Learning two striking martial arts at the same time

[KickBoxingNoob]

I have been doing Muai Thai kickboxing for 6 months. I feel like i have come a long way as a noob, but still know that I have a long way to go.
My goals for doing martial arts is to get fit and strong, get mentally strong and confident, learn to defend my self and also a great way to meet new people and make friends (im new to a city). I dont plan on ever getting in the ring, but it would be cool if i could one day.

I plan to start studying Kyokushin Karate after doing 1 year of Muai Thai kickboxing. I will want to do both martial arts as they interest me.

Kyokushin interests me as i enjoy the spiritual side of things, the self confidence etc. Plus as cheesy as this sounds i love K1 and a lot of my heroes do Kyokushin such as Van JCVD and Dolph Lundgren, Jai White etc.

So my question to everyone is: do you think doing two martial arts is over kill? Will i confuse myself or slow down my progress for both styles? Will i damage my body because of all of the contact from doing two martial arts? I plan on doing MT 3 days and week and karate 3 days a week.

Thanks for the help

 

[Higus]

My goals for doing martial arts is to get fit and strong, get mentally strong and confident, learn to defend my self and also a great way to meet new people and make friends (im new to a city). I dont plan on ever getting in the ring, but it would be cool if i could one day.

For your personal goals, there's no reason why you couldn't do both. If you start to see one school detracting from another or your priorities and goals change, then you may have to make some decisions, but otherwise go for it. Don't over think it too much. As long as you are enjoying yourself, everything else will fall into place.

 

[Fire of Youth]

It depends on the culture of your respective instructors/gyms. Some instructors take offense if you learn something else from someone else. It can be very difficult to work on blending your respective arts in that context. But if your instructors at both gyms have an open mind and like to teach what will work for your personal style, as opposed to what they find exclusively useful, then they will both facilitate the blending in different ways. Saying that, you will usually have to show that you can do it their way and respect that knowledge before they will consider what you are attempting to do with an open mind.

 

[n.diazismylife1999]

It depends on the culture of your respective instructors/gyms. Some instructors take offense if you learn something else from someone else. It can be very difficult to work on blending your respective arts in that context. But if your instructors at both gyms have an open mind and like to teach what will work for your personal style, as opposed to what they find exclusively useful, then they will both facilitate the blending in different ways. Saying that, you will usually have to show that you can do it their way and respect that knowledge before they will consider what you are attempting to do with an open mind.

HUGE red flag if your instructor takes offense at you wanting to better yourself and increase the size of your toolbox. I'd switch gyms at that point. One of the best things about MMA is that it made this whole "unchanging style that you dedicate your whole life to" garbage go out of fashion. Before, pretty much all TMA instructors would have taken offense at you training elsewhere.

As for the topic, Kyokushin and MT go well together. Go for it.

 

[shinkyoku]

kyokushin and MT go well together. Kyokushin dojos tend to welcome crosstraining -as long as you can pull whatever other stuff you learn in sparring
But.. learning two arts from scratch at the same time, especially if they are kind of similar, will always be hard. Most likely you will confuse technique fine detail, and f it up it in both arts. I would hold on starting the second art until you have a good foundation in the first.

Btw Dolph do kyokushin and fought knockdown tournaments at world level, Jai White have trained but not competed, but JCVD never did kyokushin -he did some tippy-tappy point stuff (shotokan if I remember right).

 

[Zefram Cochrane]

I don't see the problem, but I suggest you also consider these combinations: MT/Western Boxing or Kyokushin/Western Boxing.

 

[Azam]

My advice is don't put too much on your plate. Stick to one style - get proficient enough then think about cross-training in another striking art.

What I've seen some guys who are not in KK do - is turn up to sparring sessions & learn things from sparring. Although you'd have to be proficient in MT & find a place that offers sparring sessions.

I think if MT guys are interested in doing KK - that's the best thing. Not sure if it's optimal to learn two similar striking arts - better to learn boxing or something different. I suppose it depends on your goals.

 

[Paradigm]

I'd stick to one art and get proficient at it first. One year in an art isn't very much at all...even for a simplistic on the surface art like Muay Thai. Most people I see that I haven't trained with in awhile generally don't look too different from where they were when I last saw them (talking over a period of months to more than a year).

Why is this? It's probably because most people that train don't bother to do anything but the bare minimum in the gym. Training 3x a week is 156 hours a year if your sessions are an hour...not much when you think about it. If you want to get better at an art faster, stay after class, talk to the higher level people in the gym to pick their brains, work on the side with better people outside of class sessions and watch footage of good practitioners of your chosen art on YouTube or wherever. Most people that train MT don't even watch MT...I'm guessing it's the same for most other arts out there (except maybe MMA and boxing).

My advice is don't put too much on your plate. Stick to one style - get proficient enough then think about cross-training in another striking art.

What I've seen some guys who are not in KK do - is turn up to sparring sessions & learn things from sparring. Although you'd have to be proficient in MT & find a place that offers sparring sessions.

I think if MT guys are interested in doing KK - that's the best thing. Not sure if it's optimal to learn two similar striking arts - better to learn boxing or something different. I suppose it depends on your goals.

This. Focus on getting decent at one art first. Too many people want to add all kinds of tools to the toolbox without even having a one tool they're proficient at. Kind of reminds me of guys that want to learn southpaw within 3 months of starting to train something...most likely, they just end up being a guy with mediocre skills in both stances unless their art switches stances a lot (like TKD).