Some one talk me down before i sign up for martial arts

I found this manga that is about karate(what the main characters use) and other martial arts(judo, ju-jitsu, etc), and it is awesome. And now as a result of it being romanticized, i really want to go join one. To show you how hopeless i am, when i started to look , one thought prevailed; "Look for the dojo(?) that is broken down, cause thats where the true masters are...not those fitness centres."   I have taken a beginners shaolin north kung fu class (20 classes during a university semester), and i loved it. And what little we did and i remember, once in a while i would just try out again. But i have not seriously thought about joining  before.  
Internet!!! help me. 
 
 Plus, if i were to join, which martial arts should i go with? I want one that i can use to defend my self.

I practice Aikido. If there is a good dojo in your area, you should check it out.

Consider Sambo or Systema.

These are Russian martial arts specifically designed for Russian Special Forces, although after the collapse of the Soviet Union many instructors left and started teaching their martial arts around the world. They focus on self defense first and place a strong emphasis on limb control, grappling techniques, as well as regular full-contact striking.

I used to practice Systema pretty regularly and it's tiring, but fun if you get to know who you're training with.

EDIT: Completely missed that you wanted Karate, sorry...

@super2j said:

@Fajita_Jim: Awesome, thanks, this makes me want to do this more....
@McGhee_the_Insomniac: Actually i do have that option, AKido, taekwondo, more shaolin kung fu, and finally karate. Right now its between taekwondo and Karate.

Oh really, what city are you in?

The thing is people rarely realize how long it takes for you to be even 1/10th as good as someone you see on TV. The training is extensive and tiring. If you think you can stick with it, then you should do it, as you'll get into better shape, and have some fighting/self defense experience. If you think you might have a chance of quitting, you should just save your money.

If you just want to learn how to defend yourself then you'll probably want to go with something like Krav Maga or Sambo since those type of combat training is specifically designed for self defense. However, martial arts is not just about self defense, it's also about learning discipline, compassion, respect, confidence, etc. I practiced martial arts for about seven years before going on hiatus for school (Meibu-kan karate and then Shaolin-Do) and while I did certainly learn how to fight and defend myself, I also found that it made me a better person as well. In fact, I can state definitively that I was a better person (both physically and mentally) while I was practicing martial arts than I am now, which is why I'm pretty eager to start practicing again once I finish my doctorate.

Eclectic martial arts like Krav Maga or Sambo will teach good self defense techniques in a relatively short amount of time but to be honest if you practice a more traditional martial art long enough (i.e. karate, jujitsu, shaolin, etc) you'll end up being just as skilled in self defense while also probably becoming a better person in the process.

And there is also the problem of trying to figure out what i would be best at. The martial art that my body and habits would be best for may not be the one that i chose. 

jiu jitsu all the way. best self defense you can get. i train kick boxing and jiu jitsu. im doing my first MMA fight in january. ive done many jiu jitsu competitions though.  whats better than choking someone out in 3 seconds?

jiu jitsu all the way. best self defense you can get. i train kick boxing and jiu jitsu. im doing my first MMA fight in january. ive done many jiu jitsu competitions though.  whats better than choking someone out in 3 seconds?

 I want one that i can use to defend my self.

EDIT: Jeebus, I posted w/out thinking. I'm sorry about the damn wall of text. I sort of started rambling.

Regardless of anything else, exercise is always a good thing and anything you do will be more than not doing it so great!

If you're just looking to defend yourself, I recommend boxing for a couple reasons. First and foremost being that boxing is the only thing where you're training will actually consist of fighting. Aside from grapple heavy martial arts (I'll get into those in a bit), . I've taken some of your generic Asian martial arts and I have friends who take some of the more exotic types of hand to hand (that like, UFC/new Bond type try to kill the person you're fighting close combat stuff) and in all those classes, unless you're top level, will never do real sparring.

You won't take hits, or know how it feels to be in an actual fight. When sparring (which you typically won't do until you advance quite a bit), it's very controlled and you never really take hits. In the death dealing classes where you train to permanently disable people, you never actually use the techniques for obvious reasons. (and in most any fight you may get into in the real world, unless it's a life and death situation, you really shouldn't try to permanently break someone's knee or take out their eyeballs or their nuts or any of that crap) Boxing on the other hand, they'll put you in a ring pretty quickly. If you go to an actual gym instead of some kind of community college class or something, they'll teach you to throw some different punches, put you in some fat headgear and off you go.

