One of my favourite hobbies is doing different types of martial arts or doing MMA (mixed martial arts). It's a great way to feel what different martial arts have to offer and it good for disciplining one's self.
You always learn new ways on how each martial art tackles each different situation and then "stealing it" to incorporate your own way to express one's self through the martial arts. Some practitioners in the martial arts say that entering tournaments means that the martial art has turned into a sport and not a discipline. I guess they're right in a way but I reckon one should test their abilities against other in order to show how much they need to improve on.
Being a MMA practitioner also means your wide range in the knowledge of martial arts from throwing grapples, joint manipulations, different types of punches and kicks and what designated target they hit, to different types of kata's of which different martial art has.
At the MMA club I'm at now has a grading system which starts off from white, yellow, orange and green. These ones take about three months each to earn, from there, blue to black takes three months extra each time you grade. For example blue would take six months to earn because the previous belt took three. So that means to get to the next belt from blue will now take 9 months. Why it works this way because there's so much stuff to go over in a short period of time. Plus the grading examinations get longer each time.
One of my mates there said that it took 3 days for a black stripe to finish his grading.
At the moment I want to try out Taekwondo at a local club at a high school nearby my place to see what they have to offer in their tournaments since my mixed martial arts club only has a tournament once a year.
I think if one wants to become a great fighter they must incorporate more than one style martial art to the one they're doing now to see the ups and downs of their martial art and how can one fix that with the other.
Right now I've been doing MMA for about 7 months now so I'm still a newbie but I recommend doing it if one wants to get fit but also learn some street self defense.
