Never thought of myself as a geek but at age 50 can still kick a smartass in the face with enough force to drive his nose into his brain.

School of hardknocks, Heatbreak Ridge Army, TKD, and Hopkido.

What did I get out of it?
New friends.
Confidence.
Good exercise.
Learned a few good moves.

Tj

Quoted: I've wrestled, studied TKD, Tai Chi, and a hybrid art that incorporated Boxing, Muay Thai, Eskrima, Kung Fu and Jujitsu. I finally came to the conclusion that anything worth fighting about is worth fighting dirty. Poke their eyes out, crush their trachea, shoot them or don't fight at all. I haven't fought since.

Now this post was funny to me personaly anyway!  You should try coming to that conclusion years before you take a martial art.  That makes it alot harder and more frustrating.

Full contact sparring TKD, we use to have this tall kid, black belt, that would come at you with his leg above his head straight on.  Great tournament technique but God how I wanted to drop on the mat and take his knee cap out.

One thing I learned from all the tournaments I went to and all the different schools that I visited was that no two schools were alike and the effectiveness of what you were taught is heavily influenced by the type of school and the experience level of your instructor.  There are belt factories that only want your money.  There are tournament trophy factories that only train for tournaments.  There are true self defense schools and there are combinations of the variences in every school.  A belt factory or an instructor that has never been in a real fight are about as worthless as tits on a boar hog.

My instructor was a Grand Master TKD recognized by the WTF, three time Korean Champion, and ex-Tiger Division South Korean Military.  Belts were only achieved by merit not time and in order for me to even enter into Hopkido I had to complete green belt TKD and have competed in at least three tournaments.  This was to insure a basic skill level.   The Hopkido class was highly centered around self defense and included weapons techniques with a philosphy that if you defend against a technique you best know some of the techinque.  Knife defense was acommpanied by knife fighting, sword defense was accompanied by some Kendo, and grappling breaks was accompanied by some Judo are examples.  No pain no gain is an understatement and a better fit would have been constant bruses and lucky no broken bones.  A purest that could trace his TKD to it's original style and in retrospect, my instructor was not that good of a businessman.  The school was a tad too harsh for most so attendence was lower than the bigger schools and belts too hard to achieve for most which limited attendence so revenue from belts was down.  Coming from a culture where one lived in a Dojang and the people took care of the master, his school failed but his art was outstanding.  All of this inspite that we as a school always took the majority of tournaments and trophies.  This man could do shit that most would claim impossible.   He returned to Korea.

You see alot of it is the type of school you have, your instructor, and what you are being trained for.  A bad school, bad instructor, and lack of direction towards your goal results only in good exercise and little practical knowledge.  With that comes dissatisfaction often for a fighting style.

Tj