How to Choose a Good Martial Arts School

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Michael Quebec. I'm over here at Heritage Gym in Union City. And today's subject is how to choose a good martial arts school. Well that's also a loaded question. How to choose a good martial arts school really depends on what your personal goals are for martial arts. So first you want to ask yourself what it is exactly you want to get out of martial arts. If it's health benefits and if you're looking for holistic health type of healing, well then a good martial arts school should be something along the lines of like Tai-Chi or Aikido or Shingh-Hi or Ba-qua. Some kind of internal martial art that utilized chi energy. If you're goal is to get a heavy workout because you need to get your heart rate up, you need to lose weight then you'll want to choose a somewhat vigorous style of martial art. So in that case you should go to like a kickboxing gym or a Tae-Kwon-Do type of school, something where you're constantly moving and getting your heart rate up. If your goal is street defense, that's really your goal, then you might want to look in to a school that teaches a martial art such as Kajukenbo, Kenpo karate, Muay Thai can be a very effective street defense. Of course you might have to adapt the stance a little bit because you are little more open down the center and of course in the sport you're not allowed to kick the groin. But martial arts such as that are very good for street defense. Krav Maga which is the Israeli take on self-defense, that's also a good martial art and if you're looking for a school for self-defense you want to look for a school that might teach something like that. So when choosing a good school, a good school for martial arts, the number one question you have to ask yourself is what is your goal. And then the second you should probably ask is your personality, what appeals to you, and your physicality. If you're the type of person who likes to punch, you don't really like to kick, you just don't have the flexibility for kicking but your a very strong puncher you might want to look into conventional boxing, boxing gym, or a martial art like WinChun Kung Fu, which uses primarily hands. If you're the type of person who's very flexible and you enjoy flashy high kicks then of course you want to look towards Tae-Kwon-Do. That is how you choose a good martial arts school and my name is Michael Quebec. Thank you."