[powerof0ne]

To the author of this thread, I don't think you're too old but the dojo you're training at may not be suited for someone of your age. I've trained at a lot of different martial art schools as I know some of you have, too due to moving and/or schools closing, that sort of thing. I have trained at schools when I was younger with my father who was in his mid 40s at the time, where there was no way in hell that the average beginner could have just joined and expected to progress. One such gym was a muay thai gym where the dropout rate was extremely high due to the harshness of the work outs, not a good place for someone looking to get in shape, condition their shins, etc. to go to. No headgear was worn, boxing gloves, mouth piece(up to you), cup(up to you) and shin pads were worn. It was expected in every sparring session to see someone at least get TKO'd, bloody noses, lips, jump knees/kicks, had to wear shin pads if you wanted to spar more than once that week and in a lot of cases doubling up on shin pads. In my opinion, this is only good for those looking to compete and/or just looking for this kind of training but for the average person this kind of training isn't smart when they have careers to get to the next day. I stayed at this gym for quite a while and after a few years the intensity of the training and sparring went down which coincidentally resulted in more students, go figure. My Father had to quit training at this gym due to his fused back and just trains on his own, now.
Some Karate styles aren't good for bad backs due to the stances and what's interesting about that is in some Okinawan styles the stances are done higher because of the back strain! Anyhow, find a gym/dojo that suits your needs and remember you're not too old but training has to be done differently to suit different demographics.