I studied Aikido for about 5 years on and off with a very very good teacher.

Terry Ezra, look him up on the net.

He told us Aikido was a very good self defence, if you have ten or fifteen years to spare to learn it properly, but he told us to go and try everything else available also.

I really do reccomend Yoga to get all over fit and flexible, and or Pilates.

The reason I say that is a lot of the warm up in Aikido was yoga based or at least very similar. I did the same exercises in yoga classes.

Taekwondo is [in the vast majority of classes] a sport, not practical in my opinion.

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It dun't really matter.