Afternoon all, I figured it was about time I at least introduced myself after lurking for a week or so.

I'm a 37 year old bloke and I live with my wife in Leeds, though I'll be moving to Manchester in the summer, and I have a 16 year old daughter who splits her time between here and her mother in North Staffordshire.

I think, from perusing the other intros on the site, that I'm the newbie round here because most of my MA experience was in my teens and early twenties, where I flirted with Lau Gar and Muay Thai. In connection with another thread I have also Fenced for a while in my late twenties but I dropped out of pretty much all exercise after developing thyroid cancer in my early thirties. Though I did do some ill advised Aikido training in between my two bouts of the cancer.

Since getting well I let my fitness plummet and my weight shoot up until I finally got bored with getting out of breath running up the stairs! I've sorted my awful diet out and I'm looking for a martial art that will help me to get fit again as well as giving me a physical challenge in the long run...

So that's me right now, anybody got any MA recommendations, whether general or specific, for an unfit, hairy bloke who's interested more in exercise and self-defence than kata and spirituality*? Cheers for reading!


*I've no problem with either, they're just not what I'm looking for right now...

Never a newbie if your ready to learn!

I'm biased towards Krav Maga and Kickboxing. Ask around and do some more lurking in the forums then if anything catches your eye wikipedia them and find out more.

Good luck with your decision.

Sam

Hey Carl, nice one for dropping into the forums. At the end of the day thats how this site will grow when other users can drop by and see we have a free flowing forum!

In terms of been fighter you dont need any advice on that front!!

From my experience what you need to do is ease yourself back in... introducing your body to stress of exercise again where you feel that you have worked but not over exerted yourself. A good friend of mine goes for his blackbelt in 4 weeks in TKD and he started around 3-4 years ago (he is in his early forties) and I would say he is in fantastic shape but it took time to get there.

To be honest I cant see why you cant take up any form of martial art as a good instructor will recognise your getting back in shape and need time.