The Shaolin Temple is considered the birthplace of kung fu (which is a generic name for the Chinese martial arts). From its humble origins, kung fu eventually developed into literally thousands of different styles.

Combined with all the other martial arts that have been developed around the world, there are a virtually endless number of possible ways to beat your enemies senseless. But some ways work better than others. Out of all the different martial arts, which are the deadliest?

Let me be clear that I’m not necessarily talking about the “best” martial arts, only the most practical. Swimming is a great sport, but it will never be as fast as running. Likewise, a martial art heavy on flashy high kicks and choreographed forms may be a great art, but not as deadly as the ones that appear below.

Also, I consolidated similar arts – no need to include judo when BJJ is on the list, Wing Chun when JKD is on the list, etc. Finally, while the arts below are numbered, they are not ranked.

1. Boxing

You’re probably going to say that boxing isn’t really a martial art. While I’d tend to agree (even though I’m not exactly sure why), this list wouldn’t be complete without it.

Despite its apparent simplicity, boxing incorporates a number of elements critical to successful combat, such as timing, footwork, reading your opponent, and putting your weight into your strikes. Not to mention that the training is very practical, with a heavy dose of sparring against resisting opponents.

Advantages:

• Your hands are fast, accurate, and a short distance from your opponent’s head.
• Because of its simple style, emphasis is put on practical application rather than showy display.

Disadvantages:

• If your attacker won’t limit themselves to just using their hands, why should you?
• Anyone who attacks you is likely to be stronger, so trying to outpunch them is a losing proposition.

Notable practitioners: Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson

2. Muay Thai

Known as the Art of Eight Limbs, Thailand’s national sport uses punches, kicks, knees, and elbows for eight points of contact. It is generally considered the deadliest type of kickboxing, and is a staple of MMA fighters.

Advantages:

• A Muay Thai roundhouse kick has been compared to being struck by a baseball bat. Instead of using a chamber and a snap, the whole body is thrown into the kick, and contact is made with the rock hard shin.
• An elbow or a knee thrown from the clinch can easily end a fight, which is why they are sometimes banned in competitions in other sports.

Disadvantages:

• The only reason they can kick with their shins is because they’ve kicked enough heavy bags or bamboo trees to build up a thick layer of scar tissue. Do you really want to do that to yourself?
• No attention is paid to the ground game.

Notable practitioners: Saenchai Sor Kingstar, Anderson Silva

3. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

This derivative of Japanese judo is a form of grappling, using chokes and joint locks rather than strikes, leverage and technique rather than strength. It rose to instant prominence in 1993 at the first Ultimate Fighting Championship, where different martial arts were pitted against each other in a contest with minimal rules. BJJ practitioner Royce Gracie won easily, dispatching his three physically superior opponents in a total of five minutes.

Advantages:

• Most fights end up on the ground, where someone who only knows kicks and punches will be outmatched by someone who knows sweeps and armbars.
• When fighting a larger opponent, you take away much of their strength advantage by grappling up close instead of opposing their force directly.

Disadvantages:

• Since many people have now learned how to defend against takedowns, and since fights never start on the ground anyway, ground fighting can never replace stand-up fighting.
• The gi they wear makes it much easier to be grabbed and choked. It represents the suit that all Japanese men would have worn when judo was invented, but today you can’t assume that your attacker will be wearing something that sturdy.

Notable practitioners: Hélio Gracie, BJ Penn

4. Krav Maga

This is another one that people generally don’t consider a martial art, but we have to include it. This eclectic close combat system of the Israeli Special Forces uses wrestling, grappling, and striking to neutralize threats (even weapons) by any means necessary, often by attacking the body’s most vulnerable points.

Advantages:

• It teaches how to make weapons out of everyday objects, which are probably all you’ll have when you’re attacked.
• It teaches what to do in life or death situations.

Disadvantages:

• It’s just a bunch of eclectic crap thrown together. When you know a million techniques, it’s hard to quickly decide which one you need now.
• It can be very hard to find a good school.

Notable practitioners: Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer (well, can you name a real one?)

5. Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do

There’s always a lot of confusion surrounding Bruce Lee’s Way of the Intercepting Fist. People love to discuss what JKD is and is not, and how it is what it isn’t, and isn’t what it is. But here, I’m simply referring to his signature style without any of the philosophy.

Jeet Kune Do is a hybrid system that borrows heavily from several arts, especially Wing Chun, boxing, and fencing. But unlike most hybrid systems, it absorbs what is useful while casting off what is useless, arriving at the bare combat essentials. Movements are direct, straightforward, and non-classical.

Advantages:

• By training in four different combat ranges (kicking, punching, trapping, grappling), the practitioner becomes well-rounded.
• It stresses simplicity and efficiency, conserving time and energy in all movements.

Disadvantages:

• Although it’s theoretically very effective, it’s fairly obscure and hasn’t been tested very much.
• Good luck finding a decent school where you live.

Notable practitioners: Bruce Lee, Ted Wong

6. MMA

Mixed martial arts was originally a sport that saw people competing with very different styles. However, when it became apparent what was effective and what was not, a new hybrid style emerged, and this is what I mean by “MMA.” This style may be customized by each fighter, but generally combines boxing, Muay Thai, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Advantages:

• Combines stand-up and ground skills to produce a well-rounded fighter.
• The effectiveness of this style has been tested and proven more than any other.

Disadvantages:

• It’s only been tested and proven for a particular set of rules. The game changes when you allow 12-6 elbows, small joint manipulation, eye gouging, biting, groin strikes, headbutts, rabbit punches, etc.
• What works best on another MMA fighter is not necessarily what will work best against your attacker.

Notable practitioners: Fedor Emelianenko, Randy Couture

7. To be determined

Let’s hear it. What is YOUR choice for the deadliest martial art?

“We are like you; the thought pressed into his mind. We did not mean to murder, and when we understood, we never came again. We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other’s dreams. How were we to know? We could live with you in peace. Believe us, believe us, believe us.”

- The Formic hive queen, Ender’s Game

Eating animals is wrong. If you think that statement is hypocritical coming from a meat eater, you would be correct (I’ll come back to that later). But that doesn’t make it any less true.

I certainly don’t expect to convert anyone to veganism with this post, but I hope to at least lead some people to the unavoidable conclusion that eating animals is wrong, even if they choose not to act on it. If someone has a convincing argument for the opposing side, I’d love to hear it (no sarcasm meant there).

For a long time I never understood why vegetarians had such a moral objection to eating meat. Sure, it would be great if we were powered by wind or sunlight. But since we’re not, some other life forms have to be on the losing end of the food chain, right? Does it make that much of a difference who eats whom?

Granted, the rules for what animals are OK to eat don’t exactly make sense. Pigs, for example, are smarter than dogs, more affectionate than cats, and cuter than horses. Why don’t we put them on the same pedestal? Who decides these things? I don’t even know all the rules. Is it OK to eat snakes? Dolphins? Hippos? Gazelles? Giraffes? Lions, and tigers, and bears? Oh my!

But let’s say we all agreed on which animals were most expendable. We’ve identified some species that are delicious, sanitary, have the right number of legs, and are cute enough, but not too cute. What then, is the problem with these crazy vegetarians?

Photo by Create For Animal Rights

When I looked into it, I quickly saw that the issue (for me, at least) isn’t whether meat is murder. Of course it’s murder, but I’d have no problem if it were only that.

The real problem is that meat is torture. More specifically, raising animals for food in the way we do is torture. Our demand for animal products has just grown far beyond our ability to supply them humanely. We no longer just kill the animals; we do things to them that I doubt you would be willing to do personally.

I’m not going to go into a lot of details here, but the video Cruelty to Animals: Mechanized Madness gives a good look at how animals are raised for food. It’s pretty graphic. For a much milder and more entertaining version, watch the two cartoon movies at The Meatrix.

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

- Lord Acton

People seem to be hardwired with an “us vs. them” mentality. What happens when one group is bigger, stronger, or technologically superior to another? They trample the rights of the weaker group, or even consider it to at their disposal. That torturing a weaker group is wrong seems to be a lesson the human race needs to keep relearning.

