Training Suit Can I start martial arts again with just fight training?
about three or four years ago, I got my first degree Black Belt in tae kwon do. I had taken it for three years. I got out of it because my instructor was more of a little kids teacher kind of guy, and it just didn't suit me.
Now, I'm interested in getting back into martial arts, but I don't want to have to learn the patterns and other show-type kind of stuff. I'd rather just be trained in fighting.
Do instructors generally offer this kind of training or do patterns and the other things have to be a part of the experience? And is there a certain martial arts that doesn't include patterns and focus more on fight training?
What you describe as your experience in Tae Kwon Do has been the plague of that community in America for decades now! Of course he's interested in teaching little kids, there's more money in it! Of course he wants his style to be showey, he can win a kata tournament, put the trophies in his window and get more money from it!
There are still a few good Tae Kwon Do schools out there, but they're getting harder to find each year. If you try Shotokan, you'll find it has a lot of the same forms (under different names) because they both originally come from Okinawan Karate. (Shorinryu in fact)
If you're looking for a style with few, or no forms and is still useful to you, I'd suggest, depending on what you can find, a freestyle-karate class, a MMA guy, if you're in good shape, a Jujitsu or Judo class, an Aikido class, or a traditional Uechi-ryu karate (originally only 3 kata) or other.
I think you'll find it easy to learn forms if they're incorporated into instruction. An instructor that doesn't teach a few different Bunkai (applications) for each movement of a kata, doesn't really know the kata anyway. If you find a good dojo, it won't matter if it has forms or not, because you'll be learning, working out, and enjoying yourself.
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