Has being a fan of Dragon Ball inspired you to start training in martial arts?

[JEFFMAN219]

Hey all has watching DBZ inspired you to start training in martial arts? As a kid watching DBZ I wanted to take Karate but at the time my parents wouldn't let me. Now fast forward 15 years later I decided to start training in Muay Thai and so far I am enjoying it.

[floofychan333]

I did do Songahm Taekwondo before I started watching DB but I quit before I started watching and I haven't been inspired by watching, likely because I'm too busy and alarmingly unathletic

[Kendamu]

I'm surprised nobody Tweeted this thread at me!

Hi! I'm like one of four people in all of online Dragon Ball fandom that studies martial arts!! I have experience in Taekwondo and Jeet Kune Do. I'm currently training in Brazilian Jiujitsu. The rest of this post is long as it covers my Dragon Ball inspiration and how it relates to roughly 17 years of serious martial arts study.

Now, to be fair, it was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that got me into training when I was really young. Dragon Ball hadn't even been a whisper of a rumor here yet in 1980s Indianapolis. Back then, I had studied some Karate and learned to use a few weapons to go alongside my self-taught ability to sneak around all ninja-like.

It wasn't until I had seen Son Goku one-shot Reacoom on Toonami (only to go back to Raditz the next day) that I had become inspired to start looking at how I might actually seriously train to be capable against other trained martial artists. I was a Freshman in High School and had enrolled in Taekwondo with a friend and really enjoyed it for awhile! I made a lot of friends there, brought other friends from school into it, and had competed in a few tournaments as well! I also was reading in martial arts books and on the Internet about ki and how it plays a role in actual martial arts training. I noticed how in real life the effects of a kiai shout had a lot of similar effects to different ki techniques in Dragon Ball. Of course, they were a lot flashier in Dragon Ball, but I was happy with the results I was getting through my own (sometimes really odd) experimentation and research. Back then, I took the notion of ki a lot more literally rather than looking at it as a combination of spirit, mind, heart and soul, but it was effective no matter how I thought it worked.

Oh, and I had gotten my hands on a weighted vest and some heavy boots to run in, too. Because Dragon Ball.

At about halfway to black belt, I had won first place in sparring at the Midwest Martial Arts Championship, but it was against a guy who, had there been no rules, was obviously big and strong enough that he could've easily killed me with his kicks. So, I turned to my instructor to learn something more realistic for that very scenario. He gave me the self defense volume of Bruce Lee's Fighting Method and I made sure to focus my training on the self-defense scenarios, which included a lot of low kicks to the knees and other practical applications of everyday techniques I had learned in Taekwondo. I also started sparring full contact with my classmates outside of class. Eventually, our instructor had to open up a Kickboxing class for us to give us a proper outlet for that type of training.

In college, I had enrolled in martial arts classes, participated in martial arts clubs, and had assisted instruction as well. Jeet Kune Do (Bruce Lee's martial art) was an option for what I could study and I naturally gravitated toward it. Realistic application, focus on physical fitness, hard MMA-type sparring, and Bruce Lee's words about putting real feeling and intention into your attacks (which is sort of like focusing ki, but more pragmatic) was right up my alley as a Dragon Ball fan who was trying to improve my martial arts ability. I learned principles from a variety of other martial arts during my time in college, but I based it all around Jeet Kune Do as a base.

After college, I took my own Journey to the West (Coast). I live in Orange County, California now and I had originally started training at different gyms to find a good place to train in Mixed Martial Arts so I could compete against other strong fighters. By this point, I had learned a lot about the training methods of the Dragon Ball cast. I understood training the body and mind to strengthen the spirit. I understood attacking in explosive bursts. I understood the power of visualization training to supplement physical training. I understood the importance of extremely efficient moving and breathing. I understood the ability to "read" the kind of "energy" a person gives off (as in evaluating their movements, their personality, etc.). These aren't things that are exclusive to Dragon Ball, but being a fan made me focus on these things a lot more thoroughly than my friends who didn't know Dragon Ball as well. I was getting a great expansion of my education in all of those things through daily MMA training. Something was missing, though.

Over the years, my focus has shifted somewhat away from emulating the techniques of Dragon Ball and more toward living the spirit of Dragon Ball. What I ended up not getting from the MMA-focused training scene was that certain spirit of friendship, adventure, and a true oldschool martial arts spirit that make Dragon Ball what it is. I could find it in the gym I train at, but I noticed a distinct lack of that Dragon Ball "atmosphere" in the professional competitive scene that I was striving to get to. Also, I'm over 30 years old now. I don't handle concussions like I used to. I needed to change my focus to an art that that full-contact and extremely effective, but wasn't going to destroy my body by the time I was 40. I realized earlier this year (2016) that I had found all of those things in my Brazilian Jiujitsu training! Jiujitsu is extremely effective, you can spar as hard as you want without much safety gear, every submission is like learning a new special technique, the competition scene is world class, but the atmosphere of friendship, adventure, and lifelong personal development through martial arts training are all there!! So, I switched my focus almost exclusively to Brazilian Jiujitsu.

Dragon Ball and Jiujitsu go hand-in-hand. I know so many Jiujitsu guys who are also fans of Dragon Ball. Even on a surface level, Jiu-Jitsu Practitioners Should Love Dragon Ball Z.

So, like I said at the top of the post, I train in Jiujitsu now and it'll likely be what I train in until the day I die. The fighting doesn't look like Dragon Ball, but the underlying principles are all there and having even a couple months of training in Jiujitsu pretty much makes you invincible to a regular person with no grappling training; kind of like Dragon Ball characters compared to regular people. Also like Dragon Ball, even when you're that strong there's levels of skill you can't even fathom yet that you can reach through hard training and you'll never have learned so much that there isn't a new level to get to. I could go into extreme detail, but that would be another 1,000 word essay and I want to save that until I have a higher belt rank, more experience, more authority on the topic of Jiujitsu, and an even deeper understanding of the spirit of Dragon Ball.




Oh! In case you're wondering, I did have to use my Jeet Kune Do self defense training once. Those Doritos, which got stuck in the vending machine after I paid for them, were delicious.

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

Not inspired but it was one of the many influence I had when making this decision, my main inspiration was mainly from chinese movies (Jackie Chan).

[Hugo Boss]

I could go into extreme detail, but that would be another 1,000 word essay and I want to save that until I have a higher belt rank, more experience, more authority on the topic of Jiujitsu, and an even deeper understanding of the spirit of Dragon Ball.

I would appreciate to read your further experiences. If you are looking for greater heights come to Brazil!

[JEFFMAN219]

I did do Songahm Taekwondo before I started watching DB but I quit before I started watching and I haven't been inspired by watching, likely because I'm too busy and alarmingly unathletic

Lol you should get back into it bro. Who cares if you are not athletic just have fun with it .

[JEFFMAN219]

I'm surprised nobody Tweeted this thread at me!

Hi! I'm like one of four people in all of online Dragon Ball fandom that studies martial arts!! I have experience in Taekwondo and Jeet Kune Do. I'm currently training in Brazilian Jiujitsu. The rest of this post is long as it covers my Dragon Ball inspiration and how it relates to roughly 17 years of serious martial arts study.

Now, to be fair, it was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that got me into training when I was really young. Dragon Ball hadn't even been a whisper of a rumor here yet in 1980s Indianapolis. Back then, I had studied some Karate and learned to use a few weapons to go alongside my self-taught ability to sneak around all ninja-like.

It wasn't until I had seen Son Goku one-shot Reacoom on Toonami (only to go back to Raditz the next day) that I had become inspired to start looking at how I might actually seriously train to be capable against other trained martial artists. I was a Freshman in High School and had enrolled in Taekwondo with a friend and really enjoyed it for awhile! I made a lot of friends there, brought other friends from school into it, and had competed in a few tournaments as well! I also was reading in martial arts books and on the Internet about ki and how it plays a role in actual martial arts training. I noticed how in real life the effects of a kiai shout had a lot of similar effects to different ki techniques in Dragon Ball. Of course, they were a lot flashier in Dragon Ball, but I was happy with the results I was getting through my own (sometimes really odd) experimentation and research. Back then, I took the notion of ki a lot more literally rather than looking at it as a combination of spirit, mind, heart and soul, but it was effective no matter how I thought it worked.

Oh, and I had gotten my hands on a weighted vest and some heavy boots to run in, too. Because Dragon Ball.

At about halfway to black belt, I had won first place in sparring at the Midwest Martial Arts Championship, but it was against a guy who, had there been no rules, was obviously big and strong enough that he could've easily killed me with his kicks. So, I turned to my instructor to learn something more realistic for that very scenario. He gave me the self defense volume of Bruce Lee's Fighting Method and I made sure to focus my training on the self-defense scenarios, which included a lot of low kicks to the knees and other practical applications of everyday techniques I had learned in Taekwondo. I also started sparring full contact with my classmates outside of class. Eventually, our instructor had to open up a Kickboxing class for us to give us a proper outlet for that type of training.