Manifest destiny, the belief that the European settlers were under a divine mandate to conquer North America, fueled them to do unspeakable things to the poorly armed Native Americans. Ditto for African American slaves, as well as the many examples of slavery in other countries. The Holocaust, women’s rights, gay rights, there always seems to be another group to discriminate against, despite the lessons of the past.

And for God’s sake, this is just a matter of accepting that people are people. We’ve got a long way to go before everyone acknowledges that animals are entitled to basic dignity as well.

Murder and torture become much easier with distance. It’s not too hard to send a drone to kill people without remorse. It’s a lot harder to pull the trigger yourself. And it’s even harder to actually twist a knife into them.

Would you be able to go Jack the Ripper on a little piglet while it squeals in pain? (See the Cruelty to Animals video above.) Probably not, but we have no problem paying thugs to do our dirty work for us. There’s so much distance between us and the animals, it’s easy to ignore what goes on.

You only like your sausage because you don’t have to watch it being made. And if you wouldn’t be willing to make it yourself, you have to admit that it’s wrong.

“Marge, kids, the things I saw. It makes me never want to eat meat again. Just fish, chicken, burgers, veal on Fridays, deer, but only in season, and if necessary, the sweetest meat of all: human.”

- Homer Simpson

Now, to address some anticipated objections:

1. “But we’re supposed to eat meat.”

I do think that we evolved to eat meat. We also evolved to lose our teeth, our eyesight, and die in our twenties, but we’ve managed to make some improvements on that. Our bodies may have evolved without ethical considerations, but that doesn’t mean our brains can’t do better.

Anyway, we weren’t meant to eat nearly as much meat as we do. Many of our health problems are a direct consequence of dietary problems, one of which is excessive meat consumption. Our closest relative, the chimp, eats mainly plants.

2. “But you can’t get enough protein from a vegan diet.”

Tell that to a 400-pound gorilla as it munches on leaves, fruits, and shoots. Or a 110-ton vegan Argentinosaurus, the largest land animal that ever lived. Or any of the vegan athletes out there. Maybe there aren’t that many, but you can start with Carl Lewis.

3. “But vegans are at risk for a vitamin B12 deficiency.”

Isn’t it just a little ironic for someone to brag about their adequate intake of vitamin B12 while they march down the path to diabetes, heart disease, and cancer? I don’t happen to know where vegans can get B12 from, but this seems like a minor issue.

4. “But it doesn’t do any harm to consume animal products, if you’re not actually eating the flesh.”

It may not seem so, but it does. See this Undercover Investigation at Hy-Line Hatchery for the shocking impact of eating eggs. (Does it remind anyone else of when Itchy sent all the Scratchys from the cloning machine to the killing machine?) There are similar issues with drinking milk.

5. “But animals aren’t entitled to the same rights as people.”

No one’s saying that pigs should be able to vote. But since they’re smarter than three year old children, maybe we shouldn’t castrate them without anesthetics. Just sayin’.

6. “But where do you draw the line? You can’t end all animal abuse. Look, you just stepped on an ant.”

We can’t prevent all homicides either. That doesn’t mean we might as well declare open season. Don’t worry about where the line will ultimately be drawn, just start moving towards it. Currently, we’re far less compassionate to animals than their natural predators are. We have plenty of room before we reach the line.

7. “But I just like the taste of meat.”

I know. This sounds like the weakest reason, and yet it’s the one that stops everyone from making a change (along with other practical issues like wanting to fit in, or difficulty finding vegan alternatives in some situations).

I’ve gone vegetarian or vegan for several weeks at a time on a few occasions, but I’ve always come back to eating meat. It’s just too easy to forget what the animals go through, and too easy to remember that I like chicken burritos.

I know that eating animals is wrong, but this is a really tough habit to break. I just don’t feel enough of a repulsion enough of the time to want to make much of a change.

So why the hell am I writing this, and why don’t I get off my high horse? Because it’s not an all-or-nothing thing. Every little bit counts, and some changes are very easy to make.

I ditched milk with no problem at all. That’s a few more cows who won’t be injected with hormones and have their babies killed while they get sucked dry. I’m mostly off pork. That’s a few more pigs who won’t be crammed into disgusting cages and butchered alive. And I’ve cut way back on red meat in general. More cow friendliness.

