Hello from Carlisle, England

Hello & welcome!

Disability or not, the challenge is for you & you alone to overcome through adaptation. Be smart, train at the appropriate pace for you.

Best of luck!
 
no,. That won't work very well, if you want to learn ma you need to go to a class, there's no way round that, i can see you have reservation, so my experience, i was three years older than you when i started, and every bit as knackered, lond term spinal injury, bad knees, frozen shoulders, high blood pressure, you have to accept, that at our age everything takes a lit longer to achieve than it did in your twenties. Once that's on board, just keep ticking off your improvements, in strengh, in mobility in flexability, 4years later, i have. The body of a reasonably fit 30year old, but unfortunately I've still got an old face.

just go and do it, find what your weak at and then work to improve that, inbetween classes,
I think you can fake it without any real training and still get really fit, you just won't have a usable skill.

Example - Jake Mace
 
I think you can fake it without any real training and still get really fit, you just won't have a usable skill.

And I think that does bother me. Well, not from a self defence point of view, because I'm never likely to need it for that.
But in sparring/competition. But I wonder how I would fare in sparring sessions, given time to learn something again. I used to enjoy that aspect of it before. One-armed sparring? I don't know, but I think I'd give it a shot.
But in the end, I think if I can do enough to make it enjoyable and engaging, then that would be enough. Perhaps it would have to be.
 
Depending on the nature of your injury, you might be able to do BJJ. Someone here posted a few vids of a BJJ guy with 1 fully functional arm and no legs.
And I think that does bother me. Well, not from a self defence point of view, because I'm never likely to need it for that.
But in sparring/competition. But I wonder how I would fare in sparring sessions, given time to learn something again. I used to enjoy that aspect of it before. One-armed sparring? I don't know, but I think I'd give it a shot.
But in the end, I think if I can do enough to make it enjoyable and engaging, then that would be enough. Perhaps it would have to be.

Well, you said you have wingchun and taekwondo right? The former is very low impact, and the only sparring you will see is chi sau which is also very low impact. Also, Chun schools don't tend to incorporate much in the way of physical fitness. On the flip side taekwondo is a young mans art/sport. Just thinking about those kicks makes my legs ache. Maybe you have better knees than I do. You certainly dont really need your hands as much as other martial arts.

Honestly for an older guy with an injury like that, BJJ would be your best bet. Low impact but a serious workout and it can be very competitive.
 
On the flip side taekwondo is a young mans art/sport. Just thinking about those kicks makes my legs ache. Maybe you have better knees than I do. You certainly dont really need your hands as much as other martial arts.

Good job I'm so young then, especially compared to you...

Oh, wait :D

Depending on the tkd style, you might 'need' hands more than you think - we certainly use them a fair amount. But yeah, nowhere near boxer (or even kickboxer) level. Even so, one (or even no) arms can be accommodated.
 
Good job I'm so young then, especially compared to you...

Oh, wait :D

Depending on the tkd style, you might 'need' hands more than you think - we certainly use them a fair amount. But yeah, nowhere near boxer (or even kickboxer) level. Even so, one (or even no) arms can be accommodated.
How old were you when you started TKD?
 
I'll have to have a look at BJJ then, not really paid it any attention before, so can't comment yet.
You can't do chi sau with one arm, can you?!
 
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Hi all, from the wet and windy north of England.
I'm going to be feeling my way a little tentatively here for a while I think.

Some background and details:

I'm 52, and have a couple of disabilities collected by throwing myself off of motorcycles over the years! These disabilities are largely why I've joined this forum, to see if anyone out there can give me some quite specific advice to help me develop something in martial arts practice.
As a youngster, I tried Karate and Judo, but found I didn't click with them. Then I stumbled on a local Lau Gar club run by one Neville Wray. I loved it, but due to leaving school and joining the Royal Air Force, I didn't stick with it for long, although I had another brief flirtation with another Lau Gar club; then got posted to Germany, so couldn't attend that one anymore either.
And that was my last involvement with the martial arts, something like 30 years ago now, because then I had a very severe motorcycle accident, which left me with, among other injuries, a smashed left shoulder and arm.
I still ride motorcycles (when I can afford to!), but just thought "what's the point?" when it came to martial arts. I think my view on that has changed now though.

