If this was how they positioned themselves, I'd have no issue. If the vast majority of schools wanted to simply go through the forms of being martial artists without ever putting it to serious tests (exactly like the majority of tai chi classes) and instead referred to themselves as essentially "martial arts lite" then that would generally be fine. The issue is that they claim to be teaching self defence using the "proven most effective martial arts system in the world" whilst awarding some fairly high grades for minimal skill and raking in vast quantities of cash per student for the ridiculous amount of gradings they put people through (by my reckoning, 18 to black belt, a further 10 to second dan and a further 6 or 7 to third dan, so significantly over 30 gradings to reach a level that doesn't actually seem to require an awful lot of self defence ability to attain). Of course, if it were all about the way that the HQ runs its business, we'd be seeing a number of spin offs from the instructors who want to get away from the politics and just get on with decent training, but so far I've only seen very similar systems coming from those people, often with the same high costs and low standards. The most different offshoot, together with the most vocal, would appear to be Koo's self defence, which actually boasted that they'd promoted a 5 year old to black belt and that they had eliminated the concept of blocking from their syllabus...
I can spend £3,000 today and become a full time CKD instructor or £1800 to become and assistant instructor. Says it all if you ask me. When they bring out a home learning course for under £250 ill buy it and show you
Old Tom is a nice enough brew, but it is only a few steps away from being beer for the "Have ye got any spare change?" contingency
Said it was nice. Anyway it's not Ginger Beer other than it being beer with a hint of ginger, nice on a cold night when you get back inside. Anyway it's all bloody academic for me I can't drink anymore :bang:
Mr. Koo is a nutjob actually, and there is an off shoot group currently in Michigan that charges VERY little for testing and has adapted the syllabus whilst breaking away from the parent organization. Most of the other things you say I completely agree with.
I agree with almost everything you said except that 95% of martial art schools would fall into several of the same descriptions. Any school with a 8-10 year old black belt can't really be taken that seriously.
