I had a bad day at class, so I am venting a little (I apologize). Is it me, or do the same things keep creeping into the martial arts world that drive us all batty? Some things I wish didn%26#039;t exist for everyone%26#039;s benefit in any martial art. For example, I wish people wouldn%26#039;t address themselves as sensei or master. That%26#039;s just wrong. I also wish people would stop calling a new katana a %26quot;samurai sword%26quot;, because the samurai are all dead (get over it!). I wish that people would understand you can%26#039;t learn sh*t from exclusively books or the internet. Lastly, I wish if schools were going to award kiddie black belts, then they should be expected to to handle the same responsibilities as us adult black belts. It pisses me off to see them fool around, miss class for other sports, and still get the same rank I do when I behave and go to class all the time. Anyone else wanna share some gripes?|||Hi there
Welcome to the western world of martial arts. Lots of problems that can be rounded up into a few short terms
1. ego . People who have very larges ones simply shouldn%26#039;t be training. Don%26#039;t blame the student thought its the teachers fault for allowing them to train in the first place!
2. Politics. Yes this is an old beast that pops up from time to time. It stunts the development of students and ties the hands of good instructors that just want to train. Big fish in little ponds are mainly to blame. As they would say sod the training and build the empire!
3. Money. This should always be a side thing. As long as instructors can pay their rent and equipment then that%26#039;s all money is good for.
4. TV. Oh boy is the digital box of tricks to blame for so much. It warps young minds and the recent craze of shows doesn%26#039;t help either. School Boy martial artists reading this months copy of combat magazine. Great stuff!
5. Forms. The forms are good if interprited in the right way. Its not about doing the perfect form or doing it for show. They are fighting techniques. If you dont understand the principles of what they are trying to teach then its just painting by numbers. Good for show and competion but the heart and soul has been lost.
With regards to kids training. nothing wrong with that but a children%26#039;s black belt is not an adults grade and their classes should be kept separate. Discipline is for the parents not the art.
There are no masters in the west. You want to train with them you go to Japan!
People who say their arts are samuari should check to see if what they are doing is Koryu. Most arts aren%26#039;t even 100 years old and are modern day variants.
Thats my gripes out in the open. lol ;)
Best wishes
idai|||AnaMom --- great answer!
To add a few of my pet peeves that I would like to see go away:
1. XMA or any other %26quot;flash and trash%26quot; dance/gymnastics routines that thrown in a punch or stance and try to call what they are doing martial arts.
2. People who try to %26quot;out-tradition%26quot; other martial artists, while getting their own tradition all wrong. One of my favorite stories on that one is the guy who visited a dojo in Japan, heard someone say %26quot;shomen ni rei%26quot; and came home to announce at his students that he was henceforth to be addressed by the title %26quot;shomen%26quot;.
3. People who think a simple white or black karate uniform isn%26#039;t good enough to train in and have to come up with multi-colored, bizarre get-ups out of the most ridiculous material.
4. Oddballs who try to pretend as if they have suddenly turned Japanese just because they are training in karate. I mean, really, did you suddenly forget all the English you%26#039;ve known all your life just because you put on a gi? And what%26#039;s with the bad Japanese accent whenever someone insists that you answer them in English?
5. Parents who try to tell you how and what to teach their children and who argue with you about technique, the curriculum, when their children should test, etc.
6. Parents who think their children are precocious geniuses at martial arts, while you are ready to rip out your hair and considering opening up a remedial class to teach these same children.
7. Parents who insist on telling you, every class, what a klutz their poor kid is, while you think he%26#039;s made enormous progress. Also, parents who compare their two children and insist that the better student is really the poorer student.
8. Parents who want to dictate who their children work out with during class. %26quot;Buford is way too aggressive for my little Clarence. Please don%26#039;t have them spar. And little Clarence needs more of a challenge than Tusnelda can offer. Also, little Clarence doesn%26#039;t like Dakota, so please don%26#039;t pair them up any more. And Cheyenne once frowned at Clarence and hurt his feelings, so I wish you wouldn%26#039;t have them spare each other either.%26quot;
9. Couch potato parents who look like they couldn%26#039;t walk around the block without taking a nap --- but who yell and scream at their children during tournaments because the poor kid isn%26#039;t beating every other kid in his division at sparring.
