chrismay101
Green Belt
Is it possible to train in two martial arts and put your all in to both or should it be one at a time?
2 X martial Arts??
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Just as possible as it is to take 2 course in different subjects at school. Or to play two different sports.
Of course you can if you really put your mind and spirit into all of it.
Xue Sheng
All weight is underside
Yes, if you have the time to dedicate to both.
ArmorOfGod
Senior Master
You can, but I doubt you would get to excel in one or the other.
There are so many conflicts in styles. For example, tkd kicks are totally different than the way that I teach (modern karate). Olympic tkd teaches to keep the hands down by the sides while you kick and never to punch the face. Our style teaches to keep the hands by your face (like a boxer) and you can punch anywhere while sparring.
If you took those two styles, you would have a conflict of interests.
Then there are forms/kata/poomse. If you took two different styles, you would have to learn double the amount at a time where you are trying to digest what one style is teaching you.
Also, what if one teacher told you to block one way and the other teacher taught you to NEVER block that way because he thinks that way is wrong. Which way should you choose? Should you do it one way in one school and the other way in the other school? That is far too confusing for a new martial arts student.
Ultimately, I would tell someone to stick to a good style for a few years and get a solid foundation before trying another style.
AoG
There are so many conflicts in styles. For example, tkd kicks are totally different than the way that I teach (modern karate). Olympic tkd teaches to keep the hands down by the sides while you kick and never to punch the face. Our style teaches to keep the hands by your face (like a boxer) and you can punch anywhere while sparring.
If you took those two styles, you would have a conflict of interests.
Then there are forms/kata/poomse. If you took two different styles, you would have to learn double the amount at a time where you are trying to digest what one style is teaching you.
Also, what if one teacher told you to block one way and the other teacher taught you to NEVER block that way because he thinks that way is wrong. Which way should you choose? Should you do it one way in one school and the other way in the other school? That is far too confusing for a new martial arts student.
Ultimately, I would tell someone to stick to a good style for a few years and get a solid foundation before trying another style.
AoG
It's a question of synergy and diminishing returns. At some point you'll have enough skill that putting in an extra hour won't give you as much as an hour spent on something else. Of course, at other points in your development putting in an hour on something else will decrease your total effectiveness.
There also no systems that are good at everything. None. Zero. Zip. I don't care what your sifu or sensei told you. Everything has specialties, and everything has deficiencies. If you decide the deficiencies are serious enough it's a good idea to find something to plug the holes. If learning to hit effectively is important you're going to have to go beyond Aikido. If there's a good chance that your life will involve the ground TKD will need to be supplemented.
You also have to figure out what's important to you. If purity and optimization in one style is your goal, then stick with one thing and one thing only. If you're doing this to have fun, then figure out what combination of workouts will maximize your enjoyment. Honestly, for most of us it's a hobby, something to do because we enjoy it.
There also no systems that are good at everything. None. Zero. Zip. I don't care what your sifu or sensei told you. Everything has specialties, and everything has deficiencies. If you decide the deficiencies are serious enough it's a good idea to find something to plug the holes. If learning to hit effectively is important you're going to have to go beyond Aikido. If there's a good chance that your life will involve the ground TKD will need to be supplemented.
You also have to figure out what's important to you. If purity and optimization in one style is your goal, then stick with one thing and one thing only. If you're doing this to have fun, then figure out what combination of workouts will maximize your enjoyment. Honestly, for most of us it's a hobby, something to do because we enjoy it.
kidswarrior
Senior Master
This would be the optimal way to do it, IMHO.
But, if you want to do two simultaneously, it might be akin to a double major in college. If you had two very different subjects you were equally interested in, could you do both? Only you know.
I disagree - but only in degree; there are quite a few systems that are very well rounded, and contain GOOD material at all ranges. There are no systems that EXCEL at everything. And, beyond that, even within those systems that have a solid core at each range/technique class (range - long/medium/short, class - hold/throw/blow) -- very few, if any, practitioners are even good at all of it. Even though my system includes very complete grappling, throwing, and striking portions -- I openly admit that I've spent most of my personal practice developing strikes, not throws or holds. I've worked both, and am functionally competent at them, I think, but I wouldn't consider myself even good at throws.
