Everyone is more or less at risk of experiencing violence during their life. This is especially true for minorities, and as leftists in today’s political climate. The risk of violence will undoubtedly increase as political climates change, so we must be ready to defend ourselves, our comrades, our family and friends, and our communities.
I practise Krav Maga (I know) and have a limited background in wrestling, Karate, and Judo. It would be great to hear everyone’s thoughts on strategies and tactics for self-defence so we can help each other become more prepared to face violent situations.
If there’s enough interest in the topic I think it would be a good idea to start a community for self-defence.
That’s very cool, I’d heard that kung fu was more comprehensive, intertwined spiritual and life practice. I’ve always found kung fu to be visually beautiful and elegant too, it looks very relaxed but its still powerful.
I’m in the US so there aren’t too many kung fu dojos, mainly MMA, BJJ, karate, and tae-kwon-do. I’d love to do either kung fu or muay thai tho if I had the option.
out of those 4 I would do karate, karate is a very vague word though it just means any chinese martial arts. Alot of US veterans open “karate” dojos and just teach the stuff they learned in the army. Which is actually closer to taekwondo the korean military’s marital arts. I like BJJ, I think they get made fun of too much for being like the McDonalds of martial arts. They started in 1993 and became famous through one of the founders of UFC. But it’s kind of made up and has nothing to do with brazil either, which has its own styles like capoeira. and since its not really jujitsu, its judo a more appropriate name would be american judo, or really just judo.
There’s plenty of martial arts schools in America there’s probably a yearly tournament near you, every year you should check one out, theyre usually desperate for more popcorn buying spectators. You could also try looking up to see if there’s a rare form of martial arts taught near you, alot of very dedicated masters move to the US and teach a select bunch of students very rare forms of martial arts, like bando from cambodia, silat from indonesia, sikaran from the Philippines and sometimes wacko ones like haitian machete fighting, so be careful lol, but usually if you see a whole bunch of asian words you dont recognize followed by the words “gym” or “martial arts” its probably good
Loving what you’re saying, and it’s so cool to me to have a Shaolin blackbelt in here. Obviously no disagreement here, just wanna bring your attention back to the beginning of your post where you defined karate (I am thinking you meant to say Japanese?) Though I think the original meaning of karate was “the Chinese hand,” or something like that, as much of it was derived from Kung Fu!
And to Muad’Dibber, as thetables said, yeah, tons of styles! I hear really great things about Kyokoshin. Most places have a few shotokon places, and those can range from incredible to McDojo. A karate dojo is definitely worth checking out first, if that interests you. However, it’s worth saying, my bias is toward traditional arts, like karate and Kung Fu, because it’s what I’m into. Many on the internet are leaning toward MMA, Muay Thai, Kickboxing, wrestling, boxing, judo and BJJ, because UFC generally presents those as the most effective. A trip to the main martial arts sub on Reddit will show how popular this opinion is now. I won’t try to sway you either way, except to say, check out what interests you and find out if it’s good. People online can’t know what specific schools actually offer, and they make broad generalizations. Even I did it just above with the Kyokoshin mention.
Edit: See thetablesareorange’s response below. Looks like my first paragraph was off. Leaving it for context.
its more of a mistranslation, karate is actually from the tiny Ryukyuan islands, it was their own version kung fu literally called “the hand”. then “the chinese hand”, then when japan invaded in the 1800’s they forced them to change the name to “the empty hand”. Then American soldiers stationed on the islands from WW2 onward began taking martial arts classes or “karate” classes from the locals. This soon became a generic term for all east asian martial arts, although technically rooted in china, loosely based on fujian white crane style kung fu
Well color me newly educated! Thanks!