I've been practicing the Chung Do Kwan style of Tae Kwon Do on and off since 2000. I had to take a break from it for about a year due to an operation I had. It was really difficult, comming back to TKD after having not trained for so long. It was like being a white belt all over again...
The class I'm in meets at the local community college 2 nights a week. I'm currently a purple belt, working toward brown.
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though TKD is more of a sport than a fighting art if you ask me.
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That depends on the stlye. The older, more traditional TKD stlyes are more of a martial art (and very similar to Karate), where the newer "modern" TKD schools teach it as more of a sport.
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But anyways, what type of martial arts should I take? Karate, judo, dojo...?
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There are basicly 2 types of arts, grappling arts (things like Aikido and Judo) and striking arts (things like Karate, TKD, and Boxing). I'd go with whatever you think you'd be better at...
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/me awaits all the shitty comments on how boxing isnt a martial art.
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I tend to think of it as more of a sport than a martial art, but I still have alot of respect for Boxing. I'd hate to have to fight a good boxer...
Actually, I've considered taking up boxing, but I have no idea where to go to learn...
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This question is going to look dumb in a martial arts thread, but for the people who practice martial arts, why do you practice martial arts?
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Different people tend to have different reasons. I've seen alot of people join our class whos only reason for being there is that they "want to kick ass". Those kind of students normally drop out after they realize that A: learning a martial art is hard, and B: that it's not really about "kicking ass" anyway.
I personally have a number of reasons, but the main one is that I don't want to kill anybody if I don't have to. I have a CHL (concealed handgun license) and carry a pistol with me pretty much everywhere I go. I realized that, while it's a great self-defense tool, a pistol only gives you one option: kill. There are situations where you might need to protect yourself, but shooting someone isn't the way to go about it. I decided that, should I find myself in such a situation, I'd better have something I can use, aside from the gun. When all you have is a hammer, all of your problems will begin to look like nails.
So I started taking classes at my college. It's a good, cheap, practical way to learn. Over time I realized there were alot of benifits to practicing a martial art, I'd list them all but other posters have pretty well covered them.
About the other question, no, I've never used what I've learned in a "real" fight, and I hope to keep it that way...
Also, whats up with people getting black belts in a year? Can you really pick up a martial art that fast, or will they just hand out a belt to anybody these days?
Jam it back in, in the dark.
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