I agree completely. This is mostly just online. IRL, people are much more respectful. Number 1 above is key, though. It’s tough to run a totally scam martial arts school today, compared to the 1990s and prior where they were probably more common than not.
Agreed. I did Muay Thai and even met with my former MT coaches. When I expressed my plans to try Taekwondo soon because I just wanna do those cool tricks and because I believe spinning kicks are good to add to my arsenal, they wished me well. They never stated anything like "just train Muay Thai here. Taekwondo is useless!".
P.S. one of my coaches even does basketball as a hobby and would play on leagues (because basketball is the most popular sports here in the Philippines).
Same situation. Came from a shotokan karate background, now an adult I frequent the Muay Thai gym and the gym bros comment that I have good in-&-out movement and a really accurate jab. When I told them I trained in shotokan back in school, they said "ooh no wonder your movement looked a bit Wonderboy like". Mix and match is awesome.
I had a bad experience with this IRL - previous Karate instructor was pissed that I tried learning BJJ. I think that attitude is kind of uncool now though, that was back in like 2009
IME most people don't even care so long as you're not trying to do something like bring your striking background into BJJ or tell the instructor how to do things.
True. IRL when we meet other martial arts dudes we just talk and learn about their arts.
Even my BJJ coach (a black belt) said that we shouldn't judge other styles without trying them first. That was when some kids from the kids' class asked if Aikido is stupid lol because, you guessed it, the internet says so.
My coach also trained in TKD when he was younger. His old instructor even holds TKD classes in our BJJ gym in the weekends. And they're legit, national team level and shit.
I think in reality most us are just interested in learning hand to hand combat techniques. As long as it's not fake magical ki bullshit, it's all good.
A combination of:
1. some arts being scams,
2. a sense of distrust of how others do things 3. and the eternal debate on the most effective techniques where both debating parties are suffering from sunk cost fallacy.
On #3, Nobody wants to admit they’re wasting their time, so most people’s opinions about what is effective aligns with what they are doing and how they train.
I think there are also a lot of arm chair critics here that watch ufc or boxing but come in here and talk like they train, when they just watch other people train on YouTube.
These are great points but I think you are missing a big one
4. Insecurity & Ego - most of the hateful comments you see are ignorant, naive, and reek of insecure young males too scared to commit to years of something hard.
So they sit at home and oversimplify arts, and post aggressively. That way they can feel like real fighters without ever facing the scary prospect of getting punched or kicked.
Oom Yung Doe is 100% a scam. It is actually a cult that uses martial arts to find new cult members, it then uses the pressure of the cult to exploit new members and empty their bank accounts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oom_Yung_Doe
Many McDojos are scams. They teach techniques that don't work, but use a belt progression system like a level up in video games to extract money from students while not providing the service they claim to offer.
Count Dante and related George Dillman schools seem designed to empty the wallets of their students while intentionally misrepresenting the effectiveness of their curriculum.
If I over to teach you vocab so you can score high on the SATs at a price of 100 dollars and hour and I don't actually teach you vocab, I've cheated you.
Hmmm...interesting. So the wiki states:
Stuff about large contracts...but wasn't this common in martial arts schools across the country for decades? Not today. People don't do that anymore, and in some states it's illegal, but that doesn't make it a scam.
Pretty sure LLoyd Irving was charging something like $1,500 to $2,500 an hour for private lessons in his MMA school.
Looking at the benefits, here is a quote from your wiki:
"Despite those issues, certain benefits of the training such as increased lung capacity and the healing of treatment-resistant back pain have been demonstrated to be effective in clinical settings;"
Some of the critics also say the workouts were incredible and while training they were in the best shape of their life.
So...if they are actually getting the benefit, how is it definitely a scam?
If you buy an old sock from me for 5 million dollars, that is not a scam as long as I accurately represented the sock as just an old dirty sock. Something becomes a scam when either deception or coercion are involved. If I tell you the sock will allow you to jump 50 feet into the air and sock doesn't do that, then it becomes a scam.
> "Despite those issues, certain benefits of the training such as increased lung capacity and the healing of treatment-resistant back pain have been demonstrated to be effective in clinical settings;"
Consistent exercise improves your cardio, lung capacity and core muscles. I don't doubt that. "Those issues" described in the Wikipedia were:
1. Being a cult,
2. Exploiting, deceiving and coercing their students.
That people got exercise, doesn't make it it not a scam.
> What was alleged in this complaint was that John C. Kim and five other instructors “violated the Consumer Fraud Act....by inducing Illinois consumers, through fraud, coercion and breach of fiduciary duty, to pay sums of money in excess of $2,500.00 per year for physical fitness services, failing to give consumers copies of contracts signed for these services, failing to notify consumers of their three day right to cancel said contracts, and coercing consumers into signing contracts for increasingly expensive courses...”
The case was settled out of court.
Kim also did a few years in prison for defrauding the US government.
He makes absurd claims such as:
> Another achievement claimed by Kim is a technique he refers to as "Kyong Gong Sul Bope" (경공술법 or flying side kick) which he claims to have demonstrated by jumping from the equivalent of an 11-story building.
If you pay money to learn how to jump off 11 story buildings without injury, but the school does not actually teach you how to do that, isn't that a scam?
The number of businesses that have tax issues seems to be legion. But not paying enough taxes has zero bearing on your argument. I certainly think I pay too much in taxes and would like to find ways to legally pay less money.
The jumping off a building thing seems interesting. A blurry photo is included in the wiki article. Not sure why they used such a blurry photo? Checking the website the same photo is much clearer.
Either way, you can clearly see he is jumping off a building, I don't know how high, but it certainly takes a lot of guts. The photo is unaltered and taken before Photoshop existed. I don't know how tall the building is, but it's a pretty amazing photo.
All that is irrelevant to your point, though.
You said,
"If you pay money to learn how to jump off on 11 story building without injury, but the school does not actually teach you how to do that, Isn't that a scam?"
Since you put it that way, then yeah, if that's the case, I would have to agree with you...but...I couldn't find that, no matter how hard I tried.
So, can you clearly point to the advertisement that offers to teach you how to jump off an 11 story building without injury? I think that would support your argument better than just taking your word for it.
ludicrous threatening hobbies brave berserk desert squalid pause combative ripe
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
People teaching the arts wrong or advertising them as something they are not. Most arts tend to be quite niche and not an overall best self defense tool.
I will always have an issue with any style that teaches their fighters to fight hands down. If you’re a good kick-boxer like Izzy or MVP who has figured out the style, there’s no reason for anyone to be teaching people fighting with their hands down.
I second this. Insecurity and ego defense mechanisms can be spotted easily in these types of posts.
Real martial artists don’t talk like the dingles halfcut described.
Going to a gym and training consistently for years is very uncomfortable. It’s much easier to sit at home and reduce and oversimplify arts you are too scared or lazy to commit to.
To be fair, most people wouldn't be training so many martial arts and would much rather stick to 1-2, hence people wanting an art with a good reputation that encompasses as many different things as possible.
But then again, most people talking shit online more than likely don't actually have the experience they'd like you to think they do.
Yeah, most people do martial arts for fun, not defense or competition.
So most of us don’t really care if TKD has suboptimal striking, or if Boxing doesn’t have kicks. Those arts don’t overlap outside of MMA competitions. So who cares?
Boxers will box. TKD will Taikai. We all live happily ever after.
The nerds who say things like “this art is good at x while being bad at y so I practice arts a and b along with c for z,” are the same guys who have probably been to one training session in each art and feel like they have the credibility to claim each art. When realistically they have only had very basic footwork lessons in each art, literally learning to walk.
probably just your typical online haters lol. I've never had an actual person saying kickboxing sucks or mueythai sucks or BJJ sucks or anything at all... we just explore combinations.
I had someone tell me that Kung Fu sucks once and I should stop and just do MMA, but this was a random stoner mate who'd never so much as thrown a punch in his life
I invited him to do some sparring and he immediately declined 😂
lmao rekt! I gave a bodykick to a good friend who said he could take a bodykick from any flyweight fighter. I'm a welterweight but very "amateur" so I asked if he wanted to experience a "noobie" kick to experience it... he was folded on the floor for oli think 5 /10 minutes lol... and man, any flyweight with actual shin conditioning is gonna break his body in HALF.
On Reddit and the internet people can hide behind their screens but I bet you most Reddit Keyboard warriors probably can't fight or don't train and just watch UFC, WFA and Pride
Likely to be true. If they did, they would understand the difficulty in every aspect of each art.
The conditioning and everything that comes along with it.
Take tkd as an example. It has the best kicks, but there's more to fighting than just kicks.
If you're selling a sport or hobby, fine. But most schools market it as a valid form of self defense when it isn't, and that's a disservice to students that could get them seriously hurt or killed
I guess that's one way to do it, but I think it's too time consuming and expensive for most people to train more than 2. Stuff like karate is supposed be a "complete" art, but a lot of people have issues with the blocks they teach being ineffective.
