Ballet or Gymnastics as an adult male?

@twins4heaven Most dancers have jacked feet. I didn't do near 6 hours aday and still have jacked feet. But I was too lazy to tape up my feet. Now they have spacers and toe caps and tons of other support for dancers feet. If they start to bother you definitely head to the dance supply store and ask about them. (And I didn't go en pointe.)
 
@fradoff I'm not too worried about improving my Frisbee. I just play that because running around feels real good.

But out of curiosity, how would you say it will improve my frisbee? I thought they were pretty different
 
@najdib That sucks man. I live in a small town too but managed to find a BJJ club. It's on Saturday so I can do it alongside other stuff 😁.

Hope you find a place near you soon. Maybe try muay Thai? That's a bit different tho. Judo?
 
@twins4heaven I did ballet when I was a kid. It might be different in different parts of the world, but my sense of it is if you don't get in early and have a talent for it, there's no point. This is true for women, and even more so for men. If you really want to do it, you can try it, but expect it to be something you'll drop.
 
@baristaben agreed, sort of. if your goal as an adult male beginner is to get good enough to join a decent ballet company, you're crazy. it might not be completely impossible, but it would take insane dedication (and talent, and flexibility).

on the other hand, ballet is an excellent way to learn a physical and mental discipline while getting stronger and more flexible. if what you want is to be relentlessly challenged, ballet will do that. i tried martial arts for a while and never found anything remotely close to the level of focus and difficulty of basic ballet classes.

and then, once you have some basic ballet skills, the worlds of modern, jazz, hip hop, etc become much more accessible. these other disciplines offer a lot more achievable performance opportunities for adult beginners. it's not that they're "easy", but the learning curves are much gentler than ballet, and you can actually look like you know what you're doing pretty early on. ballet fundamentals are very applicable to these other styles, too. (you'll find a ton of borrowed ballet terminology and variations on ballet poses/movements.)
 
@baristaben Agreed. It sounds harsh but the way OP says it makes it seem like he won't feel happy or fulfilled if he doesn't end up learning all the "cool tricks". Obviously, there are exceptions but from what I've seen, adult ballet classes don't tend to progress very quickly, especially if the classes are short and the dancers are beginners.

That being said, if someone wants to learn ballet for the sake of dancing, I think they should go for it! But if they feel more interested in learning jumps/turns, gymnastics might be a better choice.
 
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