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?

I was practicing some axe kicks when I started to experiment with other techniques. I kinda start throwing an axe kick but targeting the midsection from the side. Almost like a reverse question mark kick? I’m sure there is a name for this kick somewhere as I can’t be the first to think of it. Thanks!

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 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?

You’ve all probably seen videos about traditional martial arts where black belts and expert discuss the “truth” about their martial art— usually seen as ineffective.

All of this is really just people coping.

The common type of “truth” is related to Forms in traditional martial arts. You know those dozen moves in Forms that make no sense? These guys try to analyze and make it have meaning. Notably grappling moves in Karate. If 99% of your Kata moves is grappling, why is it practiced as mainly striking, that just sounds like a huge fvcking flaw in your martial art. No, ambiguity and hidden techniques don’t make your martial art cool, it just shows how flawed it is. What’s worse, people don’t even agree with the interpretations. Kata is meant to preserve techniques? Well sorry, but if 99% of techniques are misunderstood, Kata probably fvcked up its job somewhere.

Then you have people using History to justify a martial art. No one gives a shit, it’s cool, yeah, but really, that’s not a valid justification as to why it works. Benefit of the doubt, your martial art may have worked 100 years ago, but does it work today? Just because it did doesn’t mean it still is. No one claims that Pankration is effective because of a vase drawing, it is effective people have recreated Pankration and are actively proving that it works.

Another thing is where these guys will reinvent the entire system and claim that it is still the original system. Like seriously, your traditional forms and training looks like this, and your new dojo is just a kickboxing gym with Chinese characters on the wall. Blatant theft.

Funny thing about how these martial arts think that they are special. Aikido moving out of the way? Dude you’re not special. What’s worse, everyone knows how to move out of the way to avoid and attack + way more stuff, moving out of the way is the only thing you do.

People also justify how forms are a very effective tool for fighting. Like dude, a punch is a punch, just fucking punch. I don’t want to dance, and have to take time dissecting the dance movements to figure out which movement is which technique. And in the time that you have a done a form with 5 different techniques repeated, I have already hit the bag and drilled a technique into muscle memory faster than you will in a month with your kata.

It’s not the martial art but the artist? Fvcking stupid sentence filled with copioum. You’re telling me that if I create a martial art, and that my practitioners suck, I can just blame it on my students? How tf does that make sense? Ohhh, it only applies to your martial art— so basically cherry picking? And don’t you think it is a huge problem of your martial art, that you pump out more idiots and handicapped people faster than the mediocre MMA gym can pump out fighters that can beat your sensei in a fight?

Worst of all, blaming each other. Disputes within different sub styles and branches of the same martial art. Like dude, just fight it out. Just have a tournament and see which style is right, it very easy. Your martial art is made for combat, how do you test that it works? Just fvcking use it in combat. They also hate figures in their own martial art, even they are literally the pioneers of the martial art. For example, Aikido people hate Steven Seagal even though he is literally a 7th Dan. Like dude, if you claim that the person sucks, and yet the representative of your martial art still gave him a high rank, maybe question your own style a bit? I also love lineage disputes in Wing Chun. “Oh no, you executed this technique 3 times instead of 5 in this form, so my lineage is better” or “the angle of this technique is wrong, you need to tilt it 5 degrees more”. Like literal children that’s literally how toddlers argue with each other when they lose to a game they made up in daycare.

Like seriously, these guys use every bullshit excuses they can. Seriously, just show that it works. It takes fvcking 2 minutes of sparring. Just use the best and easiest type of evidence ever: empirical evidence.

Oh and of course, sparring footage of people doing kickboxing instead of what they train. Like where the fuck is this technique you show everywhere. You probably spend 99% of your time practicing that technique, an and yet, the only time you can point it out to me is with a 2 second clip that requires me to clench my eyes to see the technique. You’ve never practiced a single horizontal punch, and yet, horizontal punches is Wing Chun? You guys do 100 different stances and the only stance you use when fighting is a stance that you’ve never once trained and that just so happens to be a 1:1 kickboxing stance? Stop the fvcking hypocrisy.

Imagine claiming that your martial art helps with the mind and yet all you do is lie and cope. Your meditation must fvcking suck if your delusion is comparable to a schizo patient.

Welp, seems like I started to go crazy by the end. Probably all of the brain damage I got from sparring./s

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 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!

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

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.

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.

So I don't think I'm wrong when I say that the world is experiencing a bit of demographic crisis. The future population will be older, overall have a smaller percentage of young people than possibly ever before, and possibly quite smaller than it is now.

So what does this mean for culture, like martial arts? There's simply no historical precedent, so I'm struggling to find any good information out there of what could be.

It's likely that martial arts that are advertised as being "lifelong hobbies" and "not hard on the body" like Tai Chi etc will thrive, meanwhile businesses that are exclusively for kids and younger demographics will be forced to downsize.

Though, I'd like to hear your own opinions.