Goju Ryu Karate Do

Sounds like a bunch or gibberish to most I'm sure, but Goju Ryu Karate Do just happens to be my chosen form of exercise.
Besides breathing.
I really like this because it has a nice combination of stretching, aerobics and practical application. I mean how many times are you going to use warrior 2 pose prior to defending yourself?
I take at the Budokan of Utah. We start off every class with 10 minutes of stretching and warming up. We work on flexibilty in addition to endurance and strength. Doing the splits is hard to do, but my instructor is very patient. I can almost almost touch the ground. And I hate returning to the center position. Goju is a form of martial arts that is based mostly on strikes, defensive and offensive. There are hundreds and hundreds of types of Martial arts but they are all based on some principle or another. In Goju we strike. A lot. Thus we do drills for most of the class time. This reminds me of rainy days in high school. I was on the track team and when it was too wet to go outside to train we did calisthenics. We also work on something called kata. These are forms. If you ever take a ballet class you will probably learn a dance. This is karate's dance. Here is where the drills get put into a movement that is supposed to flow and teach you how your body works. I love doing forms.
At the very end of the class sensei works on self defense moves with me. I like this part a lot too. He has shown me how to break out of hand grips and shoulder grabs. I get to use my elbows and knees alot during this part of class.
I love martial arts. When I was in college I took some Kung Fu classes, unfortunately I have not been able to continue that particular form of martial arts, but I really enjoy doing Goju.
Its funny how the more dancing I do and the more I learn about martial arts the more similarities I see between the two. I can guarantee that if you like to dance or do yoga you would probably enjoy martial arts too. To me it feels like a combination of the two, only you learn how to kill people. Just kidding.
Well sort of.