When we spar, it's always in full padding, and either points fighting or light contact continuous sparring. It's about tagging or outmanoeuvring the opponent, rather than hurting or defeating them. Except for a bruised rib I never had any injuries, training twice a week for over two years.
I recommend finding a gym where you train with people in your age group. It's difficult training with a bunch of teenagers who recover quickly and don't care about bruises, when you're the only one aching the next day and having to drop off kids and see clients.
Muay Thai has also been okay. It's brutal when you first start (RIP your toes and shins), but the sparring at my current gym is very relaxed, nobody is trying to kill you. This is how most muay thai gyms should be (not saying they are).
Purely maximizing strength and fitness and minimizing injury would look like some form of resistance training combined with low-impact cardio like swimming or cycling.
Martial arts with minimal injury would look like a boxing fitness class (as opposed to a boxing class) or something with slow motion sparring or no sparring. Not sexy at all, or particularly helpful in a fight, but safe.
While BJJ is a great workout, I would also suggest adding some weight/strength training.
The injuries in BJJ come from newbies rolling with newbies, and completion, stay away from those things, don't be afraid to tap early, and you'll be fine.
Most of those gyms also do BJJ, and I do very frequently see joint and ear injuries from those. Nothing major, but people will rotate in and out of injuries for a few weeks at a time.
With any gym, it's important not to rush into sparring before you get your bearings (and protection, like at least a mouth guard and shin guards). Some places require head protection too, but I'm not sure if that actually protects you vs just giving your opponent a false sense of "it's okay to hit you harder". You might be trading light grazing blows (and visibility) for heavier blunt impacts...? Not totally sure of the science there.
It's also super important to choose good sparring partners, meaning they are both adequately skilled at self control and not prone to bouts of anger that make them lose control. Watch other people spar for a while and talk to the coach about your own ability and theirs before jumping in. The absolute worst is beginners jumping into sparring each other without good self control, causing an unintentional slugfest where people don't know what they're doing and end up getting hurt. Don't do that, take it slow and play it safe. If you're not planning on competing there's no reason to rush through training or disregard safety.
I know I sound like an old geezer lol, but seriously, it's entirely possible to do martial arts safely if you just lower the aggro level and don't go all out.
She said last time that happened with someone during sparing it broke her kneecap instead, so I guess I was 50/50 on that one.
People are shocked when I tell them that a sport where you try to hit other people in the head has a shockingly low rate of injury.
> Some places require head protection too, but I'm not sure if that actually protects you vs just giving your opponent a false sense of "it's okay to hit you harder".
Plenty of studies have come out showing that head gear increases the rate of injury, to the extent that head gear and padded gloves should just be banned in every gym.
The safest way to spare is bare knuckle with a mouth guard. No one in their right mind punches full force when bare knuckle, at least not more than once.
(Also, bare knuckle, still wrap up, and hit with the first two knuckles. Boxers in thick gloves learn to hit with the bottom two knuckles, which will shatter the shit out of any hand that tries to do that without gloves on...)
So #1 is you like the gym and the vibe. That means you'll keep going back and stay with it.
Either BJJ or Kickboxing (or any striking art) will get you into a general sense of "in shape".
In my experience (and I have #s from chest heart rate monitors to back this up), kickboxing does a much better job getting you conditioned than BJJ does, and if you just want to look good, hitting the boxing bag will get you a nice v-shape upper body, especially if you throw some push ups in the mix while hitting the bag.
Neither alone will get you ripped or build strength the way a dedicated weight lifting program will, if you just want to be able to pick up heavy things, practice picking up heavy things. :-D
Also you won't lose fat unless you also cut calories, I've rolled with plenty of chunky peeps in BJJ. Your body will want to eat more right after an intense class, you'll need some discipline to tell it "no". If you can manage that then you'll also shed the pounds, but even if you are in the gym 2 hours a day 5 days a week, you won't automatically lose weight w/o self discipline in the kitchen (but you will be able to eat a lot more before you start gaining weight, so there is that).
For BJJ gyms, take some sample classes at different gyms, see what they are like. Some gyms are guys in their 30s and 40s who have left their egos behind, some gyms are very "go go go" and will run you ragged. No judgement either way, I've worked out at both styles of gym and both styles can be fun so long as safety is paramount.
Safety should be discussed. You should hear the instructors talk about it all the time.
At a good BJJ gym, more senior students will be asked to help out the junior students, and roll with them and show them how to do things safely. At more ego driven gyms people with black belts may not even talk to people who are just starting out. IMHO avoid those types of gyms at all cost.
Same goes for kickboxing. Sparing is an important part of learning, the only way to learn how to dodge punches is to have someone try to punch you in the head. But good gyms don't want people getting hurt, and they should be very aware of TBI and how to avoid it.
I actually trained for a couple years at a professional MMA gym, and despite being really high energy with lots of shouting and hard core warm ups, they were incredibly serious about avoiding injuries during training. The reason was simple: Injured fighters can't go in the ring, and thus don't get paid.
I've been injured 3 times during training over 10 years, which IMHO is pretty good given at one point I was training ~15 hours a week.
Tip: In a good gym, the highest risk of injury comes from training with new students who don't know how to control themselves yet. Someone in boxing class who doesn't know how to pull their punches, or who doesn't understand their reach and bops you in the face by accident.
The 2nd highest injury risk comes from yourself and not knowing your own limits.
When I was just starting out I had a senior student tell me I needed to stop because I was about to break my own arm if I didn't tap out.
That is what a good training partner at a good gym does.
All the black belts at my gym will roll with anyone. And yes, it's not common which is silly. Everyone in the gym has progressed so quickly because the different black belts are so willing to help.
> Safety should be discussed. You should hear the instructors talk about it all the time.
My instructors all the time, "the most important person in the gym is your training partner - do not hurt them. If they don't tap from a joint lock, let it go"
> When I was just starting out I had a senior student tell me I needed to stop because I was about to break my own arm if I didn't tap out.
Yep. I just let people go and tell them about it later. :)