Liars and frauds in martial arts

I don't think it's a strange view. Hannibal has said similar. Mind you he is strange

 

The guy at the local pub would be owned by my instructor. Also you say you could improve me but if I could own you in a fight I would say,"Why could I trust you to improve me when I can completely cream you in a fight hypothetically?"

 

really?

So let's consider this situation.

Mike Tyson's coach is half his size, a third of his weight and 3 times his age. Certainly it's unlikely that he will beat Mike. Or even stand up in front of him for long.

Coaches come in all sizes, shapes and ages. As Unreal Combat said, some have little or no fight record. John Danaher, GSP's BJJ coach does not fight and has no interest in competing. Does it mean he doesn't know what's what? Nope.

So don't limit yourself too quickly with unrealistic expectations.

Just sayin'

LFD

 

There's a reason that an MMA fighter might have a boxing coach, judo coach, BJJ coach and wrestling coach.

 

My internet out in Thailand is too poor to respond to this thread properly. What I will say is that I'm being trained by the guy who is responsible for overseeing the training for all the fighters at Yokkao Gym. He doesn't fight. Yet I've learned and improved alot from him in the past month.

Everyone else at this gym gets their rocks off of getting private sessions with Saenchai. Personally I prefer getting trained by the person who trains him. A great fighter does not make a great teacher & vice versa.

Big Mike from Mikes Gym in Netherlands doesn't fight. He's produced some of the best fighters in the country.

There's more to being a good teacher than being a good fighter.

 

But if he coached tyson I would be glad to be trained by him because I know he is the real deal. I just need some kind of objective proof that he is the real deal.

 

I always liked making the distinction of "Master Instructor" or "Grandmaster Instructor", with the notion that someone who has been in an art long enough and has instructed enough students to the point of raising your own students to black belt level (and continuing to guide and teach beyond) can be considered a "Master Instructor" in that particular art. For a "Grandmaster Instructor", it implies that s/he has raised a significant number of students to "Master Instructor" level and is continuing to guide them.

When you factor in any sort of 'time in grade' or time to get a significant number of students to those levels, it does provide a better idea of "why" they have that title.

So, when I meet 'Masters' and 'Grandmasters', I often like to find out how many long term students they have that have reached black belt and/or master instructor levels... gives me a bit of perspective.

Granted, I suppose "Master" or "Grandmaster" could be indicative of some super high ability in an art... but seems to me that in most TMAs, levels "Master" and up usually have more to do with time in the art, how many or how well you run a school, and what your students, especially long term, are like.

 

Sorry, yesterday was a particularly curmudgeonly day!

And that is a perfectly good way of evaluating martial arts for you. Yet you are trying to force your ideology on all the other people that may have completely different views and reasons for practicing martial arts. Given my particular background, I consider myself a total loser if I have to engage in physical violence. I was taught that self defense begins well before the possibility of violent encounter.
That means that by your definition, I'm a fraud because I would never give you the opportunity to fight with me. But that's ok, because your training and my training have nothing to do with each other, which was my point in the beginning.

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

 

STAY OUT OF MY TERRITORY!!!!

OOH!! Matron.....

 

I find it offensive for two reasons.

Firstly, because I train under the guidance of a master instructor in my chosen style. He in turn trains under more senior masters and so on. My wife also trains, and we allow and encourage our son to train. As students, we have not got enough experience to judge our instructors or their instructors. We can only take it on faith that they've been judged by very experienced martial artists and deemed fit to teach. Now what if, hypothetically, (and I know this is not the case) our grandmaster turned out to be like the guy in the video. Then it would mean I'd been tricked into trusting people who can not teach safely, and into putting a lot of time, money and effort into learning from a fraudster.

The second reason it offends me that these people exist is because I care about people in general. As it turns out, the school is attend has a provable background. There are many that are more vague. In our area for example there is a chap that claims to be 8th dan in jujitsu buy when someone asked him on Facebook for specifics about his training in Japan, he said he couldn't really remember the name of his instructor or even the name of the school. He may well be genuine. He may not. Either way there are people that pay quite a lot of money to be thrown about by him.

