My opinions on various martial arts I have trained.

Aiki-Jujutsu
I did a semester of this at a community college. The instructor was a Vietnam vet who at the time worked at NIH. This one was pretty fun; there were kicks and strikes, throws, a little bit of ground work, and joint locks/chokes. I used to practice my break falls in the stock room or on the sales floor when I worked at Target. In hindsight, doing rolling break falls on concrete was pretty dumb.

I'd say this is the one that lit the fire for doing martial arts. The unfortunate thing about this one is that no one really taught it near me aside from this entry level community college class. The closest class would have been over 2 hours total of commuting.

I think it's a worthwhile martial art, it's better than some of the ones I tried later.

In the cultural context of how people fight in the United States, I'd say it's ok as a self-defense martial art but not particularly worthwhile if one was looking to get into sport fighting.

Taekwando

TKD is a Korean striking martial art. It's heavily influenced by karate - not surprisingly, since Japan had occupied Korea for quite a while and the various schools arose after the end of WWII. After the Korean war, the South Korean government created a unifying body (KTA) to consolidate the various schools. And there was a final consolidation under the Kukkiwan in the late 70s. The consolidation and formalization towards sport combat has subsequently led to TKD being an Olympic sport.

In the school I attended, probably 80% of the class was kicking. I believe this is typical of TKD. It was a good workout, but it could often be quite boring. We would stand in lines and the instructor would count off for doing kicks. On the other hand, I do have pretty solid side kicks thanks to all of that drilling. TKD is definitely good at instilling discipline - if I had a kid, I would probably look to enroll them in a TKD class when they were little.

For sport fighting, it's obviously a good choice if you want to participate in TKD type contests. Not the greatest if you're going to steer into MMA or other sport fighting, but does provide an athletic base, combat experience, and a good knowledge of the mechanics of kicking. As a self-defense martial art it's probably not great; the cultural context of fighting in the US leans more towards grappling and boxing. Kicks are also pretty tiring and can be tough to do depending on terrain & clothing. Dress shoes in a gravel parking lot? Probably don't want to throw a head-high side kick.

Ninjutsu
Ninjutsu has a bullshit backstory from what I understood - there was a claim about secret scrolls that no one was allowed to see. I went to a school in the basement of a community center in a wealthy area. The head instructor was a Marine and pretty interesting guy. Many of the students were employees of the alphabet soup agencies in the Baltimore-DC corridor. At some point to achieve rank you would have to fly to Japan to train and test, which did seem fairly exciting in that mystical-martial-arts-secrets sort of way.

This one was fairly weird. The stance felt fairly awkward - it was a very wide base and kind of squatting. It didn't really seem conducive at all to moving or striking. The break falls also felt kind of awkward. The weapons stuff was a lot of fun, though. They worked with a wide variety of weapons, as one might expect from the popular depiction of a ninja.

I keep coming back to how odd this was. I have never done a martial art with so many people who actually had combat experience (or were still being deployed) but it also felt like one of the least realistic arts I've trained. In hand-to-hand fighting, I feel like there was almost no self defense application. Maybe all of the weapons work translated somehow? I don't know. Maybe guys who pulled/were pulling triggers for a living got bogged down into the esotericism of it all?

There's basically no sports combat application of this one. If one used a ninjutsu stance in sport, you would just get shin kicked to death.

It was interesting, but not something I would ever recommend to anyone other than trying for curiosity's sake.

What about Krav Maga?
I thought you did something with this too ....

Oh yeah, I have more to review. I just had to take care of other things last night.

HEMA

HEMA (historical European martial arts) is another weird one. I went through a beginners program on this one to try to get my brother out doing something physical and he's always been one for swords and movies. Some of the popular sword/weapon people on YouTube practice HEMA.

The beginner's course was working through long sword techniques from a 15th century fencing manual by Johannes Liechtenhauer. As one might expect, the actual use of a long sword looked very different from what is choreographed in movies. It's also a reconstruction, though - they're looking at old treatises and trying to recreate movement based off of little sketches and descriptions. There's still a healthy dose of modern fencing in the approach to fill in the gaps.

They also do a reconstruction of historical European wrestling called Ringen which would add grappling in with the swords. That would have been much more interesting to me than swords alone.

As far as martial arts go, though, I don't think anyone doing HEMA has any real interest in application outside of re-enactments. You can't walk around with a sword in modern society and no one is engaging in honor duels with swords. It's not useful at all from a self-defense perspective, because training with a sword dictates your movement & distance management. From a combat sport perspective, there are a lot of HEMA specific tournaments and SCA events. If reenactment and competing is your thing, it's a good choice because it will be easy for you to stay active. You can also be more competitive even if you're not particularly athletic.

I think there's clearly a niche for this, but it wasn't nearly as fun as I thought it would be.

