etali

I'd been wanting to do an art for a while. I've just moved to a new area. I searched for schools in the area, and picked the one that I could afford looked the least McDojo-ish. There are others that have more contact sparring, etc, which I'd like to do one day, but their fees are out of my price range. For now I'm happy to learn the art side from a good Sensei.

My school is in a rural area where everyone knows each other. I see a lot of the kids walking to and from the class in their gi. Some of them wear the belt, some of them put the belt on when they get there. The senseis don't mind if you come to class in the gi, but they don't like you wearing it elsewhere. I've only just ordered my gi. I plan to wear it to class (just for convenience - the changing area is really cramped just before class because there's other activities finishing that share the same building), but to bring a sports bag with me and change out of the gi at the end of class so that I can go in to town afterwards.

When I was learning, my teacher had us hold the edge of the pool and practice kicking our legs behind ourselves, then we progressed to holding a floatation board out in front of us while kicking our legs, to get used to moving in the water. I found that if I tried to keep my head above water while doing that, I pretty much floated naturally, and it wasn't too uncomfortable. My technique at strokes where you're supposed to put your head under water (e.g. front crawl) is appaling, but I can swim long distances now, and I'm confident enough that I don't mind going underwater every now and then. If the course is over now, why not try going to a public pool yourself, and just staying in the shallow end? I think you might do better with short bouts of frequent practice than the odd lesson here and there. Good luck!

I haven't been doing a martial art for very long. I have had cause to defend myself on three occasions in my life, and on all of those occasions I did OK. I'm female, and each case was a single, male attacker, unarmed. Two of the occasions were muggers (I went to college in a rough area). They were expecting easy prey, and when they grabbed me I reflexively flailed / kneed them, or hit them over the head with a very heavy bag of college books. Then ran away as fast as possible (I used to run competitively, so was fast, and could run for longer than most "normal" people). I now live in a much nicer area, and don't anticipate any more trouble, but if I ever did have cause to defend myself, I think that right now I'd probably fall back to the same crazed / shock the person by being a lunatic defence. My style of Karate does involve sparing, and I'm finding that when I'm up against men my short stature means that if I'm close enough to hit them (even with a kick), they're close enough to grab me. I have learned a lot about blocking incoming hits, but at my current level of experience (very low), I don't think I would rely on anything I've learned in the dojo as a way to end a fight.

My school uses bars, but they're quite discrete - I don't think they look flashy or flambouyant at all. There are quite a few black belts (it takes three years to earn one, assuming you go for, and pass, a belt every time there's a grading - although they're fairly strict so most people fail one here and there). There are only a couple of people at 2nd Dan, and only one 3rd Dan, though, and it's nice to be able to reognize those people.

I just started. We have the option of paying per lesson, or paying a monthly fee to attend an unlimited number of lessons. The monthly fee works out well if you go to three or more lessons a week. Being self employed, money is tight at the moment, so one lesson is all I can stretch to. I think that's OK for the lower belts, but I hope it will change by the time I'm ready for the higher grades.

I was already learning Japanese before I started doing Karate, so I'm happy to use the Japanese terms. My dojo uses English and Japanese at different points. I think that the Japanese is clearer and more concise. Some of the English descriptions they've chosen for the moves are clumsy, overly wordy, and not very clear. They also differ from the English names given by other places, which confuses me know end when I'm watching videos. So, purely for consistency from school to school, Japanese gets my vote.

Thanks all! I'm still a real newbie - my second lesson is tomorrow. I can't wait though

Hi Everyone, I'm new here, I've just started doing Shukokai Karate, and I'm enjoying it so far. I'm planning on going for my first grading in July. I look forward to reading more about the different forms of Karate from everyone here.