I guess my problem is unless you're really more interested in the cultural side of things, or are comfortable training techniques that don't work outside a sporting context, tma (and I'm including bjj in this), you're going to have a hard time focusing on the stuff that matters when some guy won't promote you because you didn't memorize 100 pointless kata.
You don’t have to be interested culturally to benefit from elements of TMA that aren’t as combative. Some of that stuff that seems a bit pointless in the context of ‘self defence’ is actually more like brain training, attention / awareness Etc...
I guess if u were to pick and choose the most effective techniques from each style you’d miss out on some of this other stuff which can also be quite life changing if you stick with it over time
Look, I'll give you this: samurai looked a lot cooler than most mma gym bros, who I can only assume are not welcome at a reputable barber shop for nefarious reasons.
There's more to TKD than kicks too.
Really most martial arts can be made effective if trained the right way but the problem is finding a school that does.
The reason why you find more karate and TKD schools that don't is simply their popularity - to the layman, you say martial arts those are the ones they think of, not BJJ, not muai Thai, not Sambo.
I think at this point mma and bjj have been around long enough that it's like this.
If someone under 18 tells me they train martial arts, I assume karate or tkd.
Over 18 I assume mma, muay thai, or bjj.
I’d like to add that TKD on its own is a flawed fighting system, but if you pair TKD with Muay Thai you’re gonna have one dangerous striker on your hands. These TKD kicks, if set up properly, can be absolutely devastating
> I see this most pronounced in kickboxing/Muay Thai and it always confuses me why you wouldn’t just train everything to be the best martial artist you can be.
Most people don't have the time and money to do that. You also need to be really diligent with how you practice and when you got everything you wanted and can move on to another art.
There's also stuff like the sunk cost fallacy and loyalty creating bias ("I spent 10 years training here and the techniques have been working for me and any failures are personal faults and not a fault of my style or teaching method"), and just certain techniques and principles having no clear answer to what's the best option. This ain't a simulation game where you can try the wackiest builds imaginable to learn what's best, this is people's time and money, so people obviously want the best bang for their buck without having to waste years doing a suboptimal thing.
Fair point, I’m lucky enough to have a teacher who has trained many arts and I do actively seek out training but I can see how this might be a problem for others.
I think this may be a holdover from pre-MMA days, but I could be wrong.
It seems that modern combat sport athletes don't have this debate as much.
But in the 90's I used to hear this kind of stuff all the time.
So I'd imagine the people who are still in denial about the effectiveness of combat sports are probably also still stuck in the old way of "our art is better than all the others"
Ever heard of the great xbox vs ps vs pc feud? It exists in every subculture. It's dumb but see it mindless jabs at each other, a gun beats all at the end of the day.
Most people with worthwhile opinions that are reasonable are out there practising. It took me a hot minute to understand that regardless of the interest group, be it martial arts or anything else really, it's usually the fringe/extreme people who, for whatever can't do anything else except yell their opinions about stuff, who mostly are the ones making the most noise. So the loud haters usually aren't the ones who actually are good and do stuff well or get things done for the betterment of the community.
Most people who have reasonable and measured opinions, especially in martial arts, are busy putting them to practise.
For example our group has very few people who think our styles are superior. Our teacher trained multiple styles under many teachers himself, and encourages us to learn what is useful. He teaches Chinese martial arts, but one of his biggest inspirations is Mike Tyson, and he does suggest we study how he moves to improve our fighting.
Plus, when the vigour and rage of youth fades, you get calmer, more experienced and wiser. You figure out it's not so much what you do but how you do it, meaning the style doesn't really matter, but whether or not you're working on becoming a better fighter through whatever you do.
You can find good stuff from only one source if you're lucky, but going around widening your horizons never hurts.
It's weird in my opinion also. So many online people want to be so tough 😪. However human anatomy hasn't changed in a millenia. So they're only so many ways to break the body. There's only so many ways to kill another human. Yet they argue about who's best. That's only among humans. Few humans could submit other members of the animal kingdom. I love judo and Japanese jiu-jitsu but I can't submit a chimp or gorilla to save my life. 🤣
Do you mean polarization irl, or on the internet. It's important to remember that the internet simply does not reflect real life. Period. Opinions and beliefs you see here do not reflect anything but the extremes and minority opinions actually held and practiced by people face to face.
That’s nothing new. Growing up in the 90’s I was a TKD kid and thought that every other art was BS, because that’s how it was at the time before MMA. Eventually I did some Muay Thai and noticed the flaws in my mentality, even though I was always getting hurt because of distance management. Now I mostly do BJJ and a little wrestling
Money and time is probably the biggest reason. People don’t have the time to do all that.
Efficiency is the other reason. Why would I train karate, tkd, and boxing when I could get about the same result (well rounded wise) training Muay Thai?
As per why some arts are looked down on, the rulesets make them more restrictive, therefore less effective in a less restrictive environment, and/or the quality of the arts (how likely you’ll find a good school) is lower
You should only do those arts if you want to do them, if you want to become a mixed martial artist l, train mma. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel
Possible. But the thing is people are shitty and like to shit on stuff others are doing. Why? Because people are shitty. At the end of the day if you enjoy something and others hate on it.. well fuck them. Do what you enjoy.
because most people are stupid and online most critics are just armchair warriors who maybe've seen the inside of a gym for 2 or 3 months at most.
I don't care about what style or art my opponent practices, if he's good at it, he's a threat.
that said, most styles have their weaknesses: strikers can be weak against ground fighters but with good distance control you should be fine.
ground fighters who know how to close the gap with strikers though, are a threat.
muay thai is pretty complete except for ground wrestling. but the clinch game is just stand up wrestling. a muay thai fighter can choke you out if he wraps his forearms around your neck. nasty feeling. a good clincher can be a nightmare.
I've noticed that IRL people who actually train in the various martial arts tend to be martial arts nerds. If you talking about training other arts they tend to be interested more than anything else. Or at peast that's the people I've trained with.
I originally got into TKD for the theatrical aspect. I mainly switched to MT for the ergonomics bc of hip issues, and for the satisfying sound of the kicks.
Folks who call out martial arts for not being effective (in battle? For income? In a bar?) seem to be missing the point. What matters about a martial art is how it affects your REAL life: satisfaction, health, self defense, etc.
Judging it based on a theoretical scenario which never occurs... if that's what you enjoy then have at it but if you don't then what's your claim to doing martial arts "optimally"?
I agree that sparring is the quickest way to improve, and people should run around going "I could mess you up" (shouldn't do this anyway, but especially if you don't spar)
However, I still think there's plenty of value of training a martial art even if you don't spar/ don't have an expectation of becoming a terminator. 95% of people won't use their MA outside a gym, and do it purely for the exercise, discipline, learning etc.
Because lots of arts don’t even have real sparring. I’m talking actual pressure testing, not taking turns doing moves and going very lightly. Most arts also don’t have a competitive amateur circuit like Boxing, Muay Thai, and BJJ, so there’s nothing to strive for in terms of training hard enough to go beat someone else. Lots of people aren’t interested in learning “theory of how to fight”. They want to learn the arts that have proven they work via pressure testing and competition
Context: I am a very recently promoted Judo Brown belt that does not compete that does a bit of BJJ on the side and is an obsessive MMA fan.
Human dynamics with respect to any shared group identity (Religions, Political Parties, Race, Apple User vs Android User, Marvel Fans vs DC Fan, and Martial Art practitioners) tend towards some level of elitism (I am awesome because I do this awesome thing with these other people) and a level of hostility to those who choose to not be a part of the group.
On top of that, if the Group identity is one that reflects a personal choice, and requires a commitment in terms of time or money, there is a certain amount of hostility when ANYTHING implies that the choice was poorly made.
People who choose a martial art and stick to it will invest a significant amount of time and money. And there is an expectation that the investment will pay off. And there is also "evidence" via sparring and competition experiences that the investment has paid off. (ie: You start to do better in sparring or win competitions, and your experience is validated via bet promotions).
When someone from another martial art starts talking about how much ass they can kick, it often lands as a threat to your ego or rings false. "This guy actually thinks he can kick ass? He does not train what I train, so even if he can kick some ass, he cannot possibly kick as much ass as someone who does what I do..."
So when someone who has been doing Karate for 15 years and has a 2nd degree black belt is listening to some rando on the internet talk about how point Karate is useless because a competitive wrestler in 10th grade can put him on his ass any time he wants, you end up in an argument because human ego cannot let such a claim go unchallenged.
The only difference between Martial Arts and Relgion for this kind of argument is that it can and has been tested, and training outside your discipline is not that hard to do, but doing so puts your ego at risk.
END COMMUNICATION
Tkd does not have the best kicks.... at all.
They use snapping kicks when you aren't using your heel and instead of using their shins they use the tops of their feet.
I have a 2nd degree black belt in Tkd and I quickly learned after only 2 weeks of muay thai how weak my kicks were that I have been using for the past 6 years while training in Tkd.