That said -- to return to the original question -- I don't think that you can do well trying to study two arts simultaneously, especially as a beginner. Others have done a good job spelling out the reasons, but it really just comes down to the simple question: How much time & effort can you put into doing things that are at cross purposes?
Advanced students can often work within another system, learning from it. But to really succeed, they have to mold it into a framework. They either adopt the new systems framework -- or they adjust it to fit within their old framework. A miniscule number of people can successfully create their own frame from scratch.
dart68
Orange Belt
You can train in two martial arts, but there is an old saying that goes "A hunter that chases two rabbits get neither."
Wrong, I'm afraid. Plenty of the Great Revered Masters did more than one thing and did them well. And if it they hadn't there would never have been any progress in the field. You only get that when someone learns something he didn't know and adopts it or creates something to deal with it and does it at least as well as what he was doing before.
In more recent times, consider MMA. Pure boxers and pure wrestlers don't tend to win at the higher levels. Even the specialists have to cross train, at least enough to take opportunities when they arise or to know the things outside their specialties well enough to recognize and counter them.
Back to those diminishing returns. There comes a point when doing what you've always done won't get you as far as learning something else.
In more recent times, consider MMA. Pure boxers and pure wrestlers don't tend to win at the higher levels. Even the specialists have to cross train, at least enough to take opportunities when they arise or to know the things outside their specialties well enough to recognize and counter them.
Back to those diminishing returns. There comes a point when doing what you've always done won't get you as far as learning something else.
Do Minamoto bushido for a generation or two (JMA), add chuan-fa (CMA) and tuite (OMA); combine in the mind of Bushi Matsumura, throw in a radically new approach to the direct, linear application of force, and what do you get?
`Traditional karate'. That's where it came from. `Traditional' karate is as mixed and heterodox as you can imagine.
I think the point isn't the variety of influences. It's being able to sythesize them strategically. Yes, you can study two (or more) fighting systems, but if you aren't able to integrate them into a single, systematic play of strategy and tactics, you wind up trapped like the fox in Aesop's fable, who has a hundred tricks but can't figure out when to use which one. You can learn a lot of things from different places, but I suspect you'll be doing yourself more harm than good if you don't find a way to synthesize them into a single consistent `operating system'. If you can, however, then you may have made real progress.
It's a big if, which is why it's probably better, for a lot of people anyway, to stick to one, already-worked-out synthesis of combat techs...
Adept
Master Black Belt
As I always say:
Think of the martial arts as a library.
Think of the various styles, as the sections within the library.
To get a well rounded knowledge base, you need to read books from several sections. If you want to specialise, you need to study one (maybe two) sections to the exclusion of all else.
Many sections will contain over-laps (mathematics and physics, for example) and many will be completely different. The key is to read the books you want to, regardless of what section they come from. To build your own home library exactly the way you want it.
Now obviously the analogy isn't perfect. Beating people up is a fairly limited skill set, and a few basic techniques coupled with the understanding to perform multiple applications will get you further in a scrap, than a few random specific pieces of information are in a quiz.
To answer your question, yes you can learn techniques from two different martial arts.
What you have to decide for yourself is how many techniques you want to learn from each (all of them?) and which strategy you want to use (one or the other, or form your own?).
Think of the martial arts as a library.
Think of the various styles, as the sections within the library.
To get a well rounded knowledge base, you need to read books from several sections. If you want to specialise, you need to study one (maybe two) sections to the exclusion of all else.
Many sections will contain over-laps (mathematics and physics, for example) and many will be completely different. The key is to read the books you want to, regardless of what section they come from. To build your own home library exactly the way you want it.
Now obviously the analogy isn't perfect. Beating people up is a fairly limited skill set, and a few basic techniques coupled with the understanding to perform multiple applications will get you further in a scrap, than a few random specific pieces of information are in a quiz.
