Dekan

Personally, I prefer a traditional self-defense oriented school as opposed to a competition oriented school. There is nothing wrong with those competition based if that is what you are in it for. But, I want the skill of the art to defend myself, I don't really care about rising up through the belts on winning trophies. My experience from looking at different schools in my area is, if they either want me to sign a contract for some period of time, or if they have a bunch of trophies on display, then they are not the school for me. I have been fortunate to find a couple of local schools that focus on self defense using the arts and are not particularly interested in making gobs of money off of me, or competing for trophies. In fact the schools I've actually participated in, the Instructors don't particularly like tournaments at all. If a student wants to participate, they pretty much have to drag the teacher to go. Again, nothing wrong with the modern, competetive, schools, just not what I am personally in it for.