No idea where to start by a total newb

[Onyx02]

Hello all!
I finally had a glimpse of motivation today to finally start learning martial arts.
The problem is that I have NO idea where to start. The only thing I know is that I am really interested in Shaolin Kung-fu but I'll be glad if you recommend me some other easy-to-master begginer martial arts too.
Could someone help me with some guides or routine just whatever to help me getting started?
Thank you all so much for your help.

 

[drop bear]

Wrestling is the building blocks of fighting. Any martial arts you do with a wrestling background you will be better at.

 

[Headhunter]

Well right now you just have to sit tight and wait for this BS to get lost but in the meantime work on your fitness and your strength and research styles that might be of Interest to you. Don't listen to the comments of this is better, no that's better, this is the best, that style is rubbish etc. That's all just people's ego trying to big up their own style. Just choose one that's both affordable, convinient and you have some interest in. Then once this rubbish is over and clubs are open again then get just jump in and go from there

 

[Flying Crane]

Similar discussion going on right now, some good info here:

Starting again in Martial Arts need advice

 

[ShortBridge]

And, it really matters what is available to you. I remember being in your position and not wanting that to be true, but in the end it's going to come down to you training in a group with a good teacher and you can only chose from the things available near you. So, I'd start by either letting us know what town you're from, so that we can recommend things that we know of there or spend the weekend searching on-line and locating teachers and studios open within a reasonable drive for you and then let us know what you have to choose from.

You'll get some biased advice by people who feel strongly about what they do. But, you'll also get some neutral perspective. Then you go visit a few places and see what feels right to you.

 

[Onyx02]

And, it really matters what is available to you. I remember being in your position and not wanting that to be true, but in the end it's going to come down to you training in a group with a good teacher and you can only chose from the things available near you. So, I'd start by either letting us know what town you're from, so that we can recommend things that we know of there or spend the weekend searching on-line and locating teachers and studios open within a reasonable drive for you and then let us know what you have to choose from.

You'll get some biased advice by people who feel strongly about what they do. But, you'll also get some neutral perspective. Then you go visit a few places and see what feels right to you.

Well that's one of the things I probably should've write in the post too.. I'd like to be self taught. I'm kinda antisocial and don't want to go on training with some other people and everything.. Plus I don't think there are any training schools like at all, at least not what I'm interested in the most (japanese classical arts). I'm from a small town in Moravia in the Czech republic.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Well that's one of the things I probably should've write in the post too.. I'd like to be self taught. I'm kinda antisocial and don't want to go on training with some other people and everything.. Plus I don't think there are any training schools like at all, at least not what I'm interested in the most (japanese classical arts). I'm from a small town in Moravia in the Czech republic.

Martial arts is something you can't really do by yourself. You need feedback from an instructor, along with feedback from other people (resistance training/sparring/grappling). As a temporary measure you can, but at some point you'll need to go to actual lessons, and if you start off self-taught you'll have to unlearn a lot of bad habits.

The only thing I can think of that would work self-taught is modern wushu, mainly because that's more acrobatics/gymnastics than martial arts.

 

[KenpoMaster805]

I think American Kenpo karate will fit you right its like kung fu but you can choose any martial art you want that's fits u right

 

[WaterGal]

Well that's one of the things I probably should've write in the post too.. I'd like to be self taught. I'm kinda antisocial and don't want to go on training with some other people and everything.. Plus I don't think there are any training schools like at all, at least not what I'm interested in the most (japanese classical arts). I'm from a small town in Moravia in the Czech republic.

Fortunately for you, there are a lot of schools around the world that are now offering online martial arts classes on Zoom because of the pandemic, and some of them might continue into the future.

However, you probably won't be able to get past a beginner level of skill learning by yourself. Getting good at martial arts requires experience working with other people, but at least you can learn something.

 

[lklawson]

Hello all!
I finally had a glimpse of motivation today to finally start learning martial arts.
The problem is that I have NO idea where to start. The only thing I know is that I am really interested in Shaolin Kung-fu but I'll be glad if you recommend me some other easy-to-master begginer martial arts too.
Could someone help me with some guides or routine just whatever to help me getting started?
Thank you all so much for your help.

Sure thing. Read this:
The Newbie Guide to Martial Arts Training 2.1 by Kirk Lawson

It answers all these questions.

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk

 

[SomeDataPackets]

Start out by doing some internal hardening exercises related to your tendons and bone connections. Initially take about ... oh I dunno, somewhere around 10, 12 weeks, to figure out and start doing more basic stretching stuff which you rapidly modify here and there so you can't be bored.

