Why you started taking martial arts

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rob_Broad
  • Start date Start date

Why did you start taking martial arts

  • You were scared of being beat up

  • You beat up and scared it would happen again

  • You were beat up and wanted revenge

  • Saw it in the movies and thought it would be fun

  • Fitness

  • Other (please post why)


Results are only viewable after voting.
I beat up others and began practicing jujitsu to temper my anger. When I began this study, 1952, I was only a youngster and had no idea what it was until years later. It was Judo and jujitsu I suppose but back then there was no contest that I know of.

Actually, I joned a Judo/jutisu class by mistake. Then I practiced JUdo for four decades. Hey, that was 50 years ago!!!!
 
Now that was a series!!! My favorite is "Trial", hands down. I don't know about anyone else, but those spinning heel kicks,WOW... Who can forget the cresent kick in the park. Hey that sounds like a song! Just could'nt resist throwin my 2 cents in. :D
 
I always played sports but had a terrible temper. As a kid it's not so bad but as you get older it just doesn't look good when you're one of the smaller kids on the school team and you're on the ice pounding a larger rival team's player's head off the ice with both hands like you're trying to break a coconut. People complain. It didn't help that I had a big mouth either.

By about 14 I had moved to a different city after my parents divorced and my mom was called to the school after 2 guys tried to steal my lunch money and I beat them both unconscious with a pipe I pulled out of the ground by the smoking pit. So it was either I shape up or get shipped out of the school and god knows what else. I did a small suspension and sweated the threats of lawsuits out.

My Dad was absent and my grandfather stepped in. On our monthly visits to see him he started to teach me boxing. He told me that if I wasn't good I wouldn't be allowed to continue. I absoluted idolized my grandfather and started to straighten up right away. I won't say I was perfect, but I was at least 85% better and I got through high school. I went away to university and worked on my own with it as my grandfather got sick and eventually passed away.

One day I watched a demo of a martial arts school. Before this I thought most of them to be faggy, tap dancing, fruitcakes. But this had some real power and I could see the application right away and how it fit in with boxing. It was an american kenpo school. I liked boxing but at this school we got to beat the bejeezus out of each other with almost no padding and all over. I really dug that. As time progressed I searched out more intense people and schools.

Since then I have been lucky enough to find some kewl stuff here and there and enjoy myself. Close to 8 years ago I met my wife and she pretty much keeps me in check. Martial arts was a way of learning to focus myself and my wife has made me realize that I have a lot in my life to be thankful for and I need to stay out of trouble to enjoy it. In fact she knows when I don't get to work out I get "wrangy" as she calls it and actually orders me to go to the dojo/Gym to work out.

I've gone from fighting at the drop of a dime, (if that, I once fought a guy in a convienence store because he bought the last slim jim) to walking away. I'm really proud of how far I've come.
 
The reason I originally started was because, as a child I had a real problem with authority. I used to rebel at every chance I got. Anyhoo, after a rather serious altercation with one of my high school teachers, I was given an ultimatum. I had to shape up or I was out of there. The school councellor suggested to my parents that I learn Judo for the discipline. I did that for 6 months, then quit. I didn't do martial arts again seriously until I was 26. I developed type 1 diabetes, but waited so long before getting treatment, that it nearly killed me. I got down to about 90 pounds. I took up TKD, and loved it. It made me feel alive, and some of my former strength returned. Eventually, I got sick of not being allowed to do real stuff, like punch the head, or catch the foot if the kicker was too slow. I had seen the movie Perfect Weapon, and as if by magic, an American Kenpo school opened up nearby, around 6 months later. That was about 9 years ago, and since then the hardest thing I've had to do is to convince the missus that there is nothing wrong with training 6 days a week, and then accepting her ultimatum of 3 nights a week. The rest as they say is history.
--Dave
 
That's one thing I forgot to mention. I've always had a quick, sometimes violent temper. After I started serious training, my parents commented on how much my temper had improved. I wonder if they picked up the irony; if they had let me train when I was younger, they may have spared themselves years of my tantrums :)

Cthulhu
 
About 6 years ago, I sat down and made a list of things I would like to accomplish in my life. Just sitting and dreaming, I decided I would like to have a "black belt", convinced that this was an ultimate accomplishment in martial arts. I searched the yellow pages, looking for aikido, cause that's what that cool Seagal guy did. I ended up trying a class at Renegade's school.

