McDojo Horror Stories

There are to types of sparing, Full Contact and at extream high levels of skill no pads and 50% speed and close to a tap on impact. Anything else isn't sparring, it's just another training exersise.

 

Sorry, maybe I didn't fully understand the meaning of sparring. You know, English is not my native language.

By the way, I told this story to my Muay Thai friend, and he laughed his ass off. Most MT fighters train for pain tolerance by kicking each other on the tights and train to kill the nerves off from their shins. What are these Disney Land Muay Thai guys are going to do if they enter a competition. KO in 1st round 0:03? Unbelievable.

Other McDojos: I cross-train Capoeira with Ju-Jitsu. Here in Hungary, there are two, so called grupos, with brazilian instructors, the ACDP and the GCB. One of them have a master here. In my group, the GCB the highest ranked guy is a professor, thats two belts below the master, in the other group, there is a master and a professor. These guys are the highest ranked capoeira teachers here. Not long ago, one of my capoeira mates found an advertisment, about a capoeira class, not connected to any of the two grupos. He asked me and another guy to go with him and see if this class is good. We agreed, but told the guy that must be fake, because the things listed above. So we went to see this place. What we found there, was amazing. We didn't take our abadass and cordas, just regular training clothes, and didn't tell about our formal training. And there was this guy there, who claimed to be a Grandmaster. He told us there are no belts in capoeira, as it is not oriental, and there are no uniforms. We where not surprised, but this already has proven our theory of this place being a McDojo. But, we wanted to see what this Grandmaster (ROTFL) teaches. The only things he knew about capoeira is that it has something to do with music, so there was some POP music playing during the class, and the Ginga, the basic movement. He didn't know the acrobatics, any moves, the istruments, what a roda is, nor did he knew any portugese songs. Complete bull****. It was something like if I opened a TKD dojang. I never learnt any TKD, how could I do that. So this was insane. After the class, when all the students went away, we had a little conversaiton with the "Grandmaster". We told him, that its no capoeira he teaches, and to stop cheating people. He got angry and asked how do we know that. We started to do some serious thing, two guys played while I was singing. Now, the guy was amazed. He swore that he tought he was teaching capoeira. Complete idiot. Nowadays he calls his class capoeira aerobic. Most fake teachers do that, after meeting with serious capoeiristas. I hate these a**holes, because they threaten the reputation of capoeira.

 

Hardcore Muay Thai training is bad for you. You'll be crippled by age 35. DON'T KILL YOUR NERVES!!! DON'T HIT EACH OTHER TOO HARD if you don't have to. Kick the pads. Kick the focus gloves. Kick the kick shields. Just don't go bone to bone. Remember that blod clots can kill you so don't kick each other on the thighs.

 

Hardcore Muay Thai may be bad for my body, but it's good for my soul. If I die at the age of 35 I die happy. Please shonuff, someone train that way, some other this way, everyone does what he thinks good. We are going to the same goal, but our path differs. I prefer brutal and painful training, and I am happy with it.

 

You can train rather hard but to mutilate your own body in such a way when you don't have to is nuts. The problem with you is that you are calling a certain school a McDojo because they don't mutilate their students!!!

Did it ever cross your mind that the other school was taking it easy on the beginners because the mutilating training may be bad for them??????

I think you may have watched too many Van Damme movies. Kicking palm trees is bad for you, remember that. Does he make you bind your hands with glue soaked cloth and then make you dunk them in broken glass?

Geez!!!

Going easy on noobs is not a weakness, it's called common sense.

 

I'd rather have a Sifu / Master that is 80 and has a lifetime of experience rather than one that is likely to be dead by the time he's 35!

 

Oh, sorry, I think you misunderstand me. I don't want other people do what I do. Your life, your way, your choise. I prefer hard and painful training, and enjoy it. You may prefer to train lighter, there is no problem with that. I won't call you useless or weak if you do so. But I have already told this in my earlier post. And yes, going easy with noobs makes sense. But these guys were training for Full Contact maches with No Contact fights, and that is insane. Because other Muay Thai people train very serious and they may kill them in ring. I have writen this because I feel sorry for those guys who will get a serious beat-up in their first mach. Don't tell me please there is a problem with me, I know I lost my mind, but I enjoy it. By the way, I like Van Damme movies. I like to kick trees. Altrough I won't bind my hands in glue soaked bandage and dunk them in broken glass, one day I want to parttake a hard MMA championship. However, I won't ever hurt anyone who does not want to be hurt. I do all these thing because I want to know who I am. Hope you got the point my friend.

 

i used to train at a McDojo when i first started. for many years. sometimes its hard to tell its a mcDojo - and i practice at home all the time, so i do blame the dojo, contrary to what someone else said ...



secondly after receiving a blackblet that my instructor made me bust my a$$ for i found out some disturbing things. but i should have known on the way to black belt. I passed the test, my sifu showed me the score and said you did great, but i want you to retest....

it wasn't like i did poorly on the test or something, he was just being a jerk because no one wants to go through a 6 hour test twice...



but this wasn't what made all of the trust and training dissapear in a heartbeat. i noticed the technique wasn't there and i wasn't learning that many applicable things that work in many situations (i think most clubs fall into this category)


then i found out:


my sifu had had numerous relationships with 16 year old girls, and had raped one of them. it was the biggest blow i could have felt. i truly respected this guy, and it was just that i was too blind to see before.


a lot of people get caught up in their school and think it's the best; most people don't know if they're learning decent skills or not but think they are when they get a hard workout...


i've come to discover its just like anything else... there is a definite mark of quality out there, and you need to do research before you commit to joining any school....


i've done that, and i've learned more in the past 2 years than i did in my first ten years of training...


peace,
joe

 

I have a story. At a tae kwon do promotion, one student didn't know his form at all. After telling the "master", he replied by telling the student to stand in horse stance and punch while the other students performed there patterns. This student was promoted to a triple black tip despite the fact that he didnt know his mandatory pattern for promotion.

