Selecting the right martial art can be a challenging and sometime daunting task. This guide was written to help you to make an informed decision about which martial art and school to choose.

• Lose weight / get fit
• Stop getting beat up
• Start beating people up
• Become a better person
• Deal with aggression
• Learn aggression
• Become more social / make friends
• Build confidence
• Compete & win trophies
• Learn fancy stuff you see on TV
• Increase mental focus
• Develop life skills
• Show off to friends (including new "dragon" tattoo on forearm)
• Enjoy or be comfortable in the training environment
• Learn to use weapons

• your physical attributes
• your spiritual needs
• your philosophical interests
• your tolerance to pain and injury
• your alignment with aggression
• do you prefer to punch, kick, wrestle, throw, or use weapons?
• would you prefer no contact or very close contact (like in wrestling)

… and this is the short list …

Once you've figured out what your requirements are, it's time to think about finding a school. There are a ton of schools and different martial arts. (As you may have figured, I like lists, especially checklists. Yup, make lists for everything.) I'm going to list some of the major categories and attributes in order to help you decide which martial art / school best meets your needs.

Which martial art is best for me?

Most people you talk to will tell you that their martial art is the best for your needs. Most martial arts can meet most of the basic needs (like fitness or development of life skills) so it is important to think about other "softer" requirements as well. There are a number of categories any one martial art can be grouped into so I will list them out to help clarify. Within each category there is a full range of martial arts that extend from one extreme to the other. Each category will also have a few examples of characteristics which may be exhibited in this type of school.

It is a blend of each attribute that distinguishes one martial art from another. Even within one martial art style (eg: karate), any given school may have a different alignment towards one extreme or another. It's your job to find the martial art that has the right blend of attributes to make you comfortable and meet your goals. Often an increase in any one attribute will impact another attribute. For example, an art cannot be fast AND slow. Being fast makes it not slow by default. It's the blend of attributes that is important. You will find a blend that is as unique as you are, and fits you like a glove.

To further complicate the matter, a school may profess one thing but not actually deliver that attribute to the level you need. To give an extreme and unrealistic example. You go into a school where everybody just sits on the floor. You ask if this style is practical on the street. They say yes and demonstrate how they can subdue an attacker by simply touching them (and in some demonstrations a touch is not even necessary). Wow, very impressive. So you join and after 4 years find out that it's taking longer than you'd expected to learn this skill. Some teachers can also be considered amateur magicicans. They know the tricks that are designed to impress novices and using slight of hand, speed, and assistance from a student can sometimes be quite impressive. The lesson is that you should use your own mind to decide where each school fits. Approach with a buyer-beware mindset.

So, here are some guidelines. As with anything they do not apply to all cases all the time, but by looking at all the factors you should be able to build a clear enough picture to be able to decide if this school is for you.

Attributes

Martial arts can also be grouped by common attribute. Here are the major methods or ways that can influence a martial art. An art may choose a combination of these attributes or only a limited subset. The attributes can be applied to any degree, from minimally to strongly. Often increases to one attribute results in a decrease to another attribute. A common belief is that the more visually stimulating the art is the less effective it is. Any art can have any degree of:


Striking: using the hands, fists, or elbows to strike the opponent
Kicking: using the feet, legs or knees to hit the opponent
Grappling: injuring or subduing an opponent by moving one or more of their joints in a direction it was not intended to go
Ground fighting: joint locks and strikes applied while on the ground
Aerial techniques: techniques that are performed while airborne or jumping
Fanciness: how visually pleasing it is to novices. Often visual pleasure comes from acrobatics includes summersaults, backflips, headstands, and gymnastics inspired movements.
Effectiveness: how effective a style is or how concerned it is with application
Growth: how much personal or spiritual growth results from the art. Often arts concerned with growth search for "the way" and their art names end with "-Do" (as in Tae Kwon Do).
Body unity: using the whole body as a single unit to generate power
Chi / Ki: the cultivation and use of the body's "vital energy"
Weapons: the use of weapons
Sportiness: the focus put on sport and competition.
Throwing: the skill of unbalancing an opponent and throwing them to the ground
Degree of injury to opponent: some arts prefer to subdue an opponent whereas other arts are focused on inflicting maximum injury
Age of the art: when was the art invented? how old is it?
Range: Is the art close in fighting (like wrestling), or far away fighting like with long range weapons or kicks
Flexibility Required: how much flexibility is required to perform the art
Pressure points: are pressure point strikes used
forms: Forms are prearranged sequences of movements, often performed alone. They help students practice the techniques along with timing and power. Some styles have over a hundred forms, some styles have none.
Physical conditioning: how much physical conditioning is required to become proficient at the art
Commitment: some arts are very committed to each movement whereas others are not. Commitment usually provides more power but at the risk of not being able to change if the attack misses or is blocked.
Meditation: what is the importance and time spent meditating (seated, still standing, or moving)
Impersonation: does the style impersonate any animals
Seizing : seizing (grabbing) attacks to nerves, tendons, joints, muscles and other fragile or vulnerable areas

