What Are The Different Types Of Martial Arts?
Let’s face it: most people today are not physically fit. They’re either sitting in front of the computer all day or lying on their backs staring at their phones. That was me, nearly 2 years ago. I always thought of exercising and getting my act together for health’s sake.
However, doing martial arts to change all that, has been a revelation. Due to the volumes of Kung Fu movies we’ve all seen, it just seems like a fighting art.
Different types of martial arts can help you live a healthier lifestyle for body and mind as well. Not only does it train your body to fight, but helps you reach a higher level of physical fitness.
[toc]Different Types Of Martial Arts Styles
Believe it or not, there’s a lot more to martial arts than kicking and punching. However, if you’ve seen films starring Jackie Chan, you’ll know it’s a lot more than just that.
It’s about using your whole body as a living weapon. And that requires discipline, fitness, and flexibility. Hence, it involves making your body more agile, more capable, and much stronger.
Martial arts typically don’t involve using weapons, but some can employ them.
There is no best or most effective martial arts style for all situations. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. It just depends on what you’re looking for.
Here are a few examples of the different techniques martial artists commonly use in their fighting styles.
- Striking
Striking involves hitting your opponent and avoiding your opponent’s hits. This includes punching, kicking, blocking, hitting, etc. This is the most common type of martial arts style seen in films and fighting tournaments.
- Grappling
Grappling is all about rendering your opponent vulnerable and powerless. It’s about knocking them to the ground and achieving a dominant position.
- Throwing
Throwing and grappling usually overlap. Usually, throwing involves takedowns and slams more than grappling does. For instance, you’ll see a lot more throws in Judo rather than in professional wrestling.
- Mixed Techniques
Mixed martial arts are all the rage today. They involve combining different styles of fighting. This can include a striking style such as Boxing or Muay Thai combined with a grappling style such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Jeet Kune Do, invented by Bruce Lee, is an example of combining traditional techniques with modern ones.
- Low-Impact
Low-Impact styles are great for physical fitness and learning breathing techniques. These styles usually began with fighting in mind, but have evolved over the years.
Striking Styles
Boxing
Boxing is a very ancient sport, with the earliest depictions of fights from the 3rd Millennium BC in Iraq. Class Vedic Scripts like the Ramayana also reference boxing.
Modern fist fighting and boxing started in London, England in the 16th century.
Today, it is one of the most popular sports in the world. The fight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao in 2015 generated over $400 million in pay-per-view revenue. And the Rocky franchise is still going strong after all these years. And the sport has birthed legends like Muhammad Ali and Rocky Marciano.
The sport mainly involves punching the opponent above the belt and defending in return. No punches below-the-belt. And no kicking or using your feet to strike.
Pros and Cons
The sport requires a fair amount of agility and strength to master.
Boxing requires a strict fitness routine and entails strength training and weight control. Boxing can be a particularly lethal sport. Thousands have died in the ring; an estimated 1500 based on records. Hence, it’s important to take care when pursuing this sport professionally.
Krav Maga
Krav Maga is a fighting style specifically developed for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). It means ‘contact combat’ in Hebrew. The striking style is a mix of Wrestling, Boxing, Aikido, Judo, and Karate.
Hungarian-Israeli Martial Artist Imre Lichtenfield developed this style. His training as a boxer and wrestler was useful when defending Jewish people against fascist violence in the 1930s. He started providing training for the art in the 1940s.
Today, Krav Maga tournaments occur within the IDF, and they emphasize aggression alongside defensive maneuvers.
Pros and Cons
Krav Maga is very useful if you need to defend yourself against aggressive people. It also emphasizes discipline. But, there are very few legitimate instructors outside the IDF. Some schools even offer a two-week training course to become a master.
Muay Thai
Muay Thai (meaning Thai boxing) is a combat sport in Thailand, called the ‘art of the eight limbs’ for its use of fists, elbows, knees, and shins for striking. An 18th century Siamese fighter named Nai Khanomtom‘s exploits helped popularize Muay Thai. The Burmese army captured him and allowed him to fight his way out. Along the way, he defeated ten Burmese contenders.