 

No need to apologise. It's your opinion / option to train as hard as you like, I repect that.

Good luck getting to the MMA championships.

 

Not a good sign at all.

At the school, I attend now I have seen one occasion where a student did not do well on a test and failed to advance. I felt bad for the student (although, it was from a lack of practice) but I think everyone including myself gained a new respect for the school that day. It was also a wake-up call for us. This event let us know that the school is serious about what kind of students they turn out.

I don't like seeing people fail, but, I think that it can be a good lesson for all involved.

 

I don't think training hard without pads will cripple you or cause horrendous damage to your body. Your body is resilliant, it will adapt and grow stronger. The human body is always evolving remember. If there was ever a great danger in full contact fighting, then I would quit. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger! Well.. in most cases anyways.

 

Nerves don't grow back. That's why paralyzed people stay like that for life. Be careful what you do.

PL

 

I realize that. But people become paralyzed because nerves are broken in their spine, not their ligaments or chest.

I don't think we are killing nerves when we condition our bodies, we are just building a callus over them. If you ever had callus's, its just thick skin growing over the area that keeps on getting used repetitivly. I believe the same thing happens on the inside to our muslces, bones, etc... but thats non scientific me just guessing from experience hah.

 

Hmm... but why don't they grow back?

 

Some people are able to move again after being paralyzed...some. I dunno, maybe they don't grow back, maybe they do. Maybe they never go away, maybe they do.

 

Nerves do grow back naturally as long as they aren't severed, by crushing the nerve through trauma you damage the center of the nerves, the core will grow back but the material surrounding the nerve will not. I thought I heard the growth rate is about as fast as a fingernail.

 

I used to train at a club where the lone instructor said he was a bb in TKD, Hapkido and BJJ. After some investigating, I found out he was lying about two of them.

Needless to say I changed clubs and am now in a club where not only the head instructor has qualified credentials in more than one ma, but some of his other students do as well.

 

I have some McDojo horror stories that will have you screaming for blood. I used to go to a TKD class at a local sports centre. The first class that ran we were all lined up for a drill and the guy said
'do a jab, reverse punch, roundhouse kick etc.'- when we DIDN'T HAVE A FREAKING CLUE HOW TO DO ONE. He didn't show us the move beforehand or explain the technique - he just sat on his ass spouting orders. We had to get a vague idea of the move from the swift animated gestures he made when telling us to do a move. A lot of people there were so technically crap, if my sensei had seen he would have thrown a fit. Luckily I was already trained in karate so I used that style. (He later wondered why my habits of using Shotokan moves instead of TKD were soooo hard to shift).

That's number one. Here is a slightly more shocking one. I went to a TKD tournament with this Mickey Mouse club in - crap when was it, either May orf April - anyway, I was watching some people fighting - these were low-rankers who would not have had much bodily conditioning - and the referees were allowing the contact to escalate until the contestants were kicking the living crap out of each other(which may be okay for black belts but these people were white and yellow belts who would not have done enough bodily conditioning to withstand vicious contact). There was someone getting hurt literally every two minutes, or less. I lost count of the number of people who got smashed in the face, drawing blood, and one male fighter got kicked in the groin. One girl in the U11 division got punched in the nose so hard, I don't actually know what happened but had to be serious because a load of first aid people came running. I know for a fact that referees are not supposed to allow heavy contact but these guys didn't give a crap. I myself lasted until the final in my division - I only had to fight twice because there were so few girls my age there - then was scythed down by a vicious kick to the solar plexus which had me scrunched up in pain for the rest of the mandated limit of a minute and a half. The ref didn't give a crap- he told me afterwards that 'You just have to get used to it.'

Here is the worst one. The guy who taught TKD where I went teaches a number of schools around the place. At one session he was telling us of a practice he regularly held at another of his classes where he separated his students into groups of three people, chose one to stand in the middle and told the other two to 'beat the crap out of them'. Not sparring, either - he regaled us at distasteful length about how his students grabbed each other by the neck and strangled each other, jumped on top of each other and smashed each other repeatedly in the face, and he told us we could do whatever we liked to each other - shove two fingers into the eyes, thrust into the larynx, kick the groin etc. Yes, really, I am not being sensationalist. He said 'you guys can do it one of these days' - needless to say I wasn't going to hang around for that. One of my friends, a black belt, said 'that's just the instructor talking bull' but I think this macabre practice went a bit beyond being a daredevil.

 

I should be shocked, but oddly enough I'm not. I've done less formal training that was pretty brutal, literally nothing but hand and shin guards almost anything goes, that included 3 or 4 on 1 and armed encounters with small sticks (represnting knives) light wood staves and a pair of rubber coated nunchuka that were heavier then my 14" rock maple ones. It was a great class, respect was shown and quarter given when needed. I've been to other backyard classes where a simple demo of a technique between students denigraded into an outright brawl. I just realized how important it is to have good people to train with. Hey, thanks for the insight.