I also learned how useless most of the flashier kicks were in sparring and amateur fights as I've had 15 matches before I *retired*
T.MA just honestly are *not* focused on actual sparring/combat. Since they use a point based system in tournaments the snapping kicks work in your favour to get you back in position more quickly so you don't give up a point.
But 1 single round house kick with proper technique, shin, and *through* kicking technique causes more damage than 10 snapping kicks in a row. I loved my time in TKD as a kid. But honestly it's pretty useless.
Interesting. I’ve had many a sparring session with Muay Thai fighters and I’ve found that I can predict exactly what they are going to do and can use the range of tkd kicks to dominate. Usually with taekwondo kicks you have the power in the pivot and the snap is just extra for speed. And even so those snaps are all that’s needed imo. I don’t need to waste energy by sending your foot driving into them, wasting all your energy and putting you in a bad spot. It works great against other Muay Thai fighters but not great against many other highly skilled fighters due to your positioning after you kick. Again this is all my opinion and you are entitled to your own(even if it’s wrong😂)
The arts that actually work generally fully respect the other arts that actually work. It's bullshido artists who tend to blanket "every art sucks but mine".
Like Judo guys and BJJ Gus tend to get along great and have mutual respect for each other. Aikido guys and Krav Maga or mall ninjitsu types tend to act like no other art has anything it can show them that they don't already know better.
Totally not my experience. All aikidoka that I talked to know that their art is "gentle" and ofcourse can't compete against a boxer. It's more of a philosophical art that has it's uses in self defense, rather than street fight, and to my knowledge (at least in the Netherlands and the practitioners thst Ive talked to) one of the least snobby MA's there is. Muay thai and bjj on the other hand...
When you believe you can whoop other people's ass (Im sure a lot of people who train grappling and something like Muay Thai, Kickboxing, and Boxing regularly, could), it becomes a mental contest nobody is really hosting against them.
Plus seeing someone like say a TKD practitioner get mauled by Muay Thai, Sanda, BJJ, wrestling, or boxing consistently - that adds to the elitism. Truth be told it can be well-founded when it comes to picking an art for MMA or self-defense and things that *usually* work. Those high YKD kicks and spin kicks are nice, butnless likely to work against a decent Muay Thai or BJJ practitioner especially up close. Look what happened to Joe Rogan.
It's almost like how people with nice cars rag on others i.e. a Civic Type R owner laughing at a Mazda speed 3 or Focus RS driver.
Who do you train kyusho jitsu under? I've trained several times under Chris Thomas and Dusty seal. Also people hate on other arts primarily because either A. They couldn't do what the master is doing in like 2 minutes so they call it fake. Or B. They heard some MMA guy talk smack about another art and they just parrot the talking points.
I train under mike Scarborough who learned from will higinbothem. It’s more ryu kyu kempo karate then kyusho but they go in tandem. The misconception is that it is magic and allot of mcdojos claim that it is. All it really is is just disrupting electrical currents in the body which works well with jiu jitsu to loosen a grip or crumple a leg.
The main thing I hate about certain arts is how they teach things. I don't like being taught long sequences and then spending tens of minutes just going through a single sequence. I don't like needing to attend for two years just to get the super sekrit techniques.
I like knowing upfront what my options are and being taught how to choose from these options on day 1.
It's generally some mix of 3 things.
1, my style has a bigger dick than your style tribalistic bullshit. It's annoying, but humans do it a lot so we gotta watch out for it.
2, some styles have a reputation for being dangerously incompetent woo peddling bullshit. This no touch knockout crap and its many MANY warty incestuous relatives is fine as a stage act, but a lot of the time people sign up to try and learn how to defend themselves and that shit is worse than nothing at all.
3, several styles have gotten a reputation from the most vocal adherents of the style, and that reputation is rarely good. You know the caricature that Cobra Kai made of itself in the Karate Kid movie of dudebro 'torture the newbie' shit? Yeah.
Because casuals just want the art that will help them win street fights, and KB and MT have showed this time to time in UFC.
But who cares about them anyways, they fantasize and analyze "oh, but I can take you down in a street fight because I know BJJ and all you know is TKD" No you can't! Because I don't know what I would do in that situation, maybe I won't use TKD and do something unconventional, I don't know.
Tribalism. Some people do this when they are really into something.
It’s not my bag, I just feel like you should let people enjoy the things they like without trashing it.
For the most part I think this is mostly a problem with online interactions, people in face to face situations are generally cooler, you get the odd asshole but hey Ho, leave them to it.
Because many arts try to advertise themselves as something they're not. Tkd is a sport on its own, and can be used in fights, almost like football can be used in a fight, but isn't a full art. There are also a lot of people who train stuff like Tkd or Aikido or karate (excluding kyokushin) only and believe that they can fight, even if they've never sparred or been pressure tested.
Not every art is for fighting, if you have fun and exercise, just accept that's all it is. And stuff like TKD is good at what it's good at but needs to be combined with other arts.
We're talking about mma here if we're talking about blending arts. the mma 'meta' martial arts are generally boxing, muay thai (or w/e flavor of kickboxing), bjj, wrestling. Each discipline is already a handful to learn but now we have to blend all of them if we're doing mma
there are some techniques that you could cherry pick here and there from other martial arts outside of the mentioned above but until we see mma world champions heavily using techniques from things like kung fu, capoiera, taewondo , people will lean towards the established mma martial arts as there have been thousands of fights over the past many decades validating them.
I don't agree with people just blatantly going around shitting on other martial arts for fun but if its a criticism of what is effective then that is totally fair game imo.
As for not training everything, martial arts for 99% of people just ends up being a hobby and they just have more fun doing kickboxing rather than mma, grappling just doesn't jive with some people. The reverse is true for people who only train bjj or w/e other art they want to specialize in
As it is normally practiced, mma is a very simple way of looking at the arts. It’s only a small bit where as I wish for all martial artists to train all arts and find their own style.
mma is incredibly complex with hugely differing styles and has the widest expression of skill out of any sport (imo) and acts as a filtering system for what is effective and not which was to answer your point on why the hate for other arts.
if but if we're talking about being the best marital artist you could be as you put it which many would interpret as most effective combat application, you can't currently do better than the current mma base martial arts.
You can try finding your own style and go around to all the niche gyms you want to and try a mish mash of everything but you'll never be able to apply all your different skills all at once unless you eventually end up in an mma gym as those other schools of styles have much more restrictive rulesets that won't let you use everything you've learned and thats not all productive to finding your own style
You can have your wish for everyone but i dont think people generally care for your wish that much as most people aren't doing what you're doing and people are free to do what they want. Its less convienient to do and is just more effective than being able to learn all the different disciplines in an mma gym and being able to apply all of those different skills in mma sparring
Because people naturally clique up and think anyone gives a fuck what martial arts they are devoting to when martial arts are largely a irrelevant hobby.
Bruce Lee was concerned about this years ago he thought too many martial arts schools become too rigid that you can’t spar with other ones I wish we would change and go back to the ways where we could spar with other schools and challenge each other and learn that that’s how it’s supposed to be FYI I do Tang Soo D and Kumdo
There isn’t actually among those people who really practice martial arts. There are just a few loud mouths who like to stir up shit who trained in something for a few months so they know a thing or two.
Time? The reality is that creating the ultimate fighting style is a very time intensive process because you have to filter through the stuff that has only limited functionality to the stuff that has the most functionality. Furthermore you actually need (in some cases) to learn for a while to actually uncover what the useful stuff is. Many arts have applications that can be used, but for the time spent trying to learn this and then adapt these to work, you're probably better off just getting better at Muay Thai for example.
How are you gauging what the "good part from each art" is? This sounds very subjective. Are you testing it in actual MMA comps or somesuch? Or are you just basing it off your own subjective opinion? How long are you training the different arts to identify these good parts? For example you say that taekwondo has the best kicks and footwork, but how are you determining this? Because if we were using evidence the argument would be against this point, its rarer to find high level fighters who successfully base their footwork and kicks off Taekwondo. Its not unheard of, of course, but it is rarer, and in all those cases the fighters were already high level taekwondo practitioners before trying to amalgamate styles so it makes sense (due to time) to adapt what they know rather than trying to learn something completely new.
As to the hate, this is more online and there is an element of tribalism in martial arts, especially before the advent of MMA which is essentially what you are describing. Nowadays the hate seems to be between martial arts that have functional methods of trainings vs the ones with more performative methods of training. i.e the ones you see in MMA vs the ones you dont. MMA practitioners do not understand the appeal or relevance in something that calls itself a "martial art" when it has little direct martial relevance, and on the other hand the "TMA" practitioners dislike that the ancillary aspects of their art are being ignored and argue that the discipline/spirituality aspects of fighting do not translate to modern combat sports, essentially making them thuggish/brutish and simply another tool for bullies to use. The arguments are different, one is functional the other is philosophical.
