Oh, I agree, discipline is very important in life - I was referring to street fights, however. Things might work differently in your area, of course, but around here you'd tend to get a group of people against one, where whirling about screaming "Hai-YAAH!" only gets you so far. Much easier to open-palm one guy in the nose, maybe a knee to the groin here, etc. Best to get as many down as you can before they all decide to jump you.

If it were up to me I'd just carry a blade lol

i also love martial arts.

I've done Tae Kwon Do for almost 10 years now. I earned my black belt in the November of 2006. My school teaches a very integrated style and is non-commercial. I have a lot of weapons and grappling training outside of the usual Tae Kwon Do training because of it.

I can't go to class regularly, cause I'm off at college these days, but I miss the class a lot and practice independently.

Adri

I think I was influenced towards Martial Arts because of the old Xiao Xiao stick men fight scenes

Anyone remember these?

Yeah, but I wasn't influenced by that.

As I've said before, I used to do Shotokan Karate, but this was back when I was a wee lad. I think the experience I had when I used to do it got me interested in martial arts, which later turned into wanting to do them for self-defence.

However, because of lack of transport to the gym where classes were held, I had to stop, and couldn't start when old enough due to lack of finance. Now I have a job, I can't bloody go anyway because I work a 1pm - 8pm shift.

Bollocks.

I have a first degree black belt in American-style Tae Kwon Do and have been studying the martial arts for the last 13 years or so. My studio also incorporates Kenpo as well as Escrima and a few other systems. I always enjoyed sparring and took 1st place in women's black belt sparring at the Central States Karate Championships a few years back. The chick I had to fight to win seriously had at least 100 pounds of weight on me, and she tried to use it to her advantage. I had the flexibility and speed though, so won in the end.

Unfortunately, I don't get to the studio as much as I'd like to these days. I always seem to be too busy with work and other things

My brothers in-laws run a Kung Fu studio, I could get free classes from a Kung Fu Master but I don't have the patience to work through all the basics.

It would be nice to know some form of Martial arts though, never know when you need to bust some drunkard's head around..

..I sort of stopped getting into fights once I started training kung-fu. So that wasn't a waste of time. :) I disagree it's not useful in a real fight, though, even if it's a lot of dancing around. Avoiding any injuries and having some control with the defense, that's pretty useful. ..I know someone who trains aikido - he's a mean streetfighter, even if that's almost purely defensive..

Aikido is useful for concentrating/moving/controlling energy, one of the reasons I'd like to try that.

I do energy/chi movement and junk, but it's not the same thing

Or, about landing a punch so hard you feel it connects with your entire being, yeah. No, I mean, the entire set of techniques can have real depth with the way you think and act. And aikido seems to be one of the better ways, imo. Because you learn the basic techniques fairly easily - after that, it's how to do it better, when improvising.