I've not had any formal martial arts training, but we have a conscript army and during my service my unit had to undergo close-combat training.
Long story short, the basic module was utterly useless, and while the intermediate (mainly arm locks) and advanced module (throws) looked more useful our instructors confirmed our suspicions that the training wouldn't save our asses in a street fight. And in the event of a war we'd be dead anyway if we had to depend on our bare fists.
I also practiced staff forms and fighting. It's cool, kinda feels like RP, but I doubt I'll ever use it in real life. (Really, does anybody carry around a 2 meter stick?)
I used to do archery (when I was like, what, 8?). I'd like to get back to that.
I have a prop saberstaff. It's 6ft in length: two 2ft blades, and a 2ft handle. The blade's made of polycarbonate so it does hurt if I smack someone. I accidentally jabbed my friend's thumb and someone's nuts.
I tried archery during a school sabbatical for a week. Two archers shared a single lane with three targets. On the second day I got my first bullseye on the centre target, but I was actually aiming for the one on the left. I was too embarrassed to admit it, so I switched to the centre target for the rest of my arrows. Only on the last day did I find a way to correct the fishtailing.
I did Japanese jiu-jitsu for a while.
I absolutely loved it, I just love how it's all counters to what they do.
Like they can be all like "Ayyy gonna punch you" and you can be like nope and suddenly they're on the floor in an arm lock.
Which is kinda funny because it's supposed to be a really defensive martial art, but they teach you so many ways to hurt people it's not even funny. Like there are so many locks (by that I mean ways you can hold a part of them that hurts a lot) and chokes and also pressure points (which are lil bits all over you someone can press to make it hurt a lot.)
This reminds me of what my friend said of aikido: if you execute a throw but your victim doesn't know how to fall, you'll fail to throw him but succeed in dislocating some joints.
There's only one pressure point I know of. It's slightly above the navel. Someone poked me there (knowing that there was a pressure point) and I felt like throwing up for an hour or so.