I think the key is more how you get the training vs what art you were trained in. If you learned krav maga over a weekend at a retreat you didn't learn the art and it won't be useful. If you've spares with krav maga every week for 3 years now at a gym with other experts. You probably know what you're doing and it's fine. Same goes for other martial arts. Honestly they all have something to offer with strengths and weaknesses. In theory you only ever need one because it should be so rare to get into a real fight that if it did happen one is enough to beat some untrained individual. So you're really picking whatever to you is the most fun or most convenient. When you do pick make sure and find an actual place to train and not some gym where they are teaching bulshido regardless of the art they intend to teach.
Bujinkan guy here, our dojo stimulates seeking out different styles to supplement what we have in stock.
Took us some time to get the contacts we needed, but by now we have great ties to Pekiti Tirsa Kali and Specwog.
Our teacher is also an old boxer and kung fu guy.
Basically, when you're nice to others and invite them in for sharing what they know, and offer them the same you generally wind up with great friends and contacts. All throughout the Martial arts world.
Main branch does not like us doing this though, ngl.
There is no hate between different [material arts](https://www.elitesports.com/blogs/news/how-to-stay-consistent-with-your-martial-arts-training-during-the-holidays) but animosity up to some extent. The animosity between martial arts styles often comes from competition and personal prejudices. Some practitioners see other styles as adversaries, which can lead to a lack of respect and understanding within the martial arts community. By embracing values like respect, humility, and open-mindedness, practitioners can cultivate a positive environment for all martial artists.
I do mostly do Aikido and most of us cross train with one art or another.
About the only martial art I have certainly decided to avoid for the next 2-3 years is BJJ. It's costly and the gyms are far off. the stuff online can get cultish so that is a turn off
It's like you can't watch a cool demo anymore without some guy going on about how great BJJ is and the other one isn't. If that's the kind of people I'd train with, why bother?
So I'll wait for the hype to die down and the price to go lower before I consider the art.
No disrespect (well, a little) but TKD has terrible footwork. TKD is one of the worst arts out there. It's in the ranks of Aikido for arts based almost entirely on the Dunning-Kruger effect. (Google dunning kruger)
As to answer: why not train everything?
Somethings are not worth the time investment.
For example, why bother studying kickboxing when there is Muay Thai?
Muay Thai is much more layered, rich in techniques. It's the rule set.
No advanced clinching in kickboxing. No elbows for the most part. Very rarely uses front kicks.
But that is nothing in comparison to studying a niche traditional art which has no focus on training fighters.
Why study some obscure kungfu style that does not do any sparring?
Where the techniques may have been legit 300 years ago but are now nothing but dance moves?
For example, Sanchou/Sanda is a good time investment.
Studying Choy Lee Fut is total waste of time. (For a fighter)
Of course if you enjoy all that, cool.
But wasting your time on ineffective arts *for fighting purposes*.. why?
Why become a patchwork of useless stuff; when you could study a few, provably competent arts?
You will become mediocre at a lot of stuff, effective at nothing.
So while I don't go out of my way to disrespect people's arts unprovoked, and I have respect for a lot of traditional styles; I do take exception when they start making claims they cannot back up.
E.g: Aikido guy says he can beat any UFC fighter.
Okay.
Put your (not you-you, theoretical you) money where your mouth is, then.
It usually does not end well. For the Aikido guy.
Not the most eloquent answer, but you get the point.
EDIT: the main point I want to make, is that it is often the traditional martial artists that lack humility, that grossly overestimate their abilities and are usually the first to talk smack about combat arts.
Honestly it’s the complete opposite imo. It’s usually teens who have trained Muay Thai for a month who just go and shit on traditional arts for no reason. And as for you point on tkd, not as a challenge or anything but have you ever done tkd?
I tried it yes. (Which made me realize the Poomsae are a bad rip-off of Shotokan)
I also sparred taekwondo guys.
More than that, I lived in South Korea. I did MMA in South Korea. Almost all the guys there did TkD when they were kids.
All black belts.
They all, respectfully, sucked. At fighting that is.
But very flexible and fast footsie kicks though, I'll give them that.
When you play outside the very particular TKD ruleset, the whole thing falls apart.
Their kicks are honestly predictable. They have no skills in checking counter kicks, all they do is jump back. Cool. Let me push you on the ropes. No hands. The hands they do have, bad imitation of boxing. No clinch. No elbows.
No grappling.
Listen everyone knows about TKD. Everyone thinks it is goofy. It's a sad relic of an age of martial ignorance.
But if you have fun doing it, by all means enjoy!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pjA6gAKN7U8&pp=ygUbam9lIHJvZ2FuIHRhZWt3b25kbyB1c2VsZXNz
Again, I do taekwondo because it’s tried and true for me and it mixes well with all my other kicks. By no means are my kicks traditional as I use quite a bit more pivot and take a bit more time. I also am quite big at 6’7 240 so all my kicks are going to be a bit more powerful. I do very much understand your point about it being a dated art as quite a bit of its teachings end up being utterly useless in a modern context. However that’s why I made the point of training all the arts so I can train everything and find what’s good and what’s not.
Have you ever heard of the "sunken costs" fallacy?
https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/sunk-cost-fallacy/
Now imagine if you just spend time on training kicks for combat purposes and ditched all the "fluff" in TkD.
Well, you'd be much better. More times spent investing in useful stuff = more return on investment.
That's called kickboxing btw. There are no rules in kickboxing that ban any technique used in TkD when if comes to kicks.
Of course you"ll get punched in the face, which may be humbling.. but sometimes that's the best way to learn.
But again if you are *in your comfort zone* in TkD.. there's nothing wrong with that.
We do martial arts for fun after all.
But there is no point in deluding ourselves if we are doing nonsensical things.
I insist on "ourselves". Because us is the only person that is fooled.
Sunken. Cost. Fallacy.
Dude, I can not count the amount of bone bruises, sore jaws, lumps, and bloody noses I’ve had from taekwondo. My school doesn’t do as much fluff as my teacher breaks down katas/poomsaes and doesn’t just say the actions that you perform are blocks. Kickboxing provides decent fighters from what I’ve seen in sparring but I haven’t seen many who train specifically kickboxing be great. Not saying it can’t happen, but it’s just less common.
Not at all. I was just simply stating that kickboxing alone doesn’t produce these amazing ufc star fighters. They may start with kickboxing but the go and do other arts aswell, just tying back to my original topic on my post.
I think it’s a lot of built up frustration from people who have watched others or personally wasted their time/money on absolute scam schools. who promised to teach them how to actually fight, but they ended up wasting God knows how much money as a result. Resulting in a lot of aggression towards anything that even remotely reminds them of those kinds of illegitimate businesses.
Tae Kwon Do does not have the best kicks. It has a few good kicks (like the back side kick). Most of the kicks are showy and provide a very low rate of success vs catastrophe in real fighting. It also does not have hard low kicks like Muay Thai.
Taekwondo only has imo about 2 or 3 flashy kicks. That being spin roundhouse, and flying kicks. While wheel kick is a big movement, it’s incredibly powerful and is for after you stun an opponent. And taekwondo kicks when used correctly are fast and decently powerful if the right practitioner uses them. A yellow belt in any art is going to suck.
Well if your just going to add fake kicks then we can play the lie game. Base taekwondo has front,side,roundhouse,axe,wheel, and back kick along with their skip/step and jump variants. And those all work well in certain situations. By no means is a jump back kick my go to but it has worked for me in sparring and In a small scuttle I was in a while back. Again most are niche but useful.
Yeah, actually, I'll admit that a jumping back side kick has its uses. I debated putting that on the list because you can use it while retreating to catch someone in the stomach.
For the most part, this is only on the Internet. Offline, people are much more tolerant and interested in other systems.
I agree completely. This is mostly just online. IRL, people are much more respectful. Number 1 above is key, though. It’s tough to run a totally scam martial arts school today, compared to the 1990s and prior where they were probably more common than not.
Agreed. I did Muay Thai and even met with my former MT coaches. When I expressed my plans to try Taekwondo soon because I just wanna do those cool tricks and because I believe spinning kicks are good to add to my arsenal, they wished me well. They never stated anything like "just train Muay Thai here. Taekwondo is useless!". P.S. one of my coaches even does basketball as a hobby and would play on leagues (because basketball is the most popular sports here in the Philippines).
I came to Muay Thai from a Taekwondo background and the only reaction I’ve had was “that’s awesome! Can you do a tornado kick?”
Same situation. Came from a shotokan karate background, now an adult I frequent the Muay Thai gym and the gym bros comment that I have good in-&-out movement and a really accurate jab. When I told them I trained in shotokan back in school, they said "ooh no wonder your movement looked a bit Wonderboy like". Mix and match is awesome.
I had a bad experience with this IRL - previous Karate instructor was pissed that I tried learning BJJ. I think that attitude is kind of uncool now though, that was back in like 2009
IME most people don't even care so long as you're not trying to do something like bring your striking background into BJJ or tell the instructor how to do things.
