When you’ve decided to take the leap and start learning a new martial art, it pays to put a little thought into which one will suit your needs best. The choices you get these days are far wider than ever before, and extend past the usual suspects of karate, kung fu and taekwondo. You might decide that you don’t want to (or are too old to!) go through months of strenuous leg stretching exercises, which would be required for energetic high-kicking styles such as taekwondo. In this case you might opt for one of the direct Chinese punching styles, like wing chun, bak mei or xingyi. Or you may opt for an art that doesn’t require you to be able to bench press 200 kilos! Perhaps aikido or taiji would suit.
Whatever your reasons and abilities, there will be a martial art that’ll suit you. The martial arts can be broadly categorized into four groups (five if we include those involving martial arts weapons – I’m only talking about empty hand arts for now though). They are Striking Arts, Kicking Arts, Throwing Arts and Locking Arts. This is a generalization however, and it is worth remembering that very few martial arts rely on a single type of technique. Many are renowned for a single type of technique though, and using taekwondo as an example, it is famous for the multitude of different kicking techniques trained.
So here is a brief breakdown of which martial arts fall into the different categories; some arts fall into multiple groups, and you can pretty much assume that all martial arts contain at least some aspects from all of the groups.
Striking and Punching
The obvious martial arts to include here are karate (many styles of which also contain many kicks in their syllabus) and western boxing. As mentioned in the introduction there are many Chinese martial arts which concentrate to a high degree on punching (with a few, generally low, kicks). For example wing chun and xingyi. The southern styles from China tend to be more hand oriented. Other strikes, other than punching, include the many open hand strikes of baguazhang (eight diagram palm), and the relentless elbow and knee strikes of Muay Thai and Shaolin kung fu.
Kicking Styles
Although previously mentioned karate styles all train for kicking, it is the Korean martial arts which take the art of kicking to an altogether higher level (quite literally!) with taekwondo, hapkido and tang soo do. Taekwondo is renowned for its kicks, hapkido is more rounded and contains strikes, throws, locks and groundwork, and tang soo do also exhibits a variety of different techniques, but has northern Shaolin as part of its make up. And so to the Chinese styles; many styles from the north of China are primarily kicking styles, even to the point of sometimes being referred to as ‘northern leg’. Other notable kicking styles are Muay Thai and kickboxing/Thai boxing and the Brazilian art of capoeira.
Throwing Styles
If you are looking for a martial art that will teach you how to throw people to the ground, then the obvious choice is judo, which is commonly taught all over the world. Many kung fu styles incorporate a whole variety of throwing and sweeping techniques also. You can also use techniques from some of the joint-locking arts in order to take an attacker to ground, so you might consider aikido and jujitsu under the throwing category – but these arts really fit best into the next section.
Joint-Locking Styles
The Korean art hapkido utilizes locking techniques as well as kicking, but perhaps the best known locking arts are Japanese in origin: aikido and jujitsu. The derivative art of Brazilian jujitsu combines a whole range of techniques including locking and grappling as well as throwing, to get the opponent to ground. However, unlike many other arts, Brazilian jujitsu (BJJ) – and similar types of modern fighting arts such as shootfighting and ‘mixed martial arts’ (MMA) – are adept at ground-fighting. In other words, they can stop their opponent from fighting at all once on the ground using a series of locking and choking techniques.
So if you are ready to start in the martial arts, perhaps I’ve just made your decision a whole lot tougher now, as there are probably dozens of different martial arts available in your area. Do your research (watch the video below), find a good teacher, and enjoy the ride!
Related posts: