There are different groups of martial arts and having an understanding of them will help you choose the one that best fits your style. These Martial Arts are grouped into three categories: those involving strikes, those focused on grappling, and a mix of strikes and grappling. Understanding these different groups goes a long way to understanding how each martial art style is structured and helps to assist in learning martial arts.
Martial Arts – Strike
There are several martial art styles that revolve around strikes. Kickboxing is a style of martial arts that involves the fighter dishing out strikes of punches and kicks. It is inspired by aerobics practice and has been linked to the ancient practice of Muay Thai. Other martial art styles that involves strikes includes Karate, boxing, Taekwondo and Kung-Fu amongst others. All these styles are centered on dishing strikes to weaken opponents.
Grappling styles and Hybrid styles
Another group of martial arts have to do with grappling. This style of fighting involves the grappling and throwing down of an opponent. The idea is to show dominance by pinning the opponent into submission. Some of these styles involve the use of takedowns and throws to win an opponent. Martial art styles that involves grappling are wrestling, Aikido, Judo, Jujitsu, Shuai Jiao, Hapkido and many others.
Hybrid styles involve the combination of strikes and grappling. This group came about as a result of many martial arts schools (dojo) teaching a combination of the striking and grappling styles. The mixed martial arts (MMA) is a typical hybrid martial arts that involves using tactics of both grappling and striking styles to defeat an opponent. Fighting styles that fall in this category, apart from MMA, are Ninjustu, Jeetkundo and Wing Chun.