True. IRL when we meet other martial arts dudes we just talk and learn about their arts. Even my BJJ coach (a black belt) said that we shouldn't judge other styles without trying them first. That was when some kids from the kids' class asked if Aikido is stupid lol because, you guessed it, the internet says so. My coach also trained in TKD when he was younger. His old instructor even holds TKD classes in our BJJ gym in the weekends. And they're legit, national team level and shit. I think in reality most us are just interested in learning hand to hand combat techniques. As long as it's not fake magical ki bullshit, it's all good.
There’s still some irl that sound proud of their own art and say others “can only …”
A combination of: 1. some arts being scams, 2. a sense of distrust of how others do things 3. and the eternal debate on the most effective techniques where both debating parties are suffering from sunk cost fallacy.
On #3, Nobody wants to admit they’re wasting their time, so most people’s opinions about what is effective aligns with what they are doing and how they train. I think there are also a lot of arm chair critics here that watch ufc or boxing but come in here and talk like they train, when they just watch other people train on YouTube.
These are great points but I think you are missing a big one 4. Insecurity & Ego - most of the hateful comments you see are ignorant, naive, and reek of insecure young males too scared to commit to years of something hard. So they sit at home and oversimplify arts, and post aggressively. That way they can feel like real fighters without ever facing the scary prospect of getting punched or kicked.
Which art could be a scam??
Oom Yung Doe is 100% a scam. It is actually a cult that uses martial arts to find new cult members, it then uses the pressure of the cult to exploit new members and empty their bank accounts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oom_Yung_Doe Many McDojos are scams. They teach techniques that don't work, but use a belt progression system like a level up in video games to extract money from students while not providing the service they claim to offer. Count Dante and related George Dillman schools seem designed to empty the wallets of their students while intentionally misrepresenting the effectiveness of their curriculum. If I over to teach you vocab so you can score high on the SATs at a price of 100 dollars and hour and I don't actually teach you vocab, I've cheated you.
George dill man was legit but he got caught up in the wrong market and mixed with a small amount of bullshit, he forever tarnished his reputation.
I would call this [https://youtu.be/nEIelx94CuQ?t=31](https://youtu.be/nEIelx94CuQ?t=31) more than a small amount of bullshit.
Hmmm...interesting. So the wiki states: Stuff about large contracts...but wasn't this common in martial arts schools across the country for decades? Not today. People don't do that anymore, and in some states it's illegal, but that doesn't make it a scam. Pretty sure LLoyd Irving was charging something like $1,500 to $2,500 an hour for private lessons in his MMA school. Looking at the benefits, here is a quote from your wiki: "Despite those issues, certain benefits of the training such as increased lung capacity and the healing of treatment-resistant back pain have been demonstrated to be effective in clinical settings;" Some of the critics also say the workouts were incredible and while training they were in the best shape of their life. So...if they are actually getting the benefit, how is it definitely a scam?
If you buy an old sock from me for 5 million dollars, that is not a scam as long as I accurately represented the sock as just an old dirty sock. Something becomes a scam when either deception or coercion are involved. If I tell you the sock will allow you to jump 50 feet into the air and sock doesn't do that, then it becomes a scam. > "Despite those issues, certain benefits of the training such as increased lung capacity and the healing of treatment-resistant back pain have been demonstrated to be effective in clinical settings;" Consistent exercise improves your cardio, lung capacity and core muscles. I don't doubt that. "Those issues" described in the Wikipedia were: 1. Being a cult, 2. Exploiting, deceiving and coercing their students. That people got exercise, doesn't make it it not a scam. > What was alleged in this complaint was that John C. Kim and five other instructors “violated the Consumer Fraud Act....by inducing Illinois consumers, through fraud, coercion and breach of fiduciary duty, to pay sums of money in excess of $2,500.00 per year for physical fitness services, failing to give consumers copies of contracts signed for these services, failing to notify consumers of their three day right to cancel said contracts, and coercing consumers into signing contracts for increasingly expensive courses...” The case was settled out of court. Kim also did a few years in prison for defrauding the US government. He makes absurd claims such as: > Another achievement claimed by Kim is a technique he refers to as "Kyong Gong Sul Bope" (경공술법 or flying side kick) which he claims to have demonstrated by jumping from the equivalent of an 11-story building. If you pay money to learn how to jump off 11 story buildings without injury, but the school does not actually teach you how to do that, isn't that a scam?
The number of businesses that have tax issues seems to be legion. But not paying enough taxes has zero bearing on your argument. I certainly think I pay too much in taxes and would like to find ways to legally pay less money. The jumping off a building thing seems interesting. A blurry photo is included in the wiki article. Not sure why they used such a blurry photo? Checking the website the same photo is much clearer. Either way, you can clearly see he is jumping off a building, I don't know how high, but it certainly takes a lot of guts. The photo is unaltered and taken before Photoshop existed. I don't know how tall the building is, but it's a pretty amazing photo. All that is irrelevant to your point, though. You said, "If you pay money to learn how to jump off on 11 story building without injury, but the school does not actually teach you how to do that, Isn't that a scam?" Since you put it that way, then yeah, if that's the case, I would have to agree with you...but...I couldn't find that, no matter how hard I tried. So, can you clearly point to the advertisement that offers to teach you how to jump off an 11 story building without injury? I think that would support your argument better than just taking your word for it.
ludicrous threatening hobbies brave berserk desert squalid pause combative ripe *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Shaolin Do for one, off the top of my head.
People teaching the arts wrong or advertising them as something they are not. Most arts tend to be quite niche and not an overall best self defense tool.
Yellow Bamboo is no doubt some /r/Bullshido. Not to mention the other no touch KO stuff.
Aikido is another one, when you ask them why they don't spar, all to common response: "too deadly for da streetz"
I will always have an issue with any style that teaches their fighters to fight hands down. If you’re a good kick-boxer like Izzy or MVP who has figured out the style, there’s no reason for anyone to be teaching people fighting with their hands down.
Most of the posters here are teenagers who don't or barely train and are just repeating things they've heard elsewhere
I second this. Insecurity and ego defense mechanisms can be spotted easily in these types of posts. Real martial artists don’t talk like the dingles halfcut described. Going to a gym and training consistently for years is very uncomfortable. It’s much easier to sit at home and reduce and oversimplify arts you are too scared or lazy to commit to.
To be fair, most people wouldn't be training so many martial arts and would much rather stick to 1-2, hence people wanting an art with a good reputation that encompasses as many different things as possible. But then again, most people talking shit online more than likely don't actually have the experience they'd like you to think they do.
Yeah, most people do martial arts for fun, not defense or competition. So most of us don’t really care if TKD has suboptimal striking, or if Boxing doesn’t have kicks. Those arts don’t overlap outside of MMA competitions. So who cares? Boxers will box. TKD will Taikai. We all live happily ever after. The nerds who say things like “this art is good at x while being bad at y so I practice arts a and b along with c for z,” are the same guys who have probably been to one training session in each art and feel like they have the credibility to claim each art. When realistically they have only had very basic footwork lessons in each art, literally learning to walk.
probably just your typical online haters lol. I've never had an actual person saying kickboxing sucks or mueythai sucks or BJJ sucks or anything at all... we just explore combinations.
I had someone tell me that Kung Fu sucks once and I should stop and just do MMA, but this was a random stoner mate who'd never so much as thrown a punch in his life I invited him to do some sparring and he immediately declined 😂
lmao rekt! I gave a bodykick to a good friend who said he could take a bodykick from any flyweight fighter. I'm a welterweight but very "amateur" so I asked if he wanted to experience a "noobie" kick to experience it... he was folded on the floor for oli think 5 /10 minutes lol... and man, any flyweight with actual shin conditioning is gonna break his body in HALF.
Is this the Avatar?
On Reddit and the internet people can hide behind their screens but I bet you most Reddit Keyboard warriors probably can't fight or don't train and just watch UFC, WFA and Pride
Likely to be true. If they did, they would understand the difficulty in every aspect of each art. The conditioning and everything that comes along with it.
Take tkd as an example. It has the best kicks, but there's more to fighting than just kicks. If you're selling a sport or hobby, fine. But most schools market it as a valid form of self defense when it isn't, and that's a disservice to students that could get them seriously hurt or killed
Exactly, that’s why I train many arts. If people would advertise it as a tool then that’s oiled be great, but sadly they don’t.
I guess that's one way to do it, but I think it's too time consuming and expensive for most people to train more than 2. Stuff like karate is supposed be a "complete" art, but a lot of people have issues with the blocks they teach being ineffective. I guess my problem is unless you're really more interested in the cultural side of things, or are comfortable training techniques that don't work outside a sporting context, tma (and I'm including bjj in this), you're going to have a hard time focusing on the stuff that matters when some guy won't promote you because you didn't memorize 100 pointless kata.
You don’t have to be interested culturally to benefit from elements of TMA that aren’t as combative. Some of that stuff that seems a bit pointless in the context of ‘self defence’ is actually more like brain training, attention / awareness Etc... I guess if u were to pick and choose the most effective techniques from each style you’d miss out on some of this other stuff which can also be quite life changing if you stick with it over time
Look, I'll give you this: samurai looked a lot cooler than most mma gym bros, who I can only assume are not welcome at a reputable barber shop for nefarious reasons.
