Dear HNers,
I fairly recently started kendō and I find it helps with building character (especially regarding dealing with pressure in my case). I'm curious about what aspects of which martial arts that others have found particularly beneficial to life as a programmer/software developer.
For example, one of the first things we learned is defending yourself from various holds and chokes. The first move, after securing your throat or loosening their grip is generally to hit them in the balls. This is one example of something most martial arts won't teach you because that's generally "against the rules", however, in a self defense scenario, there are no rules (there are however laws that you may break so keep that in mind).
You really want to avoid going to the ground if at all possible. It just makes you more vulnerable if anyone else decides to jump in and you never know what you're rolling around on. Besides, what are you going to do, put someone in a submission until help arrives? A really effective way to break a hold is to grab their pinky and twist it in a direction it doesn't want to go. If they don't let go just move on to new fingers. Also, feel free to bite them. Hard. You can also pull hair, gouge eyes, fishhook, etc. It's great to know how to defend yourself on the ground, but you want to be on the ground as little as possible as it can be a dangerous place because your opponent is probably not playing under the same rules you are.
If you want more of a philosophy then it's probably not right for you. This is pretty much just about winning fights when it matters the most.