Do the classical exercises like pushups with your feet up on a bed or table, and standing with your back to a bed, hanging one foot up on the bed behind you and slowly sinking on the other leg until basically you're about as far down as you can go before your heel on the bed, and your butt are at roughly the same level.

Learn how to get two chairs, and put your feet up on a table, and do dips this way: with a MAJOR component of this being that you do your utmost to change your posture as you do the exercises, a lot - so you'll eventually be rotating through doing them this way - then you'll turn over, so your back is up and your toes are on the table or bed - and do deep dip pushups, THAT way.

Use elastic bands and shadow box. Put on jeans or other sturdy work pants, pass the elastic band through several belt loops, take the ends in hand, and shadow box. At first, try to just keep chin in and spine upright mostly. Learn to bound around, sorta pogo-sticking off both feet at once, as you try to master jumping from side to side of something.

Hang a ball of some kind on some elastic from the ceiling and kick at it; punch at it; poke at it and try to learn to jump back-and-forth, back-and-forth, left to right, as you chase this thing around a little. Remember this isn't training to fight. It's training to be able - to train to fight, and not f* it up bad. Why make this half dozen or whatever habitual errors, when all they're gonna do at the gym is say ''TUCK your CHIN'' and ''FULL EXTENSION'' etc when you first start.

Something else about this tuck the chin business.

Again, get a ball,

and trap it under your chin and learn to look all around you, as well as jumping and just GENERALLY moving around, from that position.

If you're mountain biking, put the tennis ball on a discrete loop of paracord around your neck, and trap it while you ride. If you drop it, it won't fall.

If you're jogging obviously you can just grab it, so no string is needed.

You're trying to imprint some critical stuff onto your body's muscle memory before you ever have to start bounding around a human being or grappling with one. Then when you start dealing with others at gyms you pay to train and spar at, you won't be constantly having these balance problems, sprains, all this stuff, that negatively affects your ability, to even train.

Try to learn early about the fact that when you're fighting, a LOT of people spend a lot of time, on one foot only. Now - the world's a big place so there can be exceptions to what I'm about to tell you, but one of the facts of life spent on two legs, is that TWO feet can bound you QUICKER with less chance of f*ng something up, than bounding on one. Go to the dollar store and pay $6.00 american for one of those cheap around-the-ankles elastics. Get one and start wearing it as far as you can, into your normal life around your house or workouts.

Put it on and if you hike, then do that. If you jog or jog a treadmill do that. If you mow the yard - put it on. If you're just around the house - put it on.

You're gonna start finding that when you keep your feet together and are always working to keep them from crossing - this is CLASSICAL medium and higher level footwork when it becomes VERY natural for you to zip around this way,

the FIRST thing you're gonna find is you are wearing sore spots in your hips, and that you tire out by not realizing the tendons and muscles holding you on the balls of your feet are wearing out.

That's gotta stop right? Of course it does so every time you take it off, you measure FIRST the level of 'sore' and where - and vow you're puttin it back on, but that sore stuff's gotta stop.

And the way you're gonna do this is by skittering and bounding around in different ways and making the absolutely most efficient strides you can with the extension that thing gives you.

When you can stop these sore spots from appearing, the next thing you measure - it'll come early, but the main thing is stop those sore spots by having VERY agile footwork, you're looking for a sense to develop that you're thinking quite fast now - like it's just NOT wearing your MIND out - to *snap* make this agility just appear
out of nowhere, when it's on, when it's off: when you sense that you've got this different mode, than you had before - that's sorta where you're heading with it.

You'll know you're right there in the hole you've been trying to hit, when you put the thing on and start skittering around doing totally normal stuff

and it's NO mental burden at ALL to keep adjusting your feet so you're just flowing like water.

 

[SomeDataPackets]

There's some hung grammar and stuff in there but that's a lotta spam to come out of one 13 year old here in my room at my mom and dad's.

 

[SomeDataPackets]

Well that's one of the things I probably should've write in the post too.. I'd like to be self taught. I'm kinda antisocial and don't want to go on training with some other people and everything.. Plus I don't think there are any training schools like at all, at least not what I'm interested in the most (japanese classical arts). I'm from a small town in Moravia in the Czech republic.

So help me I just now looked at this after that big long post. I'm gonna try to tell you something else.

