2 styles at once ?

[Ronin]

Ronin please.

Lets just stick to Judo. Okay ?

Fine, picky bastard.

Because Kyokushin and judo are so different, you won't be doing "too much" if you do 2 days of each per week.

I woudl suggest you try and then you can always cut it down, but at your age, you shoudl be able to handle it, no problem.

[Hannibal]

Thanks.

By the way, I'm 25.

[daGorilla]

Thanks.

By the way, I'm 25.

Yer a young whipper snapper. Of course, I've always found that older martial artists never have any sympathy for the younger ones. When we were your age, we walked twelve miles up hill (both ways), fighting ninjas and bandits, just to train at our dojos....

-daGorilla :icon_wink

[Ronin]

Yer a young whipper snapper. Of course, I've always found that older martial artists never have any sympathy for the younger ones. When we were your age, we walked twelve miles up hill (both ways), fighting ninjas and bandits, just to train at our dojos....

-daGorilla :icon_wink

While draging a VW bug with our testicles and wiping our ass with sand paper.

[katana]

Now, I know I may get reamed a bit for this, especially from Strong machine, but, in my personal experience, I have noticed that, people who start directly in MMA, become a "jack of all trades, master of none".
Now, this is not a BAD thing, BUT, I feel a certain specialisation is an asset, be it striking or grappling.
I have never met a MMA that had the hands of a boxer, or the stand up of a MT guy, or the ground work of a BJJ guy, BUT theu do have SOME of the tools of all of them.

Personally, I think the fact that my hands are so good, is because I was a trained boxer, not because I tarined boxing, there is a big difference.

Still, the jury is still out on which is "better", if better is the right word.

I am starting to disagree. I used to think this but the more I train using MMA principles the more I realize how specialzed some of the tactics are. For instance in boxing hooks are a great technique and should be used judiciously but when I'm doing MMA training I find they leave me more susceptible to takedowns versus relying more on straight punches and uppercuts. Same deal with kicks. I don't use them much because they put me in a bad position more often than not. In wrestling you try to keep your hips out to maintain your balance, etc. but in MMA it leaves you open to strikes so you want to keep them in close. In straight BJJ you may develop certain techniques in the guard that work great when the person can't hit you back. I've had to break several habits I learned in isolated martial arts training to become better at MMA sparring. I'd say that MMA is emerging as an art all of itself. Depends on what you want to do.

[amichaell]

I plan on cross training, but It'll be a bit before I start taking a second class for several reasons:

1. We're buying a house (at some point) and I want to know where I'll be traveling from before I choose a school.

2. I'm still new to MA having only about five months of experience. I'm giving myself another six months or so before adding another curriculum.

3. My current class is three (sometimes four) days a week. Each class is two hours, though I'm usually there for 2.5 hours. In another six months or so I'm cutting that in half (hours wise).

It'll be some sort of grappling, though I'm not quite sure what yet. We seem to have two good bjj schools here in town, so I'll probably go with that.

[lawdog]

I remeber the first time I got thrown, and beaten like a red-headed stepchild, by a female judoka, I still have fond memories of her....

I remember when I was 15 and a pretty good high school wrestler, there was this extremely hot, 20 yr. old, 2x national high school champion, female judoka who would consistently kick my ass. The first few times it was almost surreal, like there's no way this is actually happening.

And yes, I also have "fond memories" of her.

Hannibal,

WTF? Your Kyokushin school isn't going anywhere is it? Listen, I was lucky enough to have a club like that one, full of coaches and students who were extremely succesful at the international level. Not everybody is forunate enough to have such a resource so close to them. You will learn more at that club than you can imagine. By training with those people, you will probably learn more in a year than many judoka would learn in 3 yrs. Once a week just isn't enough when learning an entirely different style, especially when it's grappling.

Try twice a week. If training 4 days a week is too much for your worn out, old body, and you end up getting the sniffles, then you can cut back in either Kyokushin or judo. But, I'm telling you, trying to learn judo by training once a week is futile.

