It's still good to get a black belt in a traditional martial art

The belt system is a massive self esteem boost.
We all know that we need to be well rounded in all areas of unarmed combat, especially considering a style best suited to your body type and personality.
American Kempo, Judo, ITF TKD, Goju, Shotokan, oyama karate are all good bases for a non MMA competitor as a solid foundation.
anyway, i’m just throwing that out there for discussion.

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Yeah sure.

It depends on the coach. Some are better than others.

It depends on the style you learn. Some are better than others.

But in general, I see your point.

Personally, I think there are many obscure bases that can benefit fighters.

Alexander Volkonovski was a Rugby Player

Aldo played soccer

Geo Martinez and Richie Martinez were both break dancers.

Schaub was an American Football athlete.

It’s maybe more important to be an athlete with a good coach than anything.

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that’s why I said non mma competitor. with all due respect ,you mentioned pro mma fighters, I’m talking about a man or woman that wants to learn how to defend themselves and build self esteem in a positive way.
Schaub? lmao.

Ok sure then I agree with you.

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OP everything you said was true but only because you didn’t compare it to the alternatives.

If you’ve got a budget for martial arts, and you’ve got a good TMA school nearby, and you’ve also got a good muay thai school nearby… why are you choosing the TMA school? Is it just the belt? I guess that’s a feature for some people… if you’re looking for a sense of achievement or progress or need constant validation.

Do you want to learn how to actually fight? Pick the muay thai school. Or the wrestling school. Or the boxing school. Or the judo school.

If you need someone to babysit the kids and you don’t want little Ralphie to have cauliflower ear… sure, take him to a TMA school.

I don’t understand why someone would pick the TMA school unless they were chasing after some hot (retarded) chick.

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Point fighting is a very weird sport. I guess I can understand someone having a particular affinity for it. I mean, Jesus, we watch fucking darts and poker on cable. Fucking bowling. Why not point fighting?

If you want to learn how to fight stay away from TMA.

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That’s an interesting point that you make. The fact is that America has destroyed any integrity of TMAs. I realised this when i read how a nightclub entertainer like Elvis Presley was something like a 10th degree black belt.
America always ends up whoring out anything with any intrinsic value to make a quick buck. bunch of sell outs,whore mongers, mud sharks and coal burners. lmao.

I was mostly fucking around with my two earlier posts. I started out in TKD, switched over to muay thai and BJJ. TKD was still really useful to me, it wasn’t a (edit: complete) waste of time, but in terms of learning how to fight and facing actual mean-spirited competition, I felt like I’d get better value for the time at a muay thai gym. That decision was made after a couple years of training BOTH. I was doing 2-3 a days, 5 days a week… chasing that Olympic TKD. After you’ve seen what you can get from a good muay thai gym, your tolerance for wrist locking, finger bending and kata pretty much drops to zero. The TMA’s have value, but it’s lost in the inefficiency.

If you want to be Lyoto Machida or Anderson Silva–let me extend an olive branch here–you’ve got to take the special things from BOTH of those martial arts and make them yours and TRANSCEND both the TMA and the more modern fighting systems.

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I started off in TKD too ,got black belt but got too heavy to use it. so just mostly went to boxing but having a black belt was a confidence boost , but anyway that’s just to be used in a last ditch effort to save your life.you’re better off learning military unarmed combat.

One of my complaints about the TKD… more on the finger bending and wrist locking shit. I always felt like the Olympic point fighting was a GREAT use of time. Learning motion, balance, speed, distance, … playing your opponent. Fucking GREAT investment of time. But then some other fucking retard would show up and start doing wrist locks. This was when I was young dumb and full of cum. If you grab my fucking wrist, I’m literally going take you down and pull your arm out of your socket. Stick to what you’re good at, stay away from the shit you know NOTHING about. The TMA’s, in my experience, have ZERO COMPASS or ability to tell the difference where their expertise ends and their ignorance begins. Hence the wasted time.

Continuing that rant just a little bit more: there’s also something to be said for not hanging around delusional people. If you’re learning how to fight, even in principle… there’s some serious fucking value to finding someone with a REALISTIC VIEW on their abilities. I don’t know why that seems so fucking impossible to TMA schools. It’s not a rule… but it’s damn near close.

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Karate with Kumite

I guess that what it all boils down to , is be proficient in small arms fire and have a ccw

the average person is never gonna fight balls out, If some basic dojo gets them fit and gives them some skills, good. maybe they protect themselves from the equal assholes.

throwing a straight punch and being brave saved one dude from getting smacked and one woman from sexual assault - good enough for me

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If you enjoy it then do it.

Looking for external validation to do something is almost always the wrong way to go about life.

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Replace “tma belt” with “participation trophy”.

meh. who did you ever train?

and for what purpose

I like your OG participation though. You deserve a ribbon. what colour you want

p.s. teaching peeps to suck cawk doesn’t really count

While I agree that boxing, muay thai, wrestling, judo, bjj are more grounded in realism than TMA - they are still largely flawed from the perspective of realism and self defense.

These arts are all centered on 1 vs 1 combat which is rarely the case for a real life self defense scenario. I’m not saying TMA with their 1 vs many techniques are better (they aren’t) - I’m saying neither address this common situation well.

Royce Gracie against 2 unarmed college football players his size would get his shit pushed in. And I’m saying this with Royce as one of my martial art heros.

Neither mma or TMA do much against armed assailants and neither do much to inform their practitioners of local laws and regulations.

Ultimately, much of martial arts training is about selling a fantasy about being some well prepared bad ass able to dish out beatings and face no legal consequences.

Anyway. At the end of the day. Do what you enjoy. If you want to get in shape then do a hard art. If you want to compete then chose a sports art. If you are interested in flashier movie style arts because you want to do youtube short movies. Do that.

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In my opinion there is still a lot of utility in getting a BB in a tma.

If you’re not some kind of law enforcement officer or aspiring fighter/competitor it might be better than BJJ or Muay Thai honestly.

Traditional martial arts can teach you a lot of the same things as BJJ or Muay Thai: discipline, the value of being in shape, the value of consistent work ethic in going from being bad at something hard to do good at something hard to do; you can learn all of these in a tma without getting ringworm or having to roll with 2 stripe white belt who can’t wait for someone to come in that he can work his shitty guillotine on.

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Bullshit. Without near live sparring you’re learning to dance.

Also, what’s just as important in a reality situation is the confidence to know you can take real damage and keep going. If you’ve never been hit for real in training, taking a real punch will be a shock and possibly traumatic. Could take the fight right out of you if you don’t know what you’re doing.

If you want to rip off white trash families who have kids with rat tails it’s a good career path though.

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