So let me bounce a question back at you. Imagine you had a young son. You allow him to train under some master, and you and he believe all is good. Then he rips a knee in training. You're gutted, but it's one of the risks of training. Then you find out the person you'd paid loads of money to, and entrusted your child to, is actually a lying charlatan. And not only has he taught your child nothing useful, but a real instructor would have known how to prevent your son from ripping a knee.

Would you still consider that such fraudsters are only offensive to insecure young men?

 

I would concede your point if it were 1980. Back then, it was very difficult to determine who was legitimate and who was an outright charlatan. This is how we end up with movies about Frank Dux. However, in today's electronic age with the world literally at your fingertips, the only excuse for not knowing all about a particular school is laziness.

I am the type of person that would not allow my child to participate in a martial arts class that I did not fully investigate before hand so yeah, I would still not be "offended" by make believe martial artists.

It takes quite a bit to offend me, and fake martial artists are a dime a dozen. Therefore, it would require way more of my attention than I am willing to grant them to bother to be offended by them. I choose to simply ignore them, except for the occasional giggle. While I'll easily answer questions if asked, I have zero desire to attempt to "save" any fool that can't be bothered to stir themselves to do their own research.

Of course, that's just my opinion. It's worth exactly what you paid for it!

 

Without even knowing you, I value your opinion more than I paid for it

I would just throw in though, I don't know where you are based but round here, trying to find anything out about local martial arts clubs or instructors is a nightmare.

We just don't have many well connected clubs. One of the two I train at is really the exception locally, in that it's an international organisation and all the info is readily available. The other club I train at is far less traceable. There are other clubs in the area that I can't find anything out about.

 

If only there was a website that united Martial Artists from around the Planet......

 

That's an interesting thought. Tell you what, give me the name of the instructor, the name of the school, and an approximate location and we'll see what can be turned up about them. Either the less traceable school you train at, or one of the other clubs in the area. It will be an interesting experiment.

Dang Canadians!

 

That would be good. Someone should develop one.

 

Then who knows? Maybe I would be missing out on a great instructor and maybe I wouldn't. I just know that there are so frauds out there today that you never know what to expect.

 

Like pretty much everywhere.

I actually got lucky: So far I only had teachers with a high standards and demands.
So when being on a seminar today in the beginner section I actually got bored, because essentially we were to train to evade and counterattack with a punch.
My partner was higher graded but couldn't hit to my face.
For two reasons: Punching straight just didn't came to him and he was concerned what would happen, if I don't pay attention.

His instructor though, he was the guy giving the seminar alongside two others, was very clear, that you would want to actually hit the nose.

So you had an instructor, who knew what to do and that one student (I don't know any other of his students), who still couldn't do it.

Does that mean he is a bad instructor?
Does that mean he is a bad student?

There is hardly any rule as to what makes an instructor good.
I probably have something else I expect my teachers to be good at then John Doe; who has other expectations as Jane Doe; who has other expectations as Max Musterman; who...


Plus: I wouldn't be impressed at all, if an instructor could fight/ spar and "win" against a beginner.
That doesn't mean much in my eyes.

It gets when he can "win" against people who know what they're doing.

I was told I finally start to get better on the ground from a fellow student in Judo (who has a blackbelt in another art and knows what he's saying) - still I get tied to a knot or throw to ground all the time.
Sure, I'm far from being good, but I at least know how to defend against *some* things.

So when the teacher dominate students who *know* what they're doing - that might impress me; but not if they could dominate people with no or hardly any experience.
That says nothing.
I tapped out a guy nearly twice my size once.
Yay me - aside that he didn't know much and I got him in Kesa-Gatame.
It's just not a fair comparison.

 

The guy who owns the school can do this though. The instructor in BJJ can literally tap out every single guy in the room with ease. These are people from judo, wrestling, JJJ backgrounds, etc, and he can tap each of them out with ease. It impresses me very much so.

 

this...

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYVdhKVb9WE"]QiGong Master demonstrating Chi - YouTube[/ame]