New

[DuleDragon]

hi, my name is Ted and i am interested in taking martial arts. what martial arts would you recomend? are some better than others?

[tntma12]

Hey there Ted, Welcome to martial arts meta. As far as which martial arts you should take, it all depends on what your looking for. No martial art is better than another, its all in what your looking to learn. I would recommend going to some of the schools in your area and checking some out and see what you like or what interests you. Hope that helps

[disgruntled]

i definately agree. and it really help to check out schools in your area because you need to know what our options are before you decide on a style.

[sirdarksol]

Welcome to the forums!

What are you interested in? As tntma and disgruntled said, there's no best martial art, but we can help you find a good match if we've got an idea of what you're looking for.
It can be pretty much anything, from looking for an art from a particular culture (I am a student of a few different Japanese arts, for example), to looking for something that looks really cool to something that is extremely effective self defense and so on and so forth.

[Hatori]

Welcome to the Forums!! I'm really echoing what everyone else has said in that it depends what you want from the art that dictates which one you will study. You will benefit from any discipline that you undertake so the best of luck to you!

[DOCBROWN1705]

Welcome.... this is a great forum to be involved in if you are looking to get into MA. There is a great deal of collective experience here, so if you have any questions please feel free to ask.

I have to agree that there is no MA that is necessarily better, but if you have some ideas of what you want to learn we may be able to suggest some different styles to look at.

[DuleDragon]

thank you for the warm welcome

i have looked around at what is offered around me, and my options are Taekwondo, KungFu (is that the same thing as GungFu?), Muay Thai, and Jujitsu. i am going to go to the school and get some more information. what should i look for and what kind of questions should i ask?

as far as what i am looking for in martial art, i basically want to do something fun to get into shape. it would be nice to also learn some good self defense. so any suggestion from the martial arts i listed?

[jackmcmanus21]

welcome Ted. As a practitioner, I would always recommend Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai. If you take up Muay Thai, know that you're going to get some bumps and bruises though, but I imagine this goes for most MAs.

[disgruntled]

i would be tempted to say Muay Thai for fitness too. it is really high cardio. but from that list i have only practiced Muay Thai and TKD, so i am not sure how intense the others are. when you go to the schools watch a class and go with the one with the highest cardio.

but honestly, i would not suggest muay thai for self defense. you will learn useful blocks and what not, but i do not consider it self defence because it teaches you how to fight, and if the other person is more skilled, you will not have a good chance at defending yourself. for defense i would look at MAs that concentrate on how to control someone elses energy. they usually are good because they teach techniques not dependent on size or strength. Muay thai has elements of that, but it is much more of a competition sport than a defence course.

[DuleDragon]

i will keep what you said in mind....

so what type of questions should i ask when i go and check out a school? i am planning on checking some out next week