Most people believe that martial arts is something that anyone could get good at and I agree with…read morethem; however, with today's commercialism businesses take advantage of the average person's naivety. Most schools people go to today are, to say the least, bogus. Taking a walk down the local eighth ave late in the afternoon, around four thirty, you would see kids RUNNING down the block with black belts. Just one word and one word only... NO! Luckily, a lot of schools out there are authentic, the proper name for those schools are mcdojos, I will include a link as an example of such dojo. This school is one of them. The instructors here don't joke around. They will push you past your mental, physical, and pain limit.
The typical two hour session is, during the first hour, jogging around the dojang fifty times and doing a series of workouts, note: If you slack off, you will regret it... the instructors will be watching you with hawk like eyes. By the end of the first hour, the floor tiles would be covered with sweat, I usually cover three tiles with sweat from my forehead, my dobok, uniform, would be soaked through and dripping. Take advantage of the five minute break that they give you, I, and the rest of my classmates, always guzzle down an entire bottle of water in less than five seconds, walk around the dojang to calm our heart rate down, and do some stretching.
The last half of the session would be the lessons that you came for. You will be drilling through punches, kicks, footwork, and stances. Careful, the instructors will still be watching you, and they will be testing both the solidity of your stance and your reflexes, a.k.a. putting a hand on your shoulder and pulling you backwards. If you manage to survive through a month of training and you have shown enough determination to go on, they will offer to teach you how to spar/fight for free, yep, one extra hour of grueling training each day.
I took a break to complete my SATs and college application process, I hope that I will get back in soon, I have formed quite a bond with my classmates, they are mostly either beginning high school or in the middle of middle school. Instructors if you are reading this, you won't be able to guess who I am :D