This gonna be a kinda wall of text too cause that's how a 13 year old in my mom and dad's place do. I feel the flying fingers will help me ward off evil spirits and other things like trolls.

Check this out. There's something called a jab, or a reflex ball, alright? Now. In the west here - wherever you are, wherever I am, boxers use these things. But they really weren't invented for boxing. After WWII the Chinese wushu people were all either slaughtered or enslaved by the communists, so an immense amount of all this wushu self training, vanished and will never be seen again. The communists burned it all, often tying people to stakes and burning them in their own libraries cause they thought that was fitting.

So today when you see a jab ball, a reflex ball, you thing ''boxing mitts, one two, one two, one two, *A MILLION YAY!!''

But Western boxers didn't invent these, Asians did. There are ink drawings of people having a form of them tied to a head dress, in a theatrical play where a long, springy switch of hardwood had a light silk string tied to it. At the end of the string, was some icon or other, and the theater people would integrate this into their acts, chasing dreams/letters/evil spirits/hopes/dreams/romance across the stage in these various ways, from full-on dramatic theater about love and war, to acrobatics.

Well, there's another drawing of a man I believe was a Samurai and he's reclining amid his professional sports and gambling stuff, and on his head, is a jab ball that is IDENTICAL to one you buy from Wish.com for ''just pay postage'' of about $3.00, or from Amazon Prime, for about $5.00 American.

Obviously he didn't have access to these elastics, right? But he's got on a ball, tethered, on a headband.

Long story short is that my dad was a security professional and had started out as a military cop and all his friends were this kinda people for a long time. One of the guys he met who was training people to go to the 'nam, explained to my dad, something he and his friends had cooked up over time, having seen these drawings.

They created something they named ''The Base Martial Arts Exercise''.

What you do is take this thing by the elastic, and you flip it out with one hand - up, out, so it comes back ROUGHLY at the level of your face.

When you release it you track it visually.
Now the exercising is gonna start.
Tracking it until it turns around is the first test. Latch your eyes on the target and do not become unfocused. The INSTANT it hits the end and begins to rebound toward you,

using one hand,
and one hand only,

dart that hand out and strike that ball VERY violently with the BACK of your longest, middle finger.

Pick a dime sized spot on that finger from the middle knuckle,
to the end of the finger at the nail -

and you strike that ball on ANOTHER dime sized area,
and knock it back out - hard. FAST. Do it violently.

Here is another time during this ONE SECOND you DO THESE THREE THINGS, with ONE hand,
you deliberately make your mind operate FASTER than all this is going on by CHECKING - running a thought process through your mind, ''I was off an inch'' or ''I was off by the width of the ball'' or ''I was off a half inch'' and forcing yourself to engage in this INSTANT analysis of what JUST happened,

before that ball can rebound and come back,
rotate your entire elbow such that the side of your hand you are presenting, flips: and your palm is facing this ball that's moving out and back at HIGH speed.

Strike that ball very very violently with the callous that is JUST at the leading edge of the palm, JUST off the base of again - your central longest finger.

A dime sized spot on THAT callous, onto a dime sized spot on that ball, YOU select. Very fast. Very violently, very hard.

Now. When this ball returns, you again try to make your mind operate so fast you can engage in the active analysis of how far you missed by,

and then, continuing to track this thing with your eyes, as it starts returning, put your hand beside it - track it briefly and grab around it's equator from the side with - again - your longest, your strongest, central finger. Put your fingers together and extend them now, with your thumb pressed alongside your hand.

You'll observe that there are two fingers out on one side of your longest, strongest, central finger,
and that there are effectively, two fingers on the OTHER side of this same, central line down your hand.

When you grab the ball you do your darnedest to grab it EXACTLY around it's equator - and to have both fingers, on either side of the central strongest one, clamp around that thing at the EXACT same time, along with your thumb.

This is ONE iteration of the base martial arts exercise.

Grabbing the elastic and flipping that ball out takes ABOUT one or two seconds.

Back handing it,
Fore handing it,
Grabbing it,

take from 3/4ths to a full second.

Do a few iterations this way: swap hands and do a few that way.

The main thing here is to make your _blanking_ mind take instruction from you that we ARE gonna strike it, measure our error, strike it, measure our error, GraB it and be FULLY engaged, a BUNCHA times. Ok?