In college, I had enrolled in martial arts classes, participated in martial arts clubs, and had assisted instruction as well. Jeet Kune Do (Bruce Lee's martial art) was an option for what I could study and I naturally gravitated toward it. Realistic application, focus on physical fitness, hard MMA-type sparring, and Bruce Lee's words about putting real feeling and intention into your attacks (which is sort of like focusing ki, but more pragmatic) was right up my alley as a Dragon Ball fan who was trying to improve my martial arts ability. I learned principles from a variety of other martial arts during my time in college, but I based it all around Jeet Kune Do as a base.

After college, I took my own Journey to the West (Coast). I live in Orange County, California now and I had originally started training at different gyms to find a good place to train in Mixed Martial Arts so I could compete against other strong fighters. By this point, I had learned a lot about the training methods of the Dragon Ball cast. I understood training the body and mind to strengthen the spirit. I understood attacking in explosive bursts. I understood the power of visualization training to supplement physical training. I understood the importance of extremely efficient moving and breathing. I understood the ability to "read" the kind of "energy" a person gives off (as in evaluating their movements, their personality, etc.). These aren't things that are exclusive to Dragon Ball, but being a fan made me focus on these things a lot more thoroughly than my friends who didn't know Dragon Ball as well. I was getting a great expansion of my education in all of those things through daily MMA training. Something was missing, though.

Over the years, my focus has shifted somewhat away from emulating the techniques of Dragon Ball and more toward living the spirit of Dragon Ball. What I ended up not getting from the MMA-focused training scene was that certain spirit of friendship, adventure, and a true oldschool martial arts spirit that make Dragon Ball what it is. I could find it in the gym I train at, but I noticed a distinct lack of that Dragon Ball "atmosphere" in the professional competitive scene that I was striving to get to. Also, I'm over 30 years old now. I don't handle concussions like I used to. I needed to change my focus to an art that that full-contact and extremely effective, but wasn't going to destroy my body by the time I was 40. I realized earlier this year (2016) that I had found all of those things in my Brazilian Jiujitsu training! Jiujitsu is extremely effective, you can spar as hard as you want without much safety gear, every submission is like learning a new special technique, the competition scene is world class, but the atmosphere of friendship, adventure, and lifelong personal development through martial arts training are all there!! So, I switched my focus almost exclusively to Brazilian Jiujitsu.

Dragon Ball and Jiujitsu go hand-in-hand. I know so many Jiujitsu guys who are also fans of Dragon Ball. Even on a surface level, Jiu-Jitsu Practitioners Should Love Dragon Ball Z.

So, like I said at the top of the post, I train in Jiujitsu now and it'll likely be what I train in until the day I die. The fighting doesn't look like Dragon Ball, but the underlying principles are all there and having even a couple months of training in Jiujitsu pretty much makes you invincible to a regular person with no grappling training; kind of like Dragon Ball characters compared to regular people. Also like Dragon Ball, even when you're that strong there's levels of skill you can't even fathom yet that you can reach through hard training and you'll never have learned so much that there isn't a new level to get to. I could go into extreme detail, but that would be another 1,000 word essay and I want to save that until I have a higher belt rank, more experience, more authority on the topic of Jiujitsu, and an even deeper understanding of the spirit of Dragon Ball.




Oh! In case you're wondering, I did have to use my Jeet Kune Do self defense training once. Those Doritos, which got stuck in the vending machine after I paid for them, were delicious.

Interesting story bro . I was also interested in taking up Brazilian jujitsu but Muay Thai looked more fun to me. I will eventually like to learn BJJ but I'll do that once I get really good in Muay Thai.

[JEFFMAN219]

Not inspired but it was one of the many influence I had when making this decision, my main inspiration was mainly from chinese movies (Jackie Chan).

What marital art are you currently training in?

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

Not inspired but it was one of the many influence I had when making this decision, my main inspiration was mainly from chinese movies (Jackie Chan).

What marital art are you currently training in?

Changquan Wushu.

[Kendamu]

I could go into extreme detail, but that would be another 1,000 word essay and I want to save that until I have a higher belt rank, more experience, more authority on the topic of Jiujitsu, and an even deeper understanding of the spirit of Dragon Ball.

I would appreciate to read your further experiences. If you are looking for greater heights come to Brazil!

Some day I just might. Right now, though, Southern California is an amazing place to live if you're interested in Jiujitsu.

I'm surprised nobody Tweeted this thread at me!