I can tell you from experience, that people who have sparred and taken real hits are very different in a fight than people who haven't. Unless you're extremely proficient at taekwondo or karate or whatever other striking based martial art, as soon as the first punch or two is throw, you will not stay in your stances or try to throw roundhouse kicks or any of that crap. You'll essentially be boxing but without knowing how to box -_-;;

As for Grappling, if you get into a situation with more than just one person, you're not gonna wanna be rolling around on the floor. And even if you are, this goes into the category with permanent damage since with things like juijitsu, unless you get someone into a choke, you're aiming to break joints as in a real fight, they're not going to tap out and just be cool when you let them go. And to top it off, you seem sort of casual and if you get into a scuffle with someone and they know some grappling, it may be best not to go against someone that's prolly better than you.

So yea, boxing. Go box, it's loads of fun, prolly cheaper, and if you get some gloves and headgear, you can go at it with anyone even if they haven't taken boxing. Just tell em to go buy a mouthpiece =D

@LiquidPrince said:

The thing is people rarely realize how long it takes for you to be even 1/10th as good as someone you see on TV. The training is extensive and tiring. If you think you can stick with it, then you should do it, as you'll get into better shape, and have some fighting/self defense experience. If you think you might have a chance of quitting, you should just save your money.

The problem with this is that most of the martial arts you see on TV (other than in documentary type shows) are designed to look good/be flashy but would not be performed in such a showy manner in real life. As many on-screen martial artists and fight choreographers will tell you, real martial arts techniques and forms just don't look very exciting or interesting on TV (even the ones that look quite impressive in real life) since they are mainly designed to be practical and efficient, not impressive-looking.

@super2j: Unless you start doing actual boxing matches instead of training, you're going to be working with pretty fat gloves and headgear. Even if you do amateur fights, you still get the headgear but slightly smaller gloves. Anything you do where you may take hits will run the risk of permanent damage but as far as those risks go, I've seen way more people get hurt wrestling than I ever have boxing. If you wrap your wrists right and have headgear on (maybe even some body protection), it's really hard to get hurt aside from some cut lips and punches directly to your nose. Which you should learn to protect against =) And to top it off, you'll prob be set up with someone your own weight so unless you're over 200 pounds and the guy you're up against is solid muscle and trying to rock your socks off, you're not gonna be taking any sort of heavy damage.

I'm no doctor. This advice was given freely and should not be taken seriously. In the case of injury, I am not responsible and my words in no way condone physical interaction with anyone else of any kind.

@tunaburn said:

jiu jitsu all the way. best self defense you can get. i train kick boxing and jiu jitsu. im doing my first MMA fight in january. ive done many jiu jitsu competitions though.  whats better than choking someone out in 3 seconds?

Killing them in 2

@spazmaster666 said:

@LiquidPrince said:

The thing is people rarely realize how long it takes for you to be even 1/10th as good as someone you see on TV. The training is extensive and tiring. If you think you can stick with it, then you should do it, as you'll get into better shape, and have some fighting/self defense experience. If you think you might have a chance of quitting, you should just save your money.

The problem with this is that most of the martial arts you see on TV (other than in documentary type shows) are designed to look good/be flashy but would not be performed in such a showy manner in real life. As many on-screen martial artists and fight choreographers will tell you, real martial arts techniques and forms just don't look very exciting or interesting on TV (even the ones that look quite impressive in real life) since they are mainly designed to be practical and efficient, not impressive-looking.

I never said, to look as impressive as someone on TV. I said to be as impressive as someone on TV. The crazy martial artists you see on TV or in movies, all have at least some level of proficiency in real Martial Arts. To be as good as like Jackie Chan for example, you need a lot of training. Jackie Chan is a good example of a real skilled martial artist making his craft look flashy.

You'll get in shape, and learn to disarm weapons.  *___*

I practice the good old fighting style of "Panic-and-hit-as-fast-as-I-can-so-they-can't-hit-me-back" where the main tactic is to hit your opponent as hard and as fast as you can in a weak spot so they're too hurt to hit back, as the name suggests. 
This goes very well with something you can swing frantically, say, a tire iron or a solid chunk of wood, aimed at the face. 
 
This fighting style might get you in some trouble though, since in my experience hitting someone frantically in the face with a tire iron is a surprisingly easy way to kill them.

 OH god, youtubing these different forms of martial arts is really depressing me. That boxing dude is right.... 
 
 OK so in terms of what my school is offering, i think the best way to go is to check out the karate class, and if i dont like it, go back to shaolin. Taekwondo relies to much on kicking and i physically lack the balance required.

I take a kickboxing class that involves the martial discipline aspects of the art as well as offering a full sparring element, and I love it. If you can find a school that offers sparring, kickboxing is a blast. The spinning kicks and other special moves really spice up the core boxing element of the art. Just my 2 cents.

I would go with boxing , Ive been in a few fights myself (not as grown up tho) and really you dont get time to remember katas , poses and such , just learn how to properly throw punches and dodge (also have seen an actual boxer kick the shit out of another in just 2 punches ... it was awesome and before you get worried the other dude deserved it) . If you are looking for it as a exercise/philosophy then by all means do get a martial art class. But the best advice is .... avoid confrontations.

