What sort of martial arts do you practice in and why? Judo? Karate?
Educating yourself in self defence seems very useful especially if you live in parts of a country that might be rough.
I’d like to get into it myself but I can’t hear well, I can lip read however. Did some boxing when I was very young but it was only practice on training bags : )
Kung Fu students and masters alike, let me know your wisdom!
If you’re in a rough part of town martial arts will only serve you to better run away. While disarm techniques are taught in a lot of martial arts if the teacher doesn’t put emphasis on them being a last option then you shouldn’t go there. As skilled as you might get a blade or a gun is not something you can engage in hand to hand fighting really and even if you manage to disarm the attacker you’ll probably get stabbed or take a bullet for your troubles.
Martial arts are more useful as a good sport and for scaring away high school bullies. Life is not a movie, the rules of engagement are incapacitate and run away
Not all martial arts are unarmed. HEMA generally works around some kind of sword, long knife or spear.
Of course, that does mean you need to carry an arming sword of halberd around, which is rather frowned upon in polite company.
Yeah when I used to do Kung Fu that was how they taught it, more for fitness and they would always emphasise that in a fight, just run away. Even if you win a fight, you don’t know how badly the other person is going to get hurt, you could end up unintentionally killing someone etc. Just not worth it. They’d also teach stuff like if you’re surrounded and you can’t get away, how to open up a gap in the people and then use that to run away lol.