10. Ridiculous movies that give everyone ridiculous ideas about the martial arts.|||I figure I%26#039;ll keep it simple. No need for introduction, simply opinion and fact:
1. Kiddie black belts and Mcdojos, belt factories, whatever you call them. As has already been stated, a 6 year old is not a black belt. a black belt is required to have enough knowledge to _teach_ correct form AND technique. So, sure, at 6 years old, this little guy can kick to another 6 year old%26#039;s head. Good for him. But can he teach a 30 year old, new to the art, how to kick to another 30 year old%26#039;s head, effectively, efficiently, and technically perfect? I think not. And as for %26quot;junior%26quot; black belts, sorry, but not a good compromise. When a 6 year old spends 6 years training, it%26#039;s probably mighty tempting to award him a black belt at 12. he%26#039;s still a 12 year old student. Kids spend 13 years in school and every one of those years they take an English/Reading course. No one awards them college credit because they have been taking English/Reading for 6 years. And these are kids who SPEAK english everyday, every minute of the day, without fail, since they began to talk. which is decidedly different from training 3 nights a week, 40 weeks a year (taking into account vacation, sickness, and the like). So if we can%26#039;t promote our 12 year old to college courses after 6 years of English, why would we promote them to black belt status? That%26#039;s easy: parents want something for their money, and little Johny%26#039;s new belt is a peace offering from an instructor not too eager to tell Johny or his parents that he couldn%26#039;t kick his way out of a paper bag.
2. Bullshido schools and bullshido katas in good schools. The next time I see a Combative/Supreme Pizza School of defense/Luta Libre WWE Wrestling Suplex school of Street Fighting/etc. I will seriously contemplate seppuku. I don%26#039;t know how many DVD%26#039;s and small, disreputable schools we can handle, teaching BS self-defense. The women%26#039;s defense schools teaching the %26quot;correct%26quot; way to kick someone in the testes, the %26quot;correct%26quot; way to pull hair, etc. are also high on the list. Seriously, just grazing my testicles is a good way to floor me, so how much more correct can you get? And do you expect all attackers to have long hair or something? Self-defense should comprise five steps. Look for escape routes, utilize impromptu weapons, escape, escape, escape. Now, fighting in a cage/ring/mat/etc. is a different story. The point isn%26#039;t to escape, it%26#039;s to win. So we train for one-on-one application of our artform with the intention of winning. But some schools still want to train crazy, useless, inefficient kata. Seriously, the square knife blocking reaper arm and the triple flying reverse thrust spoonkick kata aren%26#039;t effective, efficient, nor practical in any application, so why train them? some say %26quot;We all know that flying and reverse techniques aren%26#039;t useful in the ring/self defense, but we train them for tradition sake.%26quot; So you really believe that ancient masters trained students in their artform with USELESS techniques? No. Modern %26quot;masters%26quot; created these techniques to help delineate between a blue/brown/purple/rainbow belt and a black belt, ie. to make more money when selling belts. Get it out of your head that these crazy, Jet Li film maneuvers are something you want trained into your instinct and muscle memory. Seriously, the good ol%26#039; roundhouse, jab, cross, uppercut, hook, elbow, knee, and sidekick are about as useful as it%26#039;s going to get. Sure, you should train them from every angle, even, grudgingly, training a couple reverses for when you miss a roundhouse or sidekick, but seriously, there%26#039;s no need for flying triple reverse crescent hook heel moonkicks finishing with a ballet plie or en pointe. It%26#039;s all just garbage.
3. If your striking art doesn%26#039;t train ground fighting or your ground art doesn%26#039;t train striking, don%26#039;t try to cobble something together from %26quot;ancient manuscripts%26quot; or watching alot of UFC or K-1. Serious, just teach what you know and try to get a student sharing system with an artform that compliments yours. That is the best way to compromise. Look into other artforms with some of the same heritage as yours, or artforms that compliment your techniques. This means a Wing Chun practicioner probably shouldn%26#039;t go with a BJJ teacher to compliment, since they are fairly dipolar opposite in thinking and technique. But, equally, a BJJ teacher probably shouldn%26#039;t choose silat as a complimentary style, and so on. if your style is hard, quick, and external, choose a style of the same nature. On the other hand, if it is soft, slow, and internal, then you should again choose something of that vein. Which brings me to my next sticking point.
4. Don%26#039;t claim your artform is %26quot;pure%26quot; if your students are using a mix of artforms in their fighting. There%26#039;s nothing I hate more than watching a %26quot;purist%26quot; style claiming victory for it%26#039;s style, using another style%26#039;s exact movements. This happens more and more when I see %26quot;chin na%26quot; as a ground art for Kung Fu artists. The problem? Ancient Chin Na and even Chin Na before the UFC had little actual groundwork. It, like most artforms, largely used standing locks and dislocations for its grappling, as well as small joint manipulation and pressure point fighting. Now I see people training in %26quot;chin na%26quot; who use the guard, half-guard, mount, armbars, and other techniques tied to jujutsu, judo, and BJJ, claiming that chin na has had these for hundreds of years. Seriously, just admit that you are teaching a mixed martial art and not a %26quot;purist%26quot; art, instead of misrepresenting your heritage. I am more than glad to admit that I trained BJJ with a gi before moving to no-gi grappling. I am more than happy to admit that I still use judo throws, Aikido circular movements and wrist grips, the standing sidekick as taught to me in karate, and other techniques that work from all of the arts I have trained in, all to supplement my Muay Thai and grappling. I will never make the claim that I am a pure Thai fighter. I%26#039;m not.
