OT: Looking for a new thing...

[David E. Gervais]

Timstone said David:What you describe is Aikido.

Aaaah yes, but I call it instinct.

And to someone else's question,.. Bruce Lee Was known for Kung Fu. (or Gung Fu) It was is a mix of several styles.

..Instar,.. I reccomend Ti-Chi.. It's more gracefull. And if you are big and strong it might make your enemies do 1 of two things.. Think you're warming up and have some serious moves hidden and dangerous,.. or they will be laughing so hard they will forget to fight.

Cheers!

[deccan]

David E. Gervais said:
And to someone else's question,.. Bruce Lee Was known for Kung Fu. (or Gung Fu) It was is a mix of several styles.

Bruce Lee was originally trained in Wing Chun Kung Fu, but he developed his own practical, boxing-oriented style out of disgust for the over the top showiness of some types of Kung Fu. He called his style "Jeet Kun Do", spelling varies naturally due to its being a Chinese term. It's been translated as "Way of the Intercepting Fist".

[dogscoff]

You should talk to GrowlTigga, if' he can still be found on these forums. By all accounts (namely his own ) he is about your stature and is has taken several martial arts. I know he's trained in Shotokan karate, like me. I think he did full contact as well which is, frankly, utterly insane, unless you happen a reconstructive dentist touting for business.

I'm of a similar size to you, but without the bodybuilding, and I find Shotokan to be very suitable. It's very much a "brute force" style: Unlike other martial arts / karate styles where the aim is to deflect, unbalance or throw your opponent, shotokan is all about hitting your opponent very hard so that he falls down and doesn't get up for a while. It may not be the most energy-efficient way of achieving your goals but it has a certain simplicity that appeals to me.

What David Gervais talks about is valid, and even Shotokan teaches you to take advantage of an unbalanced opponent, but I'm very surprised a karate instructor allowed himself to get pulled off balance like that, although if you were doing something other than what he was expecting in a demonstration then I guess it could happen to even a good instructor. One of the first things you learn in Karate is stance, and with proper stance you should never over-reach or put yourself off-balance. It's fundamental to karate.

I tried Judo a while back, and enjoyed it. Although it is utterly unlike karate and punches/ kicks are completely disallowed I found that the stances and balance I had learned in karate (combined with my considerable mass and reach) made it hard for even experienced judo ppl to throw me if I really resisted them. I only did about a half-dozen lessons (including an introduction to something called Sambo, which seems to be similar to judo but with less restrictions) but I would be glad to do more of it. There's something very satisfying about picking a person up and dumping them in an undignified heap on the ground- far more so than scoring a punch/ kick on them in Karate.

In terms of self-defence, I think a combination of different styles is the best solution. No martial art is really good for self defence until you've got a good amount of training behind you (say, a year or so, training 2 or 3 hours per week with a good instructor) but they can work. I've never had to use karate in a 'real' situation I'm fairly confident that it would be useful to me if it ever came to that. The main thing though is intent- In a 'real' fight I would pick a determined newbie over a black belt any day if that black belt didn't have a real determination to hurt the other person.

[Thermodyne]

Martial arts train the body and the mind. They are considered to be disciplines. If you just want to whoop the tar out of thugs, then use one of the special forces combat courses. IMHO, the Soviet method is best suited to power fighting. But the SAS and Delta manuals are well worth the read.

[AMF]

My two cents, given my limited experience:

Boxing if you want the quickest return on investment of time - you can learn to take someone down fast, and learn how to do it quicker than in other disciplines. Good for sucker punches or straight up duking it out in a street situation, but hard for the long fight or if you need to do anything on the ground or other than punch and dodge punches.

Judo is good for learning how to street fight as well. Most street fights go to ground very quickly, and so Judo is one of the better for learning how to grapple, which is what you generally spend most street fights doing.

Karate is good if you have a long time to study and get good at it. (couple years minimum, IMHO). But only at the higher levels will it be anything other than counter-productive in a street situation.

