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Martial Arts - Alexandria and Northern VA Options

If you're interested in learning more about the martial arts, Alexandria and Northern Virginia offer some superb opportunities to do so. If you were worried about needing to travel to mountain top monasteries on the far side of the world, well, you can rest easy - it's all on the doorstep.

Martial arts - Alexandria and Northern VA options

Of course, although the term is used liberally, in reality the expression means many different things to different people. It also typically encompasses a wide range of disciplines and techniques. Some of these are extremely well known, by reputation if not expertise, due to their popularity in the movies and on TV. Examples that spring to mind might include Judo, Karate, and Kung-Fu.

In fact, as some expert practitioners will tell you, some of these commonplace terms are in fact deeply misleading. However, as a potential student you will need to think about some of the things that might influence which type of training and discipline you choose to follow.

The importance of expertise

Perhaps the first thing to recognize is the critical importance of selecting a training center under the close personal supervision of expert tutors. Depending upon the discipline you follow, the tutors may be called different things as dictated by custom and practice within the domain itself. In a sense though, it doesn't matter how your expert practitioner wishes to be formally addressed - what is important is that they are expertly skilled and extremely experienced in teaching the discipline concerned.

So, back alley training in centers with no apparent pedigree and where the tutors are extremely difficult to verify in terms of their experience might be cause for concern and perhaps best avoided. Fortunately in terms of the martial arts, Alexandria and Northern Virginia have some excellent and highly professional tutors running top-class training facilities.

Choosing your discipline

This is a tricky area to discuss because so much will depend upon your personal preferences and indeed what you might already have learned about the disciplines concerned through different sources.

It's probably fair to say that many people will be instinctively attracted to things such as Kung-Fu and Karate simply because they have received such widespread publicity through the movies and TV. However, there are many other disciplines and some may be far more suited to you.

Here are just two of the many questions that you might wish to consider in terms of helping you focus on how to go forward:

€ How physically fit are you and how much effort will you be prepared to invest in training to get fit? Being only moderately fit doesn't necessarily exclude you from any discipline but your progress in some may be rather slower than others if, for example, you have limited mobility.

€ Do you object to close physical proximity to relative strangers? If so, those styles that involve a lot of €floor work' including wrestling and grappling might prove to be a little bit intimidating for you; you may prefer others where the practice is essentially to stay on two feet at all times.

Of course, there is a long list of such questions that will eventually help you to decide which of the many styles you would like to follow. Space doesn't permit a full discussion of them here and that's why it's important to have some initial discussions with an expert tutor.

In terms of expert tuition in the martial arts, Alexandria and its surrounding areas have a number of centers that will be only too pleased to consult with you and help you to decide upon your own real preferences.


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