I did some Tae Kwon Do in high school, but this was before the MMA craze started. I enjoyed it back then.
Pros: Good exercise & confidence builder (esp for young people).
Cons: It was one of those mass-appeal black-belt mills. There were a lot of people there, and you got very little real world scenario self defense training. The sparring was fun, but almost too structured. Still some training is better than none. I'd recommend learning some form of grappling (judo or jiu-jitsu) if you're interested in real self-defense. Of course, in real-world situations, if your assailant has a gun, none of it will matter. If you've seen the movie "The Foot Fist Way" with Danny McBride (Kenny Powers from Eastbound & Down), it's a very good satire of the types of guys you'd see in this sort of center. The fun aspect is subjective, but sometimes, you'd be sparring someone who had very little or no control of their hits/kicks, and they could hurt you if you weren't careful.