Aikido is excellent for smaller builds (and women tend to be very good at this too, IIRC) and for learning how to use opponents strength against them. Also good for incapaciting joint holds. However, takes many years to get to the point where you can do it effortlessly. Some of the most amazing things I have ever seen have been done by high level Aikido masters.

I know nothing about any other disciplines, so I am probably missing a bunch of good things here.

Of course, the standard caveat is that if you're looking to learn a martial art to kick butt, you probably shouldn't be doing it in the first place. However, at higher levels, most martial arts teach the confidence and control that enables one to avoid fights to begin with. Nothing more disarming than someone who projects that confidence of "I could kick your *ss, but I choose not to, since it is wrong, etc..."

Again, only my two cents.
Alarik

[Renegade 13]

For self defense, I'll take a hand gun any day. My gun out-ranges your kick!

[AMF]

Ah, yes, that's true. But, it's harder to incapacitate unless you're really good with it. And, while it's definitely very intimidating, I think it would often be overkill in most situations.

Plus, it's a tougher sell when/if the cops come..."officer I was just defending myself" is a lot easier to sell when you beat a guy up with your hands rather than shoot him. There are a whole host of legal problems that automatically get raised when you draw a gun on someone, I think. Gotta make sure you're skilled, as well, or you're gonna end up blowing a hole in yourself, a friend, or an innocent. And your feet/hands don't normally need to be licensed (unless you're chuck norris).

Etc. etc. etc.

[Joachim]

dogscoff said:

What David Gervais talks about is valid, and even Shotokan teaches you to take advantage of an unbalanced opponent, but I'm very surprised a karate instructor allowed himself to get pulled off balance like that, although if you were doing something other than what he was expecting in a demonstration then I guess it could happen to even a good instructor. One of the first things you learn in Karate is stance, and with proper stance you should never over-reach or put yourself off-balance. It's fundamental to karate.

As has already been identified - David used principles of Aikido to deal with the Karate "instructor" and as David pointed out it seems the natural thing to do - which is part of the Aikido way. The Karate instructor did not allow himself to be pulled over (in Aikido you never "pull" someone anyway), David re-directed the instructor's attacking energy (Ki or Chi) and then used it against him.

Dont go and learn Aikido - as any Sensei worth learning from will not teach you with an attitude of wanting to beat the proverbial out of others.

[Puke]

i dunno about that, Yoshinkan Aikido involves alot of tar-beating. its a fairly violent form of an otherwise not-so-volent Do, and is mandatory training for Tokyo riot police.

most other forms of Aikido probably wouldnt be for you. as was suggested earlier, there are lots of places that train in special forces (Soviet, Israeli, US branch of choice) forms. Judo might also be good for you, and several places teach street or 'practical' jujutsu that are mixed with various other forms like you may see on UFC.

You can also find 'practical' schools of Kungfu and other chinese arts, but you have to look pretty hard to do it. popular schools tend to be showy, and lots of 'street fighting self-defense' courses are just BS to make you feel good.

a good rule of thumb is that if something looks cool when its being done, its probably fake. effective arts should leave you wondering what the heck you just saw, because you didnt notice anything significant happening between the start of the technique and the guy hitting the ground.

I would suggest that you pick a couple things and cross train. or of you pick one thing, to study different schools of that one thing so as to see it from different angles. the benefits of cross training are huge.

[AgentZero]

Instar, I've got almost the opposite problem to you. I'm about the same height (ok, an inch taller), but you've got about 60-80 pounds on me, and I wouldn't exactly say a sizeable portion of my mass is muscle either. However, a not-so-pleasant childhood has left me extremely proficient at, as you put it, beating the tar out of punks.
I've gone along to a few martial art classes, but found that their main purpose was to give people the confidence to be in a real fight, rather than actually teach them anything that they could really use. If you don't feel you have that confidence, any martial art will give it to you. If you feel you have it already (and I don't see why someone your size wouldn't), I can tell you about 6 simple tricks that'll bring you out on top in just about any fight.
Which I'll post later cause it's lunch time and I'm starving. ;-)