I’m in the UK they only let you carry a rape bell 
If you are so worried about your sister it would be better to teach her to not be alone, be more aware of her surroundings, and have dependable real friends. If she is in school have her join the track team instead. If you really want her to get into martial arts maybe Wing Chun, however a lot of places have degraded this shit into just art. Are you allowed to carry a knife in the UK, if not, I’m sure you can come up with a substitute for one. I’m pretty sure the UK has enough white knights that a girl screaming for help is enough to get a guy jumped even if he didn’t do anything.
Sorry mr jeet kun do. Do not let her take some fru fru kung fu or wing chun or karate classes.
But your sister would do well to learn something like muay thai to keep the scumbags off of her. That clinch game and those knees, kicks, elbows? Or even a boxing gym. I know the uk is full of good kickboxing and boxing gyms. Look for ones with lineage to golden glory since you are in europe.
Way good for self defense.
Wifey does muay thai with me and started doing catch.
Muay thai takes up less time and will have her looking fucking good depending on the coach
Well the benefits for wifey was her self confidence inwardly and her banging body
But that is just me.
As far as grappling goes look for a snake pit or a wiggan place. Snakepit is where they teach catch wrestling. UK people need to get on that.
Unless she wants to do it competitively and put a large amount of time and effort into it, I do not recommend Muay Thai for her.
Casual Muay Thai is a joke, no different to the “boxing” classes you see at your local 24/7 gym.
The typical Muay Thai scrub still has weak shins and a shitty clinch game. They still flinch when their shins get checked.
It takes dedication to be truly devastating and build up the conditioning required.
Casual anything is a joke but I think grappling will teach essential survival skills (a decent pair of running shoes would be good too).
That is why i said reputable gym
I was under the assumption it would be at least 4 days a week
Also any good grappling/muay thai gym weeds out casuals with the warm up routine
People who show up still after getting through 4 sessions are good to go
What kind of situation are you trying to prepare her for?
BJJ and Judo have a lot of rules/limitations.
You want to learn how to get out of a hold, that is important, but the methods shouldn’t be limited to a simple sport like you see in UFC. Putting someone in a hold isn’t really a good idea in a real life environment. Will her real life experience if she is attacked be 1 v 1? I’ve seen grapplers try to choke someone out on the street and then get stabbed or have a friend come from behind and knock the guy out cold. Also even if she does competitive Muay Thai, a lot of techniques are designed to wear down the opponent over time, which develops bad habits and wastes energy.
A lot of times I have seen people get injured, including girls, because they tried to escalate a fight.
It’s good to have confidence when you are training but when you are on the street you need to understand that anyone can be stronger, faster, smarter, etc, than you. Luck plays a factor too. Do you want to put your safety in the hands of luck? Anyone can have a knife or a gun, regardless if the law allows it or not. Real life isn’t going to be 1 v 1 all the time with rules and the environment, physical obstacles, etc, play a huge factor. Being street smart will help more. This one kid I knew that personally trained with Gracie in Manhattan was good with rules but if you try a street fight in the rain his footwork, grappling, vision, etc went to shit. It was an embarrassment to see someone who gets paid to fight complain about something like water getting in his eyes.
If you want your sister to be safe, becoming a pro fighter isn’t going to guarantee it. The strongest fighter in the world can still get shot or stabbed from out of nowhere. Staying safe is avoiding dangerous situations, increasing awareness, knowing how to get out of dangerous situations (like I said get your sister on her school track team and also she should maintain a good diet to stay healthy in shape, good for one’s life overall), learning to deescalate conflict, etc. Girls that I know that train actually got attacked more often than girls that kept a low profile and some that trained got injuries as a result of training.
Honestly any self defense course worth it’s salt would be good
God here we go with “street rules” again like we are living in a streets of rage universe
From what girls actually would tell me, Muay Thai is less friendly to girls than BJJ/Judo.
Then again, it’s kind of like what you said, a good competitive place values dedication and weeds out people that would waste time using their warm up routine.
It’s good in that regard like the fighting game scene because people respect your dedication and skills over your ethnicity/gender (though some places have super racist people still).