If even these things are too much to give up now, what else can you try? Can you refuse to eat foie gras? You probably don’t eat it anyway, so it should be pretty easy to take a stand against it. There’s a big continuum here, so if you can’t jump to the other side, just take whatever steps you can.

Many people wonder, if there’s a god, then why does he let bad things happen? They think that if they were god, there would be no suffering. But guess what? Compared to animals, you are god. What will you do with that power?

Hay House sent me a review copy of Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason by best-selling author and medical intuitive Caroline Myss. My first thought was “Boy, did they pick the wrong guy for this.” I found it OK, but keep in mind that I’m not exactly in the target audience, and people who are would like it more than I did.

“Gravity” here refers to serious or weighted thoughts and emotions. And defying gravity is about healing diseases by abandoning the fruitless quest for reason and logic when it comes to illness.

She says that you can’t reason with illness; you can’t always determine why you became sick, and you’re not going to heal yourself by learning the lesson you’re supposed to learn. But what can possibly heal you, when reason can’t, is the power of grace.

People tell me I’m too much into reason, and maybe that’s why I found the book hard to follow. I did get a general good feeling from reading it, but a lot of it seemed to not even be about healing, more about how to live well by forgiving and letting things go.

It should appeal to a fairly wide audience, since it’s not tied to any specific religion, and it’s moderate on the woo-woo factor. My favorite part might have been where she shows the connection between the 7 deadly sins, the 7 chakras, and what she calls the 7 inner graces.

I know someone who was recently given 2 years to live with stage 4 colon cancer. Her doctors have given up, and she actually had to tell them to stop being so negative around her or she’s going to find new doctors. If I were in that situation, I’m sure I would be diving into books like this. But since I’m not, I found it hard to relate to.

For those who are facing a health crisis, Defy Gravity is worth considering. For those who are not, there are still some things you might pick up from it, particularly if you’re open to going beyond the bounds of reason.

Is living longer always better, or would you rather accept a shorter life span in exchange for living and dying how you want to?

I started thinking about this in a discussion in Steve Pavlina’s forum about raw foods. Steve said “If you’re an American, you have an 80-90% chance of dying from heart disease or cancer.” I took it that people who eat only raw foods have a much lower risk of succumbing to those diseases.

But is that necessarily a good thing? Your total probability of dying from all causes combined is 100%. That doesn’t change. So if you reduce the probability of dying from heart disease or cancer, you must increase the probability of dying in some other way, because it all has to add up to 100%.

If you knew that you were going to die from a heart attack at 65, maybe you’d change your diet to prevent that. But maybe then you’d live long enough to be skeletonized by piranhas at 66. Is that so much better? Suddenly the heart attack is looking pretty good.

Once you take heart disease and cancer off the table, so many unlikely causes of death become more realistic. Will you fall into a giant vat of sulfuric acid? Get strung up by an angry mob and burned at the stake? Get chopped up by an axe murderer who takes a little too much pride in his work?

The point of all this is that everyone talks about wanting to live longer, and many people make big sacrifices to do so. But dying from heart disease or cancer at a normal age doesn’t seem so bad. Dying a bit older in a horrible accident is worse. And worst of all is living too far past your prime, watching your body and mind slowly deteriorate as you run out of money, friends, and dignity.

As Benjamin Franklin said, “Wish not so much to live long as to live well.”

I’ve never written much about food, but I came across an interesting post by Evita Ochel that I had to comment on. The post is called Going Behind the Scenes of the Food We Are Told to Eat By The News Media.

We hear about all kinds of foods that the media says we should eat. We’re told to eat salmon for the omega-3 fatty acids. We’re told to drink red wine for the resveratrol. We’re told to drink milk for the calcium. We’re even told to eat chocolate for the antioxidants.

We hear about a magical substance, and think that it’s the key to good health. So anything that contains it must be a miracle food. Red wine contains resveratrol, so it must give you immunity from cancer. Never mind all the alcohol. I suppose paint thinner or gasoline or rattlesnake venom would be nutritious too, if they added resveratrol.