He let me swing a stick, hard, at people on my 1st day, and I've been hooked ever since. I also wanted it to replace the Stairmaster in my strict workout schedule. Pretty soon, I had gone from 4 days lifting weights and 2 at arnis class to an occasional visit to the gym, and 6 days of FMA... While I don't think Modern Arnis would be my 1st recommendation for fitness or weight loss, it's added much more than that to my life!

Hey Gou - "SNAP INTO IT!!" :D

Kyle - Please tell your story...Texas Ranger and all that!!!
 
I started training in the martial arts for self-defense. I just want to be ready when something jumps off. Hey, like Sun Tzu said, "The more you sweat in peace, the less you'll bleed in war" - I don't want to bleed. :)
 
Thanks everybody for participating in this poll. I got a much better response than I expected.
 
For me it was a childhood dream, IÂ’m a rabbi and a in a sense a kabalist but from very early age I really wanted to learn karate so now I have a great position that allows me to go literally across the street to Mr. Joe Palanzo place and train!
And I absolute love it!
 
hmmmmm i almost did not post a reply here, but.... i dont see any other postings from women and well, there needs to be some balance at times lol.....


The reason i started training was that I was nearly killed a number of times as a child and I faced rape and abuse daily throughout my childhood experiences. i grew up in down town los Angeles during the early 60s into the early 80s, i spent the first 19 years of my life fighting to survive being rased by a very sick and demented evil famley, living as well then with the gangs in down town la, and trying to stay alive on the streets.

When i was 9 years old i faced the knife to closely this was not the first time I was raped, and cut with the blade, though i got away and saved my life because of my survival core from the first 9 years of my life, this time i got fed up and took charge of my life and started training when i could,

I had no money for classes or learning, so i stared sneaking into what I was told latter were JKD classes. though at the time it was not fully being called JKD and the concepts were still very new and still being developed, but No one really noticed the street rat girl of 9 almost 10 that was hiding out in boys clothing back then. i would come by and either watch or I would train when I could sort of take the class un noticed.

I did not have money or guidance, but i trained when i could and where i could. Learning both the realty and then what i could do to protect myself. It turned into a life style and life plan..... By the time i was a young woman i started training more and learning police tactics and full weapons training. Then I started body guarding professionally when i was 17.

My life throughout has been filled with one kind of training or another in either, self defense and awareness, street fighting tactics, weapons training, martial arts " i.e. JKD-FMA-and military based Aki arts, military hand to hand combat training, and the protection of others from a realty based core.

Over the years though, i have trained in many arts and in a wide range of areas for self-defense and awareness. I continued my training in FMA, JKD, and weapons training off and on from early childhood.... Then when i was 19 i got married, my father in law was a WWII Filipino war VET. In addition, of course had his own sort of fma styling... so my art and training contuned when it could...

Now one of the things I do, is teach victims of abuse, rape, assualt, domestic violance, and childhood victimization: self defense- awarness and healing though eastern concepts and holistic healing.

Ms. J bows deeply :asian:

And then says a prayer of thanks to god for Sifu Lee and Guro InosantoÂ… Both of these men helped perserve and save my life many times because of their early influances and latter teachings. Though I searously doubt that they will ever know thisÂ…Â…
 
A friend of my started, and I just tagged along... and I've been into it eversince.
 
I think we need a "Wanted to beat others up more effeciently" catagory.:shrug:
 
LOL..... easy to find people that want to be beaton up, just start hainging out at some of the Domanation Clubs in NY or Philly....


hahaha....

Ms. J.....
 
I'm game! Let's go! You can be my date Mz. J! Bring your can of whoop-***! Show me around town.
:rofl:
 
You dont need to date me to be shown around town,

Hell i think we should be capitalists here, lets see now i have been to some of the worlds best red light districts globally, what one should we plan an expedition too? Or should we do a “ Around the World WhoopAss Training Camp”

Flat Fee, once in a lifetime training camp based on real life Scenario training.

Bangkok
Hong Kong
Philly
New York
The Netherlands
Soul Korea
San Francisco
Istanbul Turkey
London
Los Angeles


We could do this like a training camp;

first, we choose what country and district to go to first and in what order.

Then we give you a list of gear to bring with

Then you will have a list of techniques you will have to learn and demonstrate

In each location you will have to do 3 hours realty based scenario training and testing

Then as organizers you and I take pictures for the book.:cheers:

We sell book with story and pics wile everyone else gets covered with stick welts, bruses and blood..........

Oh man i am so bad sometimes lolol

Ms. J...

Ps, the above is one of the many small hazards of a chick that hangs out with dudes for fun her whole life and did it all over the world.........


:samurai:
 
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