Now. The important thing is to MASTER - not see the mountains on the horizon, note their beauty then have a picnic on the plains of hesitation, and rest - MASTER
making YOUR _blanking_ hand,
switch sides, from back to front, EVERY time YOU tell it. This is the objective. Not a high ratio of completions, not ANYTHING but making yourself hit that thing
back hand,
fore hand,
then grabbing it.

That is the base martial arts exercise and puts precision striking into your reach without a coach.

There's more. Much more.

An additional thing you always need in self defense is more range. So here's something else you need to do.

Fold your hand in half. Notice how when you fold the fingers in the middle, there's a sorta 'paddle' on ONE side of your hand - those folded-over finger bones - and there's also a nearly IDENTICAL 'paddle' on the BACK side of this same hand.

When you begin to physically burn out from the base martial arts exercise, practice throwing the ball out using the elastic, and with ONE hand,

FLIPPING that hand back & forth, front-to-back, and popping that ball out with both sides of that fist, OUT at the folded-over knuckles. Do you understand what I'm saying? You throw the ball out as fast and hard as you dare, and then extending ONE hand, with the sorta 'ends' of your folded over knuckles there, keeping it in motion, striking it back-front-back-front-back-front.

Ok there's more.

This part doesn't pertain to specific exercises.

As soon as you start using it mark in your mind by actually trying, how well you can do this, when the BACKGROUND is more and more cluttered - and when overall light levels, are lower and lower.

Also, get a pair of glasses and use a tissue to cover one eye, or buy what's called a ''conical'' eye patch, from the store, and practice using your LESS dominant eye ONLY a lot of the time.

There's still more. One of the major bad things about training alone, is you nearly ALWAYS become flat-footed, and super slow to realize it's time to move, when the action starts. Give this a long think, and when you do, make yourself a deal, that you're going to always, always WALK when you do these exercises.

Try to do more and more complicated things with your feet, as you're striking this ball. I'm almost sixty and I can get on a mountain bike and find a paved trail or quiet road, and putting the bike in sorta medium gear, I can chase that ball with both hands, while peddling with my feet, and neither of my hands, on the handle bars.

If you do this, it's okay to box it like a Western Boxer, with both hands, because you're simultaneously engaging in very complex balancing and at the same time, using your feet to achieve this balance, so it doesn't tend to make you stand still when you use your hands.

***These exercises are very, VERY repetitious so it is essential... it is critical that you address this ''it makes me want to stand still so I can strike it better'' as SOON as possible.

Also if you have a treadmill you can run sideways, backward, all this, while doing these exercises and this enhances the REAL value to you, of each one, because when you're actually dealing with human beings, this DESPERATE necessity to NOT just stand there like some over confident, glued-down clown, is one of the few things that is LIKELY to save you.

People do not fight real well and do complex footwork at the same time, super well.

They start stepping too long, they start going blank about walking INTO you so they can hit you, so - DON'T train, and NOT move your feet, if you can help this at ALL.

One of the things I have done a lot when inside a structure is to try to have the entire base exercise done in the time, between one foot being on the ground, and the other stepping down.

There's more to this, yet, so - just bear with it. When you first start using it you need a gauge for whether you're doing too much of this ''chicken winging'' where your elbows are up and out, to facilitate you engaging with this ball. Walk around backward - through doors, and practice striking the ball with one hand, then the other or with both hands sometimes. One of the main things happening to people engaging with people physically is being confident and seeing action needs to be taken they rear back - and smash their elbow into a corner of a door, a wall, a window, - something humiliating. Bear this in mind, and try to bobble that thing around, when you're going backward.

The elastic will FOREVER be the thing stopping your success. Ok stopping your success when you don't just plain miss. Don't let this worry you it's not your fault, it's the nature of the thing having that tether coiling and un-coiling in the space between you and that target. Work around it sometimes. Other times just strike through it using more force.

Train yourself that when it entangles on your hand, you as SWiFTLY as possible, whip your hand out of the elastic so that when you start fighting or struggling with others in the gym, all this - you have a heightened sense of DON'T LET ANYTHING TRAP your ARM or HAND.

Between 20 and 50% of your stoppages are gonna involve getting trapped by that elastic.
DO NOT be DETERRED by it, just keep plowing and trying over and over.

Go outside at night, when there's a bright porch light behind you and face out into the dark, standing under the light. Exercise with the ball and WATCH the ELASTIC. This will give you a much more detailed understanding of what you're trying to get around and through.

