Best Martial Arts For Conditioning

[Candi Ruman]

Ilive in the countryside and must train alone. What is the best martial art for me to practice? I can devote 1 hour of training everyday. I can make a basic training gym (the one you see in old chinese movies) of ropes, bamboo etc. My body is medium build.

For the sake of clarity and brevity, I would like the experts to focus on what should I train, instead how I should train. Which martial art is best for me, under these conditions? Bonus points if you can also point to a source for practical information on training with that school. Thanks.

Stop pretending you're learning substantial skills by practicing alone. Without a partner to give live feedback and skilled resistance, and without a knowledgeable coach to correct mistakes, you're just engaging in martial masturbation. You'll ingrain bad habits that you'll have to unlearn later.

Focus on becoming the most athletic version of yourself possible. Strength train until you can deadlift double your bodyweight and do more chin-ups than anyone in town. Run sprints and 5ks until you're as fit as someone on the high school track team. Do agility, gymnastic, and movement drills until you can do a dozen well-known feats that no one else in town can do: muscle-ups, pistol squats, free-standing handstand push-ups, backflips, one-arm chin-ups, and all the flying poses in yoga. After you can do all that, get into Olympic lifting and become regional champion of the most powerful movements known to humans: the clean-and-jerk and snatch.

The most martial practice I would consider is hitting a heavy bag for a few rounds several times a week. Even that is likely to ingrain bad habits, though, so really I'd recommend getting strong, fit, fast, powerful, and mobile.

I think practicing Krav Maga would fit quite well the situation you described especially that life in the countryside would offer you a basic environment for training and it fits very well to defend against all sorts of attackers whether they are bigger, smaller, armed, unarmed, trained or not.

Krav Maga will afford you techniques to defend yourself against a massive attacker in case you are caught in a narrow space and have no where to flee as it it uses techniques of Wrestling, Judo, Aikido and more importantly Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (several ties, I have seen on UFC championships fighters with Jiu-Jitsu background wining over much more sized ones).

As you are already aware, martial arts are extremely difficult to learn without an instructor. My advice would be to find the best teacher you can in your area. There is really no substitute for the feedback and guidance they provide. Even if you only travel to see them once a month, you will still make better progress than learning out of a book or video.

Many traditional martial arts have extensive foundation work to build strength, flexibility, body coordination, and suppleness that require a lot of personal practice time. Many students with the benefit of regular instruction do not "do their homework" and still expect to make progress. You will have lots of time for the homework but will need to maximize whatever instruction time you get.

If you have multiple options of systems to study, it's best to choose a system that does not require extensive partner practice initially. This probably means a system emphasizing striking over grappling.

If you don't find a teacher, you can expect your results to be similar to someone who exercises regularly and is strong. That is much better than being unfit, but you will have great difficulties against stronger or more skilled opponents. Keep in mind though, that "massively stronger" opponents will always be difficult.

I think doing some sort of martial art which incorporates kicking and punching, and where you can train with a heavy bag, and do real heavy bag workouts. That's what I would do. Something like kick- & thaiboxing (preferably a martial art where you hit something with contact). A general home workout regime would be running for a couple of miles, followed by a half hour of punching and kicking techniques. And then doing some strength exercises to close the workout, and a little bit of stretching.

In ideal world there are quite few you could chose from to suite you but if you dont have a teacher or at least a mentor to directly teach you, I would recommend something you can inform yourself and learn alone from videos, books, manuals or similar. As you live in conditions you described I would suggest (and this is after a thinking and eliminating) Uechi-Ryu or Gojo-Ryu; those styles you can spend life in practicing and they will not present any sort of obstacle or conflicting concept to any other style which you might want to change later in future. On the other hand both of those styles (from Okinawa but with Chinese roots) will definitely help in teaching you basics and proper fundamentals of breathing, holding proper stances, psychomotoric abilities, variety of circular and angle blocking (which both of those styles soaked up from 'White crane' and which is the only correct way of countering a punch of somebody double bigger); You will also need and have to use makiwara as well as trees, which you said you have around the place you live (and which are very good for many practices), makiwara btw is a very different concept in Uechi from i.e. Wing chun makivara and it is used almost exclusively for conditioning your seiken, shuto, tetsui and few other surfaces which are used and exposed in impacts and punches); Uechi also uses series of conditioning techniques and over time your body slowly develops iron robe (how strong and how proper depends on your dedication but I saw some individuums with advanced degree of mastery from this style and they are impressive. to say at least);

