hardest martial art?

in your opinions.... what is the hardest martial art to learn? Which do you believe is the easiest? Taking into consideration large content of some arts, time to develop strengths etc etc.. Bearing in mind that one good technique trained well may be all u need!

 

Ok lets ruffle a few feathers and say the hardest is Tai Chi presuming you can find a Tai Chi teacher that knows the martial element. Easiest hmmmmmmmm Kickboxing.

 

This is just asking for trouble.

But I'll say T'ai Chi as well, if the instructor really teaches it.

The easiest? Probably poorly taught T'ai Chi. The ones who teach it just to do flowery forms. *blech*

 

I concur, Tai chi chaun.

 

Yes Tai Chi, or something that uses internal energy more than other arts, like Bagua. My experiences with American Karate have been somewhat disappointing. Where I took it it is was ridiculously easy, and you become proficient in a much shorter time than with CMA.

 

you say that like its a bad thing?

I would probably say the hardest to learn is tai chi, just going from what I have heard and seen- easiest, gotta be boxing.

takes litte time to learn, but a lifetime to master

 

Well, I don't really know how to explain it, in my school I felt the ease of learning led to a lot of folks acting like they knew what they were doing when they weren't (including me), again I only speak for that school and a couple of others I checked out. For myself, I need something more challenging, I love being awful at something and then the feeling that comes when you "get it". I also like to feel like I'm really pushing myself, and again I didn't feel that in my dojo (kempo) or the others I sat in on. I'm sure there's challenging karate schools out there, I just didn't find them.

 

I would have to disagree and say that either drunken style kung fu or mantis is hardest to learn. Tai chi is not hard to learn, it's hard to MASTER, there's a big difference that I think people are just tacitly equating. I spar with Tai chi to great effect, having only been practicing for a few months. However, I know it will be decades before I can ever become extremely proficient in it.

So I say drunken or mantis, probably leaning more towards mantis. Drunken, because it has the most awkward stancing and striking of any style I've ever heard of or seen. To be able to fight using those stances is extremely difficult until you develop a high degree of balance, coordination, timing, and control. I can't think of many other styles that require such high mastery of one's body to be able to perform. (Except perhaps golden snake, however I've heard very little of this style, not enough to give an overview and an explanation for the sake of explaining why it's the hardest style).

Then the reason I would say mantis is so difficult is because of all the pressure point hitting, dim mak being, arguably, one of the most difficult tools one can use in a fight. To try and hit a small spot, at a certain angle, with a precise amount of force, while your target is moving, and all the while defend yourself as well, is just incredibly hard and requires a tremendous degree of skill. This of course would apply to any other styles that heavily use dim mak, but mantis is just what came to mind first.

I've learned some tai chi, some drunken, and even some mantis, and by far Tai Chi is the easiest of them all (though still far more difficult then things like boxing, karate, etc.)

 

I maintain all types of fighting styles are hard to learn and adapt accordingly, that is, perform movements etc. that are effective and have the desired outcome. It comes down to your aptitude a lot of the time and basically how short your learning curve is.

 

I immediately thought of Shi_toryu (spelling?), mainly because of all the kata!

I guess Tai chi and capoeira are both extremely hard to master.

Easiest...erm...not found one very easy yet...but I haven't done them all just yet

 

I agree..Tai-Chi

 

Don't get offended people when i say this. I think Tae Kwon Do is the easiest. I trained for many years in Tae Kwon Do under one of the best Tae Kwon Do masters in the world.

For the hardest i have to say Wushu. I have only trained in Wushu for about two years, and is defintily the hardest. The red sash (which is the first sash) kids were better than half the black beltes in Tae Kwon Do. Developing the strength for jumps and kicks was so hard.

JL

 

Wushu? What style Wushu?

I reckon Tai-Chi would be my guess at the hardest to learn, because you never stop learning. It takes more than a few months to achieve full-body relaxation and the state of calmness needed to use it effectively in combat.