Hi! I'm like one of four people in all of online Dragon Ball fandom that studies martial arts!! I have experience in Taekwondo and Jeet Kune Do. I'm currently training in Brazilian Jiujitsu.

Interesting story bro . I was also interested in taking up Brazilian jujitsu but Muay Thai looked more fun to me. I will eventually like to learn BJJ but I'll do that once I get really good in Muay Thai.

Muay Thai is pretty awesome!! It's the striking art I was training in while training for MMA. I still occasionally train in some striking, but it's mainly for the sake of having good defense against strikers so I can close in for grappling.

[Kunzait_83]

Hi! I'm like one of four people in all of online Dragon Ball fandom that studies martial arts!!

*Raises hand*

So there's me, Kendamu, and Neo-Makaioshin. Wonder who the last one is?

But yeah, while I've studied and trained in martial arts since I was about 6, it had nothing to do with Dragon Ball at all. By that point I'd only just barely started hearing about DB and wouldn't get more deeply into it for maybe another year or two. Kung Fu films - Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Angela Mao, Gordon Liu, and Hwang Jang Lee's in particular - were already a really, REALLY huge obsession of mine since well before that (since I was maybe around 4?), but honestly it was largely real life problems that really got me started. My idol worship of Bruce Lee certainly helped though.

I studied mainly Shaolin Kung Fu* with a little bit of Jiujitsu and traditional Western boxing sprinkled in. Competed in some tournaments (I placed 4th statewide) and was overall really adept in my peak years (my daily training regiment was an utterly ridiculous three to five straight hours punishment session). If severe illness didn't abruptly knock me out of it years back, I don't doubt that I probably would've wound up involved in the MMA scene in some capacity. Definitely would've been a teacher also.

*My taking the actual plunge into learning martial arts was primarily motivated by real life matters, but my specifically selecting a Shaolin fighting style? Totally motivated by my slobbering adoration of Shaw Bros. and Gordon Liu/36th Chamber of Shaolin in particular.

[Perfectionist-Cell]

Well.....

My story starts when i was just 6 years old. I took Karate class for the entire school year. After that i left Karate for unknown reasons (Can't remember). Fast forward 2 years later my friend introduced me to Dragon ball z Kai (Not dbz) i started watching it to no end and then started drawing it still do till this day gotten a lot better ever since. I sparred with my friend up until 5th grade. We parted ways after graduation. In 6th grade i watched an anime called Kenichi Mightiest Disciple. I took my training seriously ever since and have been trying to create my own martial art. I started with muscle training first since i liked the way Goku trained on his way to namek. I did countless push squats and situps. Sometimes i felt Goku was standing there watching me train. Sometimes i would play DBZ while i would train just to remember why I'm training to begin with. In 9th grade i would train harder since regular push ups were getting to easy (Actially do weighted jump squats,weighted push ups, and lift weights now) .Soon i created my own martial art (I still advance it till this day). I havent given it a name but its similar to Zamasu when he uses karate chops. You defend with your left hand and attack with your right you must have strong leg muscles so you can hold your ground and take force if someone decides to push or grab you during a fight. If you deflect the oppnents attack and they have an opening attack the opening with all your force in a form of a karate chop. I have yet to test it on anyone but i keep training to become strong enough to do amazing things like Goku i guess....

The end

[DerekPadula]

Dragon Ball is what started me down the path of martial arts to become who I am today, writing about the series for a living.

My personal story is several pages long, and I explore it in the intro of the Dragon Soul book, so I don't feel up to writing about it again. But I think it'd be fun to share this new album of my experiences training with the Shaolin Monks. I'll probably do a blog post on my site about it soon-ish.

Suffice to say, everything began with Dragon Ball! It is literally a life-changing series.

[Gerzo]

I wouldn't really consider boxing a Martial Art but I started boxing when I was around 8 years old because of Dragonball I had asked my Dad if I could go to karate first of all but he said boxing would be better, I lasted until I was 15 then stopped to focus on school. I've recently started training again but not because of Dragonball, I just want to compete again now that I'm done with my studies.

[rereboy]

I wouldn't really consider boxing a Martial Art

There's no question that it is a martial art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_arts. Even weapon based martial arts are still called martial arts.

Hajime no Ippo is a great shonen manga about boxing, btw.

As for me, I never actually trained in martial arts besides attending a few Judo lessons when I was a kid. Nowadays, I'm trying to put myself in shape with crossfit, but no martial arts, and it wasn't inspired by Dragon Ball, just a general desire to improve myself.