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The flinch reaction is a nervous system reaction to a stimulus in order to protect a portion of the body inherently felt to be at risk. When your nervous system is repeatedly overridden (for example, when we repeatedly stretch past the point of basic resistance) the body relaxes and the signal to fire that reflex is no longer sent under that stimulus.
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Training Martial Arts Without Coaching is Not Recommended
I came to the same conclusion you did in this answer on Stack Exchange Fitness: skill development without a partner and without a knowledgeable instructor is very hard, slow, and prone to producing bad habits instead of ability, so you're better off becoming a beastly physical specimen instead. Your ...
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It will be pretty difficult to do Judo alone. You can practice kung fu or any other martial art with forms (pre-arranged patterns) by yourself though. If you don't already know the martial art, though, you're setting yourself up for failure. Save yourself and any future teacher a few headaches and don't try to learn from DVDs or Youtube.
Don't get me ...
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Firstly I really apologise for this round about answer.
To train as a martial artist really requires that you seek out proper instruction from qualified, competent instructors. They should lead you through the appropriate exercises based on your physical fitness and ability.
That said, any exercise that causes sharp pain, dull continuous pain or that ...
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Running seems like it is the thing for you: You can start now and improve your techniques by going to the gym to find a trainer, going to a run club, and reading books and magazines on running. You can also get a whistle and blow it (while running to a safe place) to attract attention to your predicament.
Martial arts take long time to learn. Self defence ...
answered Jun 24 '16 at 18:40
Sardathrion - against SE abuse
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Protecting yourself from bullying has more to do about confidence than about martial arts. Learning martial arts will raise your confidence, but coming across as unsure and uncertain, even if you're a grandmaster, will still get you bullied.
Because of that reason, the style of kungfu matters less. The club you go to and your trainer matters more. Make sure ...
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Source: Black Belt in Ju Jitsu
First, I completely agree that learning to fight won't fix your problem; it'll probably just get you into trouble. However, learning a martial art is a great way to build confidence and THAT can definitely help with the bullying (speaking from experience here). One thing to note though, is that NO martial art is "fast and ...
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Okay well if you do wing chun that is great, so do i! Yes it is definitely worth practicing alone. Here are some of the things i do:
Get a 3 section wall bag and a wet towel (with somewhere to hang it). Assuming you have correct form on your sun fist punch, you should practice punching the center of a wet towel with out any water flicking back onto you. And ...
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Practice on your own is pretty much an unavoidable element of the martial way past a certain point.
Other than developing your body through conditioning exercise (Bruce Lee's plyometrics are a good starting point), you can develop your body through breathing exercises (the Systema DVDs about breathing are pretty interesting and insightful).
It is important ...
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It all comes back to the question: What are you trying to do? If you're training in sword fighting, then use a sword. Just repeat the same sword cut over and over again. Try to go as fast as you can without losing accuracy. Repeat.
In some amount of time, your forearms will tire. When they tire so much that either you're starting to slow down or you're ...
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You have two requests here.
First, you can learn to defend yourself against an average person relatively quickly - just as much as you can learn basic first aid, relatively quickly. Whether it will be enough or not really depends on the luck of the draw of the situation you face. Going to train once or twice a week, for a few months, in a school aimed ...
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Honestly, the best thing you can probably start with is not going to be a martial art at all. Instead, try the following:
Strength Training
One of the biggest culprits in back pain, knee pain, etc can actually be corrected by increasing the strength of the surrounding muscles. I had hip issues and years and years of martial arts did not fix my hip issues, ...
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The best thing I found was to try and sit in seiza more often. This helps to get used to the position and will also help you to find your "sweet spot". For me that is with my weight on top of my feet with the ankles pushing out.
Outside of just sitting in seiza try to stretch out quads before and after as that also helps with position. - Disclaimer my ...
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Disclaimer: I am a beginner in both judo and physical culture. My views on strength, conditioning, and technique should be viewed with skepticism.
You're right that training once a week is insufficient. Most people won't see much progress in either physical condition or skills at less than two days a week minimum. I'll address solutions in the context of ...
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stslavik has the right idea. You need to dampen your current reaction so you can substitute another.
Martial Arts hoodoo talk:
You flinch because your mind gets caught on the idea of being hurt. If you can still your
mind, your reactions will become more in line with your intent.