Pros and Cons
Muay Thai can heighten your pain threshold, make your body more flexible, and increase your muscle mass. It can be quite violent. Most common injuries include fractured ribs, carpal bones, nose bones, digits, etc. Most injuries in Muay Thai are soft tissue injuries.
Karate
Karate, along with Kung Fu, is probably one of the best known Martial Arts. Karate started in Okinawa, Japan, during the rule of the Ryukyu Kingdom in the 14th century. No one can point to an exact year, but banning weapons in the 15th century may have contributed to its development.
It involves punching, kicking, knee striking and elbow striking. Well-known practitioners of the technique include Sean Connery and Dolph Lundgren. Professional fighters include Andy Hug, Hajime Kazumi, and Kenji Midori.
Pros and Cons
Karate, like most martial arts, fosters unity. It helps people that train and fight together. However, the techniques used are typically limited to point-scoring and not self-defense.
Kung Fu
Kung Fu is a Chinese Martial Art. It emphasizes self-defense, patience, and energy. In China, it can refer to any practice that requires study, skill, and effort to master. The most common meaning of the term in Western Culture is the Shaolin Kung Fu or Wing Chun Kung Fu. According to Chinese tradition, the art existed even before the building of the Shaolin Temple in the 3rd century AD.
Famous practitioners of the sport include legendary martial artist Bruce Lee, and action film superstars Jackie Chan and Jet Li.
Pros and Cons
As written above, Kung Fu has a lot of advantages. It emphasizes effort, patience, and the acquisition of knowledge. Kung Fu has several health benefits including keeping a low body fat, emphasizing healthy eating, and strengthening the immune system.
Kung Fu has not evolved as quickly as other styles, possibly making it obsolete when tested against modern fighting techniques. Bruce Lee developed Jeet-Kune-Do because he found Kung Fu too restrictive.
Tae Kwan Do
Tae Kwon Do is a Korean Martial Art, developed as a combative sport in the 40s and 50s. The name comes from fighting schools called Kwans in Seoul which opened up after the Japanese occupation during World War 2.
Tae Kwan Do is a combination of many indigenous Korean martial arts traditions. These include Taekkyon, Subak, and Gwonbeop. It emphasizes head-height kicks and jumping as well as fast kicking techniques.
Grandmasters of the sport include Lee, Eun Woo, and Ahn Kyongwon.
Pros and Cons
Tae Kwan Do teaches you to identify pressure points on an opponent’s body; hence, it could be great for self-defense. However, in close quarters, people have identified weaknesses. For instance, since it barely focuses on punching, there’s very little use for your hands in a fight.
Grappling Styles
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu focuses on grappling and ground fighting. It’s one of the most popular martial art styles today.
Japanese martial artist Geo Omori began the first school in Brazil in 1909. The sport emphasizes groundwork and its application to fighting. The main foundation is that a smaller, weaker person can defend themselves from a physically superior opponent.
Famous practitioners include Helio Gracie and Carlos Gracie, known as the chief developers of the sport. Many members of their family have gone on to dominate martial arts tournaments.
Pros and Cons
Since Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu emphasizes groundwork, it doesn’t matter if you’re tall or short, fat or thin. Hence, it’s a great sport for all body types and people of all ages can train it.
Like most grappling styles, you won’t learn how to punch or kick.
Russian Sambo
This is a Soviet martial art developed in the 1920s by the Red Army and the NKVD. Taught to soldiers and servicemen, and intended to be the best meld of all fighting techniques. Viktor Spiridonov and Vasili Oschepkov pioneered this style. The latter derived the fighting style by studying Judo from its inventor, Jigoro Kano. Oschepkov’s system was more brutal while Spiridonov’s was less so due to his physical injuries from WWI.
The most famous Sambo fighters include Fedor Emelianenko and Alexander Pushnitsa, both of whom have won several titles.
Pros and Cons
Sambo is a lot less limited than other martial arts in that it incorporates so many fighting styles. Moves like the leg sweep, scissor takedown, and calf crusher, help athletes transition easily to MMA. Hence, if you want to fight professionally, you should seriously consider this one.
Just like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, there is little to no emphasis on striking and kicking.