If you need sources of books or schools feel free to say but with just a name you can find a lot; If not those 2 arts I've mentioned then third one is all right but I think its also furthest from the origins it is (in this order):- Uechi-ryu (which is on my opinion closest to origins of Pangain noon)- Goju-ryu, - Shorin-ryu:

You don't need a full school, or even a live teacher to learn -something- although if you can get a single person to train with, even if they are a beginner and even if you only get to practice with them once a month, it will help you immensely compared to training just by yourself.

The reason is that you will want to learn range, targeting, and how to read someone trying to be aggressive with you. You can't fully learn that with a bag, since, the bag doesn't duck, move or counterattack. You also can only really learn grappling of any type with a partner.

There's also tons of training videos and books available, so it's not hard to find. Most of the punches and a lot of footwork cross over with boxing, so you can also use boxing training videos and books to supplement what you're learning. If you can get a training partner, most MMA videos or books will get you some grappling in there as well.

And while you're training, remember that you're not necessarily training to be a professional fighter, or fight against professional fighters - the intense conditioning to harden bones is probably not going to be necessary for you - people who are not training in fighting do not handle taking full kicks to the legs or block knees very well.

Without being already established in a dojo it is far more difficult. If you were already established and had been training for some time I would suggest to do as some of my fellow Dans have done since they have jobs now that keep them afar more often than not. They work in the oil fields and since they were Dans (black belts) prior to these jobs. They have been allowed to train and record their hyungs (forms), Ho Shin Sool (self defence) and Il Soo Sik Dae Run (one step sparring) with a camera from several different angles. Our master then reviews the footage provides feedback and occasionally a video responce. Of course all of this is only supplemental as they still show up to the Do-Jang (Dojo) on their off-schedule to further refine their skill.

Without already being established and knowing the basics however, the only thing I can suggest is to find an art you'd like to study read up on their forms, styles and techniques, then find video footage maybe on YouTube and practice.

But without feedback on proper footing and motion for a given movement you won't be getting the most out of it, it can also be dangerous. Throwing kicks without proper technique for example can cause sprains, strains and joint damage.

Before any strength and conditioning training, martial artists should stretch and warm-up. All stretches and exercises should be supervised by a trained martial arts instructor in order to prevent injuries and to ensure the proper technique is utilized. If you have had an injury or are in pain, please see a doctor before starting any stretching or exercise program. For additional stretches and exercises, please visit the main Martial Arts Physical Fitness section.

Like I said, pick any of these and you would be correct, but what if you found yourself on the proverbial desert island of exercise and could only choose one kettlebell movement to keep in your training quiver. The answer is easy. The one-arm clean and jerk.

First, get your clean and jerk technique down pat, and to do this it is critical that you work with an SFG Level II instructor. They have specialized training in the clean and jerk, and they can shortcut your learning by taking much of the trial and error out of your way. There is a time to be cheap and a time to be smart. Be smart and hire a coach.

Now, take a ten-minute test. See how many clean and jerk you can do. You can switch hands whenever you like and you can set the kettlebell down whenever you like, but you are fighting the clock.

If you can keep up the pace, at the end of ten minutes you will have done 100 total reps. What most people find is that at about the seven to eight minute mark things start to get ugly. If you need to drop your rep count to four and four or even three and three, go ahead. You must keep excellent form and you may not fail.

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