I’ve been doing Muay Thai, Dutch Kickboxing, and Boxing for about ten years. I don’t compete although I’ve done a few smokers, and they don’t give out gym belts in these styles so no degrees and colors to speak of.
I’ve been able to learn from good local trainers/partners and jumped on any seminar I could attend, including Ramon Dekkers, Andy Souwer, Jongsanan, Sakmongkol and others.
I love sparring and have good training partners that understand the difference between sparring and fighting, although I’ve experienced plenty of the later in my 10 years of doing it.
I’ve taught quite a few people in my time and do private lessons at my gym.
Hapkido has alllll the weird kicks. Its only within the last decade that Hapkido has introduced competition, it seems like watered down MMA.
You can attack the front and sides from the shoulders down. No head contact. No elbows, but knees are fair. All takedowns and locks are fair game, as are chokes (other than putting your knee or shin on the windpipe etc).
Hmm, it seems like a strange combination between taekwondo and ju jitsu, which sounds awesome. It has the 2 things I like the most about martial arts - fancy high kicks and standing joint locks. Unfortunatelly Hapkido is a lesser known martial art, I couldn’t find any school in my area. Plenty of taekwondo gyms, but no hapkido ones.
Hapkido usually sucks because they don’t practice active resistance.
If they’re practicing active resistance, like in a BJJ training, then they’ll quickly get rid of the useless wrist “locks” and such, that simply aren’t practical and turn it into a fine gym to train at.
I’ve heard of other “styles” like Yo mu do (don’t remember exactly) where they combine TKD and Judo rules, for example. Got pretty interesting with learning to take downs as counters to kicking. But still TKD + Judo means no realistic punching.
…there’s a hell of a lot more to Hapkido than just wrist locks. It’s not a sport. It’s an eclectic system, it has punching and striking and weapons too.
Small joint locks are applied when there is little no opportunity for resistance. They have to be set up. There’s a time and place for them, but not as a first response.
I recently received my brown belt. It was a very rough experience and my performance was truthfully a mess, but I earned it. I have three more belt exams until I achieve my black belt, but I have to improve my wheel kicks soon if I want to get my red belt.
Speaking of locks, what about standing arm locks like in japanese ju jitsu where you break their arm ? do they work, are they useful in a real fight ? I’m talking about something like this:
As someone who’s used wrist locks and such In real altercations. It can work… Just gotta know when to use it like most martial arts techniques. Standing Kimura are my best friends.
Cops and security workers use arm and wrist locks all the time. I’ve also heard of nurses putting mental patients into joint locks when they get attacked.
The biggest misconception about them is that you can do this shit when people are swinging at you. That’s bullshit. You need to distract your opponent so you can get the hold in before they try to resist. It’s why they work so well when you have another person helping you.
I used to do Karate (it had grappling, forms, sparring, self defense) as a kid from 8-15. Then I did a month or so of Krav Maga when I was like 25.
If I wanted to enroll now as an adult, should I take fitness conditioning classes or would you recommend grappling?
The goal is for fitness and weight loss while doing something fun. I like the gym but I don’t go hard in the gym as I used to go. When I did Krav Maga, I felt like my conditioning improved much better than just doing “Gym cardio”.
It has rankings = to belts system. But people don’t actually wear belts lol. Like no one wears a belt but they have rankings. You can usually tell to an extent based on how well someone fights. It helps to determine what skill level you are for when you fight in tournaments mostly. Although some people think rank is heavily tied to skill, but that really only becomes relevant once you are going for 3rd or 4th dan.