martial arts training

[keikiwai]

all the above are good suggestions. visit the class; ask questions.

if you are interested in self defense, i would suggest krav maga. it is very practical, concentrates on going against modern weapons, many attackers, in the dark, etc.

also the workouts are very intense both physically and mentally.

[its420yo]

Here's the thing, assuming you're like most guys who want to take classes, you want to improve your skills in actual fighting abilities, or at least that's one of your important goals. Strength/agility/endurance/concentration/health increases are almost guaranteed side effects.


One of the things you look for is the ability of the instructor, and the ability of his students. I fortunately train at a very prominent place right now, my master's two sons are number 1/2 in my province (ontario) in boxing and the older one (probably 25) is gearing up to train for the olympics for canada in 2008, an he has a very very good shot at doing it. (he KOed the last year Canadian champion and he finished second this year). They've only been doing boxing for 1 year and half.

These are things you can look for, a bad training place would not have indication of this, the official boxing ring in my city for example did not have such credentials when i went in. Their students trained in a nasty, sweaty gym and their students weren't in t he top levels of competition in the area even though they're boxing specialists.


Another thing to look for is variety, to be a good martial artist you need to know all kinds of martial arts, a karate black belt will be helpless against a jiujitsu master.
but a jiujitsu master can fight off 4 guys with jiujitsu skills alone he would need striking abiilities. the place i go to now strongly emphasize the mixing of skills so you take kungfu/boxing/jiujitsu/muay thai/karate and their students are very well rounded and dominate the other dohjohs in this part of the country. You will need to take at least one form of striking and one form of grappling, but the more the better. with martial arts, its often a myth to say "i want to specialize and get good at one thing first", practice them all at the same time is definitely the way to go.


finally, you wanna look for a place with an actual ring, unless you want no part of actual physical contact, a ring is absolutely mandatory, high degree black belts come in to fight some of the guys form our dohjoh and regardless of their skills/credentials they freeze in the heat of battle. a ring is a very fast place and having been in it will make you a better person and much more capable of defending yourself.

Bags, those are important, if a place doesn't even have punching bags, walk right back out.

[BCPVP]

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If you'd like some more info there was a show on TLC about the top 10 deadliest martial arts...you can probably buy the DVD.

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I would almost never trust TV to accurately portray what the "deadliest" martial arts are, so I'm hoping that you're joking.

OP: I've took Tae Kwon Do for 5 years and have now been in Aikido for 2. TKD was through public school rec department so it was fairly cheap (I want to say $50 for a whole "session"= 6-8 weeks). Aikido is through my university and our dues are $20 for an entire semester.

As far as training, this may depend on how often the school you're looking at is open. I would definitely recommend going more than once a week if possible. 2-5 sounds good. I go to Aikido three times a week, but could go more although it'd cut into various other parts of my life.

Telling a good school from a bad school could be a little difficult for someone who's never done a martial art. Some signs of a bad school would be contracts (not waivers)and "garaunteed" times for getting certain ranks. While watching a class, ask yourself if the techniques the students are practicing against are practical (assuming your interested in martial arts for self-defense purposes) and realistic. Are the attackers giving enough energy in their attacks or are they just being punching bag? Are other ranges covered, like standing techniques as well as ground techniques? Is there lots of flashy techniques or talk of "super deadly" techniques (like punching someone's nose cartilage into their brain)? Basically, be skeptical as there are far too many schools that are more interested in making money than teaching people to properly defend themeselves. Someone mentioned checking out the lineage of the school. This may be helpful if you know what it means when you found out. If you don't know what it means that the instructor's teacher was Master Cheung or Grandmaster Kim than it might be better not to waste time trying to figure it out until you finally decide on a school Whether the stuff the school teaches works for you is far more important than lineage, imo.

Hope some of that helps.

[PWHerman]

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Hope some of that helps.

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It definitely does. Thanks very much to all for their thoughts and advice.