5. As already stated, politics is a horrific detractor from martial arts, and the leading cause of problems 1-4 above. Without %26quot;your art sucks, mine is superior%26quot; and %26quot;my art is older than yours and we have belts%26quot;, none of this would happen. In fact, arts would share more and be more open to change when they see that they are becoming ineffective if we%26#039;d get over it all. We might see hard japanese styles like shotokan adapting their punches to be delivered from different stances to accomodate the MMA and self-defense of today instead of holding to traditional methods which were meant to break bamboo armor and attack armed samurai. Instead, we see sports claiming to be self-defense, self-defense arts of the 1600%26#039;s claiming to be effective against guns and knives today, and %26quot;ancient%26quot; arts with hazy pedigrees claiming to be the superior artform of all time. Sounds alot like one politician saying %26quot;Don%26#039;t listen to him, he%26#039;s lying%26quot; about his rival, who says the same about him.|||it%26#039;d be better without the thugs they sometimes create, the egoheads. the sensei thing kinda sucks too.|||HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! sorry, i very much enjoyed your venting and i agree with you 100% espcially about the kiddie black belts and the samurai sword. it is a katana and when the owner is an actual samurai, then they can call it a smaurai sword. one of my gripes is when a school makes up they%26#039;re own belts....what the heck is up with the %26quot;CAMO-belt%26quot;!?!?! and belt want to find a ninjitsu school in the US just so they can go around playing Naruto like a %26quot;real%26quot; ninja. you%26#039;re better off watching TNMT. i hate the way that some schoole require you to recruit at least 2-3 students inorder to recieve their black belt, and are all about money and contracts. i understand that people need to make a living but some people really bring truth to the term %26quot;McDojo%26quot;. the reason why those kids can miss class for their other sports and advance just the same as you is because mommy and daddy are still paying the school and they won%26#039;t pay anymore if Junior isn%26#039;t advancing. You%26#039;ve gotta love the all powerful dollar.|||I can not stand going to tournaments these days. It is no longer about the martial art. It seems that it has turned into a popularity/dance contest. Since I am now being asked to judge creative forms.... I will admit that those who are putting on a dance or gymnastics display score very low in my book. Some is nice but add a kick or two to the flashy dance moves and back flips. Martial skill is what impresses me... no gymnastics.|||Hmm. As a school owner, I have a few different views of what the martial arts would be better off without:
#1 - POLITICS!!!!! I cannot tell you how tired I am of politics in the martial arts. Even though our national governing body was just swept clean and totally taken over by the US Olympic Committee, the grassroots level associations are still pretty much old-boys clubs, and if you don%26#039;t kowtow to them, you%26#039;re pretty much blackballed as a school. Then there are the style associations. Our school has already left two because of politics! One, the head of the association was pretty much lining his pocket with membership fees and insisting that when he visited, the host school paid for every thing for him and his entire family. Want to be a certified instructor? Pay him. The second association we joined had quit the first because of politics but guess what? MORE politics! We had to follow their curriculum to the T, never mind trying to adjust stuff for our student recovering from chemo or for our student with scoliosis or for our autistic student. If we didn%26#039;t follow the requirements as written, well, these students would not receive rank. Oh, there is much much more but it all amounts to POLITICS. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Martial arts would be so much better if people could train and teach for the love of it rather than being ordered to follow some ridiculous politically charged orders.
#2 - Asian masters who look down on American Black Belts and automatically consider them inferior. Those old-boy clubs, the %26quot;don%26#039;t even address us high and mighty Asian masters%26quot; attitudes. What ever happened to martial arts courtesy???
#3 - Parents trying to force instructors to advance their child in rank just because little Zach has worked %26quot;really hard in class.%26quot; Well, it%26#039;s great that he%26#039;s put in effort in class. Effort is necessary, but it%26#039;s not the be all and end all and when your child meets his rank requirements, then we%26#039;ll talk about testing him. And by the way, parents, get your kids to practice at home! How on earth are they supposed to improve if the only time they do martial arts all week is during class???
#4 - Children%26#039;s uniforms that look like eye-bleeding billboards because of all the patches they%26#039;ve earned in class and sewn on every single inch of their uniforms. I can understand a school patch, a style patch, an association patch. But geez Louise, some of these schools have 10 zillion student of the week/lesson/month/year patches, DELTA team and STORM team and SWAT team and splits club and Black Belt Club and Leadership Team patches, rank patches (what is the belt for, then???), weapons patches and you name it! It looks awful!