To answer your question, yes you can learn techniques from two different martial arts.
What you have to decide for yourself is how many techniques you want to learn from each (all of them?) and which strategy you want to use (one or the other, or form your own?).
I see nothing wrong with being in two martial arts at the same time BUT i do suggest getting a strong level of training in one before learning a 2nd
Shaderon
Master of Arts
Everyone above has a point. I think it boils down to time, natural ability, strength of will and bloody mindedness.
Once I've been a few years in TKD I'd like to do more in a Aikido or Hapkido. Preferebly Hapkido if I can find a class nearby, but I'll never give up TKD, that will be my core art.
Once I've been a few years in TKD I'd like to do more in a Aikido or Hapkido. Preferebly Hapkido if I can find a class nearby, but I'll never give up TKD, that will be my core art.
Xue Sheng
All weight is underside
TraditionalTKD
Blue Belt
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To me, aside from splitting your energy and concentration into two directions, it's also about loyalty. If you are training in two martial arts, or trying to anyway, it is akin to trying to serve two masters. I don't know where your loyalties lie. After you have trained in one martial art for quite a few years and established yourself as a loyal student, and your Instructor knows you can be counted on, then it is okay to start training in another art. Several of our black belts. including me, have. Our GM's son practiced BJJ. But he was also a 4th Dan before he took it up. It's not about demanding that you stay only with me, it's about firmly establishing your basics and your loyalty before stretching your wings.
Adept
Master Black Belt
I'm confused. Why should a person be loyal to a set of techniques bound together by an over-riding strategy?
Or, in the case of being loyal to an instructor, why would training at another school, if it offers what the student wants, be considered disloyal?
Further to that, why would a person owe 'loyalty' to a school or instructor?
Xue Sheng
All weight is underside
In America you are right in East Asia (China and possibly Japan) you would not be training with a good sifu/sensei.
Xue Sheng,
It depends on when, where and with whom. There have been plenty of Japanese and Chinese practitioners who did (and do) more than one thing. Kano-Sensei had teaching credentials in several systems of Ju Jutsu. Of course, he was an innovator's innovator. Many of the Chinese-from-China sifus I've met have - for instance - Taiji, Ba-Gua and Xing Yi from different teachers. Others will deep six you if you even shake hands with someone from another school. As always, human relationships depend so much on the people involved.
When I did Okinawan Karate my teacher had Black Belts up the wazoo from his teachers in Okinawa. He had high ranking in the style, but before he got the Master Teacher certification he had to correct some deficiencies in his practice. They sent him to Judo and Aikido schools for a few years to (as he put it) "Pull the broomstick out of my butt", get some grappling and groundwork, and a few other things.
It depends on when, where and with whom. There have been plenty of Japanese and Chinese practitioners who did (and do) more than one thing. Kano-Sensei had teaching credentials in several systems of Ju Jutsu. Of course, he was an innovator's innovator. Many of the Chinese-from-China sifus I've met have - for instance - Taiji, Ba-Gua and Xing Yi from different teachers. Others will deep six you if you even shake hands with someone from another school. As always, human relationships depend so much on the people involved.
When I did Okinawan Karate my teacher had Black Belts up the wazoo from his teachers in Okinawa. He had high ranking in the style, but before he got the Master Teacher certification he had to correct some deficiencies in his practice. They sent him to Judo and Aikido schools for a few years to (as he put it) "Pull the broomstick out of my butt", get some grappling and groundwork, and a few other things.
I agree. Without first having a good solid foundation to build on it can be confusing and more difficult.
I don't know if I would have been able to train 2 arts equally at the same time. I feel I would have been denying myself the essence of the art and ablity to give it my full effort and attempt at mastery.
Now after years of Shotokan and moving to Kempo, I find learning to be easier and I can appreciate my new art more than when I started my first art as a beginner. I will always have my old style as a part of me no matter what I study. The same with any other styles we train. They become a part of us and our own personal style.
Every foundation starts with the laying of the first stone.
-Marc-
