A young mechanic or even a football player is doing a job though, moon. He has to get stuck into the crap jobs to begin with to prove that he's hardworking and he'll be an asset to the business. Martial arts is different, you're paying for a service, being downtrodden isn't part of the deal. Besides, in martial arts you prove that you're hardworking by sticking at the training even if it gets hard, not by folding the black belts' gis and sweeping the sensei's yard. EDIT: I'm a poet and I didn't know it!
I can see why you are saying that but i disagree if you want to learn the art you need to show willing, you need to prove you want to do more than just train. I have yet to go and train under someone who has made his students fold up his Gi. I see no problem with sweeping the training area as you plan to train there. Again i have never met one who has made students clean his back yard. When my teacher comes over (lives in Malaysia)i will drive him to various parts of the country or take him to the pub(though he is slacking in that department nowadays). I will also put him up or students that come over with him. I do not believe any of this is being walked all over i feel this is being part of the family. If i go to see him or go to another school i would expect the same attitude. In return for this he will spend whole days with me just training whilst he is here. I also used to train with about the most traditional Go Ju ryu teacher you could meet and though his training was very very hard i never once heard him ask any body to do anything he would not do himself. I suspect if there are teachers taking advantage that is a fault in those teachers i feel most good teachers will ask you favours they will not demand them. So i do not believe its the rituals the teachers ask of their students its more to do with certain teachers crossing the line and asking too much. If you are talking from experience i think you were probably unlucky and got one of the power mad freaks and i have met a few in passing. Ps as for the paying for a service you are correct but if you do not like it you can walk away. One reason alot of Mcdojos do so well they get alot of students who do not want to train hard. The real hardcore students being either TMA or MMA train in small schools.
Sounds like you're part of a nice organisation. Wish mine had been more like that! The folding of gi's and sweeping is irrelevant. I didn't do either of those, the point of the thread is the general way students were treated. The folding and sweeping were just examples given of the culture of some organisations, and even if that didn't happen I'm sure there'd be little difference. Whether you vet students, make them an apprentice in the arts, it should not give anyone the privilege of treating them in a demeaning, unpleasant, aggresive, sadistic manner. moononthewater; have you read previous posts? I totally agree with your post, but its missing the point of the thread bit
Why? That's what you're paying your money to do. They did that at my uncle's aikido club. It happens. Did you see that "Deadly Arts" programme where they went to an aikido dojo in Japan? Mutual respect is not what I disagree with. What I disagree with is where instructors and senior belts use their ranks to bully the lower orders and call it "tradition". Most? Maybe. But there's plenty around who do take advantage. But the problem is that an organisation structured in a militaristic fashion that teaches blind obedience as part of the "spiritual" aspect of its training provides a ripe opportunity for authoritarian prats to ruin people's training. It's like the argument I use in favour of hard-contact sport martial arts. If instructors are training you to compete, they can't afford to teach you crap, because if they did they'd be exposed in competition and their numbers would drop like flies. It's not that other types of MAs are all rubbish, but in their case it's down to the conscience of the individual instructors to determine whether they teach well or not - sports MAs are self-regulating. But the thing is, people are often weak minded. You get successive generations of people who have this fascist, cult-like way of thinking ingrained into them because they bought into the hype surrouding MAs and were too weak to resist. It would be OK if it was only affecting them, but they affect their students who affect their students and so on.
i don't even know where to start... but i have said it before and i will say it again... Timmy boy, you are an idiot!
pgm316...........if you had read all the posts you mught notice i was in this chat at the start and as with most things in life it has gone in a different direction maybe if you had read them aswell you might have noticed.The unpleasant and sadistic manner happens very rarely and when it does it is more to do with a bad teacher. Timmy i think you have just had some bad experiences very few clubs over here are like your examples. Also if you are talking about clubs in Japan or Asia you have a different culture and way of going about things. I will try and answer later when i get back from training.
In that case we will have to agree to disagree as i have been doing traditional martial arts for over 25 years and never had a teacher treat me in the way you are depicting. I am not saying you are wrong but in all the time i have been involved i have never witnessed this. Hard and sometimes brutal training but never nothing i would call sadistic as some one mentioned.
We'll have to agree to disagree then moon. I'm with Tim on this one! Just because you haven't experienced it means it doesn't happen Its not bad teachers, its the culture within certain organisations and I've come accross a few of which and trained with one. But theres really no point going round and round in circles as I'm obviously imagining it And as Tim says its not about personal experience anyway, I've heard similar reports from other. And also read similar stores (Angry White Pyjamas: to name one book).
angry white pyjamas... well i know someone who did this corse - and i know someone that used to teach at yoshinkan tokyo - this is a tokyo riot police corse! going from novice to instructor level in aikido in 1 year! if you think you can get achieve such a feet without extreme training let me know how... i am sure the world is waiting with baited breath - and the whole idea that timmy boy puts forward about him being a customer and he paid his money and so has shown his commitment makes me want to puke... it embodies the attitude of everything i feel has corrupted the MA's
Timmy do you believe everything you read or see i suspect not. At no point have i said that what you believe is wrong i just believe it is a very small minority i welcome your opinion but i think you are tarring many people with a small brush but you entitled to your opinion as i am mine. Haduken also has a good point though put a little harshly. When going to train paying money does not give you a right to be treated gently. If i go to the dentist i do not expect him not to do a filling because it hurts just because i give him enough money. I expect him to provide the service for which i went to see him. I also teach outside martial arts in the private sector. I have students come to me to learn a skill they pay me good money to teach that skill. I will teach them that skill in whatever manner is needed and sometimes i can be harsh and almost sadistic.This is because mistakes can get them hurt or killed. If they do not like it they can go elsewhere but most will stay because i have a reputation for being good in my line of work. Most of my students want this skill and will put up with what they have put to them to gain that skill. I have no problem with what you say and believe but there are two sides to every coin.