#5 - detractors who know nothing about martial arts, especially traditional martial arts, and make all sorts of judgmental calls about the arts even thought they are ignorant and have never trained themselves. And these people are the ones who of course are usually the most vocal.
#6 - lack of standardization!!! Oh, it drives me nuts to see camo belts and purple belts and orange belts and brown belts whenever I go to a Tae Kwon Do tournament or testing. Hello??? World headquarters only recognizes five colors (yellow, green, blue, red, black) so what makes you think you can do better by creating your own rank system? And don%26#039;t get me started on the dozens of different types of uniforms out there!
#7 - BELT FACTORIES! Ugh! Thanks, belt factories, for giving martial arts a bad name by simply raking in money for belts instead of actually training the students who receive these undeserved ranks. Find me an art, any art, whose students of all ages and ranks are all consistently ready to test, skill-wise, every three months. The result is a bunch of mediocre or worse high-ranking students who can%26#039;t fight their way out of paper bags. Even worse, their receiving rank dilutes the true value of that rank when earned properly.
Okay, I%26#039;m stopping here, with two quick notes:
a. Although in our school. we call our Black Belts %26quot;Sir%26quot; or %26quot;Ma%26#039;am,%26quot; I have no problem with people being called Sensei or Sabunim or Sifu or Master. These titles for the most part are earned upon reaching a certain rank and undergoing years of training. If a Black Belt has devoted himself or herself to the arts and has earned the right to be called Master, then it%26#039;s respectful to recognize that dedication. It%26#039;s not as bad as a PhD insisting on being called Dr!
b. We award junior black belt rank (Poom) to those students who have worked their way up through the ranks to earn them. Skill, attendance, assisting in class, and knowledge of the art all come into play for our Poom students. We don%26#039;t test the rank lightly. We just awarded a 10 year old his Poom after 6 years of training, three times a week. Another of our Poom students is a junior world record holder in martial arts kicks and listed in Ripley%26#039;s Believe It or Not (page 246 of the new orange-cover hardback or check http://www.ripleys.com/core/answers/?p=1... ). We make sure that the rand of Junior Black Belt is indeed earned. Just wanted to let you know that there are juniors who do earn their rank... nothing irks me more than seeing a 6 year old Black Belt. As if a 6 year old understands what a Black Belt even signifies.|||It can do without most of the knife defense techniques which are more likely to get you killed than they are to protect you.|||UFC|||Martial Arts has became a fast chain food restaurant. It is much more business oriented than what is really its for. For the majority of Martial Arts schools, they have money in mind. If you seek true Martial Art way of living, you would not have much to complain about. They are out there. You just have to look for them. But the question is can you handle it? and what are you really looking for ?|||I don%26#039;t think any school should spend more than ten minutes a week on forms, if that much. The kiddie black belt thing is pretty stupid too.|||I think martial arts can do without Kata%26#039;s and any form of spinning kicks...|||Get rid of three things and all will be well in the world of Martial Arts:
-1- EGO
-2- Belts
-3- Tradition
These are the three things that have and will cause all the problems. Eliminate just one and most problems will fade away. All three are interlinked so one should or two should cause martial arts to, once again, walk the path of the truth that it was intended for it.|||The way that everybody%26#039;s making Martial Arts to be a %26quot;sport%26quot;.
I do feel that we can have some %26quot;fun%26quot; with friends and such with it.But it%26#039;s just starting to get out of hand.I think it is a slap in the face to all the %26quot;old school%26quot; martial artists for us to do that.That is why I am a practitioner of authentic Ninjutsu (Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu),because it is not a sport at all,it is an Art and a Way,it is not been polluted yet.It is straight up self-defense.|||I agree with Anamomof5 especially; and some of the other answers in the same vein. As to the exclusion of kata and other training methods deemed as to be %26quot;useless%26quot;. If you believe we can delete what we like from an art because it doesn%26#039;t fit; then fine, but don%26#039;t muck about. Go the whole hog.
Drop the Japanese/Chinese etc terminology, take away the Gis, belts, bowing etc etc; everything that is not American/ English etc.
I am the first to agree that for any martial art to remain viable as a FIGHTING ART it must adapt, and many cases, be modified in order to keep pace with best practices but there must be distinct separation from the original art.
But for the traditional ARTS, if you change them they are no longer what the Founder intended. Don%26#039;t be hypocritical.|||I agree 100% with the people who think they can learn a martial art on the internet... or on video tapes, or in any form of correspondence course. Everyone needs a sensei/sifu. I also don%26#039;t think children can be blackbelts. They can receive the belts from unscrupulous and incorrect sensei, but they do not become blackbelts. They%26#039;re children! not %26quot;dans%26quot;.... The martial arts would also be better without everyone lying about, exagerating and glorifying their lineage.
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