Evita clears up some misconceptions about these foods. My favorite part: to get enough resveratrol from red wine, you’d need to drink 1,000 bottles a day. Bottoms up!

Why do we go nuts over every potential miracle food? I think it comes down to seeking an easy solution. If we can isolate the one chemical we really need, we can put good health in a pill.

So when one thing turns out not to be a magical substance, we go looking for the next one. Soy, beta-carotene, vitamin C…surely there must be one simple thing we can take for perfect health without restricting our diet in any way, or doing any of that damn exercise. What kind of a cruel world do we live in where effort is required?

But no, there’s no ambrosia that will make up for all the crap you eat and all the healthy food you don’t. It will take effort.

Evita points out that instead of eating junk because it contains trace elements of a good thing, we can just get that good thing from its source. Instead of eating salmon laced with mercury, pesticides, and antibiotics, we can simply eat the plants that the salmon get their omega-3 from. And instead of becoming winos in the name of good health, we can just eat red grapes.

Many years ago, I was at a wedding and deciding what to drink. I said “I like white wine much better, but everyone says red wine is good for you.” My friend replied, “Well, it’s not like people train for marathons by drinking red wine.”

Do you have sugar cravings? Admit it, that cookie looks really good to you!

For many people, sugar cravings become a full blown addiction, taking a severe toll on their health and self-esteem. They may suffer weight gain, emotional roller coaster rides, cardiovascular issues, diabetes, tooth decay, and other issues. Not to mention the thousands of dollars they’re compulsively spending on desserts.

Akemi Gaines offers to free people from their sugar addictions, with her new ebook Stop Craving Sugar! She used to have severe sugar cravings, until she learned the practices that made her petite, emotionally stable, and able to enjoy all the foods she likes, without being driven to binge eating.

Since I’ve already written a testimonial, I get to quote myself:

“Most nutrition books just talk about the food itself. Akemi goes deeper by tying together the physiological, emotional, mental, and spiritual causes of sugar cravings. Because let’s face it, you won’t cure your cravings just by forcing yourself to stop eating sugar. You need to address the root causes, and that’s what Akemi shows you how to do.”

You hear about a lot of different diets–high carb, low carb, high protein, low protein, vegetarian, vegan, raw, etc. People will try these diets and get completely different results, so it’s hard to know what to eat. That’s why I think it’s helpful to look beyond just the food to figure out the underlying causes of sugar addiction.

This ebook is scientific enough, but still easy to read. You don’t have to be a doctor to understand what Akemi’s talking about. This is something you can really put into practice right away.

It comes with a money-back guarantee as well as a special bonus offer: a free coaching session (normally $125) from weight loss coach Angie Monko, a friend of Akemi’s.

Do you experience sugar cravings? Get back your health with Stop Craving Sugar!

This is an order of Outback’s Aussie cheese fries with ranch dressing. It has received the honor of the #1 position on the list of the 20 worst foods in America.

It contains nearly three thousand calories, far more than an adult is supposed to have in a whole day. And this is what you eat before your dinner even arrives.

I thought it would be a good idea to check the list to see if I was eating anything that made the top 20. To my dismay, the Quiznos Classic Italian sub came in at #14, winner of the worst sandwich category at 1,370 calories. So good, yet so bad.

However, that was for a large, which is enormous. Even the regular size is really big.

The Quiznos website lists the large at 1,220 calories, not 1,370 like Men’s Health says. Nearly a third of the calories and more than half the fat come from the red wine vinaigrette dressing. A regular size Italian sub without dressing is 630 calories.

But it would be pretty miraculous if an American only had 630 calories for lunch. They’d be more likely to get a large sub with dressing and wonder why they can’t lose weight.

Contrast this with Hira Ratan Manek, who has gone for 411 days without food, living on only sunlight and water. However, his site says that “Occasionally, for hospitality and social purposes, he drinks tea, coffee and buttermilk.”

Wait a minute! Buttermilk is 100 calories per cup. That’s like saying that Winnie the Pooh has gone for years without food, living on only sunlight and water. Then the fine print says he occasionally has honey for hospitality and social purposes.

Just how much buttermilk are we talking about?

