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I used to join some boxing and Muay Thai trainings a long time ago. When I was actively training and sparring boxing I really liked the feeling that I had some idea how to stand up for myself if anything happened. Also nowadays I am in meh shape (but not horrible, I run and play tennis) and nothing ever got me as fit as regular sparring so I really would like to pick up a fighting sport again. I would like something where I can train against other people with some force without getting concussions (so no more boxing, I used to have bad headaches after sparring rounds..) and without kicking (very injury-prone in my experience, also some orthopedic problems making this uncomfortable for me).
I will probably drop by a nearby BJJ gym later today to check it out. There is one Gracie gym and one independent well-reviewed gym in my neighborhood. I have some doubts though: BJJ looks like memorizing a fuck ton of technique of dubious value without the constraints of the sport (hitting, biting, gauging etc). Also I am afraid the classes will be a long series of "technique/combo of the day" without long term structure as I often found martial arts classes to be, and I will lose interest.
I know a bunch of people here do casual martial arts so I am fishing for some recommendations. I live in decent size city so I could probably find a gym for most things you recommend.
Edit: just went to my first class and apparently it was cancelled. Great start
Are you literally me? I followed exactly that course into and out of fight sports (I quit after a bad concussion in a car accident, knowing that cumulative concussions would be bad) until I took up BJJ recently. Obviously, I'm less than a year in, so take this as the zeal of the recently converted or newbie enthusiasm, but:
Given your stated constraints, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is literally the exact thing you are looking for.
You say you want the fitness benefits of regular high speed sparring
but don't want to get hit in the head or kicking anyone
which is basically sport jiu jitsu. It's the closest you can get to simulating a fight against a resisting opponent without striking. You're going live, struggling close to full speed against an equally interested opponent, every single class from day one to age seventy unless you choose not to. The typical classes at the four schools I've visited all follow the structure of warm up -- technique -- live rounds. It's the closest you can get to a fight with minimal risk of concussions, and that seems to be an even harder line for you than it is for me. I'm not trying to get into an argument about fighting theory, but any other martial art you try to practice is going to be bullshit if you can't go live with blows to the head, you're either going to be doing some kind of tai-chi where you're moving so slowly that it isn't teaching you anything for timing, or you're removing head shots from competition which seems like a much bigger problem in terms of muscle memory and timing. Basically, to the extent that you think BJJ is bullshit because it doesn't involve striking/gouging/whatever, you can't take up any striking martial art that isn't more bullshit without getting hit in the head which you don't want. So I'd say take up BJJ and hit a heavy bag or get somebody to hold focus mitts for you once a week to keep your timing on your punches, and you'll be 99th percentile in a fight.
What I love about BJJ is that, if my schedule lines up with the classes and my (w/l)ife allows it, I can go live basically every day, in a full speed more or less full power setting against another adult male trying his hardest. I typically aim for ten to fifteen minutes, twenty at the outside, of live rounds after every class; this puts me at an average of around an hour a week of live fighting. If I were getting punched for fifteen or twenty minutes a day, multiple days a week, sometimes multiple days in a row, I would not be able to keep up with it. I've actually found that BJJ allows me to train at a higher intensity more regularly than most other workouts period, I couldn't lift heavy or climb project grades or run three days in a row at a high intensity with no rest days.
I will say that my gym is more sport focused, small built around several prominent tournament competitors, so in my training week a lot of time is dedicated to stuff that has no realistic self defense application. I frequently joke when one of my coaches talks about what would happen with a given technique "in the street" that if I'm in a fight with a stranger and he hits a De La Riva guard on me, I'm going to stop and say "hey where do you train? Tenth planet, no shit, my buddy Dan trains there, do you know him?" and the fight will probably fizzle out as we realize we share a hobby. But that's the natural consequence of going live, in every martial art there's a tradeoff in "realism" between actually trying with full speed/muscle/effort to win and putting in rules to prevent "unrealistic" strategies and behaviors on the mat. Some of the modern BJJ "dive for his shoelaces" leg lock techniques seem like they would be useless off the mat, but if you institute rules to ban them, you end up with so many rules that the sport becomes more restricted and less "real."
And anyway, the focus on sport BJJ versus self defense varies between gyms, and between coaches at the same gym. Actually between students. Every gym I've been to had a few cops, several veterans, and a few guys that are more into the combat jiu jitsu aesthetic/concept. Seek those coaches and fellow students out and you can practice in a more realistic rather than sport based way, they'll be happy to have another guy to practice with and on. Combat jiu jitsu rules are a popular way to include slapping strikes to keep your opponent honest on the ground without too much damage being done, and I've seen people bring out training knives or other weapons to practice self defense strategies with. What you need to do if you want something different than what your school is teaching is take control of your own training, ask the coaches for help with what you need.
Personally, I still hit the heavy bag every now and then, as I did before I started BJJ. In a fight, I'm probably still sticking to the plan of throwing straight punches and keeping my distance, though I'm much more comfortable in a clinch now, and I'd imagine that my timing is better as a result of so much time spend in competition with other full grown men. If I chose to use any BJJ, it would be sticking to stand up techniques like throws, arm drags, russian ties, which would allow me to control my opponent without going to the ground. If I found myself on the ground, I would aim to hit a sweep or reverse or otherwise disengage and get up, which we learn a lot of ways to do.
More broadly from my experience taking it up
Pros of BJJ
-- Live competition with a resisting opponent with minimal risk of injury.
