Best Fighting Style?

Before anyone says there is no best fighting style - This isn't that kind of thread..

What I want to ask is what fighting style would you suggest for self defense purposes? To help I'm not physically strong, I am average in terms of strength and for speed, I am also 5'6 which is short in my opinion (I dont know bout you)

So I want a style I can learn and have fun that fits me. I learned about this martial arts academy (Its not really an academy since its not big as a school) that is near where I live and they teach Wing Chung, Kickboxing, Brazilian Ju-Jitsu and MMA.

Now I am not interested in MMA and I'm not quite sure about Kickboxing but Wing Chung and BJJ emphasis on being able to defend yourself against stronger and bigger opponents than you are which are good but since I can only get 1 since I dont have the cash to do both which one should I take first?

Do note that I will eventually do both or all 4 but for now Im focusing on 1.

Thanks.

P.S Please don't start bashing any of the styles - each one has their strengths and weaknesses.

Well BJJ is mostly about grappling and a weight advantage can be utilized anyway. However that is where my recommendation will go, it is a grappling style of fighting and when employed against an inexperienced person can be very devastating. That's because it's about breaking bones and choking people out in more ways than taking their back. I will say however that I have watched a Wing Chun world champion get beaten by an MMA fighter in a matter of seconds.

One more thing. MMA is not a style, it stands for mixed martial arts which means it is very likely it will include BJJ anyway as well as Muay Thai, and in my case boxing.

My trainer called Wing Chun the 'martial art for lazy people', and that's basically what it is. Not being muscle ridden and having a short stature is actually an advantage in Wing Chun.

Chinese martial art splits the human body into six 'areas', and there is only a very limited number of ways the human anatomy can act when taking a closer look at those areas. Wing Chun especially focuses around the control of those areas, having an answer to every possible scenario of attack and exploiting the inevitable openings those attacks create. Wing Chun itself kind of sucks at offense, to quote my trainer again: "The perfect answer to Wing Chun is to do nothing.". However, it is the ultimate in defense.

Muay Thai has some serious hardcore stuff that's very dangerous, but it has downsides and a lot of silly (Read: stupid) aspects, too. Hopping around and high kicking? From a Wing Chun perspective I'm wondering who came up with that nonsense. For self defense purposes this is still enough to completely ruin people that don't know anything about actual combat, which will pretty much always be the scenario anyway.

Whatever you do, stay away from Karate, Taekwondo, Capoeira, etc. These things have absolutely nothing to do with defending yourself. At all. Yet they often get marketed that way, which is utter horse shit.

Not intending to derail, but before I even go further to reply to this can you please elaborate on how you concluded that these styles (esp. Karate and TKD, since I have not worked with Capoeria practitioners) are as you say they are?
Disregarding of course McDojangs, McDojos, and I suppose ATA (Haven't worked with ATA folks, so I can't comment firsthand if the horror stories as a whole are true. lol) since like any other style of martial arts, there are legit schools to train at, and on the other side of the coin there are those that just want your money without training you the whole nine yards, much to my dismay and disgust.










I've worked with Muay Thai folks, too. The conditioning I've seen is intense and some of the best I've seen, but in my opinion some of them seem to take too much punishment in the ring rather than evading then countering- so I can kinda see how your words line up here.

I used to be into Taekwondo myself. My switch over to WC was caused by someone showing me exactly why lifting your feet off the ground in a combat situation is a horrible idea.

All these schools claim to be martial arts when they're really just sports. When I see Karate people trade hits, feint attacks and commit to kicks it's already contradicting itself. Selling this as 'martial art' or a tool for self-defense is simply a lie, and this whole facade of philosophy that karatekas love so much won't help you out either when your leg gets caught in the blender.

Capoeira isn't even worth talking about. The idea of lifting your legs and turning your back at the same time gives me cancer.

I forgot one very important thing also. I see a lot of people trying to explain which fighting style is better than others, which I know you didn't really want, at the end of the day no matter the opinion if you put less work into the martial art than another person who takes an "inferior" martial art they'll beat you every time. Martial arts and fighting styles always depends on the person, which is why there is no "best" and anything otherwise is nothing but a stupid bitch faced lie.

[size=14]I used to do Aikido, and I can tell you that it's one of the best (I've tried out of Karate, Judo and Kickboxing) for actual self-defence. Before you even begin to work with any techniques, there is rigorous discipline training and reflex honing. The techniques themselves are almost entirely defensive and to be used when countering (either a blade, punch or kick) and they all leave your opponent unable to move and/or disarmed. You also learn how to use swords which was interesting.

