I guess I'm always the type to read the wiki so I quickly learned the "exploit" way to train up an impressive fighting force: build mechanisms and set up a room

I guess I'm always the type to read the wiki so I quickly learned the "exploit" way to train up an impressive fighting force: build mechanisms and set up a room full of poor quality light wood spikes linked to a lever that is being continuously pulled by another dwarf, then station your squad of unlucky soldiers inside that room with the door locked (keeping a careful eye on them to remove anyone with excessive bruising so they don't pass out and get slowly poked to death). Eventually your dwarves get ninja level dodging skills. At that point they are pretty much invincible because they can't be hit by enemies and can just punch the goblins to death while dodging every attack. (I once had a dwarf trained in this manner kill a forgotten beast inside one of the underground cave levels with a silk sock taken from the corpse of a less skilled worker dwarf who had been slaughtered by the beast). It took forever but he survived. But anyway, speed of learning aside there is practically endless variation in techniques to take advantage of in Dwarf Fortress, and if you choose you can discover them all yourself through slow experience, or you can read up in the wiki to get a jumpstart, but either way you end up having a lot of FUN.