[lawdog]

I am starting to disagree. I used to think this but the more I train using MMA principles the more I realize how specialzed some of the tactics are. For instance in boxing hooks are a great technique and should be used judiciously but when I'm doing MMA training I find they leave me more susceptible to takedowns versus relying more on straight punches and uppercuts. Same deal with kicks. I don't use them much because they put me in a bad position more often than not. In wrestling you try to keep your hips out to maintain your balance, etc. but in MMA it leaves you open to strikes so you want to keep them in close. In straight BJJ you may develop certain techniques in the guard that work great when the person can't hit you back. I've had to break several habits I learned in isolated martial arts training to become better at MMA sparring. I'd say that MMA is emerging as an art all of itself. Depends on what you want to do.

I think this goes back to what I said before. MMA generally strips away the "low percentage" stuff, but what's low percentage for most is not necessarily low percentage for you.

Suppose you were born with a genetic pre-disposition to developing KO power in your hooks. Now, if you train for years as a boxer, you should eventually achieve that potential. If you're knocking people out with your hooks, being succeptible to a takedown is not as relevant.

However, had you only trained MMA, you may never had known or realized that knock out potential, which may have been your bread & butter.

Once again, this approach takes a lot of time, and it would seem to favor those who are starting at a younger age.

[Ronin]

I am starting to disagree. I used to think this but the more I train using MMA principles the more I realize how specialzed some of the tactics are. For instance in boxing hooks are a great technique and should be used judiciously but when I'm doing MMA training I find they leave me more susceptible to takedowns versus relying more on straight punches and uppercuts. Same deal with kicks. I don't use them much because they put me in a bad position more often than not. In wrestling you try to keep your hips out to maintain your balance, etc. but in MMA it leaves you open to strikes so you want to keep them in close. In straight BJJ you may develop certain techniques in the guard that work great when the person can't hit you back. I've had to break several habits I learned in isolated martial arts training to become better at MMA sparring. I'd say that MMA is emerging as an art all of itself. Depends on what you want to do.

Like I said, jury is out.

[katana]

I think this goes back to what I said before. MMA generally strips away the "low percentage" stuff, but what's low percentage for most is not necessarily low percentage for you.

I agree with this, but it needs to have a certain context applied. I know guys who are awesome at a Spider Guard in BJJ but it just doesn't help them become better at MMA. When you do MMA you'll eventually develop your own style that includes your own high-percentage moves that work when doing MMA style fighting.

Suppose you were born with a genetic pre-disposition to developing KO power in your hooks. Now, if you train for years as a boxer, you should eventually achieve that potential. If you're knocking people out with your hooks, being succeptible to a takedown is not as relevant.

However, had you only trained MMA, you may never had known or realized that knock out potential, which may have been your bread & butter.

I don't know if I agree with this. I think in MMA sparring you'll use what works for you. If your hook develops into a reliable weapon you'll use it but you need to understand its risks in the MMA-rules context. It may not be a good enough hook for Golden Gloves contention but may be just fine for MMA where you are looking to create an opening for one of your other allowed attacks. Again it just comes down to what kind of fighting you want to do.

Basically for me it comes down to this on cross-training. I studied many styles over the years and almost universally all the teachers advised against cross-training. They said it would be distracting, etc. If you you want to learn the full and complete intricacies of an art this may be true. But if you want to learn to be competitive in MMA you better be cross-training and you should be doing MMA sparring and not just isolated boxing, wrestling, etc.

MMA sparring is the most exhausting exercise I've ever done. It's much more tiring than wrestling, BJJ, boxing, etc. by itself in my opinion (and the opinion of very hard core wrestlers and kickboxers with whom I go to class). I think this reason alone is enough to justify a focus on MMA skills exclusively when learning to fight. It seems to me that the emergence of schools that teach just MMA is relatively new (within the last few years). We'll have to see how these new breed of fighters do in NHB to see if this approach is superior to more traditional focused training. I suspect that it will be.