After you get where you understand the critical nature of striking the thing with the part of your hand you PLAN to - just being quick - being SHaRP -
you can slash at the ball as well. Think of sitting in a desk or standing in a place and someone approaches and you don't really want to martial arts boxing stance up - but something's gotta happen NOW - look at your fingers and imagine how many times you've seen people try to reach out and sorta swipe at someone's face in desperate attempt to generate the speed to deflect or whatever.

Learn to throw the ball out and drive directly into it with the tip of your longest finger,
Learn to throw the ball out and sorta slashing out at it with the tips of the fingers, as your hand jets out sideways.

If you bear in mind that in general, a person who's trying to harm you must look at you - you can slash, poke, knuckle at this thing, with the comforting assurance that NOBODY likes a LIGHTENING fast, VIOLENT pop to the eye, with ANYTHING.

You can also teach yourself accurate throat grabs. A lot of times when you're fighting, a person will be holding onto you, or trying to get a strike in on you as your maybe trapped or distracted momentarily, and what you'll need to do or find happens to be the thing you CAN do is reach out with your hand, and grab them, and push them back by their throat and neck.

For this exercise, throw the ball out, have a pre-strike such as a boxing strike or a back-hand strike lead off, and when the ball returns, put your fingers together, put your thumb out so the tips of your index and longest finger, and your thumb, are pushed out equally, and strike the ball really hard with the web of skin, bridging the space between the base of your thumb and index fingers.

Practice doing this with your fingers/thumb spread roughly as far apart as would be needed to seize a human being by the neck, rather than JUST spreading them far enough to admit the ball between the thumb & fingertips.

You can also practice throwing the ball out, and when it returns during your iteration, JUMP to the side, and GRAB the ball FROM the side you jump to, as if you dodged a person - and grabbed a wrist, or maybe an outstretched finger to bend backward, and push that arm down so you can strike them with the other fist.

You can also strike these things with your elbows, as part of your flurry combos of about two strikes, etc, and a grab.

Ok finally one last thing about your mentality during self training. I kinda mentioned this above but when you self train there is a horrifically bad trait you start doing cause it just plain takes less MENTAL DEMAND from YOU - and that's kinda relaxing and giving up, as SOON as your flurry, your iteration of different class strikes - front/back of the hand, fingertips/boxing fist, - whatever - as soon as you see, ''oH SH(*) it WeNT oUT toO FAR -

When you start out, try to tell yourself that ''If I strike it and it goes sorta out of range for me to complete my iteration of strikes before I grab it, as SOON as I see this happening, I'm gonna suspend the iteration of strikes, the flurry I was gonna do - and just reach out and grab the thing before it can be pulled down to the sorta ''rest'' position hanging down in front of me.''

This helps you have an exercise which trains you to never stop hustling - ''letting things get out of control.''

This is another VERY good way of helping train yourself to be VERY fast on your MENTAL feet - seeing that the strikes you WERE gonna perform aren't available any more due to some error or quirk of a ball and a string - this is a good way of training yourself to recognize that ''the plan I had, and was dedicated I was gonna bring off, if that freakin ball stayed in play - it is NOT gonna work this has CHANGED and I've gotta get control, NOW by doing something COMPLETELY different, than I was PLANNING to do.''

This backup exercise is a MAJOR component of fighting and working fast at really, anything - SEE when it's gotten out of control due to what the f* ever and without ANY hesitation at all, CHANGE the plan, and do something COMPLETELY different than you were gonna do.

Ultimately you're gonna be throwing it out sideways, forward, low, high, and over time you're gonna map a BUNCHA stuff around your person about WHAT your HANDS can ACTUALLY reach,
in - whatever time's available.

You'll know how much you can speed things up from trying harder, and you'll know when THAT side or surface of THAT striking hand/elbow CAN'T get there in time, and you'll be USED to measuring THIS TOO.

And so ultimately if you just PRESSURE yourself by just always making it JUST a little more difficult than you can do but giving it ALL you've GOT a LARGE percentage of the time - you're gonna become QuiTe
able
with your hands.

Another thing you can learn to do is just grab the elastic and put a sort of a loop in it so there's a little sorta half-hitch knot, and a couple of inches of the elastic looped out there and this'll shorten it and - believe it or not since you spend a lotta time dodging the elastic anyway, it doesn't really tangle your hands much more at all, and you can practice some stuff where the strikes are happening REAL quick, like - FOUR times per second, cause the elastic's short, so the time of travel's lots shorter, and your hands are RIGHT there in front of it.