Unfortunately I only have experience with MMA and Kickboxing out of the 4 you talk about and neither of them concentrate on defence as the main focus, although I really enjoyed MMA.[/h]

Well I found while searching through Google (Oh how I love Google). A introductory class for Krav Maga. So what do you think about this style?

Krav Maga is taught in a different school a bit farther than the school that I mentioned in my original post but still within my town, so was wondering what you guys think about this style?

Some things that call themselves "fighting styles" are redundant and/or have no idea what they're doing themselves. You call it a bitch faced lie, I call it generations of research. I really don't care if you're the grandmaster of your own one-leg balancing blindfolded ""fighting style"". It's as if you're telling me healthy food is equal to junk food and it would just depend on how much of it you run off again. If you don't want people to bash your school or just simply don't want information like that then don't open related discussions, do your Karate and hope you will never get into an actual stress situation with it.

I always hate replying to posts like these because it's basically just asking me to reiterate or emphasize something I've already explained. No matter what established fighting style you study. There is no superior martial art that you can learn in a few days or work half assed at and just go out and beat somebody else who works twice as hard and puts in more effort in one of the so called "inferior" martial arts. Exactly how you speak of generations of research is exactly why you should know better than to try and bash styles that have been around longer than you were born. Now stop wasting my time because this thread is not for open discussion between you and me, or at least I'm not going to let it be.

Now I see your point. You're saying people that actually train properly and are dedicated outdo people that do... absolutely nothing. I somehow completely missed that.

Definitely "Wing Chun". It was developed for women to protect themselves. Fast and quick. And made also for small people.

Isn't the whole idea of this to have a starting position behind the opponent? How is that not completely redundant?

I just came up with my own secret move for self-defense, I call it the "Deathbusterr". It requires your opponent to be lying on the ground, arms tied to his back. Haha.

So nacho would you say that chines martial arts is superior to any other if you put a lot of effort and don't half ass anything ? Also what would you guys say is the best or rather ultimate offensive martial art ? Would combing a really good defensive art with an offensive style be efficient and effective in a fight etc ?

Doing anything halfheartedly will only get you nowhere. That applies to anything, not only sports.
Talking about a "real fight" situation. I've seen (not proud but have also been in) situations where a black-belt gets downsized. Just because you study something it doesn't guarantee an advantage. It takes immense training hours and sparring sessions to actually understand what you're doing. Even then there's that chance of something unexpected.

Before talking about the best style or perfect combination (which is obviously according to the individual), one must be determined to practice until their limits.
And above all, one must remember that any self-respecting athlete will know that his hands are a weapon and are not to be used "offensively".

I did judo and ju jitsu. I wanted to learn aikido someday mind telling me the basics for it?

Sorry for the late reply, I wasn't paying attention to this board.



The whole thing about going all serious, maximum effort is a really annoying misconcept. You can spend all your life training a martial art, perfecting it with a no-nonsense mentality. The truth is it doesn't even matter if you don't understand the human body and the nature of movement. You can be a Taekwondo master and still be oblivious of the unnatural and forced way Taekwondo uses the body to attack, which is depressingly common. This is the one point I'm really trying to get across to people.

Chinese martial art goes a very very long way back, and looking at it's history it went through a large amount of trial and error. It has just as many bad and unnecessary things as every other source of combat. But keep one thing in mind: new styles like MMA and Krav Maga didn't magically change the rules of the human body. It doesn't make bones and muscles work differently, opening up magical new ways of countering. They take things which are already there and known and try to package it in their own form of representation and learning. It's not optimized if you take a modern style and learn the bad things they threw in there as well, nor is it optimized if you take one of the chinese leg-based arts of the northern regions.



The problem with being offensive is the form of commitment that comes with an aggressive act. You have to close the distance to your opponent in one way or the other, and something as simple as stretching out your arm can't come without commitment to an exploitable act. Risk-free attempts like feinting don't actually exist in real combat, objects that don't enter the "indoor" area and cause physical contact don't exist from a real defender's point of view. True offense would be more about the concept of a defensive wall simply moving forward.

I'm a kickboxer with a long history in traditional arts (TKD, Kyokushin) and boxing. However, as a Renzo Gracie purple belt I must vouch for BJJ as the best practice for self defense.

It's wise to brush up on a few techniques from boxing or muay thai, but if you had to focus the bulk of your training on something to defend yourself with I'd go Jiu Jitsu. With it, you're using a real neutralizing style. A little training goes a long way and removes many variables in a scramble.

I love this highlight, lol.

I enjoy kickboxing, but more so for cardio purposes. If you want to learn self defense, try different ones that interest you either through the Internet or any local places that offer what you want to train in. Always fun to try everything once! You could also look into self defense courses specifically which help you with things such as observing your surroundings, proper techniques to evade from perps, and overall safety.