New addition to the Resources page: The Science of Being Well by Wallace D. Wattles. It was published in 1910, which ironically was the year before Wattles died from health problems at age 51. However, I don’t think this diminishes the validity of the book. For one thing, he didn’t have modern medicine working in his favor, and lots of people died young. Also, he had been in poor health for several years, and might not have even discovered his health secrets until the very end. I’m sure he would have been worse off not knowing what he knew.

Unlike The Science of Getting Rich, The Science of Being Well is not completely based on the law of attraction. Significant emphasis is placed on proper eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping. It may be a bit controversial; for example, he says that you should always skip breakfast. But much of what he says is hard to argue with, aside from the polarizing issue of the law of attraction.

Partway through the book is an editor’s note that underscores the significance of this book:

“In 1910, very little was known about physiology and pathology, the inner workings of the body in health and disease. Today, almost a century later, despite huge advances in medical science, the human body is still largely a mystery. The process of mapping the intricate genetic code that makes us human (the Human Genome Project) has called into question what every present day doctor was taught in school about the most basic function in our cells: the role of DNA.

The implications of this are at least as dramatic as the discovery that the earth is not flat! Amazingly enough, cutting-edge science supports exactly what Mr. Wattles wrote in this last paragraph, which bears repeating: the Power of Nature within you is sufficient to overcome all hereditary impressions, and if you will learn to control your thoughts, so that you shall think only those of health, and if you will perform the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy way, you can certainly be well.”

There are a tremendous number of unnatural typos in the book, such as periods and hard returns in the middle of a sentence. No doubt introduced by the editor and not the author, but unfortunately I found it very distracting. Still, it’s a very good ebook. You should read The Science of Getting Rich first, in order to get the necessary background on the law of attraction. The next book in the series is The Science of Being Great.

Note that this particular copy of the ebook contains an advertising link at the top of each page. I’m not affiliated with this link, I haven’t researched it, and I have no recommendation either for or against it.

Please share your thoughts on The Science of Being Well in the comments.

I took a day off from work today. Or rather, HR sent me home after a coworker found me lying comatose in my chair. I really needed the day off, as my head, chest, nose, throat, and stomach just aren’t cooperating at all, and I’m feeling chills that aren’t warranted by the 75 degree temperature.

Of course, I wouldn’t have come in to work in the first place if I could have afforded to take the day off. But being a new employee means you start with no vacation. I spent a week in Colorado this summer, and I had to go into a negative vacation balance to do it. Now I’m planning a trip to Japan in the spring, and I want to save up enough vacation time to cover that.

So yesterday when I was having trouble staying awake at work, I just closed my eyes for a bit. Today I made it in OK, but quickly realized that I was completely non-functional, and would have to more or less sleep the whole time. So when a thoughtful coworker noticed, he tried to work something out with HR. The HR lady is very nice, and said I could work from home without using my vacation time, and got a network guy to verify that my laptop had VPN access. I do consider this a favor though instead of just common courtesy, because my group typically doesn’t work from home, and she knows that I didn’t have much chance of actually getting any work done.

I thought that I had caught something from the guy next to me, who sounded like he was coughing up a lung yesterday (I’m sure he wanted to take a day off, but he’s newer than I am, so he has even less vacation time). But then the network guy said he thought I had what one of the other network guys had, and was surprised I was still standing (I might not be tomorrow). Why are all these people forced to work at a fraction of their normal capacity and get the rest of the office sick, instead of just going home?

How about this as a new global HR policy: when you’re sick, you go home. You don’t need to use any vacation time or PTO, you just go home. You work from home if you’re able to, or otherwise you just see a doctor and get some sleep. I’m sure that overall output and morale would increase under this system, and anyone abusing the system would quickly be found out. Everyone wins.

As for me, I might have to take another day off tomorrow, but I won’t know until the morning. But I’m going to remember this experience, and especially the experience I would have had if HR hadn’t been so accommodating. This is part of the “why” for many would-be entrepreneurs, people who are sick and tired of being sick and tired!

[Update 12/15/07 - I did have to stay home the next day. I went to work the following day and people said I sounded like I was going to die. All four people on my team ended up getting sick.]