Haduken, if you want to tell me that my attitude makes you want to puke, at least have the decency to explain why. If not, shut the hell up. Moon, I would have treated what I'd seen as isolated one-off incidents if I didn't keep hearing about this kind of thing happening and were it not for the fact that Deadly Arts was actually ADVOCATING what was going on. I'm not tarring all clubs with the same brush, I simply think it's a significant problem. If you've been training in martial arts for as long as you have then you're more qualified than me to comment on the extent but I really think it's got to be more than a small minority when so many people keep reporting it.
In my opinion moon and haduken you are missing the point entirely. Not to mention the seriously bad attitude haduken. Shouldn't your martial arts training teach you to stay calm and deal with the situation politely!? I agree with Tim, I am the cutomer! I pay my money and you teach me. My commitment will be training hard!!!! The teachers commitment will be to train me well!!! I do not want to do ANY other ritualised BS to prove my commitment. And to the point; These clubs that myself, Tim, and not to mention the original article by Steve discuss, do not get the results! They have the tough regime but they don't have the end result. Train in BJJ or MMA!? I don't want this to turn into a TMA vs MMA debate but have you seen many of these Aikido students win a UFC event lately If these institutions get the results then where are they!?!?!??!?!?! :bang:
Pgm316, that's exactly what I mean. Sweeping the sensei's yard isn't testing my commitment to training hard at martial arts, it's testing my willingness to have blind faith in my instructor regardless of what he makes me do or regardless of how crap the training is. Sonshu doesn't make me sweep his yard to test my commitment - I go to the lessons and train hard (or as hard as I can, considering my pathetic level of fitness). If I wasn't committed I wouldn't go to the lessons and I wouldn't learn anything, which - oh yeah - would actually be MY problem, not his. I have faith in Sonshu's ability to teach stuff that works because he has extensive MA experience, he answers my questions and demonstrates things properly, and he has a 5-3-0 record in MMA competitions. He doesn't need to create an illusion of superiority to convince me to keep training under him. I think we should leave the TMA v MMA debate out of this one though mate
You've managed to introduce several debatable (and often debated...) subjects in one paragraph there Are you really answering his question "how can you train someone to instructor standard within one year?" by saying "they should take BJJ/MMA"? So BJJ promises to train it's students to black belt within one year? Hmmmm... not sure that's the case!
In hindsight I have probably done a bad thing! Whats wrong with my BJJ/MMA answer. If I wanted to get good in a year that would be a good solution. Especially seeing as I don't want to train the the way the riot course teaches. In the one year course they gained their black belt. The book also said how a black belt in Japan is considered as special as it is in other countries. It was mearly a sign of getting to a good level, however still far behind the masters.
This can keep going on and on we all have our own views on how things should be done as our beliefs are at each end of the spectrum i think we are all as close as we are going to get to each other s views (which is not close). Thats fine with me nothing you say will convince me that its a big problem and nothing i say will change your mind. But thats ok if we all had the same opinion there would be no MAP and no one would learn anything(life would also be very boring and to much like 1984). Even with Steve Morris`s article there is a lot i agree with and i believe him to be one of the best Martial artists alive. But that does not mean i agree with him totally even though i believe he is better than myself. I have just had different experiences to him.
BJJ/MMA are good sports don't get me wrong - i love them and train in BJJ myself, I also agree that you can get very proficient if you train pretty much any MA hard enough and intensly enough for a whole year - I was using the yoshinkan because you brought them up - remember also that the riot police course is not about training to be a MMA fighter - your comment about them not proving themselves in UFC or whatever is way off base - they are not training for tournaments or anything of the like - they are training to be riot police, a very different ball game, with very different rules. The reason I dislike people saying that they are a customer is because you shouldn't be one. you are a student - if you want to learn MA off someone it is nothing like learning a sport like football or dare i say it tae kwon do etc etc... in a sport you will be expected to train hard, yes, you will be expected to obey the coach with in reason to progress, yes... and in both cases if you want to learn what the teacher has to offer you will do whatever he says - it is all about desire. in a MA the person has no obligation to treat you softly just because you think you are a customer - if you wanna leave, fine, no problem, if you wanna learn you will stay and trust the teacher to know what he is doing - the only place this falls down is with mcDojo crap teachers who teach by rote without really knowing what they are doing, and add in the beastings to cover the gaps in their knowledge - and these people will quickly be discovered and abandoned
Haduken, once again you've completely missed the point. I WANT my instructors to make me train hard. I DON'T want them to be "soft" on me. If I didn't like the hard training, I would just quit. But if I train hard, I want that training to be relevant to learning the martial art. Sweeping the sensei's yard and folding the black belts' gis is not relevant to learning the martial art - it's what people do when they want you to be submissive and obey their orders unquestioningly, like in the army. They want to lord it over you because they either enjoy getting on a power trip, they don't want you questioning what they teach in case you realise it's crap, or both. I'm not complaining about hard training, I'm complaining about pointless training with a sinister ulterior motive. My old TSD club didn't train hard at all, and nor did the aikido club that I mentioned. If they're teaching me something that really works, they don't need to use Traditional Rituals(tm) to test my commitment - they will see my level of commitment from the fact that I keep coming every week despite being made to sweat like a pig each time. Instructors who use pointless rituals to keep the students blindly believing in what they teach are what corrupts martial arts, and that makes ME want to puke. That's not what I pay for when I train.
