Which Martial Art to Study???

[krys]

I have seen peoples startin MA quite late (ie over 35) and do well in Wing Chun, Silat and Arnis-Escrima, Hsing I, Bagua..... I would avoid beginning Muay Thai-Wrestling-Boxing at your age, these are good arts but you could easily get injured if you have no previous sports training...
BJJ could also be a good choice if you don't go in a too rough place...

[gregimotis]

Now that you've heard good advice re: what styles to consider, here's some advice on what to avoid:

are some very good Kung fu, karate, and tae kwon do schools out there, BUT very often these traditional arts are full of flowery, showy techniques that look good on stage but have no place in self defense. If you go into a school and common sense tells you this is never going to work 'on the street', your common sense is probably right.

Also there are a lot of incompetent instructors out there. The Tae kwon Do craze in the eighties (for instance) generated a whole MA industry focused on taking your money in exchange for quick black belts and frachising. If a school is charging more than a nominal fee for testing, or promise a 'black belt' in less than four years, RUN FAR AWAY. For more info on this type "mcdojo" into your search engine.


Finally, If you can find a school in your area that teaches a couple different arts within the same building, I would encouage you to check it out. There are a lot of advantages to that set-up,not least being, if you get bored with one thing, you can try out another (and you will get bored sometimes - Martial arts competence takes many hundreds of hours)


Good Luck, and let us know what you settle on.

[HuSanYan]

Originally posted by Strepto
Go take a look there

http://www.martialartsites.com/styles.cfm

Chose a style from the dropdown menu. Then you get to read about the style and if you click on the Style History tab it will give you some historical info about the style.

Have fun reading!

I just took a look at that site & its very good, here is another one that is along the same thing, it may have quite a few more styles listed and then a couple of paragraphs about each, including quite a few of Kung Fu styles..........

http://www.martialarm.co.uk/martial-list.html