Street/Combat Practicality
Some arts are completely focused on practicality, even to the point where there is no art. They focus on fighting and winning in street fights. They train hard with lots of realism. Very little else is of concern. Clues: If the instructor prides him on having taught any elite military group (commandos, navy seals, green berets, etc).

Other arts focus on philosophy and self development. There are arts where the study of the art is the primary goal. Their movements may not be very practical. In these cases they will often try to convince or demonstrate the effectiveness of their style. Ask yourself "Would this technique still work if the demonstrator was half his/her current size?". This is a good guage of effectiveness.

Physical fitness
Martial arts range again from those which focus exclusively on physical fitness (such as Tae bo) to those which have very little focus on physical fitness.

Philosophy
Most traditional martial arts are rooted in some philosophy. The art will range from heavily rooted in philosophy to lightly rooted in philosophy. With some martial arts, the philosophy is one designed to improve the self and the mind in order to be a more successful combatant. Others focus on this philosophy in order to avoid combat all together.

Meditation / Chi Gung
Some arts use meditation as a vehicle to calm and centre the mind. They may use meditation (sitting, standing or moving) to heal the body and build "life energy".

Hardness / Softness
A style will be described by how "hard" it is. Now that doesn't mean hard difficult, it typically refers to how it deals with incoming force. A hard style will typically meet force with force. It will block an attack by striking it perpendicular and smashing it out of the way. They will often try to use their block to cause injury. A hard style commits more power to each attack/block, making it more difficult to stop. The price of this total commitment to each move is that the movement is less able to change, making it difficult to recover from a mistake.

Soft styles tend to redirect incoming energy and will try to use incoming energy to unbalance the opponent or move them into striking range. Soft styles are not as committed to any given technique and can therefore change as required. Since the techniques change, they can easily recover when blocked. The non-rigid body is less likely to be unbalanced as it changes with incoming pressure. Soft styles hit, and hit hard - however they do so using relaxed power. Think of a baseball pitcher; they stay relaxed but generate a lot of power into the baseball. If they tensed up their muscles (not soft) they actually decrease power.

Internal / External
Internal arts focus on the development and application of the less tangible attributes of the martial arts such as chi and energy. They tend to focus on the mind and internals of the body. Often an internal style will have a focus on meditation (seated, standing, or moving). An internal style will have a focus on moving energy through the body (and possibly into another's body). This often requires flowing (whip like) movements as opposed to angular movements.

An external art typically will focus on the body, body mechanics, and the anatomy to provide leverage and force.

Completeness
Completeness of an art goes hand in hand with practicality. A "complete" art is one that includes fighting from all ranges. It includes weapons, techniques to fight those who are far away, those who are in punching range, elbowing range, grappling range, ground fighting, everything and anything you can think of. Often schools will distinguish whether they are a "complete" martial art by whether or not they include ground fighting. Other styles believe that to be a complete style you must be able to use every possible weapon from every possible range. Typically the more "complete" a style is, the more techniques are involved. Mastery of all techniques can take a very long time.

At the other end of the spectrum are styles that train not to get into a situation where they would have to use … say … the telephone as weapon. While some will profess the benefits of learning to fight with a telephone, some styles believe it best to avoid this situation. A more realistic example can be seen with ground fighting (wrestling). Some styles train to be successful in confrontation without falling to the ground. Other styles train where they cannot be successful WITHOUT falling to the ground. Each of these styles can therefore be said that they are not "complete".

Often "complete" martial arts will advertise that a lack of completeness implies a lack of capability to deal with each situation. A situation can be dealt with through avoidance; "You may not need to train it if you can prevent it from happening" is a philosophy of many "incomplete" martial arts. Each person will have an alignment to how dedicated they wish to be to a particular way of dealing with confrontation.

Traditionalism
Some instructors teach what they were taught and hand down the system unchanged. Other instructors change the techniques to suit their needs or based on their experiences of what works and what does not. If tradition and learning methods that have been applied for hundreds of years is interesting to you, then look for a more traditional school. If you prefer not to be bound by tradition and prefer to work on what's interesting and practical for your current environment, a less traditional environment may be for you. Typically, traditional schools focus on hard work and strong ethics. The guide to whether a school is traditional or not is to review the formal lineage of the instructor (it's like his/her pedigree). The stronger and longer the line of teacher relationships, the more likely it is that you are being taught traditional martial arts.

