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what is karate like? I have never done a martial arts class....
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Funny you should ask... I just got back from a helluva class... owwwww... sore... lotsa slamming into the mats (I wish they were softer). As my friend said, it's not the falling - it's the landing
But seriously - and Ledove can jump in too with her experiences -- it REALLY depends on your style and your particular school and instructor(s). Some schools are belt-mills that hand out black-belts like candy on Halloween... other schools are real tough fighting schools that weed out all but the most masochistic macho types...
My school now is self-defense oriented. It has high standards, and I've never seen a belt test where everyone passes. Which is good - at my TKD school (and this isn't all TKD schools, just the one I was at) no one ever failed a belt test
. My TKD focused more on kicking - all kinds of fancy kicks and stuff, and on Olympic-rules sparring (which I didn't find particularly applicable to real-life attack scenarios). We also did kata there, and board-breaking. I even broke a concrete brick with my fist!
Our style at the school I'm at now is kajukenpo - it combines aspects of karate, judo, ju jitsu and kenpo. We work on kata (forms), escapes (from various types of grabs - everything from wrist grabs to chokes to bear-hugs), self-defense sets where we defend from a punch in set response patterns (classroom model) and then we learn to adapt them to varying unpredictable circumstances. Our classroom "rule" is that if you get hit in the face, it's your own fault for not blocking the punch!
We spar (with protective gear, but with contact), we do grappling (like BJJ, on the ground). We learn to fall, then we throw and sweep each other (like tonight... ugh...). We do joint locks and arm bars...
We also do multi-man attacks where you are jumped by more than one person at a time, or sometimes the class makes a circle around one person in the middle and everyone attacks that person and they have to defend from whatever direction, whatever random attack is coming.
Some days I get the poop beaten out of me, but I love it... It's never boring! I'm weird, I guess. It's also a community, a kind of family... My DH and son also take classes (DD wouldn't be caught dead there
)... I respect our sensei a lot, and I've learned a lot from him and the other senior belts.
Sorry that got so long, but it's hard to put it "simply." If there's a school near you, try observing a few classes and maybe you'd like it!