Aikido

Aikido is derived from Aiki-Jujutsu. It was founded by Morihei Ueshiba, or as they refer to him Osensei. It took the harder style of Aiki-Jujutsu through a religious lens and made a much softer art with joint locks, redirection of someone's force, etc. Striking is nonexistent but they do have weapons. I believe some of it also branched off into some purely religious/Ki practice.

This is also an art a lot of people make fun of online. And of course, it's what Stephen Seagal is known for practicing. But also Aikido of some sort is what the Japanese police use, I believe.

My experience with it was interesting. Some of the people training at the school I attended were old Judo players looking for something more laid back. But what they would do wasn't Aikido as demonstrated; it was somewhere between Judo and Aikido. It appeared that this generally worked pretty well even as they were resisting each other.

Aikido as demonstrated never felt like it would work practically. All attacks were exaggerated and mimicked the path of a sword rather than a punch. I could easily resist the techniques of others if I wanted; the environment of perfectly compliant training partners who jump into falls or readily tumble wasn't great. Also I found bowing to Osensei really weird, I'm not really one to bow to pictures or salute flags or whatever.

There's really no sporting application for Aikido; No one uses it as a base for competition in any sport that I'm aware of. For self-defense? You can make it workable in my opinion, but it won't really look like what they're teaching in most places.

MMA (Muay Thai + BJJ)

This is en vogue thanks primarily to UFC, though there are many mixed martial arts promotions both now and in the past. Muay Thai and Brazilian Ju Jitsu has been a fairly common mix; BJJ has no striking, Muay Thai has very dynamic striking.

I trained at a Lloyd Irvin affiliated school. There have been a number of fighters affiliated with Lloyd Irvin who've achieved success in MMA and in BJJ competition. While I was there, a future One FC champion was also training there (fairly early in his career). It is exciting to train with professionals, so there is that.

It was a really disorganized place to train. There was no real curriculum as far as I could tell; the head coach would maybe demonstrate a single technique then sit in a folding chair in front of the class and watch. I didn't get a single word of feedback from him the entire time I trained there (and I can't recall him offering feedback to anyone at all). One of the competitive BJJ students confirmed he didn't get any actual coaching either years later. Any actual BJJ coaching seemed to come from whatever hodge-podge of competitive fighters were around that day. For them, a lot of the coaching was done separately and completely focused on their specific game plan for a specific event.

The Muay Thai coach was a lot better; some of the sparring combinations he showed I've used ever since.

My impression of dysfunction has been confirmed in the years since I've been there. They've had a lot of falling outs with trainers and fighters. I checked their website recently; they claim to have great coaches with great resumes but don't tell you who they are. They tout one fighter who was training when I was there; he left the gym a long time ago and he hasn't had a pro fight since 2016. They don't even mention people I know who won competitions while members there.

So what I'd say about MMA is this: it's fantastic for both sport and self defense. For sport, there are tons of amateur and low-level promotions if you want to fight. For self-defense, this is culturally what Americans see for fighting. Every young man in the US (who would be prone to fighting) has seen MMA and think they're going to get mount and pound away at the person on the bottom. A lot of the dumb fight videos on YouTube are just young, dumb men picking fights and play-acting at UFC.

The problem with actually training it is that I think there is a lot of bad training thanks to the popularity. You can get in on the training game without being a good trainer. You can luck into a reputation because a great athlete walked into your school and put in the work on their own.

Krav Maga

The art of the Israeli military. Or so the branding goes. There are probably some similarities in training, but from what I saw on Fight Quest years ago it's debatable what the carry over is between military and civilian. I've gone to two different Krav Maga schools, which I guess are slightly different because there's some schism between affiliations. There were some differences in training, but not a huge difference. If you put the curriculum side-by-side, I'd say there is a 60% chance I could tell the difference.

One of the good things about KM is that both places I went to had a clear curriculum, the IKMF affiliated school in particular. They also pushed aggression. This is kind of a mixed bag - for self defense, being able to go from 0 to 100 quickly is a great skill to learn. On the other hand, I think some of the training teaches bad habits. They would do a multi-person drill where you would strike a target 2-3 times, then engage a new target. Continuing to engage a group of people in hand-to-hand combat is a sure way to get hurt or killed. Or you might break a choke hold and do 2-3 strikes in the air. You're training yourself to throw punches when you're actually too far away to hit someone or not targeting them.

However, they also did actually teach verbal deescalation as a first step (though only as a precursor to attacking someone). I think better training would be that the potential assailant either randomly disengages or attacks following attempts at verbal deescalation, so you have to learn to read if aggression is appropriate or not.

I didn't like some of the techniques and didn't like the way some were taught. The example off of the top of my head was wanting people to keep their hands up when kicking. In every other martial art, for example, you either post your hand on the opponent or swing your arm when throwing a roundhouse kick. Not in Krav Maga, though, you have to keep your hands up the whole time! From what I've seen online, some KM instructors have been breaking off and improving on the curriculum - deleting bad techniques and training.

I think they also overstate the value of illegal techniques from sport combat. Kicking someone in the nuts is fine. It might work, but you definitely shouldn't assume it's going to end an attack.

