Chapotraphouse

Muay Thai & BJJ are both good options, they tend to be the foundations for a lot of MMA gyms.

Hey, mod of !combat@lemmy.ml here. Happy to answer questions.

When choosing a martial art, you’re not choosing in an ideal world, you’re choosing in your city. You need to find a good gym you can travel to, with good coaches and a schedule that works for you.

I’m going to move to a bigger city in September, and there’s a lot of stuff available, so you can comment on the more niche options.

Step one: spend an hour searching what’s available there. Check their timetables to make sure you can fit it in, and then get back to us. Then you need to go to the gym and make sure you like the vibes there. A good student-teacher relationship is essential.

Decent answers here already. Like 389aaa saying"My number one piece of advice is that the best martial art is the one you will practice consistently" – and that largely has to do with liking the crew.

Judo and Brazilian Jiujitsu are very effective and dont involve any head hitting so no cte. They focus on how to react if someone grabs you which is good, because in any other case you should be running away as fast as possible.

My number one piece of advice is that the best martial art is the one you will practice consistently, more or less. Some have better proven track records than others, but almost all of them will give you a firm advantage over the untrained as long as you practice diligently and efficiently.

Unfortunately a lot of martial arts gyms or dojos are chuddy as fuck, so you may have to bounce around a little to find both a style that you actually like, and a group of people who you can at least tolerate and more importantly trust with your body.

With that in mind, these days people seem to regard some combination of Judo+BJJ+Any striking art to be a good combo, as that would cover your bases in terms of unarmed combat - stand-up grappling, ground grappling, and striking. Wouldn't reach you how to deal with weapons, but weapon arts are quite niche and the rest is more important self defense wise.

If you don't wanna invest that much time, which is fair, out of the 3 my uneducated take would probably be Judo - less likely to be chuddy than BJJ and the ability to get people on the ground while remaining upright is theoretically the best thing you can do in a self defense scenario, as it gives you an opening to run.

In terms of injury, 90% of that is gym/dojo culture. If they don't take safety seriously, have a no pain no gain mindset, use too much force in sparring? You're gonna get hurt. The other 10% is how often you're getting struck on the head. Not doing a striking art, this can be mostly avoided by getting really good at falling properly.

I second that Judo and especially Jiu-Jitsu are probably what you want to do to minimize risk of long term injury and get useful training. It depends on where you're training, but in my experience you're less likely to get acute injury from Jiu-Jitsu (less likely to take a bad fall) and it has more groundwork, which is important for self-defense. Judo is still helpful though.

Most striking martial arts either give you a higher risk of acute injury than you're probably okay with, or are garbage for any purpose other than general fitness. That said, general fitness is still a good thing and you are much more likely to get through a self defense situation unless you have good cardio, so you should seek to improve it even if you can only pursue it via stationary bike at a gym or something.

Qin and 389 provided good suggestions. Both judo and bjj are excellent options. Practical and low risk of injury if you aren't planning on competing. There is still some risk, especially early on as your body learns to adapt to the movements and you learn how to breakfall and roll correctly. I tweaked my knee the first week trying to stay upright when my partner was pulling my body. I instinctively tried staying upright but you're supposed to go with the movement. Don't let that scare you though. If it's an option, try to find a bjj gym that incorporates judo, so that way you can learn takedowns and how to properly fall if someone catches you by surprise. Either option is a really solid defense strategy and lots of fun. I am partial to bjj because I do it and had a few misconceptions beforehand that were quickly shattered when a lot of my preconceived notions about what the martial art looked like and what type of people go to these classes was flipped after seeing it firsthand. Yes, there are a lot of chuds in these fields, especially bjj, but you just have to be selective when looking at gyms. I find most chuds gravitate towards Gracie Bara gyms (they also have weird rules other gyms don't) and 10th planet gyms (lots of Joe Rogan chuds and then you get to have the endless debate of gi vs no gi), but again, these probably vary from place to place. Just check out the prospective gym's website, do a free trial and check the vibe you get from the students and the teachers. I picked my gym based upon the fact that: they did both judo and bjj, everyone was smiling instead of trying to look tough, and they had a trans flag proudly displayed and no weird chud shit.

But basically, yeah, if there's judo available take that. If not, do bjj. If you find a bjj gym that does both, definitely do that. Hit me up if you have any questions.

Edit:

Some more advice to help you narrow down your decision.

If you do decide to do bjj, look out for these red flags: Avoid gyms that make you pay for belt promotions. Avoid gyms that force you to compete. Avoid gyms that don't have women in the classes. Avoid gyms with contracts.

work that cardio up to running. a fistfight is like sprinting as hard as you can for a few minutes unless one of you has a glass jaw.

learn some grappling and some takedown defense. BJJ is fine but you're not going to the mat on concrete because you'd fuck your own knees and everything.

what's your threat model that you think brawling will help, as opposed to removing yourself from the situation?

What ever has a cheap gym near you where people are nice.

Your milage may vary. Boxing is useually good but in lots of places people play too rough. MMA is cool but could be over priced or the gym could be full of right wing types. Kung fu is fun but it is entirely too dependent on local situations to guess. Around me kung fu places were elementary overpriced day cares with dubious predatory self help stuff attached.

If self defense is really your main concern and guns aren't an option your next best bet is probably learning to use a collapsible baton or maybe a stun gun. Having a weapon is always going to be better than being unarmed no matter how good a fighter you are.

Edit: should probably also add that focusing on your cardio is gonna be the best thing you can do for your own safety no matter what because the best thing you can do in a self defense situation is GTFO, and if you do end up in a melee it will be very cardio intense.