To cut a long story short, I have recently found myself in dire need of getting fit again (which is actually going pretty well, although I'm still in the very early stages of that), and while putting together a workout to get started with, I found myself using my memories of training with the aforementioned Neville as a kind of guide to a training philosophy. Couldn't help introducing some stretching and even basic techniques that I could remember, so I started to wonder if it was worth me trying to get back into it, disabilities and all.

Well, I think that's long-winded enough as an intro, so I'll sign out for now. Hope to get into some discussion at a later time, and will definitely have lots of questions, and be looking for some inspiration.

Bye for now

LastGasp

Welcome to the forum. Thanks for your candor. What each person defines as disabilities is and should be different for each person. I think it is important not to listen too much to the masses and mainstream media to define ourselves. Getting back into a workout routine again will hopefully help you find yourself and search deeper into Neville's philosophy.
Best of luck and keep us in the loop.
 
Interesting.
But how much of that kind of thing can the one-armed martial artist really learn? I still think WC isn't really ideal for me.
What I've also been wondering, is what kind of one-armed techniques could I use for a block or counter using my right arm to deal with an opponents right-arm attack, leading to me performing a strike or other finishing move...scratches chin thoughtfully
Well, I could maybe come up with one or two, but I'd really need to work hard to compensate for the loss of that left arm.
But that's why if I were to actually want to develop a proper fighting skill, it seems to me that one discipline is not going to be enough. Unless....I've said elsewhere that Jun Fan seems to fit in that I lead with my strong side - this allows me to protect my weak arm somewhat, and also the fast in-out attacks would leave me exposed for the least time. Not that there're any Jun Fan classes anywhere near me so it's a moot point really.
There's always evasion - run away! lol
 
Interesting.
But how much of that kind of thing can the one-armed martial artist really learn? I still think WC isn't really ideal for me.
What I've also been wondering, is what kind of one-armed techniques could I use for a block or counter using my right arm to deal with an opponents right-arm attack, leading to me performing a strike or other finishing move...scratches chin thoughtfully
Well, I could maybe come up with one or two, but I'd really need to work hard to compensate for the loss of that left arm.
But that's why if I were to actually want to develop a proper fighting skill, it seems to me that one discipline is not going to be enough. Unless....I've said elsewhere that Jun Fan seems to fit in that I lead with my strong side - this allows me to protect my weak arm somewhat, and also the fast in-out attacks would leave me exposed for the least time. Not that there're any Jun Fan classes anywhere near me so it's a moot point really.
There's always evasion - run away! lol
?? Why dont you put some time in to rehabilitating , building up your " weak arm", rather than do what you can do to e,cess, , that's what I was saying about your excessive stationary jogging, you've got a bad arm and back to sort out, do that first, Or have you only got one arm ? In which case sort the back out
 
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?? Why dont you put some time in to rehabilitating , building up your " weak arm", rather than do what you can do to e,cess, , that's what I was saying about your excessive stationary jogging, you've got a bad arm and back to sort out, do that first, Or have you only got one arm ? In which case sort the back out

The back's improving. Don't quite know what you mean by sorting out my arm? Please explain.
Going to excess? That only happened because at the time I injured myself (I take it that's what you're referring to?), my body gave me no indication I was overdoing it. Nor did it feel like I'd overdone it until much later. DOMS, remember? DELAYED :rolleyes:
 
The back's improving. Don't quite know what you mean by sorting out my arm? Please explain.
Going to excess? That only happened because at the time I injured myself (I take it that's what you're referring to?), my body gave me no indication I was overdoing it. Nor did it feel like I'd overdone it until much later. DOMS, remember? DELAYED :rolleyes:
You have an arm that does work very well, I'm trying to save you some hard lessions, but your not for listening, if you keep going as you are all the niggling injuries will build up and you grind to a halt.

After 3months of enthusiastic exercise I had to have two months oFf , to let it all heal, which put me back to about month one, and meant I lost 4months of improvements, but he'll carry on jogging on the spot
 
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