2 years of hard training to get yellow belt, my grandson gets belt in 6 weeks?

[dvcochran]

Last night I was listening to students talk about an up coming tournament.
You have got to be kidding me!
Snap punches and back fist to the head no points.
You get more than 1 points for fancy kicks to the head.

No wonder no one practices snap punches and back fist, something I practiced for hours and hours.
No wonder people practice fancy kicks, I would never use in a real fight.

To the teachers credit I have heard them say fancy kicks are not good for a real fight.
Teachers teach hand combinations, but when students spar hand technique are not used or if used not well.
Students are more interest in tournaments than winning fights.

I hope as young people take over, the importance of hand techniques will not be lost.

What if you had worked on "fancy" kicks as much as you have worked on punches all those years? Would your opinion be different? Seriously though, I agree there are several kicks I personally would not use in a SD situation. Partly because I am older and cannot call on the as quickly and effectively as I could when I was younger. Everybody gains comfort from how they train. Kicking styles are outside fighters so that is where they are comfortable. Wrestlers want to be on the ground. So it has a lot to do with a persons style conditioning.

 

[dvcochran]

The problem is parents either don’t know how to discipline their kids or don’t have the will to be consistent with it and cave.

They think disciplining is just hitting, and they’re against hitting their kids, so they’ve got nothing. I’ve never hit my kids, but I sure as hell discipline them whenever appropriate. How? By taking away things they like. By not letting them do things they like. Not doing your homework? No video games. Being disrespectful in school? No sports. Stuff like that. Such an easy concept, yet today’s parents aren’t doing it or following through and being consistent.

Great example...
I had an 8th grader (academic school teacher) who wasn’t doing any homework, and was doing nothing more than taking up space in my class. Same for every other class. We had a conference with the mother (single parent), where she broke down crying and said she doesn’t know what to do anymore. One of my colleagues suggested taking away his Xbox. The parent’s reaction was like we just told her to not feed her kid. There were zero consequences for the kid’s behavior. If there are zero consequences, why is a kid going to listen? If the posted speed limit is 65 and you know for a fact that there’s no police enforcing anything at all, are you really going to obey that law?

Parenting is easy in principle. It’s quite hard in practice. Why are parents sending their kids to MA class for self-discipline? Because they can’t do it themselves, for the most part. It’s sickening. It’s that same mentality of when a kid is disruptive or disrespectful in my class, it’s my fault because I’m not doing my job right. I’m not making it fun enough. I’m not using proper classroom management techniques. I’m failing to motivate the student. It’s all bull$hit. I’m not going to accomplish much in 40 minutes. A MA teacher isn’t going to accomplish much more in 60 minutes. It all comes from the home. Plain and simple, yet no one wants to be accountable for their kids’ actions.

Rant over. For now anyway.

com·pas·sion·ate
/kəmˈpaSHənət/
adjective
adjective: compassionate

1. feeling or showing sympathy and concern for others.

Somewhere the meaning has gotten lost. Sometimes the best was to be compassionate is showing a person where they are messing up and teaching them that there are consequences for their actions. I feel we are at least two generation deep into a society where the a lot of parents never learned this. Being hard does not mean no love, quite the opposite. Good rant.

 

[skribs]

Last night I was listening to students talk about an up coming tournament.
You have got to be kidding me!
Snap punches and back fist to the head no points.
You get more than 1 points for fancy kicks to the head.

No wonder no one practices snap punches and back fist, something I practiced for hours and hours.
No wonder people practice fancy kicks, I would never use in a real fight.

To the teachers credit I have heard them say fancy kicks are not good for a real fight.
Teachers teach hand combinations, but when students spar hand technique are not used or if used not well.
Students are more interest in tournaments than winning fights.

I hope as young people take over, the importance of hand techniques will not be lost.

I may have lost it, but what organization are you part of?

In WT rules, you can't even punch to the head. So a punch to the head is -1 point.

One thing to keep in mind is that this is a game, not fighting training. Just like basketball or rugby. I agree it does dilute the fighting aspect of the art...but the fancy kicks are fun to do.

