What Martial Arts Should I Learn For Self Defense

[Elly Garnand]

In this article, you will learn about seven martial arts that you can use in real-life situations, and you will get to see ONE Championship athletes applying techniques in each of their respective disciplines.

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On the outside, you learn striking, while in close combat, you learn clinching, grappling, wrestling, and submissions. This makes mixed martial arts possibly the best form of martial arts for real-life situations.

What makes the best martial art for self-defense? At the end of the day, the best form of self-defense is preparation. It does not matter which martial art you learn for self-defense. Rather, what matters more is that you can apply your martial art to every day life.

Those are all valid reasons, but the only one that really matters is the reason you are interested in the martial arts. So ask yourself, what do I really want? Why am I interested in training a martial art? That question and the answers you find will help guide you to the right martial art. Ultimately, this is a very personal question, and the answer depends entirely on where you are in your life, and where you want your path to take you.

25 years later: I was in my late 30s, I had gained a lot of weight, and I had been wishing my whole life that I had continued taking martial arts. So when I finally got up the courage to change my lifestyle, I lost a bunch of weight and decided it was time to explore martial arts again. It was time to stop regretting the past and pursue one of my bucket list items with a vengeance.

Like you, I spent a lot of time on the internet looking at different dojos and different martial arts styles in my local market (Salt Lake City). At this point in my life, some of my reasons had changed. I was no longer interested in being the Karate Kid. Here were some of my criteria:

The age-friendly aspect of Aikido is very different from most martial arts. Many arts are simply too aggressive or require too much physical strength/agility to continue training after you reach a certain age or physical condition.

At the end of the day, for me Aikido has application far beyond the walls of the dojo. Yes, it is fun, great exercise, mentally and physically challenging, and builds friendships that will last a lifetime. But perhaps more important, Aikido teaches principles of peace, kindness, humility, and harmony that can be applied to every aspect of life.

About the Author: Gerry Carpenter (3rd Dan Aikikai Aikido) is co-owner of Aikido of Salt Lake located near downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. His teachers include Philippe Wyffels (4th Dan Aikikai Aikido) of Salt Lake City and Roberto Maruyama (7th Dan Aikikai Aikido) of So Paulo, Brazil.

Identify your goals: Ask yourself why you want to learn martial arts. Is it for self-defense, fitness, competition, stress relief, or cultural enrichment? Understanding your objectives can help you choose a martial art that aligns with your goals.

Consider your physical abilities: Some martial arts require more physical fitness than others. For example, if you have joint problems, you may want to avoid high-impact styles like Muay Thai. Conversely, if you have a lot of energy and enjoy aerobic exercise, these may be perfect for you.

Cons: Taekwondo is not a very effective martial art for self-defense. The training and techniques are not realistic, and taekwondo fighters on YouTube are nearly always defeated by full-contact fighters, and often even by street fighters with no formal training.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) emphasizes joint locks and chokes to immobilize and subdue opponents (after all, it was invented by Helio Gracie, a smaller fighter who needed a way to defeat bigger opponents). BJJ is one of the fastest-growing and most relevant martial arts on the planet today, and you can see it being used in almost any UFC fight.

Pros: BJJ is the single greatest martial art in the world today to help one smaller person defeat one bigger person in unarmed combat. It also has a thriving competitive scene and a fun, warm community of practitioners.

Cons: In a self-defense scenario, BJJ falls from a huge win rate to a very low one if you add the variable of multiple attackers or a weapon. In a street fight, going to the ground should be your very last option.

Krav Maga: Krav Maga is a martial art with origins in the Israeli military. Its goal was to combine the most practical and effective components from other martial arts, in a system that could be learned quickly by soldiers.

Pros: Krav Maga is one of the most effective martial arts for self-defense. In addition to practical, real-world techniques, students are trained in scenarios that recreate the conditions of a real confrontation, such as defending against multiple attackers or disarming weapons.

All that said, martial arts are still excellent supplementary training to have under your belt (especially a black one). Each style I recommend below has a lot to offer, whether more traditional or more mixed martial arts. But if your goal is to learn how to defend yourself in real life situations, choose your martial arts style wisely, be aware of its shortcomings, and make sure you round out your training with other self defense skills. Otherwise, you may well still find yourself unprepared and frozen when faced with real life threats. So take all of these recommendations below with a grain of salt, and make sure you get a wide breadth of experience.

The other thing I love about Krav Maga is its training environment. Krav Maga classes are often practiced in street clothes without gloves or padding. This is to help simulate what a real fight would feel like, so you can better prepare your body for those conditions. I use this same philosophy in my own Tough Cookie Self Defense Course. You want to practice your self defense skills in as realistic a setting as possible, with as much full force and adrenaline as you can, so your muscles can memorize performing these moves under the worst case scenarios.

Let me show you the way of Tough Cookie Self Defense, including how you can take the moves from all of these best martial arts for self defense above and incorporate them into a holistic and realistic self defense system that teaches you how to fight back like the powerful woman you are!

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No matter how good a martial artist or instructor you are (no matter how many times you have practiced your art within a dojo), there is nothing that can compare with dealing with a real life threat. Nothing can replace the experience and test you and your abilities more than an actual attack and someone who is really wanting to hurt you, or kill you.

No one can offer you a 100% safe environment, someone can attack you because the opportunity to do it exists. By being trained and self-aware, you prevent or postpone an attack. According to statistics more than 2/3 of the attacks against women could be prevented if they were trained in simple and basic self-defense as well as situational awareness.

Women, are known to have strong intuition, something that alerts us or makes us feel that there is something wrong with a person or situation. Use it! Think in advance what actions you could take that would provide you more safety. While you are driving, shopping, at home, dating, clubbing etc.

If you do a research online you will find many self-defense courses available but have in mind, 90%+ of them are delivered by martial arts instructors with no other qualifications. Even fewer of those instructors are women. From my personal experience attending many of those courses, I found that the students were treated, trained and handled like martial arts athletes or professionals, and the major effort of teaching was focused on the fight or fighting back instead of avoidance, situational awareness, conflict management, psychological factors or predator profiling... So, from the first moment students get in the class they learn how to become the victim and get involved in an attack (they learn reactive instead of proactive methods).

I find it more dangerous to teach someone something that she is not ready to apply in real life than not teaching it at all. Teaching and reinforcing a false sense of confidence could lead to catastrophic failure. Can you imagine what would happen if a victim kicked an attacker and because of her fear/adrenaline, she kicks wrong or hits the wrong target? If he stays on his feet guess what? He will fight!

As a female I tried to apply some of the techniques I learned, in real life. Not all of them worked for me and I belong to the women who have a previous training in martial arts and sports, so it makes me wonder how it would work for a mother or a grandmother?

As women we must learn to think and out-think. We must search for instructors that know how to teach us and know what to teach us. And we must learn under stress. We must allow ourselves to be tested under extreme conditions and continue to train to not be victims. So if you are thinking to join a self defense class, before you do so, think again what they will be teaching you and most important who will be teaching you. Have in mind, If the threat occurs you will be alone to deal with it, so make sure you are properly prepared.

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