UKC

is martial art can be useful for girls???

Depends how you define useful.......assuming you mean for self defence purposes, any and all from a combat sport like boxing through to a grappling sport like Judo. But there are weak areas in the way almost all arts are practiced. Having done quite a few years training I would suggest the way in which they are practiced has more to do with effectiveness than the headline name. My main experience is karate, and that can cover everything from absolutely brutal self defence to more self discipline focussed classes. If you want something true to its combat roots Ju jutsu (not BJJ, a very effective but different beast) is worth a look. Covers striking, kicking, grappling, throws against untrained violent attackers, rather than in a sport context. But have a look around and find something you are comfortable with. Muscle memory is vital and to get that one must practice.... Don't assume that an art like Aikido which emphasises using an opponents strength against them is the answer for a girl because I have found that it requires fine motor skills, very difficult to utilise in combat with the heartrate going crazy.

Hope this helps a bit

Maybe, but English grammar is.

Yes martial art can be useful for girls, or anyone really.

Why wouldn't it be?

Simply as exercise it's good, throw in how it might be useful in protecting yourself and it's win win.

I wouldn't say it's the be all and end all, as in any situation you have to overcome fear first and for most, then you have to remember what to do, then you have to be able to implement what you've learnt. so it's not going to turn you into someone who's invincible, but once again it can't hurt.

My daughter is nearly 12 and she's a black belt it would be easy for a determined bloke to do anything he wanted to her, but hopefully she'd put up a fight and maybe make a little time to get away. If nothing else her fitness level might allow her to out run any standard attacker.

Like most thing she goes because she likes it, not because we or she thinks she needs to.

There's some good ideas around: the best general wins without fighting a battle. Same goes for martial arts, its far more impressive to use tact and diplomacy than smashing someone in a pub car park.

I think the real benefits from training in martial arts is to test and understand yourself. Putting yourself through genuine adversity is going to give you a better understanding of you are. So i would say pick a martial art that includes contact competition: judo, bjj, boxing, muay thai etc

Some of aikido and kungfu are great, but forms are fairly useless. Another quote: you dont rise to your expectations, you fall to the level of your training. So if you always practice your training in a controlled environment you are going to be completely overwhelmed in the chaos of someone trying to hurt you: "no wait! You're suppose to grab my other sleeve"

Marital arts are definitely useful...

And maybe the Turing Test.

Whatever gave it away? 

Kemics, why are kung fu forms useless?

I wouldn't say completely useless, but fairly useless. As in there is very little of use to be learnt from them. Or there are certainly much more efficient ways of spending your time. 

A huge part of fighting or competing is responses and reads/feints and counters. Anticipating what someone is attempting to do and imposing your own will on them. Even shadow boxing, the idea is to watch yourself in the mirror, think about your shot placement and visualise your response to a punch being thrown at you. 

So what do rigid forms teach: a prescriptive set of movements that will never occur ... what's the point in learning them? Maybe they teach technique... but who's correcting the technique, what is the original meaning of the form? Usually it's something like: How to attack an imaginary man on a horse with an imaginary sickle you're not holding.

 There's also no resistance, if you want to practice hitting/kicking something way better to practice on a heavy bag. 

Maybe they teach some nebulous concept of "discipline", but really if that's all the achieve you would be way better turning up to the gym 3 times a week to learn something more applicable. That is my experience at least  

It's worth checking with whichever martial arts club you're thinking of joining if its members are involved in regular sparring sessions/competitive fights. Some clubs concentrate more on kata/form even at a competitive level, which is good for self discipline, fitness and flexibility, but not so much for self defence. Also, you need to attend regularly; a couple of sessions won't make you invulnerable.

I had a long reply typed and then our systems went down! Argh! If I survive my annual review today I'll get back to you!

You have highlighted one of the differences between sport or match combat and street combat. Street combat will very rarely involve feints, as opposed to sport or match combat which is often trying to elicit a trained response from an opponent and take advantage of that response.

Forms are a short hand for all the various actual self defence techniques of the original master. The issue is whether anyone understands them sufficiently to make use of them, hence the attack a man on horseback...blah blah scenario. These kind of techniques can't be practiced in free sparring because ripping your partners windpipe out means a) criminal charges b) being sued c) no-one willing to partner with you next time, or a combination of all three! I know from a wide range of karate training that there are schools that practice these real combat techniques, and have no doubt that there are similarly kung fu masters and so on with equal depth of knowledge. I'm not saying sport sparring is bad, as distancing, timing, reading an opponent are skills only attainable against a non compliant opponent, but it's certainly not the whole picture. Unless of course, you wish to be a sports martial artist.

I agree from experience about hitting a heavy bag, but I have found karate people who never hit a solid object to lack power, and kickboxing people who only hit a bag that stops their movement to lose balance when their strikes miss. A combination of both is surely better.

This is all a matter of my opinion, but it's a reasonably well informed one with a fair amount of varied experience. My taste is actual combat techniques, combined with work for speed and power, largely because I'm too old and rubbish to be a sports fighter, but each to their own. Just know what you are buying into.....

I expect a few comebacks now....

