I guess I'll tell you about my martial art experiances while I'm on the subject... This might be a long stroy, and some people might find it boring, so I'll warn you ahead of time...
I'm a college student, and my interest in the martial arts started a couple years back when I found out that I had to take a PE class. I looked at the avilble classes, and found that I could take either Karate, TaeKwonDo, or Akido for the requirement. I decided that I should take one of these classes, instead of something like basketball or soccer. I figured I'd get more out of it. You can never be too prepared, right?
I ended up in TKD. My first choice was Karate, but it wasn't going to work out because the class times conflicted with some of my other classes. It all worked out though, because the TKD stlye being taught in this class has alot in common with Karate anyway, in fact some call it "Korean Karate" instead of TKD.
This particular stlye is called "Chung Do Kwan" (I think it means "Blue Wave Fist" or something like that). It is not the kind of TKD that you seen in the olympics. It is much more tradtional, and has much in common with Karate, as I said before. That is because the Japanese invaded Korea and Japanese Martial arts became popluar there. The modern stlyes of TKD are more of a sport where the tradtional stlyes like Chung Do Kwan are more of a "real" martial art. For example, in some styles of TKD, punching is considered "cheating"
Anyway, the basic idea behind Chung Do Kwan is to become VERY good at a few techniques instead of kinda sorta knowing a bunch of techniques. There are 15 such "basics" that everyone practices at the begining of class. Everyone from the newest newbie to the black belts works on perfecting these 15 moves. As you advance in rank, you are expected to be able to do them faster and with more control.
I decied I liked this idea. Sort of like really getting to know one handgun instead of shooting several every now and then. So I stuck with it and now I take the class just for fun. I am currently a green belt, the ranking system goes like this:
Newbie
White
Yellow
Green
Purple
Brown
Black
Newbies are technicly white belts, but I break them into two catagorys because a real white belt knows the 15 basics (and a couple other things I'll talk about latter on) and are just trying to improve upon themselves so they can advance to yellow. The "newbies" on the other hand do not know all that stuff and so they are often seperated from the rest of the class and a black or brown belt helps them learn the 15 basics while the "real" white belts and the rest of the class practice the 15 at a much faster pace...
At this point you might be thinking "wow, it takes a couple years to advance to green?". Well, it doesn't really. The reason it took me that long is I had surgery and had to take almost a year off from TKD to heal. Normally it takes about 6 to 9 months to advance to the next level. This can varry from person to person, and you need to be a brown belt for a while before you are ready to advance to black...
Anyway, while Chung Do Kwan is focused on those 15 moves, there are other things that you learn as you advance. They fall under 3 catagorys:
Forms: I think these are known as "kata" (spelling?) in Japanese, but I'm not 100% sure about that. Basicly a long series of moves that help you learn how to flow from one move to the next. They also look cool if you watch someone else do them. At first these stick pretty much to the basics, but as you advance in rank more there are a few more advanced moves that are inculed in the froms for that rank...
3 Step: 3 Steps are done in pairs. You have an "attacker" and a "defender". The attacker throws 3 punchs, and the defender blocks 3 times (thats why it's called "3 step"), and then does some sort of counter attack. Everything is planned out, so both the attacker and defender know exaclty what to expect. At the white belt level, the idea is to learn control (so you don't really hit your partner) and turst (you have to trust in your partners contol). We don't wear any protective gear, and so we don't really "hit" each other in class. The reason being because A: we are there to learn, not hurt each other and B: it helps you learn control. Some complain that it isnt' a real martial art if you don't hit people, but I dis-agree... Anyway, the higher ranks use 3 steps to learn new techniques, like sweeping for example.
I have here a picture of myself and a black belt in the middle of a 3 step:
I have just finished my 3rd punch (I'm the one on the right), and my partner is moving in for the counter attack. Notice that he looks a little blurry (his feet in particular), this is because he was moving so fast the camera had trouble taking a clear picture...
Sparring: Like with 3 steps, you spar in pairs, and also like in 3 steps, you don't actually hit your partner (we stop just short of hitting them, and as you advance the space between your foot/fist and your partner decreases, brown belts come within about a half inch of hitting you while yellow belts give you a good 3 inches or so to be on the safe side), and you don't have any protective pads. This is why only yellow belts and above practice sparring. White belts need to learn control and haven't proven that they can spar safely untill they pass the yellow belt test. Sparring is where you put all the other skill you've learned to the test. You see if you can use them in a real fight, aginst an opponet who has some martial arts skills themselves.
I've learned that Martial arts are not only good to know for self defense reasons, but they can also be fun, and are good exersize. I would recomend learning a Martial art to just about anyone. We have all types of people in our class, guys, girls, short people, tall people, people in their teens, people in their 50s. Just about anyone can learn a martial art, it's not just for bruce lee types...
Sorry this post was so darn long. I hope that someone, somewhere out there found this interesting or helpful in some way...