Some non-traditional styles pride themselves on focusing on the current environment and will change techniques or philosophies as new challenges arise. Bruce Lee chose "use no limits as limits" and chose to update his own style as he learned and experienced other styles, often borrowing techniques. Often instructors will teach their own style because, like Bruce Lee, they did not learn the complete style (Bruce learned ving tsun for 2 years).

Religion
Almost any activity (including most martial arts) can be used to promote and give a path to self-awareness and improvement. Many religions also promote and give a path to self-awareness and improvement. It therefore stands to reason that there can be many parallels between any given religion and any given martial art. Some martial arts have evolved around religions. It is also not uncommon for people knowledgeable in a religion to become attracted to a martial art that has similar philosophies. For example, if my religion says "be kind" then I will find a martial art/school that fosters kindness.

Try to find a school that supports your current or desired religion (and associated philosophies) to the right degree (from none to lots).

Culture
Martial arts can also be grouped by the culture from which they come. The most common (at least to me) are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Indian martial art systems; however this is far from a complete list.

The martial art quite often takes on the flavour of the culture and sometimes the movement's names are in a language of that culture. Learning a martial art is a nice way to get exposure to some other cultures.

The Instructor

A good instructor will have the skills you wish to learn, the ability to teach them, and a personality that makes the environment a place where you are comfortable learning.

Check the background of the instructor. Make sure they have accurate and verifiable credentials. Many students believe they are good enough to teach, and promote themselves to instructor. It is worth while to verify the lineage and history of the teacher. The lineage is their pedigree, and the stronger the ties with their teacher (and their teacher's teacher), the more likely it is that your instructor is knowledgeable and certified.

It is possible for an instructor to be a good fighter, but being able to fight or impress people or beat up people is not a sign of skill. Quite often it's the opposite.

A good instructor will have nothing to hide and will answer your questions honestly and immediately. The way they answer your questions before you're a student will be a good indication of how they will answer your questions after you're a student.

With a poor or self-promoted instructor you will most likely receive poor instruction, and even if the style is excellent, you may not be able to learn it. Sometimes the instructor is not knowledgeable enough and "fills in the gaps" with whatever they can. Sometimes there may be a martial art which everybody says is terrible - but when you meet a qualified instructor you actually find out that it is fantastic. The instructor has the ability to make an art shine as well as the ability to pass that on to you.

The instructor should be of high moral fiber. She should want to train you more than pretty much anything else (you can tell when an instructor loves what they do). The instructor will likely become a roll model for you and/or your children.

If the instructor has stopped learning and practicing, then your own learning will likely be finite. If the instructor chooses to modify what they've learned, there is a chance the techniques will change and evolve in the future as he/she does. The instructor should also be practicing what they t(pr)each. If the instructor is doing one thing but teaching another, it may be an indication that they are trying to withhold skills from their students. The student's techniques should look similar to the instructor's.

The instructor should be available to each student for questions and should give a reasonable amount of personal attention to everybody. If the instructor focuses on one or two students and ignores the rest, it's a good indication that the instructor pays more attention to the favorites. The instructor should be active in teaching and helping. There is a difference between teaching and demonstrating. The teacher should be able to get the skill concepts across in a clear (and slow) manner as well as be able to demonstrate the application of the movement with skill and control.

It is accepted that there is a difference between tournament training and self-defence training. The instructor should recognize the difference. If they train both the same, there may be a problem.

Needless to say, the instructor should not be violent with the students. In some cases hitting can be a valuable training tool. The instructor should not treat everybody equally when it comes to contact, but should be able to use the right level of contact for the student (with their permission of course). The training program should be tailored to each student and contact should therefore also be tailored, from none to more. There should not be any injuries and violence should not be used. Talk to the students and instructor to ensure you will be treated with the right amount of respect.

If the instructor shows signs of low morals, aggression, anger, unfriendliness, greed, short temperedness, and other negative emotions, it may be a sign that the school is not for you (unless you admire those traits). Those emotions are often warning signs that the instructor has not trained hard enough to overcome those traits. In general if the instructor does not seem like a nice person or makes you feel uncomfortable, it may be a good idea to keep looking.

Selecting the School

So now you have some specific things you can look for when you go to a school. Each school and instructor can vary many of these attributes, so it's important to narrow down to the type of martial art and then visit the school to see how they implement these general rules.

