Where Are the Real Martial Arts?
i have studied alot of arts in my life, but most these days are geared toward competitive fighting, like mma. they are great for health and fitness but suck as self defense classes and real world combat. all anybody wants to do these days is watch ufc and stuff like that and think its real martial arts. whens the last ime a rapist called a time out or a killer said "i’m sorry" for a kick to the nuts. but for the last 10 years i have been studing ninjutsu, it seems like its the only real battlefield art left. judo, karate, and all the main stream arts are geared toward compitition now and the real art got left behind somewhere. are there any other combat arts left other than ninjutsu?
Hoowah for the ninjutsu nod.
Judo has Goshinjutsu, which is meant to show how to apply judo on the streets. Karate — real karate — is not in the slightest geared toward competition, though it can be hard for some students to see past the kata to the bunkai (I really wish I hadn’t been one of those students). Real kenpo (seems to be a rarity these days). Arnis/Kali/Escrima, Silat, Koryu Jujutsu, some forms of Gendai Jujutsu… They all have it.
The sad fact is it goes back to the instructor. Even ninjutsu — there are some excellent instructors, and some absolute garbage ones ( The garbage ones tend to be the ones who feel everyone else is doing it wrong). If you’re not finding what it is you’re looking for, you have two possibilities in any art — either the instructor just hasn’t shown you it yet, or he doesn’t know it. More and more, I believe the latter, but if you’re seeing hints as to the application, he probably just doesn’t feel you’re ready for it.
your not looking hard enough, japanese jujustu, karate kung fu, arnis. there are 100′s of styles to choose from
who say mma cant be used in the street. even though i dislike mma, it is still useful as long as you train properly
kung fu
Yes, they’re around. A majority of them are out of the commercial eye because they cannot teach for a living and stay true to their combat focus. There’s no real market, no commercial desire for combatives. Everyone I’ve personally met who study such a martial art are either just dedicated full time students or teach on the side and have a steady income career.
I am sure there are more than what I’ve run into, but from my personal experience Bak Mei, Kali (Arnis), Kajukenbo, Taijutsu, Goju Ryu, Hsing-i, Choy Li Fut and Bagua are the styles that have generally retained their combat focus and training methods. From what I’ve seen Kenjutsu has never deviated from a combat focus and anything with a "jutsu" as part of its name is usually a combat focused art.
Kenpo (Kempo) Karate used to be a safe bet for being combat focused but after the 80′s when Kempo had a huge popularity trend many people jumped on the Kenpo name and ruined the reputation of that style. Now when you hear some one trains in Kenpo you have to look pretty close to see if it’s old school or watered down.
I’m with ISDS on this one.
All you have to do is visit one of several of the top contributors in this section to find that there are in fact plenty of people still doing the martial arts as self-defense. I could care less about competition. I’ve been there, and done that. I want to and do practice street worthy techniques in my Jujitsu, Kempo, and Karate. If you are ever in Georgia, look me up.
EDIT:
kempo_jujitsu77 the key word was in what you said. You said, "in a match…. ". There is where you made a mistake. We traditionalist don’t train to use be in matches. We do not have rules. We do not compete. We only defend ourselves if we have to.
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point taken. however in a match with you vs an mma equivalent, ill put my money on the mma guy every time.
You do know that MMA self-defense classes are geared towards self-defense, right? Most, if not all, MMA gyms teach self-defense as well as MMA for sport, just to get in shape, etc.