Dreaming of Bruce Lee, looking like Kung Fu Panda

With summer 2008 a virtual wash-out so far, city residents may well be looking to extend their indoor pursuits. And I have just the thing. The weird and wonderful world of martial arts.

Aged thirty-something, with hair thinning and slight muffin-top on the mid-rift, I am going to venture into the unknown world of Manchester's martial arts.

Manchester is jam packed with martial arts masters and their varied classes. It's like most things, as soon as you start to look for them suddenly they're everywhere. Indeed I only had to take 100 steps from Planet Confidential's front door to stumble across my first martial arts gym.

All manner of martial arts are available to all comers in this city of ours and yet much of it seems esoteric and impenetrable. Here’s where to start.

Accompany me on my summer odyssey as I kick, punch, elbow, throw, wrestle, and grapple my way through as many classes as possible. For your information, and no doubt amusement, I'm in for a punishing schedule over the next four months.

Aged thirty-something, with hair thinning and slight muffin-top on the mid-rift, I am going to venture into the unknown world of Manchester's martial arts. With the benefit of first-hand advice from seasoned black belts I trust that this page will prove useful and hopefully 'enlightening'.

As you may guess by the use of inverted commas, 'enlightenment' is the first of several contentious terms that will pepper this page. Sorry, but the martial arts - or our general perception of them - are just littered with mysterious secrets and grand claims, along with daft make-believe. So you, the reader, are hereby invited to argue the charms and pitfalls of such terms and in fact all aspects of the martial arts.

I'm looking for info on your classes, your training tips and anything that will help this to be a greater resource for martial artists in Greater Manchester.

Why am I doing this? I'd say it's because the martial arts is one of the few things aside from sex, drugs and rock'n'roll that make sense (albeit a sometimes skewed sense). Besides, I'm interested in people and what they get up to in the strangely social yet solitary world of the martial arts. This weird and wonderful world offers a panoramic snapshot of our selves: hair-brained hard-cases, strange self-harmers, daring do-gooders, the lot.

To sum up, it's the yin and the yang of everything: the balance of mind and body, the free sensation of being lost in the zone. But then I'd sound like an idiot to most. Better to tell something of the back story which has led to this point.

Having started and stopped some martial arts as a kid, this journey really kick-started a fistful of years ago when I turned 30. Perhaps at that ripening age I should have been thinking about settling down rather than conjuring up teenage dreams. But age is just a number, right?

I started training with a Chinese master who does not operate a black belt system. I can't say I'm a black belt or any colour but I can say I've become a devotee of the martial arts. Maybe that counts for more.

To start off , with the Beijing Olympics looming in August it seems right to cover Wrestling, Judo, Tae Kwon Do and, if I'm still alive, Boxing. The following months will be dedicated to these simple themes: internal martial arts like Aikido and Tai Chi, external martial arts like Muay Thai and Karate and, finally, to bring it all together, the self-explanatory mixed martial arts of the 21st century.

To contact Tim with questions or suggestions about Manchester martial arts, please enter your details into the form below.