How do you judge a school? Have you ever been to that little hole-in-the-wall restaurant and found that it has the best food in the city?

In general, you have to remain objective and assume that the school meets your current needs. Trophies are impressive but can be bought. A big school may not be supported by a strong or ethical business model (what are they doing to generate enough revenue to pay their rent?). An instructor may say the right things but act differently when teaching. Take the time to assess all the schools and do your best to find the one that will be best for you. Often a school will believe that what they teach is good for everybody. While a style may be a fit for each person, each person may not be a good fit for each style. It's up to you to determine if this style is in line with your needs.

	Teaching Students with Special Needs As part of our business section aimed specifically for those individuals thinking of taking up the martial arts as a career, Lesley Jackson uses both her first hand experience and the thoughts of other martial arts instructors on how to teach pupils with special needs and/or learning difficulties.

Ask the instructor or school what association they belong to. Find out if their membership is current and active. Membership in an association normally brings with it some degree of certification there is a degree of quality to the teaching process. If the school has broken ties with the association or is a single-shingle school there is a possibility that the instructor is teaching "their version" of a martial art. This often happens when an instructor does not understand (or has not been taught) the entire original system. They feel it is necessary to supplement or change what they were taught because they do not feel it was "good" enough. If they are unwilling to say the organization name or sidestep the question, this is a sign.

If the school has one instructor but teaches many different styles it may be an indication that the instructor is a "jack of all trades" (and master of none). He may be good / impressive enough to teach the beginners but will often lack the depth required to take the student to the highest levels. This is especially more likely if the many arts being taught by that instructor come from different cultures (eg: karate, kung fu, and tae kwon do).

Cost

Naturally, the cost of classes is an important factor. However the cost should be only one factor in your decision making. As with most things, you normally get what you pay for. Just for fun, let's do a bit of math...

10 students paying $70 / month = $700 / month. How many students are there on the floor and how much do you think that facility costs? The difference has to be made up somewhere. Many schools opt to make up the difference by additional service charges (like gradings) and product sales like uniforms.

You will normally know right away if the school is in the business of making money or if it's in the business of teaching kung fu. If the latter, the school will typically be modestly sufficient. Of course there is a limit, if the school is in some guy's basement or garage there is a good chance that they are not a qualified instructor.

It's important to investigate all the charges. Watch out for hidden charges that you may not be aware of. Also, some schools expect a multi-year commitment and have requirements that product be purchased at regular intervals. There can be fees for grading to the next level, fees for sashes/belts, different (expensive) uniforms for different levels and more.

Schedule & Location

Depending on your goals the schedule of classes will be very important. You'll probably want to find a school that has enough class times that you can dedicate a few nights a week to training. Although in some rare cases a golden light shines down and makes somebody a master in a few months, for most of us commoners we have to train regularly.

The location is also important for this reason. A 5 hour commute to the school is rarely a sustainable model, and it likely will not take long before the burden of travel outweighs the benefits of training.

Watch or attend class

The school should let you watch a class and attend at least one class if you would like. If you are not allowed to watch until after you've paid, it may be a warning sign. If you attend, see how you are treated. See if you are taught the same as the others and if you are welcomed as part of the group. Make sure you feel comfortable training in that environment and with those people. Are they helpful, accommodating and welcoming or do they make you feel like an outsider. The feeling you get as a guest often represent the school's policies and attitudes in general.

Check to see if you are being taught the real stuff or are you on the "beginner" program. Do they teach you as if they assume you will be staying or as if they assume you will never be back.

Do they "teach" or simply demonstrate the movements and tell you to follow. Do they teach (know) the application of the movements?

Talk with or train with the other students. They can be very helpful in finding out about the school. Ask about their experiences and how they enjoy training.

Watch to see how the instructor teaches. Are they helpful and respectful? Does the instructor seem to care about teaching and learning?

Watch for violence or injuries. Find out from the other students about the injuries and frequency of injuries.

Make sure you ask lots of questions. If you get the feeling you've asked a "wrong" question, the instructor should probably be more skilled at handling questions. In martial arts there should be no dumb questions. If you train under this person you will likely have lots of questions, and they should all be answered.

Belt/Grading system

Many schools will have a belt or grading system. Some schools have only one belt - black (instructor). Others have many many many different belt ranks, sometimes with mini-ranks between belts. There may be costs associated with advancement so check. Normally the belts (and associated skill levels) are different colors to symbolize different ranks.



Well, I think that should be enough to give you a good foundation in selecting a martial art and school. Good luck with whichever art you choose and all the best in your training!

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