I was already practicing martial arts on my own mostly studying from Krav Maga books for about 2 years. Then I went through a pretty traumatic situation courtesy of my then friend. After that, I decided that I had to kick it up a notch and now I'm taking Shotokan classes. So I guess like everyone else here I started for self defense.

I haven't had to use my training since I started a traditional art, but it's helped me a lot more than just being a better fighter. I've never been able to dedicate myself to studying before. Now, I can easily take time out to study clean up and do the rest of that boring stuff without thinking twice about it.

Sounds like you're learning how to be dedicated to taking care of yourself.
Martial arts will make you a more detail oriented person, and will condition your mind to focus. The discipline and focus that is demanded of you by your instructors will rub off into your daily life if you take it seriously.
Lots of things that we do in the dojang are repetitive and can be looked at as boring, but every little boring thing that we do has a purpose, and you have to master the mundane before you can master greater things.

I train:

1. because I love doing it

2. for fitness and overall well-being

3. for self-defense

4. because it's part of my job

I knew a guy who was a black belt in Seidokan karate. He stopped training after he got his 1st dan. He went to the gym for a few months but then quit and returned to karate. He said he couldn't get motivated to run on a treadmill or go to an aerobics class. Karate 3 times a week plus all the other karate training he did at home motivated him far more and he enjoyed it far more. I'd say there are a lot of people like that in martial arts.

Additionally, many martial arts do offer a fairly holistic system of fitness training. A Shotoakan Karate-ka has a good blog and said that if you want to get strong, do weight/strength training, if you want to get great aerobic fitness, go running, if you want to get flexible, do yoga. However, if you want to increase your strength, fitness and flexibilty all in one go (but to a lesser extent than the aforementioned), do Karate. For a person who is on a budget or only has limited time to exercise, a karate class might be a better option if they want to have multi-faceted fitness training.

A final note is that I've learnt things in martial arts classes that I wouldn't learn in a gym/fitness class. Things about posture, breathing techniques and mental wellbeing.

Martial arts aren't the be all and end all, but the fact of the matter is it is better to keep active doing something you enjoy rather than forcing yourself to do something you don't enjoy. As I said, I've met people who don't like the gym but love doing martial arts. Same way there are people who love playing tennis or cycling or swimming but don't like going to the gym. If it keeps you active and you enjoy it, keep doing it.

I've really learned to be more independent. And that's a great thing because this is the time in my life where I have to be. And no kidding on mastering the mundane. My father has tried to train me in karate before. He would say things like "Stand on one leg." And leave me there. Of course I never got past one session because that was boring and hard.

But for about 3 months now I've focused on balance training a lot, and now I'm starting to get the benefits from it and it's opened up a whole new world of abilities to me.

The possibilities are endless, my friend.
The trick is to keep at it.

Its good to hear you are enjoying your training, but I am always wary of stone-age training attitudes in traditional martial arts e.g. stand on one leg for an hour, punch an oak tree until your knuckles bleed, eat a porcupine for breakfast bla bla bla... It's macho outdated crap that (with no offence to your dad) isn't a very effective way to teach someone.

Don't get me wrong, I see the benefit of certain exercises in traditional martial arts and I understand that repetition is the mother of learning, but a decent teacher can innovate and make material interesting.

For example, a Judo coach of mine once got us to do Seoi Nage (shoulder throw) for nearly an hour in one class. Every 5 minutes or so he would slightly change the drill so we were doing something a bit different. Some examples of what we did in the class:

Uchikomi for Seoi Nage
Kouchi gari to Seoi Nage
Ouchi gari to Seoi Nage
Counters to Seoi Nage
Seoi Nage Randori, one person attacks, the other defends...

...and some more stuff too. That was about 1 hour of doing the same throw. I must've did the throw 100+ times in that class, but it never got boring because we had a good teacher who kept the class interested by introducing variations of the same movement at regular intervals. It was an effective and interesting way to learn. He made an entire lesson out of a singe Judo move. He explained everything in detail as to why we were doing what we were doing. Signs of a good teacher.

I would run a mile if a teacher had me doing a horse stance for a half hour while the teacher sat in the corner of the room reading the latest Black Belt magazine lol!

I actually don't train with my father. The sensei I train with now his training is heavily influenced by a big mma background along with working on a military base. So a lot of my strength conditioning training is through obstacle course and the circuit training. He calls it boot camp style.

We do a lot of the traditional forms and exercises along with the obstacle course training and a whole lot of drilling with pads.

I've never been to a mma gym so I can't say just where all the differences are from my training. There is little to no sparring right now. Everything we focus on tends to be accuracy for our strikes. We practice the blocks but haven't gotten to using them yet. This is where most of unease comes from.

My class isn't very experienced yet. I'm only at the 3rd belt level myself, and there are only 3 or 4 people at higher belts than me. Does the defense become a bigger priority at the later belts? My style is Shotokan Karate in case I haven't said that yet.

As long as the training is specific to your martial art, great. I've been in classes before where I had to do star jumps, push ups and situps in the class warmup. None of which had any relevance to what the movements we were doing in class. It was just some random fitness ideas the coach had. Sadly there I've met a lot of martial arts teachers who don't understand fitness training or the science behind the human body. You don't need to have a PhD in Sports Science to teach a martial arts class, but you should research what you are doing and understand the best way to train.

Hopefully your teacher knows his stuff and is tailoring the fitness and conditiong trainng specifically towards Shotokan Karate.

I only have a small amount of knowledge on Karate. Your best bet would be to make a post in the Karate forum. There are some very knowledgeable folks in there Razma.

I'll go do that. Thanks Prizewriter.