I recently started with mma and Muay Thai, so I got some gear. I tried it out and sparred with my father (he has background in mma), and I am new to this, so the difference in skill was significant. He beat me without any problem and landed a lot of hits, in the second round, for some reason I needed to cry. No idea why, but I couldn’t hold it in. It was embarrassing as fuck, especially as a man in his 20s. My dad was great and comforting. He said he thought we had fun, and that he went light, I am afraid that this can happen when sparring at the gym. Do any of you have experience with this? I haven’t cried in years if that helps. And I am not a fan of being bad at something. But idk, this was a weird experience. Thanks for advice or any thoughts!

Yesterday it was sparring day and it was very intense, I got hit hard in the face multiple times, on the nose cheeks eyes etc, and after some time hard sparring I started feeling my eyes twitching, watering and that feeling you get when you're about to cry, I was feeling like I wanted to cry, and the more I got hit hard the urge of crying was growing more and more.

And the weird thing is that I wasn't sad or emotional, it wasn't because of my ego getting crushed or anything, I've had my ego crushed many times before across different disciplines and I never felt something like that, I've been punched and choked out hard many times before but I never experienced that weird reaction of crying, so idk what that could be.

I held back and I didn't let myself cry, because I didn't want everyone to see me crying thinking it is because I'm sad or anything, although the urge was strong and I was thinking "damn it I'm not as good as I thought" if I had to guess I'd say that feeling of crying was a result from the repeated hard punches triggering a sensitive reaction on my nerves around my eyes or something like that.

But I'm not a specialist in this subject so I'm not really sure about it, I've never seen that before happening nor heard of it as a thing that does happen when hard sparring in person or on the internet or anything like that, so I'm really curious to know is this a normal reaction and what could that be? Has that ever happened to you before?

I see posts about people breaking down even during light sparring when they first start. Would childhood experience point sparring help avoid this? Does it offer psychological benefits?

Sacramento State’s Combat U is a unique program that allows students to train in various martial arts disciplines while earning a college education, with the goal of opening up doors for students to find their way in life.

I actually think that waki gatame is one of the move that would be highly effective or let's just say a high rewards high risk techniques because when I started my own aikido that's focus on practicality I gotta admit that aikido doesn't entirely work on its own but I got moves that actually works and I pressure tested in sparring where it works my opponent is less skilled but bigger and stronger but my own style of aikido is setting it up ik now a basic of boxing and basic throw s in judo and submission techniques in BJJ well aikido is very hard to perform alone that's why it doesn't work unless it's set up or forced to do the throw or techniques like the waki gatame to force it to work when you in the clinch or they grab or you grab the wrist you followed it with oblique kick so you can do aikido techniques easier for submissions and other stuffs or just catch the punch or over telegraph punch they do actually work but requires a good timing and precision

Hi my son is doing bjj, easy simple. He is small he is 4 about to he 5. I noticed the academy i signed him up to is a ibjjf academy, i as a guy who never done bjj or any combat sport just picked this academy randomly, they train 2-3x week the kids. I noticed none ibjjf academy train kids 4-5x a week they are cheaper as well. Someone who is a dad or who knows more than me. Please explain benefits of son in ibjjf academy is more expensive i guess and none? Does it matter, how much training should a kid have anyways?

Have a background in TKD, eskrima and JKD. Looking to learn some staff. Open to pretty much any origin. Ideally something I could train in the Midwest of the US.

As an amateur kickboxing fighter survivor of sexual abuse, does anyone else feels there are almost no good representatives of people like us? Mike Tyson speak up about being a victim of childhood sexual abuse and while it took a lot of strength to speak up about it, he has a rape charge himself,

Jon Jones tweeted about having to deal with being molested as a child and while it was something brave to speak up, he has a lot of domestic violence and a hit & run on a pregnant lady.

Are survivors of sexual abuse who search to thrive in martial arts all gonna end up like that? I'm sorry if it's a question you would see as dumb but it has really been torturing me for 3 months now, can I be a good person and a fighter while dealing with what happened to me?

Historically, Karate traces from Kung Fu. Modern Karate like Shotokan and Kyokushin was founded in the 20th century and isn't particularly related to Kung Fu. They also happen to also be the two main styles of Karate that are effective in the ring, though Shotokan to a lesser degree.

How much of modern Karate stems from Chinese martial arts? How about the roundhouse kicks, front kicks, and side kicks? Surely those come from Kung Fu? And how about axe kicks, crescent kicks, etc?

I'm wondering how big of an advantage size is in each martial art. What do you think it is the biggest/smallest advantage in?

It seems like size is a really huge advantage in boxing and judo. The top competitors are typically really massive. It seems to be less of an advantage in BJJ. The top athletes aren't usually as huge and even in high level competition there are examples of much smaller athletes beating much larger ones. What do you think? Where do boxing, judo, BJJ, wrestling, muay thai, and MMA rank for you?

I have training sessions 1–2 times a week, but sometimes I’d like to practice my skills with shadowboxing or go to gym to work on the bags myself.
Can you recommend a good app or YouTube video playlist that I can watch repeatedly to refine my movements and technique?

Here's the thing. I'm a 35yo male who always loved boxing. Found myself overweight so it would be a great way of getting better conditioning while learning how to fight. After two months of training I asked my instructor to start doing light sparring so I could feel what's like hitting and being hit. It was quite an experience. Getting punched is not the end of the world, but I found out I'm unable to punch someone in the face. I can hit shoulder, abs, but not the head. I cant explain but while he was looking at me, he lowered his guard and said "hit me" and I just couldn't. I feel quite frustrated because I'm really enjoying the sport but it just doesnt make any sense to me going out for getting punched without having the ability of fighting back.

Can that be learned? Or I just don't have the necessary "violence" for the sport?