Best Martial Arts School: How to Choose the Right Style for You

 

Choosing the right martial arts school or even the right style seems like a very complicated, important decision to make. It's not. In fact, it's one of the simplest, easiest decisions that there is to make.

There's only two methods of choosing a school and they only have a couple of criteria each. In this article, I'm going to tell you everything you need to know in order to select the right martial arts school for you, you specifically, and know it doesn't have anything to do with your body type or your age or your background or any of that stuff that you think matters a lot. In fact, for most of you, it doesn't even matter if the place is legit.

I get this question more than any other question in my DMs, except for maybe how tall I am. I get that one a lot, but everyone wants to know like what school should I go to? They tell me, they tell me their height and their weight and their age and they tell me all this shit and then ask me which martial art is right for them or which school is right for them. Uh, none of that matters.

Now none of that matters for most of you. If you're like, I'm only five foot five. Should I try boxing or should I do wrestling? And someone on Reddit is like, Oh, if you're shorter, wrestling is better for you.

No, like if you're shorter and you want to do Taekwondo or boxing, you just have to be better at it to get the same results than people who are taller. And if you're lanky and weak, wrestling will be harder, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't train it. Your body type has nothing to do with the style or school that you pick.

The other big one is like, I just want to know if this place is legit. And they'll send me a link to a school and like I look at photos and like most of the time it's not. But for most of you, it doesn't even, that doesn't even matter either.

There's two methods for choosing a martial arts school. I'm going to keep this real simple. One is if you are a professional fighter, you fight for a living, you compete, or you are a high level amateur.

Uh, you have a few fights and whatever rule style it is, whether that's boxing, kickboxing, if you do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu matches, you compete and you want to get really good at that. You want to compete at the highest level. There's one method for choosing the right martial arts school.

If you're anybody else, even if you want to be a professional fighter, you still don't use the professional fighter method for choosing a school. That might not immediately make sense to everybody, but I will explain it. If you are currently a professional fighter or a high level competitor in any combat sport, you pick the place that's competing and winning.

Also, you're probably not reading an article on how to pick the right school, but maybe you could use this one. When people ask you this question, you are simply looking for a place with a proven track record of success and competition. But if you're literally anybody else talking to you, aspiring fighter guy, who's not had his first lesson yet, but has already picked his walkout song, or if you just are interested in self defense or fitness in general, or you just want to have fun.

If you're anything other than a high level competitor, there's three criteria. You pick a place that's close to your house. You pick a place that you can afford and you pick a place that when you go try the class, you like the people and you have fun.

That's it. The criteria is not effectiveness. It's not lineage.

It's not certifications. None of that shit matters. And yes, that also applies to people looking for real effective self defense with some caveats.

I'll explain. You might be thinking, well, no, I should pick like the best place. I should be at the best place if I want to learn how to defend myself or my family.

Well, if you have no experience, how the fuck would you know that you're at the best place? It's impossible for you to ever appreciate or recognize efficiency if you don't have the context and perspective that comes from knowing what inefficiency looks like. Most of the very talented martial artists that I know spent a good chunk of time in a place that sucked, but it was fun and they could afford it and it was close to their house. But won't you be wasting your time? No, because you're having fun doing something you can afford that's close to your house.

That's literally the criteria. Just pick a place that's fun and it's close to your house and you can afford. And then after you do that for a while, you might think like, damn, my instructor ain't never fought anybody and man, everyone here got these soft little boy bodies and nobody, I don't think anybody here knows how to fight.

Then you go try another place and then you see if you like that without a proper appreciation or understanding of what's a good place and what's a bad place. When you find a good place, you're not going to want to go just because it's good. It's going to hurt.

It's going to suck. You're going to be tired. You're not going to want to go anymore.

You're never going to get over that hump. That's why this doesn't apply if you're already a high level competitor. You will drive two hours to a place that stinks to get your ass kicked by people that you don't like because you want to be the best.

And now back to you, guy who's never put on a pair of gloves in his life. You are not, you might say that you're gonna, you won't. The best most effective program that there is isn't any good if you don't go.

Now, if all you care about is fitness or fun, then all this should jive. And if you are a high level competitor, then you kind of get what I was saying. But you aspiring fighters and self defense enthusiasts might be struggling with this concept.

If you're struggling with this concept from the perspective of a person who is not currently training, how do you know I'm wrong? So go ahead, go train some bullshit. Go train, go to a karate school. If you don't like the karate school, go to the boxing school.

If they're not nice there, go to the jujitsu school. If your neck hurts and it's not fun, don't go there anymore. Don't go do those things if they're not fun.

There's no rule that says that the place that you are training at has to be the only place that you ever train at. Maybe you get good as shit at hop keto for literally no reason at all. And you do that for years and you think it's super cool.

You can probably like fight okay compared to a guy that's never trained. Then you can go to an MMA school or Brazilian jujitsu school or a boxing school or whatever and get your ass kicked and be like, all right, now I need to decide, do I want to learn this or do I want to just stick with what I was doing? Either answer is okay because it's your time and your money. But once you have the context, once you have the foundation, once you can get through a warmup without gassing out, once you can keep your hands up for an entire round, once you can break a fucking board or whatever, you'll have some context and maybe you'll experience inefficiency.

But from that perspective, you can now fully appreciate efficiency. But that's my answer. That's my answer to this question.

Every time I get asked, pick a place close to your house that you can afford, that you have fun when you go. The easier it is for you to get to classes, the more likely you go, the more you go, the more you'll know, the more experience you'll have, the more context you'll have, the better perspective you have as long as you are making good, honest self-assessments along the way. Now you can ask me all the questions you want about like the place that you're training at doesn't spar.

It probably sucks. If the place that you're training at, if you call the guy in the front of the room master, it probably sucks. If you have fun, it's your time and money.

In the meantime, just just fucking pick a place, dude. Just pick a place. Like you're bullshitting around, you're making up a bunch of excuses and reasons and trying to find the perfect place.