So a buddy of mine and I went to a free introductory class of Krav Maga yesterday. It’s a martial art created by the Israeli military, who you know don’t mess around when it comes to pragmatically kicking the shit out of others. In self defense, of course.
Anyway, it was pretty cool! We did the whole warmup thing, and then practiced some jabs, kicks to the groin, and elbows to the head. Fun! Unfortunately, the classes are pretty spendy (60-120/mo) it seems to me…and I have no job (and am already paying for a gym membership), so…
Any martial arts people reading this (hehe) care to give me some insight on how much is reasonable to pay, and what they’d recommend in terms of different styles etc?
Oh boy…this is a can of worms indeed!
Firstly, 60 is pretty reasonable, 120 is a bit much. 70-90 for unlimited classes is a pretty standard rate, but you can usually get a discount if you pay in advance. My gym was $500 for 14 months of unlimited classes, including membership to their full scale 24/7 gym. That’s a deal you’re just not going to find anywhere else, unfortunately. If you do decide to start up in something, talk to me beforehand- there are a lot of commercial gyms (McDojos) that are just ridiculously overpriced.
As far as styles, well, what do you want to do? There are striking-only styles, grappling-only, throwing-only, weapon-only, and any number of combinations.
MAs tend to splinter into three groups: art, sport and self-defense. Arts are usually more rigid and traditional with some (possibly beautiful) esoteric/archaic practices. Sports are usually based around a specific rule set and stress techniques that work under those rules, strength and cardio training. Self-defense, or RBSD, features quick’n’dirty techniques effective in real-life situations, and don’t usually contain sparring or competition, rather lots of drilling.
Are you interested in any particular culture? Many countries have a number of different native styles falling under different categories.
Examples (each within the categories from a different country):
Art
Karate
Capoeira
Tae Kwon Do
Eskrima
Kung Fu
Sport
MMA
Fencing
Boxing
BJJ
Judo
Self-defense
Krav Maga
Systema
Marine Corps LINE Combat
Small Arms/Firearms
Close Quarters Combat
What would your aims be? Fitness? Social? Learning a skill? Learning an art? Self-defense?
That’s enough to mull over fer now. =^)
Wait- scratch all that, you should just go ahead and learn this.
You know, I saw that link, and I thought, “Diacritics on a g? That’s got to be Turkish.” Completely not knowing what I was talking about, but hey.
Also, I was talking with a USMC hand-to-hand instructor this weekend, and he basically came out and said that Krav Maga is the self-defense form. Everything else isn’t as effective because it has different aims – usually nonlethality, but there are others.