Martial Arts and You

[mago]

This is an article designed to help you select the right martial art, or even if martial arts is for you.

There are several categories of martial arts. For ease of consideration, I'll break them down into hard, soft, and meditative. Each has their own advantages and drawbacks. I'll deal with capoeira in the next article.

Hard martial arts deal with strong strikes and aggressive methods of combat. In this category are the arts designed to quickly and painfully disable or destroy an opponent. These arts rely on quick, powerful strikes with arms, legs, and joints, and develop muscular strength and technique in order to generate their effective power.
Arts include (not definitive, but illustrative):
Krav Maga
Tae Kwon Do
Mixed Martial Arts (UFC and PRIDE-style fighting)
shootfighting
boxing
kickboxing
Karate
savate

Soft martial arts do not use body strength to strike their opponent into submission, rather deflecting the attacker's strikes and attacks into disabling holds and defensive traps and blocks. These arts are good for those who are seeking total body conditioning, rather than gains in strength and power.
Soft arts include:
Hapkido
Judo
Aikido


Meditative arts are styles that emphasize spiritual growth along with martial developments. The movements are slow, and graceful - the concept being the perfection of execution reflects perfection of thought and application. These low-impact arts are often used by those who are not interested in making board-breaker kicks or joint-breaking locks. However, these arts are as deadly and lethal accelerated into fighting speed, however, the mindset is to execute the movement perfectly, mentally and physically.

Meditative arts include:
T'ai C'hi C'huan
most Qi Gong arts
Ba Gua

This article neglects several arts, addressing mainly arts found in Europe and the classically known Asiatic arts. There are several arts that are not easily encompassed in these categories. Armed martial arts such as Kali, SCA medieval swordfighting, and unarmed arts such as batuque and capoeira also deserve their treatments, but will be addressed later.

[ladyhawke]

Thank you Mago, I used to have a private teacher, who taught me one on one "T'ai C'hi C'huan" I studied this for over two years when I was a teen, I was taught the rolling technics on a concrete slab, and also worked out my hands with sand bags after he would put this substence on my hands that helped tuffen them up, I would hang in trees, by using only my fingertips, I studied for personal reasons and was highly dedicated at the time and learned a great deal.

Very true statement.

the mindset is to execute the movement perfectly, mentally and physically.

[Minu]

TRES COOL, Madalyn!

Learn more about your mysterious self each time I read you.