I think though that the idea of "street/real fighting" vs "sport fighting" is a bit of a logical fallacy. I think it's simply either a case of effective or non effective technique. I can only say that in my own experience I've encountered this idea before and it is generally used to cover up ineffective ideas.  As in there's a guy who proclaims he's a master, only he cant really show his techniques because he would kill someone. Usually he's out of shape but knows the "five finger death punch" etc  

Karate is completely legit and teaches very effective techniques. But there's a lot of other traditional martial arts like Aikido or kung fu, which teach eye pokes, pressure points and wind pipe ripping etc and the reason they practice on imaginary opponents is because it doesn't work on real ones! 

Are you real Vinay? No replies yet.

The forms in kung fu contain core movements of each style but also a lot of flowery nonsense. The moves were given names which sounds nonsense but are actually useful explanations eg grasp sparrows tail. This was done deliberately to keep the secrets of the style safe. In the 70's when I started you'd follow the old ways of spending a long time on very basic moves building up muscle memory before moving on to applications then applying those in fighting. Fighting was divided into sport or street. Linking moves and flowery moves were junked for applications.

Times have changed (for the better I think) and people dont want to do that anymore hence the rise of pared down styles like BJJ, Muay Thai or Krav Maga. All very effective with no fluff.

I spent thousands of hours over 30 years learning moves that I would never use in a fight and all my weapons training was useless as I generally dont tend to carry a sword or butterfly knives on a daily basis. But it was fun learning them. Thats what kept me going back. I had to stop kung fu almost 10 years ago but I miss it every single day.

Hum - I did Shodokan Aikido for a while, which includes an element of restricted but competitive sparring. The idea there is generally that you learn the basics of a technique in a very restricted form with a cooperative opponent, and then you try it on a series of progressively less cooperative people and when it doesn't work you can go feed that back up the chain into more cooperative training and try to learn the stuff that you need to do to make it more effective. There's no pretence that you're preparing for no-holds-barred street fighting, but you are at least properly testing the mechanics of what you're being taught.

Another effect of this sort of training, if you're anything like me, is that you become extremely suspicious of any martial art where people claim that they'd be able to do something to a live, resisting, unpredictable opponent just because they've got a bunch of partner drills nice and sharp or done some noncompetitive sparring, because you seen how quickly stuff that you thought was nailed can go to pieces the first time you come across someone who's really out to spoil your party.

FWIW, Aikido generally doesn't seem to go in much for the five-point-palm-exploding-heart-technique type stuff or the eye-gouges and groin strikes, though. The body mechanics that it works with generally seem fairly legitimate - joints, levers and balance, basically - even if it's not the most efficient way of learning self-defence.

I can't really comment on Shodokan Aikido. I only tried, briefly, I'm guessing a more traditional form of Aikido. When I'm disparaging Aikido, I'm thinking of the full hakama, people gently running with an arm outstretched and then jumping into a summersault thing:  youtube.com/watch?v=MDeRs9TTpX8& just picked the first video on youtube. 

edit: aaaaand now I've gone down the rabbit hole of watching silly martial arts videos on youtube!  Only a short step from aikido to no-touch knock outs -  youtube.com/watch?v=_Z0_n7tGnK0& I think that's the problem without sparring (and thus reality checks) it's so easy for people's egos to run out of control. 

And there's your answer OP, it's good for girls (and boys) because it's fun. If you don't enjoy it, don't do it. Kung Fu has been good for me in so many ways, none to do with actually fighting anyone for real. Fun to learn, sociable, good for confidence, composure under pressure, mental health, physical health (to a point - if you do it long enough to a high standard, it may take it's toll on the body!).

I train with both girls and boys, and it appears to be equally beneficial to both genders. There's nothing either gender can do that the other can't. Admittedly, we do have differences in terms of where we'd prefer not to be struck

Sorry to hear you had to pack it in ring ouzel All the best.

Damo

Cheers Damo! And you are spot on about it taking a toll on your body as my knee and my elbow will testify!

Yes it helps with flexibility and core but it can take its toll on your knees. Also take into account that if you do free fight or compete you will get injured which means less climbing which is one of the reasons why I packed it in.

Good question, Claire. But Lord Lucan is more likely to reply than vinay

He/she, in his/her first ever post, posted a fairly meaningless non-climbing related question on a climbing forum

I would be interested in what the point of such a post is. What is it done for and what is gained by the poster? Given the poor English it  I presume it originates overseas, boredom/ scam/ advertising/ fishing for something?

Yes, I really do not know and I suppose we cannot know. It is baffling because they go to the trouble of finding UKC and creating an account then posting a seemingly random question. My guess is they are just trying to provoke a reply from people, or a discussion among forum members - in vinay's case [based on his/her post] perhaps because he/she is interested in the idea of females doing martial arts - who knows why

Personally I'd stick to painting using watercolours.  Its so traditional for girls.

Krav Maga is good for girls because it uses biting, scratching and eye jabbing, and kicks to the groin. But any martial art is 2000% better than no martial art. Krav Maga classes can be a bit 'street', choose a style which appeals to you.

Not just useful for girls! I employ those techniques myself, on a daily basis. Bar staff who don't serve me quickly enough, shop assistants who won't make eye contact when they hand me my change, more generally, anyone I find myself disliking for some reason, even if I can't quite put my finger on it (apart from the eye-poking, of course). The list goes on .....