Regardless of art, there will be some gyms whether they be Muay Thai, BJJ, Judo, or Boxing that will be more friendly to women. Just depends on the place. Have her scope out some spots try some classes and get a feel and see what she prefers. Regardless of what it is, if she’s not interested in it and doesn’t follow up with whatever classes shes learning then she’s never going to learn to defend herself anyways. Also, did we seriously suggest Wing Chun as the best form of street defense for a women?? I basically lived in a Hung Gar studio for 3 years and there were many Wing Chun elements and practitioners and I can tell you that would be the last thing I would want someone to learn for self defense. Of the like 5 martial arts I’ve studied it was by far the least practical (besides Kendo of course lol). As someone who’s been around boxing my whole life, if taught properly (i.e. not boxercise bullshit) there are plenty of women that can punch properly, and hard. They just need to have proper instruction.
Those are generally known as good styles to deal with larger people. I would personally choose BJJ over Judo, but take what’s available.
In the efforts of self defense and handling sexual assault and harassment, she’ll need to supplement her training with courses intended solely for self defense of women.
You share the experience with other girls your age. You hear stories about how women fight off attackers. You probably get to lay a solid groin kick into some poor guy wearing a fat suit. It’s fun and can even be an emotional experience when she realizes just how much more power she’s gained.
Repeatable, verifiable, and scientifically vetted results show self defense specifically targeted at women reduce sexual assaults:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/study-shows-resistance-tactics-work-to-prevent-campus-sexual-assault/article24905250/
https://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/rape-sexual-violence/campus/Pages/decrease-risk.aspx
http://cascade.uoregon.edu/spring2013/social-sciences/are-women-safer-when-they-learn-self-defense/
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801214526046
She will be sexually and verbally harassed, and probably assaulted (such as a man grabbing her butt). She needs the tools to respond immediately. Those tools are proven to significantly reduce her risk.
You’re doing good work.
boxing and wrestling for women. jiujutsu for long term
We had a recent case in my city where a 16 year girl was attacked by an ex convict who tried to rape her. The girl was a karate practitioner and kicked his ass. The story made it into the local newspapers.
Karate is not useless as some are saying around here. Plus, it is more elegant than boxing or wrestling, and not as hardcore as muay thai, so I think it fits well for a girl.
Judo could also be fun, if she is ok with being smacked into the ground all the time.
I think all styles are very good realistically. It’s just with boxing and wrestling they are both very tactile so there’s more likeliness to get realistic training through tactile muscle memory.
You could say 60% of karate schools will be slow to get you to a certain level. But that other 40% will give you more tools than 70% of boxing gyms. These are almost random numbers but its my way of clarifying my thoughts on the subject
A lot of traditional arts do shit that’s simply not natural. It takes time to make those movements natural, further compounding the time it takes to become remotely effective with those techniques.
Throw on top of that an overemphasis on forms/Kata and “self-defence”, and it’s no wonder most TMA practitioners can’t hold up in a ring.
This is has been my observation moving backward from sport fighting into TMA, to Chinese arts specifically.
This is not to say that traditional techniques themselves aren’t effective. Hell, in some cases, what’s natural is more stressful or dangerous to your body.
Open hand strikes can be devastating, but the natural instinct is to punch with the closed fist.
The “bear paw”, or the inside of a closed fist, is deceptively strong, since you’re hitting with both the sharper second knuckles and the palm heel. It fits nicely around the areas behind the ear, too, and you can throw it like a Stockton Slap. I see people do this by accident with hooks in MMA.
Deflecting or blocking with the meaty part of the forearm is unnatural - the natural instinct is to grab with the hand. It’s why scrubs block or defend against kicks with both hands.
The back of the wrist is surprisingly more durable than the back of your hand. It’s not natural to hit with it though, since you just want to swing your arm. It has to be trained, but it hits just as hard as a backknuckle strike. You’ll NEVER see this in sport, though, since the wrist is always bound.
To be frank, most kicks are unnatural, too.
TL;DR - instead of just taking the techniques and drilling the fuck out of them, people started putting them into forms.
When I was in HOKK in Hawaii, we also had grab arts. Basically some Jujitsu takedowns and defenses
Anyone can tell me about Sambo here?
Combat sambo? Gi sambo? Nogi sambo?
Great grappling matches up well with judo and greco
Not many schools teach it, but the techniques are applicable anywhere
Combat sambo is basically russian pankration