 

[skribs]

What if you had worked on "fancy" kicks as much as you have worked on punches all those years? Would your opinion be different? Seriously though, I agree there are several kicks I personally would not use in a SD situation. Partly because I am older and cannot call on the as quickly and effectively as I could when I was younger. Everybody gains comfort from how they train. Kicking styles are outside fighters so that is where they are comfortable. Wrestlers want to be on the ground. So it has a lot to do with a persons style conditioning.

I've worked on those kicks for years, and I wouldn't use them in self defense.

 

[Bruce7]

What if you had worked on "fancy" kicks as much as you have worked on punches all those years? Would your opinion be different? Seriously though, I agree there are several kicks I personally would not use in a SD situation. Partly because I am older and cannot call on the as quickly and effectively as I could when I was younger. Everybody gains comfort from how they train. Kicking styles are outside fighters so that is where they are comfortable. Wrestlers want to be on the ground. So it has a lot to do with a persons style conditioning.

I guess your right MA is all about fun. Most people will never get into a fight, so doing fun stuff makes more sense.
It is much more fun doing fancy kicks, than standing in a horse stance doing a 1000 punches in front of a mirror.
I need to adjust my thinking. If I had been part of the change, I probably would not even notice. I need to lighten up.

I think more people stay with MA now because it is fun. People drop out of class a lot more back in the 70's.
The TV show Kung Fu and Bruce Lee movies were popular so a lot of people want to learn MA, but classes were boring
and most people did not last to the end of the month. I stayed because my instructors abilities were pretty amazing, so I figure If I stayed with it my abilities would be assume someday. So hours of punching and kicking in front of a mirror I figured was the price.

 

[Bruce7]

I may have lost it, but what organization are you part of?

In WT rules, you can't even punch to the head. So a punch to the head is -1 point.

One thing to keep in mind is that this is a game, not fighting training. Just like basketball or rugby. I agree it does dilute the fighting aspect of the art...but the fancy kicks are fun to do.

I am a dinosaur, tournaments are very different now.
Back then most people did not know what Taekwondo was, so the tournaments were called Karate Tournaments.
Their were no pads and you could only score one point per round.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

I guess your right MA is all about fun. Most people will never get into a fight, so doing fun stuff makes more sense.
It is much more fun doing fancy kicks, than standing in a horse stance doing a 1000 punches in front of a mirror.
I need to adjust my thinking. If I had been part of the change, I probably would not even notice. I need to lighten up.

I think more people stay with MA now because it is fun. People drop out of class a lot more back in the 70's.
The TV show Kung Fu and Bruce Lee movies were popular so a lot of people want to learn MA, but classes were boring
and most people did not last to the end of the month. I stayed because my instructors abilities were pretty amazing, so I figure If I stayed with it my abilities would be assume someday. So hours of punching and kicking in front of a mirror I figured was the price.

For what it's worth, I agree with you. There's a higher attrition rate your way, not good for a business, but I would much rather do 1000 punches in front of a mirror, or spend an hour throwing a roundhouse kick, then figuring out how to throw a 720 jumping tornado kick. The people I train with are mostly the same way.

 

[MetalBoar]

I guess your right MA is all about fun. Most people will never get into a fight, so doing fun stuff makes more sense.
It is much more fun doing fancy kicks, than standing in a horse stance doing a 1000 punches in front of a mirror.
I need to adjust my thinking. If I had been part of the change, I probably would not even notice. I need to lighten up.

I think more people stay with MA now because it is fun. People drop out of class a lot more back in the 70's.
The TV show Kung Fu and Bruce Lee movies were popular so a lot of people want to learn MA, but classes were boring
and most people did not last to the end of the month. I stayed because my instructors abilities were pretty amazing, so I figure If I stayed with it my abilities would be assume someday. So hours of punching and kicking in front of a mirror I figured was the price.

