HELP: Starting a Second Martial Art

Rich_2k3 · Red Belt

I've been doing Karate for about a year now and I'm thinking of joining another club (at the same time) which is Lau Gar Kung fu, both are quite different to each other and Lau Gar is more of a competitive martial art and it also incudes the five shaolin animals, while Karate is geared more to self defence, is this a good idea? and when do u think it is a good time to start a second martial art?
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gheinisch · KF VIP

If you feel it's the right time to start another Martial Art than go for it. Cross training is great and can be very beneficial especially if the style you train is may be weak in a certain area. With that said, you say you have been training for only a year. I've been training for four years and feel like there is so much knowledge in my style yet to be learned. Ask your Sensei what you can expect down the road in your style, it may be your style has some of the things you're wanting to learn elsewhere. My style incorporates some of the animal forms but they weren't introduced to us until a couple of years into training. Don't rush to learn, practice what you know to perfection. As our Hanshi says, "I would rather you have a few techniques perfected that work, than to be familiar with 10,000 that don't." Be sure it's for the right reasons, you may want to give your style a little more time. IMHO

Hope this helps! Good luck in your decision.
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WolverineGuy · Red Belt

I agree...if you've only been training one year in your style, you really can't have an informed opinion on what the holes are in your art.

Mind you, if you're just doing it for variety...heck, why not. But I still believe that there's a certain leel of mastery that has to be attained before jumping to another art.
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Rich_2k3 · Red Belt

Its really just to do with interest in the other arts, Kung fu might suit me better or it might not, theres no harm in having a look I suppose.
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"When my enemy contracts I expand and when he expands I contract" - Bruce Lee

aefibird · Black Belt

Yeah, have a look. If you want a bit of variety in your training I'd say 'go for it!' Go and pay a visit to the Lau Gar club and have a chat to the instructor there.
Just make sure that you're not trying to learn too much new stuff at once - it's better to keep going over the same techniques again and again rather than rush to try out all sorts of different moves.

Good luck with your training!
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SevenStar · Black Belt

personally, I wouldn't do it - here's why...they are both standup styles. lau gar being a chinese art may have slightly different methods of power generation than your karate. Also, you may start to get some of the techniques confused, or only using what you prefer. For example, I was in muay thai when I started longfist. After 4 years of longfist, I was still throwing the thai style roundhouse, as opposed to the way they did it. I still fought and moved like a thai fighter. That's the style I prefer. I can do the chinese forms properly, but when I fight, I'm all thai. As that's what I prefer anyway, I'm now back into thai boxing.

That said, you can do both, but to some it may be confusing. To me it wasn't confusing, but I kinda refused to follow the chinese methods of power issuing.

In addition to muay thai, I grapple. graplling is "safer" to cross train in, IMO, as there is not alot of crossover between the grappling and the standup.

Reklats · Blue Belt

So... are you going to do both at once, or are you thinking about switching? It might be hard to accept the doctrines of two different arts. After a little bit of bjj training I felt stupid doing tkd, so I stopped. I thought I was going to cross train and I ended up just dropping tkd alltogether.

SevenStar · Black Belt

me? nah, I'm not switching. I intend on getting back into the ring, and continuing to compete in judo and bjj.

Rich_2k3 · Red Belt

Well, I went to the a lesson yesterday to check it out, firstly its all in chinese which is confusing, and their are little subtles likes the bowing is different and the guard is very different (unpractical in my opinion) and some other little things. But some things were the same like the side kick, roundhouse, stuff like that. One annoying thing was the snap punch, u see in kung fu u snap punch with ur fist pointing vertical instead of horizontal, i found that all the power was lost. But I enjoyed the sparring, which was practically the same, and I tried to mix both arts together. There is one really good thing about this club, theres loads of tournements and lots of squad training, and I would like to compete. I dont know what to do, its the subtle differences between the two that confuses them, if they were completely different then that would be fine, becuase its easier to seperate them...mmm i dont know, i'll give it a few more lessons see how it go's, u see if there was a judo or ju jitsu club near me then i'd join it, but for some reason theres only striking arts. I really want to do a grappling art. The ppl at the Lau Gar club were really helpful and friendly, I dont want to go for a few weeks then quit after signing membership and all that. HELP.
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"When my enemy contracts I expand and when he expands I contract" - Bruce Lee

tommarker · Black Belt

I've been told that by the time you get to 2nd Dan, you have a good enough grasp of the essentials of your art that you can think of studying something else without ending up with a mishmash of technique.
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