Bear these next words in mind as if the life safety and health you save, could be your own. When I told you about the base martial arts exercise, I told you that you'll back hand it - then you'll turn your palm over and palm strike it. Ultimately this could become popping it with the tips of your longest fingertips, hitting the ball with the heel of the hand - but then
when you grab it, it is really important, and actually, if you plan to be pretty good with your hands cause you live rural or travel and have lotsa time over some months, or years, to keep one of these around -

you need to have c.r.y.s.t.a.l. c.l.e.a.r. instruction to yourself, that it is better to miss that ball, than for you to be SUPPOSED to GRAB it - from the side, like I told you - and hand heel it or palm strike it. because THIS is how a fast mufus - reaches out - and forgetting - drives his palm or wrist, DIRECTLY down onto an extended knife, or a screwdriver, or an ice pick, or a brass knuckle.

You need to remind yourself that the reason in the base exercise, these two actions follow each other, is that - they are similar and it's REALLY important to NOT - when you're - you know in your real life - do the one when you SHOULD do the other. You can get your wrist skewered by a screwdriver and literally bleed to death or nearly so, and most CERTAINLY start bleeding, everything will be slippery AND you'll get weaker.

Being able to realize the gravity of doing the wrong one, at the wrong time, is high art: and in fact goes with the suggestion that as SOON as you start, try to not let the ball get out of play without your seeing it - and instantly abandoning all plans - and grabbing it.
I forgot to talk about that earlier, but - consider this part about not palm stopping when you should be grabbing, a safety meeting.

Also the homemade versions of these using soft foam practice golf balls, give you a smaller target and a faster one too.

If you make one out of a child's lightweight foam toy type ball you can use them indoors with no problem and they too, actually travel faster than a tennis ball, which weighs more and so has a longer turn-around time.

 

[SomeDataPackets]

oh yeah, and while I'm at it there's a couple more things you should practice with these, if you have the time and effort to become really quite good with your hands.

There's gonna be a lotta times when you're just ''oK eNoUGH with the base martial arts exercise thing, and you're gonna wanna just boxing punch it.

Try to do this a LOT with just one hand and also hold out your unused hand, kinda out beside where you're punching the ball and haze the ball a little with that unused hand - don't let the ball get too far AWAY, don't let the ball crash into your open hand.

After a few iterations of that, hold out a FIST - basically same way, tracking the ball out by roughly, where it is when you're striking it with the other hand.

Sometimes, hold the hand out like this and after two or three strikes - some number you assign yourself, - grab the ball with the other hand. Something I did was throw it, hit it once, grab it with that guarding hand. Throw it, it it twice, grab it with that other hand. Then three times, then four, etc.

Yet another very good exercise when you're doing this and get where you can do quite a few pops of the ball with one hand, is to put your unused hand, up covering your ear, and actually POINT your ELBOW at the ball, adjusting just your footing.
Try to interleave the two simultaneous exercises, pointing your elbow sorta in toward the center of your body, with your hand of course over your ear - using your feet to swiftly - s w i f t l y is a key word here - re-align the tip of your elbow with basically the point your active fist is striking the ball.

This puts very high speed decision making back into the mix because you're using your feet to adjust where your elbow points, while at the same time you're also aligning your punching shots. This is one of the many exercises I've rotated back around to doing lately.

Another thing you can do is lean way over and turn your fist like you're gonna uppercut the ball and do that, while keeping the hand up over your ear trying to turn and point your elbow at the ball during your striking.

Complexity and trying to figure out classical classical striking is part of always making it so interesting and difficult that you never get bored.

Something I also do sometimes is to throw the ball out and strike it in a FULL hook - hitting it fully as possible from the side, and when it fires over really fast, try to grab it with the other hand. This is one exercise, where I punt and basically am satisfied a lot of the time, just palm stopping the ball, even though the Bruce Lee class stuff would be grabbing the ball from the side, similarly to how I described grabbing it for the base martial arts exercise.

 

[yak sao]

Well that's one of the things I probably should've write in the post too.. I'd like to be self taught. I'm kinda antisocial and don't want to go on training with some other people and everything.. Plus I don't think there are any training schools like at all, at least not what I'm interested in the most (japanese classical arts). I'm from a small town in Moravia in the Czech republic.

Find a group you click with and train.
Then take what you learn and train it at home on your own between classes.

MA training is a balance of partner training and solo training...you need both.
Since you say you are anti social, you may spend a little more time with the solo training but you still need to gauge yourself on a regular basis with a live partner.