For me the thing that's helped most is visualization. As stslavik ...
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Stop planning your eventual wall of black belts and go get a blue belt in BJJ or a brown belt in judo or join a SAMBO school or join a wrestling club. Worry about integrating your grappling into your striking after you have some grappling skill.
Try a class at each of the grappling schools in your area, pick the one with the highest quality teachers and ...
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Your option to learn new things is pretty limited.
Forms have some, limited value
Since you've mentioned kung fu as one of the directions you might go, there's plenty of video online of various forms and lots of books to back it up that you can do. This might help you develop leg strength and coordination, but your options for learning how it flows/...
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TL;DR
No, it's not essential. Full splits are an impressive display of flexibility, but few martial arts include them as anything other than a nifty party trick or something for exhibitions.
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There are two important points to consider:
Full splits are not essential in many martial arts systems. Kicking itself may be secondary. The motivation behind full splits is often high kicking, which is high-risk in combat. See Low kicks vs high kicks in street fight.
No one expects beginning students to have full splits. If your martial arts school ...
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You can't actually "harden" soft tissue through conditioning. You can:
A) increase the muscle strength and density (though strength training), which gives you better ability to absorb/resist hits
B) condition yourself to work through the pain and numbness by regularly taking thigh hits.
Otherwise, it comes to do avoiding the hit, or doing some form of ...
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It doesnt count as experience. This is mostly due to the fact that the extra knowledge you have gained hasn't been tested and played with, which in it self could be dangerous should you rely on it. Be honest and state the number of years actively training.
The improved knowledge is a good thing but without having a chance to apply it it would be like ...
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Fitness for martial arts doesn't mean just strength or aerobic capacity. It also requires flexibility and agility. Please don't ignore stretching--both in order to be better, and also to train safer. Injuries often inhibit, even preclude, eager training. (Said by the guy who's not trained seriously for a month while nursing a shoulder injury.)
When I moved ...
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I see no problem in training on the beach as long as the sand is dry, clean (no rubbish), relatively plain (no bumpiness) and fine (it adapts better to the impact, same reason why it should be dry).
It might be slightly harder than a mat, but it's far from dangerous. It might even improve ukemi by 'punishing' bad posture or lack of tension. Modern mats are ...
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Learn to walk away…
Your problem is that you get angry: stop doing that.
Anger management classes and/or techniques should be your first step. Your second step should be to learn about de-escalation techniques. Finally, a trip to no nonsense self defence is needed -- especially the notes on "street fighters". All these will help you not get into those ...
answered Sep 13 '16 at 14:58
Sardathrion - against SE abuse
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From the definition of experience:
The knowledge or skill acquired by a period of practical experience of something, especially that gained in a particular profession.
By that definition, your two years hiatus from martial arts should not count as experience regardless of the amount of time you fantasied about martial arts.
In addition, years of ...
answered Mar 7 '17 at 10:04
Sardathrion - against SE abuse
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Is a master always required to gain mastery over this martial art?
Yes. If you try really hard you could get some basic ability yourself (from books, videos etc.), but to gain anything approaching mastery you need good instruction (and other skilled people to practice with). The simpler the style is technically the more you can teach yourself, so ...
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Like Sardathrion said, Cardio is very important. Stretching is also vital, I've tweaked my planting knee because I can't split my legs far enough apart. There are a number of very good books on Amazon about martial arts stretching and exercises.
I know some people who self trained them selves through books, like Bruce Lee's Tao of Jeet Kune Do. But honestly ...
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"Meditation, breathing, or visualization" practice will not help with what is essentially a failure of physicality and technique. Technique usually improves with in-class practice, but physicality requires out-of-class work to develop for most adults who are not genetically gifted.
You must attain a basic level of athleticism--that is, physical strength, ...
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You need to work on this enough to lose all the superfluous tension in your body.
If you really want to work on this, then just do standing practice. Stand, feet approximately shoulder-width apart, and then scan your body in horizontal slices (along the sagittal plane) feeling for tension. Go from your head to your toes. I would recommend trying to limit ...
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Your options as a college club are:
Share what each member knows
Find a coach or teacher
Be a thoroughly mediocre "fight club"
I recommend avoiding (3). Learning from online resources is hard and not recommended. Either accept that the styles you'll learn are the styles that each of your (possibly flaky, deranged, drama-bringing) fellow students brings to ...
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