have to work hard to be able to defend yourself. There's no magic to it.

Good luck ,