Martial arts?

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i do karate i am a blue belt

BTW, I don't know if any of you guys are near Detroit, MI? There's going to be a Dan Inosanto seminar on May 14th and 15th. My group will be driving about four hours to get there, its $195 at the door, $175 prepay by bank note, and if you get six people its $146 each. Two days, five hours each day, I think the lunch might be complimentary?

As it is right now what I'm learning is very close to Inosanto Kali, the Wing Chun is already there, and we have Kuntao and China added in. However, getting to meet Dan (the guy is a living legend, if you don't know who he is I'm posting a Wikipedia link below), and since he has been heavily focused on Silat in the last decade or so it will be interesting to see some of that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Inosanto

I've trained traditional shotokan karate for the past 10.5 years now. My parents didn't get me into it though. I actually started training against their desires at first to tell you the truth.

I'm glad I did though. It's all because of karate that I:
1. learned a second language
2. spent time abroad
3. met my boyfriend
4. have been able to protect myself nonviolently in several questionable situations
5. learned to make friends with anyone, even my opponents sometimes (highly effective in RL actually)

Shotokan Karate? That's awesome, it was the first martial art I ever practiced!

Errm, as for the question at hand, I don't do any martial arts now.
I started with Shotokan Karate, trained for a year, flitted to Taekwondo and Jujitsu for around 6 months, then trained in boxing for 2 years (and LOVED it), but quit due to money constraints and my eating disorder worsening... Never trained in any combat art since. D:

Martial Arts are one of my favorite things to do for many years now, and there is no day in the week where I do not go and train. I regularly train in:

- Karate (Kyokushin)
- Filipino Martial Arts (Eskrima, which I also instruct)
- Kendo
- Kyudo (Heki Ryu)
- Kenjutsu (Hyoho Niten Ichi Ryu)
- Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
- Wing Tsun
- German Sword Fencing (again, I am also instructing)

Also used to train in Judo, but stopped after first degree black belt (Shodan). Also used to be into regular sport fencing when I went to school in France. Used to do Pencak Silat and Muay Thai, but couldn't go to training reguarly due to conflicting schedules with college, so I quit it for now, but plan to go back to these later.

Any advice for a Muay Thai/kickboxing and submission grappling rookie? Like what should I bring to the first class and watch out for?

Don't have too much experience with MT, but practicing BJJ for a while. It depends on the style of submission grappling if you need a gi or if regular sports clothing is enough, but you really, REALLY want to bring a gum shield and a groin guard. Especially the groin guard. Really. You want that. Another advice I'd like to give is be sure to eat enough magnesium to avoid convulsion.

So for my experience over the last two days: Guro Inosanto started us with single stick patterns the first half of Saturday, single and double knife the second half, yesterday morning we tried several JKD and Panantukan drills, the last half of the class was Silat. While it was all good stuff and even closing on seventy-five it was worth seeing how he moves, I understand why we haven't really gone and affiliated with JKD, lots of long sparring sets which my teacher is not a fan of (believes from experience that its typically only three or four punches before you bridge distance and take someone down or get into Silat or Kuntao range).

Definitely a fun guy, he had a lot of really informative stories both regarding Bruce Lee and historical regarding the Philippines, Java, Sumatra, etc.

Just started learning judo, it's loads of fun.

Taekwondo
Karate
Yaw-Yan
Boxing
MMA
Aikido
MACP

Here's a question: Does it not get confusing learning so many different styles? Do you find that you get conflicts between one and another? Do you ever Jiu when you should Wing?

I hope I'm not butting in and hopefully even with my response starreyeyedvoyager will still come back and give his/her opinion on the topic.

My instructor has talked on this many times, essentially when you get a black belt in a really strong/practical style you'll be able to go back and pick up anything else very quickly. Its not so much like trying to learn languages from all over the world as its like trying to learn one language and then all the different dialects and slang, mainly that the human body - even with person to person variation) has only so many mechanics of motion available before you come up with some very universal fundamentals of what's good form vs. bad form.

I'm sure he won't mind. That's a good answer, and it makes sense to me.

I wouldn't want to take on another martial art until I felt I'd thoroughly covered a single one to a certain degree.

Lol, nah, its just a pet peeve of mine actually. I made sure to let him know that we still want his input.


And that's wise. Four or five years will sharpen your understanding of how it all works so that when you get into another art - even if it ends up being an upgrade - you'll still learn a lot quicker than the beginners. Unless you get stuck with a really bad teacher or art off the top you'll find that experience stacks.