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Comment by presidentender | Hacker News Reader

Practicality is important to me, and difficult to judge without some experience. Properly practiced Jujitsu, Sambo and Krav Maga are practical. There are useful lessons in Muay Thai and hard American kickboxing. Judo is acceptable, particularly if you are not possessed of great strength. Wing Chun's pitch sounds reasonable, but I cannot speak to its efficacy.

Avoid most schools of Karate (Kenpo especially), Capoeira, Aikido, Tae Kwan Do, and most of Kung Fu.

In any case, there are bad instructors to be found for every art. Caution is in order.

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Why would you provide such a definitive advice on the arts to avoid?! I can't even believe this answer was upvoted. I'm not a big fan of Kenpo Karate myself or of capoeira-under-the spotlight but I wouldn't say to avoid them, there is interesting learnings in any martial arts. You don't even know what this guy is exactly looking for and you make a selection of very MMA oriented arts.

I don't understand how you got upvoted on this one.

He stated arts to avoid based on his personal preference of the martial art being practical, which I take to mean as being practical for self-defense. Modern karate-like martial arts tend to optimize for point-fighting, which won't do you much good in a physical self-defense scenario. OP implied he wanted to train for fitness with no comment on self-defense, so the practical nature doesn't apply, but regardless, the parent comment is valid.

It depends on which dojo you train at. In our (Shotokan) dojo, every couple of lessons or so, someone will ask "but that's illegal in a tournament, right?", to which our sensei laughs and says in a real fight there's no such rules. We are taught to end any fight in one strike. We are taught to destroy the three weak areas of the human body (can't fight if you can't see, can't fight if you can't breathe, can't fight if you can't walk). We're also taught judo, because most fights end up on the ground. We're taught a wide variety of self-defence moves, most of which end with us taking a joint or two or theirs.

I'm sure there's plenty of Shotokan dojos that don't have such a good sensei though. YMMV.

I agree. I think some of this is instructor based. Some kung fu teachers focus on the practical aspects while others focus on the sports aspect just like taekwondo point fighting. I think you have to go in with an open mind. If you've already made up your mind that you want a "practical" martial art and that taekwondo is only for point fighting then you will not enjoy it. That said I still think a professional Korean Tiger athlete will wipe the floor with most geeks and my money would be on the Korean Tigers.

If you find karate impractical, try a good school of kyokushin karate and tell me that it's not useful. As for kung fu not being practical, that depends entirely on your school (kung fu covers so many different types of martial arts including wing chun). Aikido is very useful but not by itself (most MMA champs have studied aikido).

The real thing that should be said is that every martial art style is practical and what really matters is the quality of the dojo at which you study. I've studied the same martial art in two different school and can say that the quality of the school is by far the most important factor.

My training is Bushidokan Karate, Jujitsu, Judo and high school Wrestling. Going looking for Karate will get you Kenpo most of the time.

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