Choosing art for fitness - good athlete but not flexible legs

On 12/12/2024 at 4:10 AM, DarthPenguin said:

I would echo the other posters comments but also mention that trying to self teach, without significant prior experience, is likely to result in learning faulty movement patterns and having a lot of hassle down the line trying to fix the faulty muscle memory.

Speaking as an instructor, I'll say that a LOT of my time working with beginning and intermediate students involves making these type of corrections before they become bad habits.  Looking from the outside, some may look small (corrections).  However, when the student makes these small corrections they'll notice significant improvements in the efficiency and efficacy of their techniques.  As a student becomes more advanced and experienced with how things are supposed to look and feel, they can start learning on their own and self-correcting (at my school we generally see this happen around 1st degree black belt).  However, even the senior instructors in my school (both of whom have been training for 30+ years) still make it a point to train under other instructors from time to time (generally 2-3 times per year).  Yes, you technically CAN learn martial arts remotely, but if you have a good school near you I'd highly recommend you check them out.