OT: Western v. Eastern martial arts

[rdonj]

I've heard that there are people who teach Tai Chi as a martial art rather than as a method of exercise and that it can actually be quite dangerous. But I would say that pretty much any martial art can be powerful if practiced by a sufficiently gifted student, so long as it's not something silly like martial arts tea ceremony.

I don't know what aikido looks like either, but I suspect it looks a little like judo. My brother used to do judo... and of course he would always practice on me.

My personal experience is with Aikido, which may also be impractical in a street fight (or MMA), but it's great for keeping the wife and kids in line (see my wife and kids).

To my understanding, Aikido is basically a grappling art, like judo or jujutsu. Looking up the acronym MMA, I seem to get a hit relating to UFC, which I am vaguely aware of and heard somewhat to the effect that it was dominated for a while by practitioners of gracie jiu jutsu in particular. So apparently it would probably not be impractical for that, though personally I am not that convinced of grappling arts superiority. Then again, a lot does depend on the student.

And K, interesting that you dueled an olympic fencer. Olympic fencing kind of bugs me though... usually, the two people just lunge at each other and whichever hits first wins, so it seems mostly determined by who has the best reflexes. In my book that's not winning, that's mutually agreeing to die :P I tried fencing once... I was at a renaissance faire, and they had a few guys there offering fencing lessons. I had a bit of bad reflexes for it being used to somewhat different sword arts, so I would keep trying to do things I wasn't supposed to and had to restrain myself. Anyway, I ended up going 2 to 3 with my instructor, with a rather furious battle on that last point, neither one of us wanted to lose Relevance? Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that with martial arts, it's not necessarily so much learning the moves as perfecting the technique and acquiring the reflexes required for it. Being properly fit for the school helps too.