To walk into a martial arts club having never done any of this type of training is often daunting to even usually outgoing folk. You often will not know what to expect and also have preconceived ideas of what martial arts training is about, many of which will more than likely be wrong.
Its not always this rough
I’ve written a list of hints here for helping you find the right club for you:
- Decide what it is you want out of the style and then research its strengths and weaknesses
- Call a few of the same “style” club and go along to a few different places
- Ask questions!!
- Don’t be blinded by advertising and marketing, try and avoid sign ups until you are sure it is right for you
- Is the style right for your fitness level or body type for instance I wouldn’t recommend Judo for anyone injury prone.
- Lots of people claim to be champions, masters, 8th Dans, Heads of this and that. There are so many organisations that this is often just worthless. Ok if they won a genuine world title for say a major organisation like say Cage Rage World Title or Olympic level judo, but most of this should be taken with a pinch of salt. I’m not saying this applies to everyone but simply don’t assume a title is all it appears to be, My good friend and training partner won a British title with his first fight and would readily tell you he knew nothing at the time, he was just strong and fit.
- Look at the students, do they look like they know what they are doing, what is the atmosphere like?
- Grades are not really that important. Many of my students have black belts in other systems and they’ll tell you they threw them in the bin when they started training with us.
- Finally and this is important: Don’t get sold on the idea of just a bit longer then it will click, if you are thinking that then go and check out somewhere else no matter how long you have been there. The best martial artists often train under many different people. If your instructor frowns on it then he’s probably got something to hide and doesn’t want you to realise there’s better out there…
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That rss feature on your blog here is brilliant, you should tell people about it in your upcoming post. I haven’t noticed it for the first couple of times, now I’m using it every morning to check on any updates. I’m on a very slow dial-up connection in Germany and it’s quite hindering to sit there and wait for such a long time ’til the page loads… but hey, I just found your rss page and added it to the Google Reader and there you are… I’m always up-to-date! Well buddy, keep up the good work and make that rss button a little bigger so that other people can enjoy that as well