Anyone can start an art, take a few techniques, and use them to "spar". But that does not remotely constitute leaning it, and anyone who says they have learned Tai-Chi within a months is dreaming. I can spar with a few Wing Chun techniques after 5 months, but have I learnt it? Nooo... and Tai-Chi takes FAR longer...

 

It will have to be the shaolin styles- there's so much to master- It will probably take a lifetime or more!!!

 

I would say Aikido is one of the most difficult arts to master. It seems to have a wide variety of very tricky techniques and infinite numbers of variations. The added problem with aikido over other arts is that you have to learn with a partner so that adds a whole other set of issues into the equasion. Most Wushu /Taichi stuff is practised solo.

 

Hardest mmmmmmmm

Depends on the indivdual.

For e.g. someone say 5 stone overweight & unflexible - Tae Kwon Do would be very hard going.

You have to find one you like that you feel suits you, you enjoy, & isn't ridicuously hard to learn.

 

What do you mean by learned Tai-Chi then? Do you actually mean mastered it? I mean, I know Tai-Chi material, and I can apply Tai-Chi material - I'm not pretending to know all of Tai-Chi, or to have mastered any Tai-Chi, I just say I know how to do Tai Chi. Do I have to know advanced calculus and be able to compute quantum equations to be able to say I can do math? Or that I know math? It doesn't mean I've mastered math, it just means I can perform math. Same with Tai Chi.

However, not same with Mantis. I can't hit pressure points on a moving target for the life of me. It's like getting your equations wrong everytime in math class, in which case you couldn't yet say you know math if you can't get anything right. Drunken material, I've gotten better at it, but whenever I try anything but the simplest techniques I end up flat on my butt, or staggering across the room off balance. This is all I meant when I said the latter two are harder than Tai Chi. Not to MASTER, but to just learn.

 

Yeah, I totally agree, even though Wushu and Shaolin styles can vary widely in how they're taught, I think at their core they're just ridiculously hard to train your body to do. The kicks and stances seem so convoluted, I still haven't got half of the basics down, I can't imagine how long it would be until I could use it in real life effectively. CMA's can be extremely hard. That's why they're cool

 

The hardest martial art for endurance and overall toughness: Muay Thai Boxing

 

Wushu is the national martial art of modern China. I saw their national team perform it at the Melbourne Tennis Centre when they visited a number of years ago.
It is to them as ballet is to western Europe. Very artistic, very pantomine, very skilled and very acrobatic.

Similarly, kata are the theatre of Japanese cultural pantomine. Very precise, very involved and again, very skilled. Where Chinese (theatrical) martial arts is flamboyant, Japanese is pragmatic.

Hmm...the hardest to learn? I think it's an oxymoron. The hardest part is combat itself, the styles are to represent aspects of human form which may either make it easier or be more appropriate for the given situation.
So the hardest would be those designed not to be applicable but theatrical and artistic. Wushu, the various Japanese katas and to a lesser extent Tai Chi Chuan or Geijutsu (ie. things like flower arranging or painting a cool manga picture). Then comes sports orientated martial arts such as Tae Kwon Do (a hybrid of Chinese and Japanese forms), Thai Kickboxing and Capoeira dance. Unnaturally adapted, "civilized" (but brutal) self defence forms such as generic Kung Fu and the mainstream martial arts fit in there somewhere between Tae Kwon Do and Kickboxing.
Bujinkan forms (from koppojutsu to joe kwan's self defence school), are the easiest and they should be. They're designed that way, straight out fighting is the easiest thing for a brain to understand bar none. It's just that anything else is an easier thing to do because laziness always is.

It's always the way though. The most effective course is in fact the easiest to learn. Funny about that, it seems we've intelligent brains after all.
But unnatural stuff looks so....ethereal and beautiful it's, I dunno, art. And we don't exactly come out of the womb thinking very realistically.