-- Cardio, there's no motivator and no pacing like a 200lb wrestler on top of you who you have to stop from choking you.
-- Practical to train as a middle aged guy, there's older guys in their 40s and 50s going live at our gym. Can be a lifetime hobby.
-- Built for the mottizen/autist. John Danaher is the greatest BJJ coach of the century, he started training while taking a PhD in philosophy at Columbia. Chris Wojcik, a well known coach and competitor, is somewhere in the SSCverse having cited HPMOR in interviews as influential on his life. An infinite universe of techniques to learn and apply. It's the closest thing in the real world that delivers on the nerd martial arts dream of learning something and winning a fight.
-- Allows for a large number of styles for different body types and preferences. You can be a speed-power guy who shoots single legs all day, you can be a slow grinding technical old guy who fights from bottom half guard, you can be a flexibility and creativity guy who loves inversions to obscure subs.
-- Great community. Everyone wants to hang out, broad range of people from blue collar and cops to white collar tech kids.
-- You owe it to yourself to learn it, at least for a while, at some point in your life. Pure BJJ might not be something you see a ton of in MMA anymore, but techniques originally developed in BJJ are a core part of training for MMA fighters and armed forces, so even if you move on to something else it's worth taking time to study it.
-- The control and submission techniques you learn offer ways to fight without doing serious damage to the other person, which is good for situations where you may be in a fight but not want to overdo it. We have a lot of paramedics who train with us, and when they get crazy people in the ambulance they say its great to be good at keeping them in safe positions and neutralize them or force compliance without hitting them which creates more problems. At the same time, a kimura ends with a broken arm, and if you do it in a hurry it takes less than a second from locking it in to snap, so you can end a fight very quickly compared to throwing a lot of punches each of which is unlikely to end the fight. So you get a spectrum of violence to pick from.
-- The sense of masculine pride you get from defeating a resisting man in a physical struggle, knowing he is trying his best to subdue you but you subdue him instead, is incomparable. It is available nowhere else at this price in physical damage and danger, and never this frequently. When you win, it feels so good, and losing motivates you to try harder. Outside of any technical self defense ability, you will walk into that situation with the confidence of a wolf knowing you can beat another man in a fight because you have beaten other men all week.
Cons of BJJ
-- While BJJ is in practice the best weapon for the small guy against the big guy, because of the full-send nature of training, it's much more size dependent in training than boxing was for me. In a boxing sparring session, you're mostly going light, and against a little fella you just go lighter. In a BJJ round, you tend to go full power, and even if you don't the weight you are carrying around makes a difference. Little guys can just get smashed all day unless they're much better than the bigger guys. I'm lucky to be about the size of an antique heavyweight champion so it's not too much of a problem for me, I can go against basically everyone in the gym without problems, even the guys who are 250lbs I just do my best and figure I'm big enough that I don't get to complain. I don't know how you're built, so this may or may not matter to you, but if you're on the smaller side you're going to have a longer distance to travel in technique before you start getting wins.
-- You will get injured eventually, as you would in any intense athletic training, and especially in any real physical struggle. I don't see injuries any more frequently in BJJ than I do in rock climbing gyms or crossfit boxes, curving for intensity, but they do happen. You will need to personally take responsibility for preventing your own injuries, proactively tapping early, recognizing when you're hurt and should skip class or rolling, etc. There are some opponents I limit my rolls with to certain positions, because every time either they hurt me or I hurt them. A more "fake" training environment with fewer and less macho live rounds, like a krav maga self-defense class for women, is likely to have less of a "rub some dirt in it" culture and lead to fewer injuries.
-- You will feel ridiculous for an extended period of time. Boxing pretty much feels like boxing after about a week, you put your hands up and you punch and you just get better at punching, you put any guy in a boxing ring and he can fight. BJJ didn't really feel like I was doing BJJ for months after I started, I was just trying to survive and not hitting techniques, and I got pretty depressed at some points that I just sucked and would never get anywhere with it. I got past that, and now at least occasionally feel pretty good, but it's also the case that...
-- It's extremely training partner dependent. Our gym is pretty disorganized, mostly working guys and we show up when we can, so I never know who is going to be there any given week. One day this week I show up and I'm the only white belt, or I'm smallest guy there, and I'll just get smashed all day, just trying to avoid losing too quickly, taking pride in slowing the monsters down. Another day I might show up and be the assistant coach for the day because everyone else who showed up is newer and doesn't even know the positions we're training, or I'll happen to roll with guys I can beat on for one reason or another when we go live and rack up wins or work on new techniques I'm less comfortable with at full speed. Your fitness and skill levels, and those of the people at your gym, will determine your experience at the gym, in a way that isn't the case in lifting or climbing or running for me. When I lift the weights are there, regardless of who else shows up or doesn't. At BJJ, my experience is determined by the human terrain.
-- At times, BJJ can get way too meta. There's one coach I like a lot at our gym as a person, but when he's running class he teaches techniques that are too complicated for me, designed to counter techniques occurring at a level that I'm not operating at yet.
-- It can turn into an obsession very easily. Which was tough for me for the first six months when I REALLY, sucked, because I didn't want to talk about it. But you might find yourself making excuses to go to the gym more than you can spare the time for, or spending time and money on instructional videos or private training sessions or seminars and camps, and it is easy to get sucked in because you want to keep up with your peers at the gym.
Overall, I think BJJ is exactly what you are looking for at this stage in your life.
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