Nothing beats good old-fashioned street smarts. Walk like you know how to defend yourself if need be but don't appear cocky. Criminals tend to prey on people who look weak and insecure.

I've never taken a martial arts class and outside of grade school I've never gotten into a fight because learning how to avoid trouble has proven to be more beneficial than learning how to fight back.

do it and learn to kick somebody's ass. stuff happens man.

Concussions are forever. Also, gun>fist, every time.

Wing Chun - Referential material - Bruce Lee, & Movie shown above (Ip Man)

Fantastic stuff

I studied Karate for 4 years. it's great I say do it.

I'd say Jiu-Jitsu would be your best bet...but I trained for a few years in it, my dojo was pretty crap, a karate black belt was allowed to run us ragged during warm-ups, because he was a black belt :S and my sensei was the laziest man alive, who arranged gradings, only to have people cancel the majority of the time...oh and not to mention the fact that we all had to stay our belt colour (yellow for me) for nearly a year, because of the whole grading issue...I trained for the guts of three years, and came out with an orange belt (a grand total of two gradings, which is nothing), quitting before getting to green, as the sensei wouldn't do an in-house grading, and was more interested in showing us off to other dojos than actually allowing us to grade. So yeah, on second thought,  fuck martial arts, too many variants, not enough logic, and if you get a particularly bad dojo, you'd be stuck with a belt long after you've learned every move, perfected it, and aren't able to learn the next set of moves because the sensei is too busy neglecting their duties to actually advance your knowledge of the art. Also, Jiu-Jitsu has more than a few impractical, and extremely dangerous, throws. I bruised my lung and cracked a few ribs when a guy threw me, held on too long, which affected my landing. Better to enter a martial art, or sport, where striking is the main discipline, as most street fights become hand to hand affairs with multiple people in the fray, so space for throws is limited. Too much can be gotten away with in some dojos, but boxing actually has a set amount of rules that each person has to follow, which is much better in the initial stages of a training environment.
 
Learn how to box, or better yet, kick-box, hell, I know kung-fu is a martial art, but it teaches you to defend yourself, and helps you learn self-control.

If you can add martial arts training to your life in a smart way and with clear objectives it will improve your life greatly.  
Dont do it cause you saw it on a cartoon or cause you think it might help you on the street, training for the street is very different from most martial arts training regiments and chances are you will be disappointed or hurt. 
Good luck with your search, I hope you find something that suits you cause it really is great if you take it seriously.

Do it! Martial arts are great.

When I was a child I trained in Kung Fu. I quit for a while and then started up in Karate and I love it. I prefer it to Kung Fu.

Karate might not be the absolute best if your primary concern is the best form of self-defense, but my training certainly places emphasis on strong techniques that will take down your opponent. The only issue with karate is that those are not the techniques that you use when you spar because they would be illegal in point sparring, which is more of a sport. However, it will make you faster, more alert, and stronger, so that's enough for me to be confident that I could defend myself against an attacker enough to remove myself from a fight situation.

Regardless, starting a martial art is never a bad thing. It gives you a different kind of focus from other activities/sports.

Boxing/kickboxing and wrestling are the most effective, IMO. It's no coincidence that the UFC is loaded with wrestlers. Grappling lets you dictate where a fight takes place and the conditioning is intense. Pretty much any street fight you could get into will be very fast and revert to basic sloppy techniques like haymakers and takedowns. You need something simple and effective. Most martial art places will have you practice techniques in a controlled environment, i.e. setups that you know are coming. Real fighting doesn't work like that. Also, if you want to learn self defense you need to go somewhere that contains some amount of hard sparring. The hard sparring should be close to full speed and strength. That's the only way to learn defense is by simulating fighting as closely as possible and gaining experience with it. To be totally honest, safety/injury is something that you have to come to grips with a make a choice on. Most martial arts/combat sports will involve some precautionary measures but injuries can and will happen. With more traditional arts, you may get more of a 'rite of passage' outlook on injury and pain is just part of the culture. Personally, I have done wrestling, Japanese Jujitsu (green belt ), and Tae Kwon Do (red belt). I didn't stay involved in any of these as I didn't really see a need and most of the techniques would be ineffective anyways. Unless you have a job like a Police Officer/Bodyguard/Bouncer the idea of actually needing these skills are mostly in fantasy. If self defense is the main concern, look at other methods (avoiding danger, security system, home firearm) because the chance is if you ever have to defend yourself (unless you go looking for fist fights), it'll probably by an attacker that is armed with a gun or knife.

DO ITT!!!!!!