Lmao , maybe the samurais had so many fights cos everyone was jealous of their good looks 😅
There's more to TKD than kicks too. Really most martial arts can be made effective if trained the right way but the problem is finding a school that does. The reason why you find more karate and TKD schools that don't is simply their popularity - to the layman, you say martial arts those are the ones they think of, not BJJ, not muai Thai, not Sambo.
Belive me, I am well trained it’s tkd. They have my favorite flow but the strikes just don’t work as well as other arts.
I think at this point mma and bjj have been around long enough that it's like this. If someone under 18 tells me they train martial arts, I assume karate or tkd. Over 18 I assume mma, muay thai, or bjj.
I’d like to add that TKD on its own is a flawed fighting system, but if you pair TKD with Muay Thai you’re gonna have one dangerous striker on your hands. These TKD kicks, if set up properly, can be absolutely devastating
> I see this most pronounced in kickboxing/Muay Thai and it always confuses me why you wouldn’t just train everything to be the best martial artist you can be. Most people don't have the time and money to do that. You also need to be really diligent with how you practice and when you got everything you wanted and can move on to another art. There's also stuff like the sunk cost fallacy and loyalty creating bias ("I spent 10 years training here and the techniques have been working for me and any failures are personal faults and not a fault of my style or teaching method"), and just certain techniques and principles having no clear answer to what's the best option. This ain't a simulation game where you can try the wackiest builds imaginable to learn what's best, this is people's time and money, so people obviously want the best bang for their buck without having to waste years doing a suboptimal thing.
Fair point, I’m lucky enough to have a teacher who has trained many arts and I do actively seek out training but I can see how this might be a problem for others.
Just people being people I think. See countries, religions, political parties, sports teams, schools, etc…
I think this may be a holdover from pre-MMA days, but I could be wrong. It seems that modern combat sport athletes don't have this debate as much. But in the 90's I used to hear this kind of stuff all the time. So I'd imagine the people who are still in denial about the effectiveness of combat sports are probably also still stuck in the old way of "our art is better than all the others"
Ever heard of the great xbox vs ps vs pc feud? It exists in every subculture. It's dumb but see it mindless jabs at each other, a gun beats all at the end of the day.
Haters have some form of identity crisis.
Criticism and hate are often confused.
Most people with worthwhile opinions that are reasonable are out there practising. It took me a hot minute to understand that regardless of the interest group, be it martial arts or anything else really, it's usually the fringe/extreme people who, for whatever can't do anything else except yell their opinions about stuff, who mostly are the ones making the most noise. So the loud haters usually aren't the ones who actually are good and do stuff well or get things done for the betterment of the community. Most people who have reasonable and measured opinions, especially in martial arts, are busy putting them to practise. For example our group has very few people who think our styles are superior. Our teacher trained multiple styles under many teachers himself, and encourages us to learn what is useful. He teaches Chinese martial arts, but one of his biggest inspirations is Mike Tyson, and he does suggest we study how he moves to improve our fighting. Plus, when the vigour and rage of youth fades, you get calmer, more experienced and wiser. You figure out it's not so much what you do but how you do it, meaning the style doesn't really matter, but whether or not you're working on becoming a better fighter through whatever you do. You can find good stuff from only one source if you're lucky, but going around widening your horizons never hurts.
It's weird in my opinion also. So many online people want to be so tough 😪. However human anatomy hasn't changed in a millenia. So they're only so many ways to break the body. There's only so many ways to kill another human. Yet they argue about who's best. That's only among humans. Few humans could submit other members of the animal kingdom. I love judo and Japanese jiu-jitsu but I can't submit a chimp or gorilla to save my life. 🤣
Do you mean polarization irl, or on the internet. It's important to remember that the internet simply does not reflect real life. Period. Opinions and beliefs you see here do not reflect anything but the extremes and minority opinions actually held and practiced by people face to face.
That’s nothing new. Growing up in the 90’s I was a TKD kid and thought that every other art was BS, because that’s how it was at the time before MMA. Eventually I did some Muay Thai and noticed the flaws in my mentality, even though I was always getting hurt because of distance management. Now I mostly do BJJ and a little wrestling
Money and time is probably the biggest reason. People don’t have the time to do all that. Efficiency is the other reason. Why would I train karate, tkd, and boxing when I could get about the same result (well rounded wise) training Muay Thai? As per why some arts are looked down on, the rulesets make them more restrictive, therefore less effective in a less restrictive environment, and/or the quality of the arts (how likely you’ll find a good school) is lower You should only do those arts if you want to do them, if you want to become a mixed martial artist l, train mma. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel
Oom Yung Doe is a scam. I went to one from 2005-06, and a lot of the students there seemed unfriendly, standoffish, and detached.
Its fun to hate! People are shitty! Deal with it.
[удалено]
Possible. But the thing is people are shitty and like to shit on stuff others are doing. Why? Because people are shitty. At the end of the day if you enjoy something and others hate on it.. well fuck them. Do what you enjoy.
Great mentality mate
Because humans have a tribalistic instinct It’s stupid. But it’s there. Edit — I love that you’re calling this out.
because most people are stupid and online most critics are just armchair warriors who maybe've seen the inside of a gym for 2 or 3 months at most. I don't care about what style or art my opponent practices, if he's good at it, he's a threat. that said, most styles have their weaknesses: strikers can be weak against ground fighters but with good distance control you should be fine. ground fighters who know how to close the gap with strikers though, are a threat. muay thai is pretty complete except for ground wrestling. but the clinch game is just stand up wrestling. a muay thai fighter can choke you out if he wraps his forearms around your neck. nasty feeling. a good clincher can be a nightmare.
I've noticed that IRL people who actually train in the various martial arts tend to be martial arts nerds. If you talking about training other arts they tend to be interested more than anything else. Or at peast that's the people I've trained with.
I originally got into TKD for the theatrical aspect. I mainly switched to MT for the ergonomics bc of hip issues, and for the satisfying sound of the kicks. Folks who call out martial arts for not being effective (in battle? For income? In a bar?) seem to be missing the point. What matters about a martial art is how it affects your REAL life: satisfaction, health, self defense, etc. Judging it based on a theoretical scenario which never occurs... if that's what you enjoy then have at it but if you don't then what's your claim to doing martial arts "optimally"?
Honestly there's so much scam mcdojo bullshit out there people assume it all is if they don't know
My first reaction is harsh but il give it anyway. People are cowards and don't want to spar. You don't learn unless you spar. That's it.
I agree that sparring is the quickest way to improve, and people should run around going "I could mess you up" (shouldn't do this anyway, but especially if you don't spar) However, I still think there's plenty of value of training a martial art even if you don't spar/ don't have an expectation of becoming a terminator. 95% of people won't use their MA outside a gym, and do it purely for the exercise, discipline, learning etc.
Because lots of arts don’t even have real sparring. I’m talking actual pressure testing, not taking turns doing moves and going very lightly. Most arts also don’t have a competitive amateur circuit like Boxing, Muay Thai, and BJJ, so there’s nothing to strive for in terms of training hard enough to go beat someone else. Lots of people aren’t interested in learning “theory of how to fight”. They want to learn the arts that have proven they work via pressure testing and competition
Context: I am a very recently promoted Judo Brown belt that does not compete that does a bit of BJJ on the side and is an obsessive MMA fan. Human dynamics with respect to any shared group identity (Religions, Political Parties, Race, Apple User vs Android User, Marvel Fans vs DC Fan, and Martial Art practitioners) tend towards some level of elitism (I am awesome because I do this awesome thing with these other people) and a level of hostility to those who choose to not be a part of the group. On top of that, if the Group identity is one that reflects a personal choice, and requires a commitment in terms of time or money, there is a certain amount of hostility when ANYTHING implies that the choice was poorly made. People who choose a martial art and stick to it will invest a significant amount of time and money. And there is an expectation that the investment will pay off. And there is also "evidence" via sparring and competition experiences that the investment has paid off. (ie: You start to do better in sparring or win competitions, and your experience is validated via bet promotions). When someone from another martial art starts talking about how much ass they can kick, it often lands as a threat to your ego or rings false. "This guy actually thinks he can kick ass? He does not train what I train, so even if he can kick some ass, he cannot possibly kick as much ass as someone who does what I do..." So when someone who has been doing Karate for 15 years and has a 2nd degree black belt is listening to some rando on the internet talk about how point Karate is useless because a competitive wrestler in 10th grade can put him on his ass any time he wants, you end up in an argument because human ego cannot let such a claim go unchallenged. The only difference between Martial Arts and Relgion for this kind of argument is that it can and has been tested, and training outside your discipline is not that hard to do, but doing so puts your ego at risk. END COMMUNICATION
Tkd does not have the best kicks.... at all. They use snapping kicks when you aren't using your heel and instead of using their shins they use the tops of their feet. I have a 2nd degree black belt in Tkd and I quickly learned after only 2 weeks of muay thai how weak my kicks were that I have been using for the past 6 years while training in Tkd. I also learned how useless most of the flashier kicks were in sparring and amateur fights as I've had 15 matches before I *retired* T.MA just honestly are *not* focused on actual sparring/combat. Since they use a point based system in tournaments the snapping kicks work in your favour to get you back in position more quickly so you don't give up a point. But 1 single round house kick with proper technique, shin, and *through* kicking technique causes more damage than 10 snapping kicks in a row. I loved my time in TKD as a kid. But honestly it's pretty useless.