I think KM is a fairly decent self-defense overall, though, for short term training. I think it will give people some useful tools and probably make them more confident and aware of their surroundings (which in itself probably makes you less likely to be attacked). I think for longer term training, it probably isn't as useful. It starts morphing towards some sort of weird kickboxing/MMA thing with worse technique. There really isn't any combat sport value.

Iaido

This one is a Japanese sword art - basically the art of quickly drawing a sword. This art is usually kata only, working through a standard set of 12 kata.

I would put this more as meditation than a martial art, really. You're focused on quickly drawing the sword, fluidly moving through a series of cuts, returning the sword to the saya, and returning to a relaxed/seated position. For people who test and rank in this, they're judged on the fluidity & accuracy of movement and their demonstration of zanshin.

No practical self-defense or sport combat applications at all, unless you look at meditation as a practice that benefits those.

Hapkido

This is the art I did for the longest, reaching 3rd dan. It's also a derivative of Aiki-Jutusu, filtered through post-(Japanese) colonial Korea. Where Aikido went in an airy, religious sort of direction, Hapkido went in a self-defense direction. There's a variety of kicks, strikes, and a harder style of locks, throws, and grappling.

I liked this art a lot. It had all of the kicks from TKD, though directed more towards harder strikes than slappy point-scoring kicks. There were a variety of hand strikes and elbows (my personal favorite). The throws & limited ground work were largely cribbed from Judo (with many of the people in the lineage of Hapkido being Judo competitors).

One of the things that differentiated joint locks in Hapkido from Aikido was that in Aikido, you almost had to get a wrist lock magically. In Hapkido, if you get a wrist lock it's because you've jerked your opponent off balance or elbowed them in the face. Striking and kicking was used to set up throws, trips, and joint locks.

I think this martial art is a pretty strong choice for self defense, partly because I think the best self defense strategy is that if you have to use force, it is better to get the person on the ground and vacate the area as quickly as possible. From a sport perspective, it's not great. You have a mixed bag of tricks that won't transition directly into anything else. Some throws, a little striking, some kicking, basically no ground work.

I might teach this someday.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

The one that the Gracies made famous and I mentioned previously. Except this time, trained at a school devoted to just BJJ. This is what I'm currently doing with a Gracie University affiliated school. Tons of ground work and a handful of mediocre take downs.

What I really like about the way the Gracie University affiliated programs are set up is the standardized curriculum. To go into the white belt class and be able to drill basic techniques is what I wish my previous experience was. Doing all of the basics in slow technique classes dozens of times prior to moving into more advanced techniques is a really smart way to organize things.

The only thing I'm not particularly enthusiastic about is the self defense side of things and billing it as combatives. I'd rather not be on the ground with someone if I don't have to be. Get a throw? Great! Follow them down and keep grappling? Not unless there's a really good reason to. I get it overall because BJJ is almost entirely ground fighting, but I think the self-defense side's best application is being able to sweep or escape, get up, and get away.

Sport combat opportunities are, however, great. There are frequent tournaments so for anyone who wants to compete, a BJJ school is a great option.

Catch Wrestling

Catch (or catch-as-catch-can) wrestling was once an Olympic sport. It's the origin of both professional wrestling and freestyle wrestling. In recent times, it's the submission style trained by professional fighters like John Barnett and Randy Couture. Kazushi Sakuraba, also known as the Gracie Hunter, was a catch wrestler.

Catch wrestling shares a lot in common with BJJ; there is a lot of cross over between submissions, though they use different names for the same moves. The two biggest differences are: catch wrestling is a lot more invested in being on the feet and scoring take downs and there are more pain compliance type submissions.

In starting BJJ, one thing I have to constantly remind myself is not to go for the pain compliance. In catch, I wouldn't even both going for a proper rear naked choke, I always went for the neck crank/cross face.

Catch wrestling might be the most fun martial art I've ever done. The problem is that it's also the most brutal. I seldom left a class without a bunch of new bruises after working on throws for 30 minutes. I should have done this when I was 18 and practicing break falls on concrete, not at 40 when I have to get up and go to work.

The rolling was also intense. The instructor could say 50%, but everyone was absolutely going balls to the wall most of the time (including the instructor). The biggest reason I'm doing BJJ now is that I pulled a quad and got a concussion at the last catch class I went to; I'm not interested in getting brain damage pursuing a hobby.

From a self-defense perspective, catch wrestling is pretty awesome. Most of your time is spent throwing people. If you can throw someone on the ground, you're doing pretty great. From a combat sport perspective, it's just ok. Most grappling tournaments have rule sets that don't favor wrestling, they're geared more towards BJJ. You can compete, but you have to be careful about things like slamming people. It's probably on par with BJJ as a good complement for competing in MMA.

Wow, this is the most literate and compelling differential between martial art forms ...
I was actually considering one for a bit ...

I'm really reading this slowly and with purpose ...
Thank you for this ...