Depends what you want out of it. If you want to fight effectively, efficient use of training time implies having a tight feedback loop to improve quickly, which means fighting a lot (for real). Fighting a lot is not a pleasant life.
You can get a lot of things out of martial arts training, but I don’t think you can get many of them in a month. If you want to have a better chance in self-defense situations, you’re not going to gain the skills or the habits you need for it until much later. If you want self-discipline et cetera, you’re not going to get much of it from learning falls and a few basic escapes. If you want to get in shape, you’ll barely have started. If you just want to have fun and feel badass… okay, it’s plausible that you could do that in a month, but it’s not going to last once you stop training.
I honestly feel that “learning to fight effectively” is kind of a red herring here. Martial arts does make you better at fighting—but few people, martial artists or otherwise, are good at real, no-holds-barred fighting, because parts of that skillset are so dangerous that they basically can’t be gained without being repeatedly injured or worse. But that goes for the bad guys, too. Self-defense largely isn’t about beating your mugger or whatever in a serious fight; it’s about deterrence, mainly through signaling comfort with conflict situations and by giving you the skills to deal with strongarm tactics short of serious fighting.
And I wouldn’t recommend taking martial arts classes primarily for self-defense anyway, at least if you live in a Western country and not in the worst parts of a high-crime city.
Depends what you want out of it. If you want to fight effectively, efficient use of training time implies having a tight feedback loop to improve quickly, which means fighting a lot (for real). Fighting a lot is not a pleasant life.
You can get a lot of things out of martial arts training, but I don’t think you can get many of them in a month. If you want to have a better chance in self-defense situations, you’re not going to gain the skills or the habits you need for it until much later. If you want self-discipline et cetera, you’re not going to get much of it from learning falls and a few basic escapes. If you want to get in shape, you’ll barely have started. If you just want to have fun and feel badass… okay, it’s plausible that you could do that in a month, but it’s not going to last once you stop training.
I honestly feel that “learning to fight effectively” is kind of a red herring here. Martial arts does make you better at fighting—but few people, martial artists or otherwise, are good at real, no-holds-barred fighting, because parts of that skillset are so dangerous that they basically can’t be gained without being repeatedly injured or worse. But that goes for the bad guys, too. Self-defense largely isn’t about beating your mugger or whatever in a serious fight; it’s about deterrence, mainly through signaling comfort with conflict situations and by giving you the skills to deal with strongarm tactics short of serious fighting.
And I wouldn’t recommend taking martial arts classes primarily for self-defense anyway, at least if you live in a Western country and not in the worst parts of a high-crime city.