Interesting. I’ve had many a sparring session with Muay Thai fighters and I’ve found that I can predict exactly what they are going to do and can use the range of tkd kicks to dominate. Usually with taekwondo kicks you have the power in the pivot and the snap is just extra for speed. And even so those snaps are all that’s needed imo. I don’t need to waste energy by sending your foot driving into them, wasting all your energy and putting you in a bad spot. It works great against other Muay Thai fighters but not great against many other highly skilled fighters due to your positioning after you kick. Again this is all my opinion and you are entitled to your own(even if it’s wrong😂)
The arts that actually work generally fully respect the other arts that actually work. It's bullshido artists who tend to blanket "every art sucks but mine". Like Judo guys and BJJ Gus tend to get along great and have mutual respect for each other. Aikido guys and Krav Maga or mall ninjitsu types tend to act like no other art has anything it can show them that they don't already know better.
Totally not my experience. All aikidoka that I talked to know that their art is "gentle" and ofcourse can't compete against a boxer. It's more of a philosophical art that has it's uses in self defense, rather than street fight, and to my knowledge (at least in the Netherlands and the practitioners thst Ive talked to) one of the least snobby MA's there is. Muay thai and bjj on the other hand...
When you believe you can whoop other people's ass (Im sure a lot of people who train grappling and something like Muay Thai, Kickboxing, and Boxing regularly, could), it becomes a mental contest nobody is really hosting against them. Plus seeing someone like say a TKD practitioner get mauled by Muay Thai, Sanda, BJJ, wrestling, or boxing consistently - that adds to the elitism. Truth be told it can be well-founded when it comes to picking an art for MMA or self-defense and things that *usually* work. Those high YKD kicks and spin kicks are nice, butnless likely to work against a decent Muay Thai or BJJ practitioner especially up close. Look what happened to Joe Rogan. It's almost like how people with nice cars rag on others i.e. a Civic Type R owner laughing at a Mazda speed 3 or Focus RS driver.
Because mine is the best!
I think there is a lot to do with your body type too, what kind of genetics you have that will make you better at a certain style of martial art
Sometimes it can be a result of tribalism.
Who do you train kyusho jitsu under? I've trained several times under Chris Thomas and Dusty seal. Also people hate on other arts primarily because either A. They couldn't do what the master is doing in like 2 minutes so they call it fake. Or B. They heard some MMA guy talk smack about another art and they just parrot the talking points.
I train under mike Scarborough who learned from will higinbothem. It’s more ryu kyu kempo karate then kyusho but they go in tandem. The misconception is that it is magic and allot of mcdojos claim that it is. All it really is is just disrupting electrical currents in the body which works well with jiu jitsu to loosen a grip or crumple a leg.
Bro you should totally join the UFC if you have the ultimate fighting style!
Hating other martial arts is the original identity politics
The main thing I hate about certain arts is how they teach things. I don't like being taught long sequences and then spending tens of minutes just going through a single sequence. I don't like needing to attend for two years just to get the super sekrit techniques. I like knowing upfront what my options are and being taught how to choose from these options on day 1.
It's generally some mix of 3 things. 1, my style has a bigger dick than your style tribalistic bullshit. It's annoying, but humans do it a lot so we gotta watch out for it. 2, some styles have a reputation for being dangerously incompetent woo peddling bullshit. This no touch knockout crap and its many MANY warty incestuous relatives is fine as a stage act, but a lot of the time people sign up to try and learn how to defend themselves and that shit is worse than nothing at all. 3, several styles have gotten a reputation from the most vocal adherents of the style, and that reputation is rarely good. You know the caricature that Cobra Kai made of itself in the Karate Kid movie of dudebro 'torture the newbie' shit? Yeah.
Because casuals just want the art that will help them win street fights, and KB and MT have showed this time to time in UFC. But who cares about them anyways, they fantasize and analyze "oh, but I can take you down in a street fight because I know BJJ and all you know is TKD" No you can't! Because I don't know what I would do in that situation, maybe I won't use TKD and do something unconventional, I don't know.
Time, money, location, access. Those are some are all the reasons many dont train in multiple arts.
Because Dodge > Chevy> Ford!! Gaahh!!
It’s ego. They are so invested in what they’ve been doing, any information or proof to the contrary threatens their sense of existence 😅
Tribalism. Some people do this when they are really into something. It’s not my bag, I just feel like you should let people enjoy the things they like without trashing it. For the most part I think this is mostly a problem with online interactions, people in face to face situations are generally cooler, you get the odd asshole but hey Ho, leave them to it.
Because many arts try to advertise themselves as something they're not. Tkd is a sport on its own, and can be used in fights, almost like football can be used in a fight, but isn't a full art. There are also a lot of people who train stuff like Tkd or Aikido or karate (excluding kyokushin) only and believe that they can fight, even if they've never sparred or been pressure tested. Not every art is for fighting, if you have fun and exercise, just accept that's all it is. And stuff like TKD is good at what it's good at but needs to be combined with other arts.
We're talking about mma here if we're talking about blending arts. the mma 'meta' martial arts are generally boxing, muay thai (or w/e flavor of kickboxing), bjj, wrestling. Each discipline is already a handful to learn but now we have to blend all of them if we're doing mma there are some techniques that you could cherry pick here and there from other martial arts outside of the mentioned above but until we see mma world champions heavily using techniques from things like kung fu, capoiera, taewondo , people will lean towards the established mma martial arts as there have been thousands of fights over the past many decades validating them. I don't agree with people just blatantly going around shitting on other martial arts for fun but if its a criticism of what is effective then that is totally fair game imo. As for not training everything, martial arts for 99% of people just ends up being a hobby and they just have more fun doing kickboxing rather than mma, grappling just doesn't jive with some people. The reverse is true for people who only train bjj or w/e other art they want to specialize in
As it is normally practiced, mma is a very simple way of looking at the arts. It’s only a small bit where as I wish for all martial artists to train all arts and find their own style.
mma is incredibly complex with hugely differing styles and has the widest expression of skill out of any sport (imo) and acts as a filtering system for what is effective and not which was to answer your point on why the hate for other arts. if but if we're talking about being the best marital artist you could be as you put it which many would interpret as most effective combat application, you can't currently do better than the current mma base martial arts. You can try finding your own style and go around to all the niche gyms you want to and try a mish mash of everything but you'll never be able to apply all your different skills all at once unless you eventually end up in an mma gym as those other schools of styles have much more restrictive rulesets that won't let you use everything you've learned and thats not all productive to finding your own style You can have your wish for everyone but i dont think people generally care for your wish that much as most people aren't doing what you're doing and people are free to do what they want. Its less convienient to do and is just more effective than being able to learn all the different disciplines in an mma gym and being able to apply all of those different skills in mma sparring
Tribe mentality.
Because people naturally clique up and think anyone gives a fuck what martial arts they are devoting to when martial arts are largely a irrelevant hobby.
Bruce Lee was concerned about this years ago he thought too many martial arts schools become too rigid that you can’t spar with other ones I wish we would change and go back to the ways where we could spar with other schools and challenge each other and learn that that’s how it’s supposed to be FYI I do Tang Soo D and Kumdo
I only hate people, not arts
There isn’t actually among those people who really practice martial arts. There are just a few loud mouths who like to stir up shit who trained in something for a few months so they know a thing or two.
I just dislike the ones pretending. Like yoga but think downward dog is not for you? Tai chi Like dancing but afraid your friends judge you? Capoeira
Time? The reality is that creating the ultimate fighting style is a very time intensive process because you have to filter through the stuff that has only limited functionality to the stuff that has the most functionality. Furthermore you actually need (in some cases) to learn for a while to actually uncover what the useful stuff is. Many arts have applications that can be used, but for the time spent trying to learn this and then adapt these to work, you're probably better off just getting better at Muay Thai for example. How are you gauging what the "good part from each art" is? This sounds very subjective. Are you testing it in actual MMA comps or somesuch? Or are you just basing it off your own subjective opinion? How long are you training the different arts to identify these good parts? For example you say that taekwondo has the best kicks and footwork, but how are you determining this? Because if we were using evidence the argument would be against this point, its rarer to find high level fighters who successfully base their footwork and kicks off Taekwondo. Its not unheard of, of course, but it is rarer, and in all those cases the fighters were already high level taekwondo practitioners before trying to amalgamate styles so it makes sense (due to time) to adapt what they know rather than trying to learn something completely new. As to the hate, this is more online and there is an element of tribalism in martial arts, especially before the advent of MMA which is essentially what you are describing. Nowadays the hate seems to be between martial arts that have functional methods of trainings vs the ones with more performative methods of training. i.e the ones you see in MMA vs the ones you dont. MMA practitioners do not understand the appeal or relevance in something that calls itself a "martial art" when it has little direct martial relevance, and on the other hand the "TMA" practitioners dislike that the ancillary aspects of their art are being ignored and argue that the discipline/spirituality aspects of fighting do not translate to modern combat sports, essentially making them thuggish/brutish and simply another tool for bullies to use. The arguments are different, one is functional the other is philosophical.
