Another late intro

[GreenDragon]

Hi,

 

I have already received a great deal of help in choosing an art from this site, but never came here to do the introduction thing...so here goes.

 

I am a 32-year-old graphic artist who makes money doing management. I have never been able to get into the working out thing and quite frankly until a couple years ago never felt the need to. But alas, my metabolism has finally slowed to the point where my inactivity has caught up with me. When I was in my early teens, a friend of mine was going to kenpo and I thought that was just so cool, but my mother would never let me do anything that was stereotypically thought of to be dangerous (like football or karate). But I always played baseball and soccer, and up until a few years ago, my buddies and me would get together and play basketball and volleyball. So finally with my gut growing and my wife taking an interest in us getting fit, I decide it's time to go ahead and try karate. My primary motivation being I wanted to do something that would be active enough to get me in shape and would be fun at the same time...learning some self defense couldn't hurt either, and the wife approved, so off I went, woohoo!

 

I live in sunny Tucson, Arizona (it's getting hot already) where MA studios abound so the choices were many even though the levels of quality and availability for working into my hectic schedule were limited. I tried a free night of TKD and although the workout was great, the instructor had a bit of a Latin accent which made it very difficult to figure out how he wanted me to pronounce the Korean he was speaking...if I said it just like him, it wasn't quite right and he would keep correcting me by saying the exact same thing, frustrating. But after the wife heard about my TKD night she thought she might like to try something like that. So we went and got a family rate at a place where I could do karate and she and my stepdaughter could do cardio-kickboxing. Well after a few lessons, it was apparent that with her bad back (car accident) a workout with that high of an impact level was going to do more harm than good, but that wasn't stopping me. She came to watch my white belt test at the end of our first month and the class was a little more tough than usual (because the head instructor who was rarely there had to re-teach us the basics that we had learned incorrectly from his son and drill us to make sure we had it down so he could give us our belts and charge us for them). When I said to my wife "tonight was tougher than usual" she laughed and said "that was tough?" clearly comparing it to the workout she got in the cardio class. But it made me think, so I came here searching for opinions and quickly came to the conclusion that I had been attending what turned out to be a MCdojo for a month. My search continued...I then found a great Tang Soo Do dojang, I did his $35USD two week trial period and liked it a lot. Then he dropped the contract bomb on me, calling it an agreement, and implying that if there was some reason I could not attend, like being laid off he would not hold it against me (then why have a contract at all!). Although contracts are a good thing from a business perspective, I just didn't feel comfortable with the idea that if I got laid off, I'd be legally bound to put food on his table while my family ate ramen. So again the search continued...and I was surprised at how much I had learned from this forum and other sites about the MAs and just how difficult that knowledge made it to find place to train that would meet my new high standards and give me the workout I was looking for without having to sign a contract or breaking my bank and also had classes late enough in the evening that I could attend. I thought I had looked everywhere, tried every search site (martialinfo.com, etc.) and called every place in town, so I was about to settle on an excellent local bujinkan and learn budo taijutsu. However, admittedly one of the concepts of this art is that anyone can do it so physical fitness is not trained for nor is it required to excel. So on a day that I had planned to go and do a trial class, I used some Tucson Recreation site to try and see if I could find the number to some Goju Ryu place someone told me about that wasn't in any phone books. While on this site, I found a place simply called kickboxing at Tucson. Turned out to be just some guy who rents a room in the upstairs of a gym and teaches Muay Thai and Brazilian Jui Juitsu up there. It was in the evenings, the workout would be intense, and the price is unbeatable (lowest anywhere in town for any art). So I've been doing that for a month now, and although the class is a little informal, and we sometimes start a little late because some people show up late...when we start, it is dead serious.

 

So, that's my story...I finally found something I am enjoying, even though some nights I get a little more bruised than I'd prefer. Part of my successful search is due to the excellent advice and friendly replies I have received from a lot of very knowledgeable folks on this site, so thanks everybody, glad to be here.

 

GreenDragon

[Pacificshore]

Welcome aboard, and glad to see someone do their homework before settling or committing to something or place where they were not comfortable.

[SaiFightsMS]

Welcome to the forum. For many the first place they try to train is not the right one.

[Red J]

Welcome! Good luck in your training.

[karate_woman]

Welcome

[SBN Doug]

Welcome, and congratulations on finding somewhere you feel comfortable training.

 

However, I would like to throw a quick opinion out about two things. One, small clubs like that are sometimes the best place to learn MAs, but don't be surprised if some day, he can't make ends meet or moves away. Make the most of it while you've got it.

 

Second, contracts are not always evil. I started out in KSW on a month to month basis until I was sure they were legit. When I signed a contract, he was able to drop the fee significantly. When I did have to drop, because I was moving, he didn't even give the contract a second thought.

 

Good luck in you training.

[monkeygirl]

Welcome to the forums!

 

Doug said pretty much everything I wanted to say

[Karateka_latino]

Hi and wellcome to the Forums.

[Patrick]

Welcome.

[G95champ]

Welcome to KF.