As orgs died I figured this would be the best place to post this.
I've opened this thread to people who does/did martial arts or like watching/talking about them.

I've been doing kickboxing since around august 2019 and just got my yellow belt, couldn't be happier about it, but I still have a long way to go.
So, does anyone else fights irl?

Yellow belt in what??

I grew up doing karate when I was aged like 8-12 and then started Muay Thai when I was about 17 and have been doing it on and off ever since (22 now) I have been going most weeks for about 2 years now and I love it. How often do you train?

Yellow belt in kickboxing. I heard that kickboxing is similar to muay thay in some aspects(jab, direct, circular kick, frontal kick & a few other things).


I do kickboxing twice a week, but sometimes I play light fight with some friends.


About karate, I've been wanting to do it for a while now, as I just figured it has disarming techniques and it could be really useful in some situations.

I was a blackbelt in Shotokan karate before I started kickboxing when I was 14. I had got silver in 2 national champs in Shotokan by that point and every single person in that kickboxing club beat the crap out of me. I think it genuinely hindered my ability to fight, I probably would have lost to an average untrained guy my size. Never looked back when I started kickboxing, every now and then we would get some cocky people coming in (mainly from taekwondo) and have similar experiences.

Traditional martial arts have mostly been proven ineffective, previously protected by tradition and the lack of information we have now. The uptake of MMA has definitely contributed to that in a big way. I think the only traditional martial arts that hold any water nowadays are grappling-based ones like BJJ and judo.

Yea karate is pretty pointless, I found that at a young age it gave me good body awareness and balance and things like how to fall well (good for rugby) but other than that it wasn't very helpful

Yea I agree with moop, bjj and judo.
Edit: actually wingchung (cbf looking up spelling) which my brother does as a security guard is quite useful out of the gym

Pretty much all fighters of previous generations had some kind of background in traditional martial arts. MMA wasn't a thing and most people weren't so aware of the superiority of fighting sports (i.e. boxing, kickboxing, muay thai, wrestling etc) over martial arts. Heck, Chuck Liddell had a background in kenpo and Anderson Silva starting off in taekwondo and capoeira.

Just a quick gym flex

Sick stuff, Jobo. Y'all tough.

So, why is shotokan karate so bad compared to kyokshin?

I don't know much (anything) about Kyokushin karate, but in Shotokan they separate you whenever a point is scored. More like fencing than a fight. It encourages a blitz-style strategy where you jump in to score the point, knowing you're safe afterwards because the referee will separate you. It doesn't really translate very well to continuous fighting sports like boxing or kickboxing and isn't effective for self-defence. It was good for fitness and balance when I was young though, meant that I picked up kickboxing quicker than I otherwise would have done.

The main problem with Shotokan was that you only ever practiced against people who were also fighting with the same style. I totally would have frozen up if someone started swinging haymakers at me.