How to Learn Martial Arts

[Heretic]

Originally Posted by DoctorTony

Has anyone ever heard of or uses Target Focused Training (TFT)?
Please bare with me, I am not a Martial Artist, but I think it is a form of Tai Kwan Do and JuJitzu (spelling on these?).
Uses a lot of the Yang energy.

Thanks for this thread.

TFT seems like another close combat street savvy art as advertised. It relies a lot on Chin na, or a lot of grappling, locks and throws. Chin na is awesome and is in just about every art to some degree. I DO have to tell you that I don’t like going to the ground on the street. It just opens you up too much because you can’t move out of the way if needed. The best block to any strike is simply not being there. If there were 3 guys on me, the last thing I want to do is go to the ground and wrestle with one while the other two are just waiting for a chance to hurt me.

The same goes for kicks, no matter how good I am at them, I would not use them in multi-attacks and probably not on the street at all unless it was a finishing move. They ARE devastating though and it is hard for the novice and even the intermediate practitioner to abandon them. There is a big argument on what does or does not work on the streets, and many people usually blame the art and not the practitioner concerning effectiveness.

Tae Kwon Do is heavily reliant on foot work and even a black belt can get owned on the street because it takes a very long time to become resilient, and learning some one footed stances would really increase your effectiveness. A kick is vastly more powerful than a punch in terms of physics, and I have also seen some very well trained practitioners of Tae Kwon Do who can handle multi-attacks in an impressive way by using feet alone.

I think a lot of good arts get a bad reputation as street arts simply because they take so long to learn, and most of the people who try this stuff on the streets are no better than intermediate performers of that art, so it is no surprise that people label them as bad street arts.

Most people who have mastered an art simply would not get in a street fight, unless they like to fight, and look forward to these situations. I can’t explain why but to tell you that there is a world of things you can do phycologically to play on your attacker’s fear, once you have conquered your own. There are so many other techniques that can be performed that are far removed from physical harm that will let the enemy know that they better not pursue an altercation with you, but this doesn’t always work of course.