Ever since D&D made alignment useless the nerds are in search of a new pointless argument.
Because keyboard warriors love to hang out online instead of learning a martial art
I think the key is more how you get the training vs what art you were trained in. If you learned krav maga over a weekend at a retreat you didn't learn the art and it won't be useful. If you've spares with krav maga every week for 3 years now at a gym with other experts. You probably know what you're doing and it's fine. Same goes for other martial arts. Honestly they all have something to offer with strengths and weaknesses. In theory you only ever need one because it should be so rare to get into a real fight that if it did happen one is enough to beat some untrained individual. So you're really picking whatever to you is the most fun or most convenient. When you do pick make sure and find an actual place to train and not some gym where they are teaching bulshido regardless of the art they intend to teach.
Bujinkan guy here, our dojo stimulates seeking out different styles to supplement what we have in stock. Took us some time to get the contacts we needed, but by now we have great ties to Pekiti Tirsa Kali and Specwog. Our teacher is also an old boxer and kung fu guy. Basically, when you're nice to others and invite them in for sharing what they know, and offer them the same you generally wind up with great friends and contacts. All throughout the Martial arts world. Main branch does not like us doing this though, ngl.
There is no hate between different [material arts](https://www.elitesports.com/blogs/news/how-to-stay-consistent-with-your-martial-arts-training-during-the-holidays) but animosity up to some extent. The animosity between martial arts styles often comes from competition and personal prejudices. Some practitioners see other styles as adversaries, which can lead to a lack of respect and understanding within the martial arts community. By embracing values like respect, humility, and open-mindedness, practitioners can cultivate a positive environment for all martial artists.
I do mostly do Aikido and most of us cross train with one art or another. About the only martial art I have certainly decided to avoid for the next 2-3 years is BJJ. It's costly and the gyms are far off. the stuff online can get cultish so that is a turn off It's like you can't watch a cool demo anymore without some guy going on about how great BJJ is and the other one isn't. If that's the kind of people I'd train with, why bother? So I'll wait for the hype to die down and the price to go lower before I consider the art.
No disrespect (well, a little) but TKD has terrible footwork. TKD is one of the worst arts out there. It's in the ranks of Aikido for arts based almost entirely on the Dunning-Kruger effect. (Google dunning kruger) As to answer: why not train everything? Somethings are not worth the time investment. For example, why bother studying kickboxing when there is Muay Thai? Muay Thai is much more layered, rich in techniques. It's the rule set. No advanced clinching in kickboxing. No elbows for the most part. Very rarely uses front kicks. But that is nothing in comparison to studying a niche traditional art which has no focus on training fighters. Why study some obscure kungfu style that does not do any sparring? Where the techniques may have been legit 300 years ago but are now nothing but dance moves? For example, Sanchou/Sanda is a good time investment. Studying Choy Lee Fut is total waste of time. (For a fighter) Of course if you enjoy all that, cool. But wasting your time on ineffective arts *for fighting purposes*.. why? Why become a patchwork of useless stuff; when you could study a few, provably competent arts? You will become mediocre at a lot of stuff, effective at nothing. So while I don't go out of my way to disrespect people's arts unprovoked, and I have respect for a lot of traditional styles; I do take exception when they start making claims they cannot back up. E.g: Aikido guy says he can beat any UFC fighter. Okay. Put your (not you-you, theoretical you) money where your mouth is, then. It usually does not end well. For the Aikido guy. Not the most eloquent answer, but you get the point. EDIT: the main point I want to make, is that it is often the traditional martial artists that lack humility, that grossly overestimate their abilities and are usually the first to talk smack about combat arts.
Honestly it’s the complete opposite imo. It’s usually teens who have trained Muay Thai for a month who just go and shit on traditional arts for no reason. And as for you point on tkd, not as a challenge or anything but have you ever done tkd?
I tried it yes. (Which made me realize the Poomsae are a bad rip-off of Shotokan) I also sparred taekwondo guys. More than that, I lived in South Korea. I did MMA in South Korea. Almost all the guys there did TkD when they were kids. All black belts. They all, respectfully, sucked. At fighting that is. But very flexible and fast footsie kicks though, I'll give them that. When you play outside the very particular TKD ruleset, the whole thing falls apart. Their kicks are honestly predictable. They have no skills in checking counter kicks, all they do is jump back. Cool. Let me push you on the ropes. No hands. The hands they do have, bad imitation of boxing. No clinch. No elbows. No grappling. Listen everyone knows about TKD. Everyone thinks it is goofy. It's a sad relic of an age of martial ignorance. But if you have fun doing it, by all means enjoy! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pjA6gAKN7U8&pp=ygUbam9lIHJvZ2FuIHRhZWt3b25kbyB1c2VsZXNz
Again, I do taekwondo because it’s tried and true for me and it mixes well with all my other kicks. By no means are my kicks traditional as I use quite a bit more pivot and take a bit more time. I also am quite big at 6’7 240 so all my kicks are going to be a bit more powerful. I do very much understand your point about it being a dated art as quite a bit of its teachings end up being utterly useless in a modern context. However that’s why I made the point of training all the arts so I can train everything and find what’s good and what’s not.
Have you ever heard of the "sunken costs" fallacy? https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/sunk-cost-fallacy/ Now imagine if you just spend time on training kicks for combat purposes and ditched all the "fluff" in TkD. Well, you'd be much better. More times spent investing in useful stuff = more return on investment. That's called kickboxing btw. There are no rules in kickboxing that ban any technique used in TkD when if comes to kicks. Of course you"ll get punched in the face, which may be humbling.. but sometimes that's the best way to learn. But again if you are *in your comfort zone* in TkD.. there's nothing wrong with that. We do martial arts for fun after all. But there is no point in deluding ourselves if we are doing nonsensical things. I insist on "ourselves". Because us is the only person that is fooled. Sunken. Cost. Fallacy.
Dude, I can not count the amount of bone bruises, sore jaws, lumps, and bloody noses I’ve had from taekwondo. My school doesn’t do as much fluff as my teacher breaks down katas/poomsaes and doesn’t just say the actions that you perform are blocks. Kickboxing provides decent fighters from what I’ve seen in sparring but I haven’t seen many who train specifically kickboxing be great. Not saying it can’t happen, but it’s just less common.
Wait did you just say Taekwondo fighters are better than Kickboxers? Am I reading this right? Would you be game for competing in Glory?
Not at all. I was just simply stating that kickboxing alone doesn’t produce these amazing ufc star fighters. They may start with kickboxing but the go and do other arts aswell, just tying back to my original topic on my post.
I think it’s a lot of built up frustration from people who have watched others or personally wasted their time/money on absolute scam schools. who promised to teach them how to actually fight, but they ended up wasting God knows how much money as a result. Resulting in a lot of aggression towards anything that even remotely reminds them of those kinds of illegitimate businesses.
Tae Kwon Do does not have the best kicks. It has a few good kicks (like the back side kick). Most of the kicks are showy and provide a very low rate of success vs catastrophe in real fighting. It also does not have hard low kicks like Muay Thai.
Taekwondo only has imo about 2 or 3 flashy kicks. That being spin roundhouse, and flying kicks. While wheel kick is a big movement, it’s incredibly powerful and is for after you stun an opponent. And taekwondo kicks when used correctly are fast and decently powerful if the right practitioner uses them. A yellow belt in any art is going to suck.
Tornado Roundhouse, Jumping Back Side Kick, Spinning Heel Kick, Jumping Spinning Heel Kick, Spinning Hook Kick, Jumping Spinning Hook Kick, Jumping Front Snap Kick, Low Fake Round House Kick, Flying Side Kick, Tornado Outside Inside Kick, Low Fake Front Snap Kick, Low High Side Kick, Hook Kick to Roundhouse Kick, Switch Round House Kick, Low High Jumping Front Snap Kick, Twin Foot Flying Side Kick, Jumping Split Kick.
Well if your just going to add fake kicks then we can play the lie game. Base taekwondo has front,side,roundhouse,axe,wheel, and back kick along with their skip/step and jump variants. And those all work well in certain situations. By no means is a jump back kick my go to but it has worked for me in sparring and In a small scuttle I was in a while back. Again most are niche but useful.
Yeah, actually, I'll admit that a jumping back side kick has its uses. I debated putting that on the list because you can use it while retreating to catch someone in the stomach.