I think DaN\'s point was more about needing to fight to learn to fight. While you will EVENTUALLY learn to fight off an attacker...possibly even reliably so, with TKD, you\'d spend several years getting there, where as in KB you\'ll get there alot sooner, they\'ll throw you in the ring and knock you around a bit right off the bat.
You can\'t learn to fight kicking air and entering tournaments where you can\'t hit the face or groin, etc. Of course someone who takes a martial art will be more prepared for violence since they\'ve got the general concepts on how to throw a punch (or kick in TKD), break a board, etc but they still get the snot knocked out of them by any street punk who\'s been in a few dozen real fights. This is probably not the same outcome for kickboxers who don\'t expect the referee to stop the fight the first time they get socked in the nose. I mean, you can\'t be ready and calm and in control when you\'re head is being beaten regardless of how well you perform your tai chi routine UNLESS you\'ve experienced the pain and fear a few times.
I\'m not a psychopath or anything, I\'m not suggesting you need someone to beat on your face. But, if you want to learn to defend yourself, you need to put yourself into the scenario. I think martial arts and self defense are dangerous in this way. They make people think they\'re alot tougher and safer than they are...almost super human. I have seen what happens when someone who isn\'t quite as ready as they think tries to demonstrate their \"ability\" and on more than one occassion it\'s ended alot worse than it could have if they\'d been more realistic.
I think the terms \"defending myself\" and \"fighting\" mean the same thing, you can avoid violence all you want but when you get down to fighting your way out of something, either you\'ll have experience or you will not.
So, not surprisingly, I\'ll vote for kick boxing. Martial arts have a beauty all their own, I took them for several years when I was younger, started when I was 6 up to and through Jr High (Karate and Judo). In High School I was still a big enthusiast but studied on my own mostly, leaning heavily towards more combat orientated disciplines like Jeet Kune Do (my buddy was a huge Bruce Lee fan boy), boxing and kickboxing.
So yeah, in short, TKD, Karate, etc are great, but not for defending yourself, IMO. If you don\'t notice all the flaws in %99.99 of the martial arts movies, like how their arms are fully extended when they contact the target...and the target gets knocked out or explodes into splinters...then you will shoot down my post in flames.
Don\'t get me wrong, I do still have a great deal of love and respect for martial arts, but there is a misconseption that they are mainly teaching self defense. The reality, in my experience, is that is a minor part of the whole. Even if they focus on \"combat\" it\'s typically \"tournament\" combat...so, yeah, not helpful out in the real world...again IMO.
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