Wrestling
Wrestling is one of the most popular sports around the world. It includes sumo wrestling in Japan, Kushti/Pehlwani in South Asia, wrestling in western countries, and even Shuai Jiao in China. The origins of wrestling are ancient. The sport goes back nearly 15,000 years. The Epic of Gilgamesh even mentions the sport and old Babylonian cave drawings also describe the sport.
The sport emphasizes pinning down opponents and knocking them down rather than striking. It also emphasizes footwork and strength.
Famous wrestlers include Wang Xu from China, the Great Gama from India, and Ibrahim Moustafa from Egypt.
Pros and Cons
Known more for groundwork and pinning down opponents, there is very little striking. It might not be ideal for close-quarters combat. But, the sport is great for building muscle mass and for weight loss.
Throwing Styles
Judo
If you’ve seen the John Wick movies, you’ve seen Judo in action. The main character, John Wick uses it to defeat the bad guys.
Kano Jigoro created Judo in 1882 in Japan. The sport emphasizes chokeholds, joint locks, and throws rather than strikes.
Famous Judo champions include Ryoko Tani and Tadahiro Nomura. Both champions have won Olympic Gold medals in multiple championships.
Pros and Cons
Judo teaches endurance, static and dynamic balance and also helps to increase agility and speed. It’s a great sport for developing physical strength and physical health. It also helps to make the body more flexible. However, Judo doesn’t allow the hitting of the face or any strikes, especially during a tournament.
Aikido
This is the martial art made popular by Steven Seagal. Every time you see him fighting, that’s Aikido. He’s even a licensed instructor.
Ueshiba Morihei, a Japanese martial artist, developed this style based on his life experiences.
The word Aikido has several meanings, including ‘joining together’, ‘meeting’, or ‘reciprocity’, or ‘the way of the harmonious spirit’. As a martial art, it emphasizes turning an opponent’s attack momentum against him/her. It involves a lot of joint locks and body throws.
Pros and Cons
Like most grappling and throwing styles, this too is not very useful in close-quarters combat if you need to punch or kick. It’s great for defense in open combat, but its minimal offensive emphasis may leave you open to attack.
Mixed Styles
Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)
Mixed Martial Arts refers to a combat sport which involves a combination of techniques from different traditional martial arts. These include striking, throwing, grappling, etc. The sport gained popularity in the 1990s and is currently one of the biggest draws in sports. It has a younger audience and is one of the fastest-growing sports streamed online.
Famous fighters include Georges St-Pierre, Ronda Rousey, and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Pros and Cons
MMA can help develop your body and your core strength. It’s an extremely demanding and intense sport. It also has several other benefits including relieving stress.
However, there have been eight fatalities due to injuries sustained in MMA matches. However, this puts it as one of the safer lethal sports compared to boxing and auto racing and even running.
Low-Impact Styles
Tai Chi
Tai Chi comes from the philosophy of the forces of Yin and Yang (darkness and light). It emphasizes balance, meditation, and defense training more than fighting. While originally developed as a martial art, people tend to practice it as a meditative art.
There is no exact origin known, though Taoist and Buddhist monasteries claim to be the originators. Even then, only legendary tales of the art exist rather than historical records. The most widely accepted origin is from Zhang Sanfeng, a Taoist from China.
Pros and Cons
Tai Chi has various health benefits. It can improve cognitive ability, help relieve stress, and even increase your lifespan. As a fighting style, it might be ineffective against modern techniques. A very well-publicized fight between MMA fighter Xu Xiaodong and Tai Chi master Wei Li lasted 10 seconds. Wei Li lost.
The backlash was so bad that Xu went into hiding after the match. Chinese officials and the public saw the loss as an insult to their traditions.
Which Type Of Martial Art Is the Best?
There is no right or wrong answer here. There are many types of martial arts and it depends on what you are looking for.
Are you interested in self-defense, fighting, competing in tournaments, physical fitness, or a combination of these things?
One thing for sure is that martial arts are a huge cultural tradition in many countries.
The main benefit of learning a martial art is that you can learn a useful, potentially life-saving skill while also improving your physical and mental health.
You don’t have to stick with the first type you choose. If you don’t like it, try another one!