Martial arts

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

So I'm at a new school now and they offer a few things that I could take:

Karate (Shotokan), Beginning and Intermediate/Advanced
Karate (Tang Soo Do), Beg/Int/Adv
T'ai-Chi Ch'uan, Beginning and Intermediate/Advanced

I'm mostly looking for something that's relaxing and will be able to get me to stop focusing on my work for a few hours a week. Each one only meets twice a week for an hour (except for Shotokan that meets on Saturdays as well). I haven't done my tae kwon do in about ten years, so I don't know if my background in it will do much good.

If none of these sound any good I could always fall back on racquetball.

You'll find either shotokan or tang soo do to be quite similiar to tae kwan do really. Tang soo do is very closely relates as it's either split off or parallel art to tkd depending on whose version of korean martial arts history you listen to. Like wise shotokan is often considered the root of tkd do to some of the cultural bs the japanese pulled on the koreans when they invaded. At any rate you shouldn't be coming in completely green.

Tai Chi depends a lot on the instructor as it's varies largely in focus from raw relaxation exercise to being an effective martial art. Either way therapeuitic but unlikely to get you in really good cardio shape or get you ripped. It also it takes a fairly long time to develop to be effective as a fighting art compared to most anything you can do. So if your focus is kicking ass quickly or losing a gut you'd best look elsewhere. It's pretty good if you stick with it a few years though and tends to be good for bad backs and knees.

Depending on the instructors involved none of those arts art inherently flawed so I'd take a gander at a class in action to see what you think of how they run it. Most schools are fine with letting you either take a trial class or at least watch one to scope it out before you commit.

Originally Posted by Killy

That's unlike anything I've seen here, what was the name of the style/school?

Tae kwon do schools vary wildly in curriculum depending if they're focus is on winning tournaments or on self defense. There's a fair amount of punching, joint lock, and throwing techniques that go straight out the window when the focus is winning trophy's as the majority of it is disallowed in tourney's. He probably just lucked out into hitting a more traditional school. The majority are crap and just try to soak soccer moms for expensive belt testing. It's pretty tricky to find a good one in that style.

Jam it back in, in the dark.