Yeah, I think things have changed and it's also a lot more expensive to run a school (at least here in Seattle) than it used to be. If you don't want to teach out of your garage and you want to keep the doors open you've got to make the classes appeal to more people than you used to. Back in the '90's I used to pay $90/month for my Hapkido school - that got me as many classes as I could handle Monday/Wednesday/Friday. My instructor offered 4 90 minute classes each of those days (3/day later on because there were only 2 of use coming to the morning class and the other guy's work schedule changed) and I would frequently make it to 2 of them. He didn't offer kids classes and the training could be brutally hard. New people didn't tend to stick around so the school stayed about the same size the 5 years I was training there.

I would guess he was grossing about $2000/month from the school back then, maybe a little less. Back when I started I'd guess his monthly expenses were about $1000/month in total. So even then he wasn't making much money from the school and it was really just a labor of love, but he brought in a little until things started to get more expensive. Now, I know from personal experience that the space he used to rent would have to cost a minimum of $3500/month just for rent (not counting utilities, taxes, advertising, insurance or any of the other stuff) and it might be a lot more than that. I don't see a lot of people who want to pay more than maybe $120/month for MA training so unless he had a lot more students he'd be losing >$500/month even without paying himself or anyone else anything. I hear he has re-opened his school at this point in another town that's cheaper, and he's also added in kids classes. I don't know if the adult training has been watered down to keep more students or not, but part of the reason I haven't gone to check it out is that I'd be a little heartbroken if it has and it's too far for me to actually train there anyway so why risk being disappointed?

The other side of it is that MMA gyms and related schools (pure BJJ, Muay Thai, etc.) seem to have taken over essentially the entire commercial space for people who really want to get in there and fight. We can all debate how well they work for pure self defense or meet any particular individuals desire for a "traditional" martial arts experience, but I don't think many people will argue that they're a great choice if you want to get in some real, legitimate martial competition without much fluff. I think most people who want or are comfortable with some hard training and hard or at least hard-ish contact sparring are going to those gyms now. Or they're training with small groups in garages or only semi-commercial, almost club like schools.

 

[JR 137]

I guess your right MA is all about fun. Most people will never get into a fight, so doing fun stuff makes more sense.
It is much more fun doing fancy kicks, than standing in a horse stance doing a 1000 punches in front of a mirror.
I need to adjust my thinking. If I had been part of the change, I probably would not even notice. I need to lighten up.

I think more people stay with MA now because it is fun. People drop out of class a lot more back in the 70's.
The TV show Kung Fu and Bruce Lee movies were popular so a lot of people want to learn MA, but classes were boring
and most people did not last to the end of the month. I stayed because my instructors abilities were pretty amazing, so I figure If I stayed with it my abilities would be assume someday. So hours of punching and kicking in front of a mirror I figured was the price.

Don’t forget to add it was painful too. Hard sparring can be pretty painful and no fun. Doing 100 consecutive kicks against a pad or bag doesn’t feel great to most people. Exchanging kicks to the thighs with a partner to condition them isn’t very appealing to the masses.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the majority of the masses know why that stuff’s important and think they’d like to do it, but getting from point A to point B is too painful, takes too long, and flat out isn’t worth it when they actually have to do it.

 

[WaterGal]

I guess your right MA is all about fun. Most people will never get into a fight, so doing fun stuff makes more sense.
It is much more fun doing fancy kicks, than standing in a horse stance doing a 1000 punches in front of a mirror.
I need to adjust my thinking. If I had been part of the change, I probably would not even notice. I need to lighten up.

I think more people stay with MA now because it is fun. People drop out of class a lot more back in the 70's.
The TV show Kung Fu and Bruce Lee movies were popular so a lot of people want to learn MA, but classes were boring
and most people did not last to the end of the month. I stayed because my instructors abilities were pretty amazing, so I figure If I stayed with it my abilities would be assume someday. So hours of punching and kicking in front of a mirror I figured was the price.

I think there are pluses and minuses to the kind of old-school training you mention. For the really dedicated people who stick with it, they'll get a lot out of it. But like you say, most people in schools like that would quit after 1 month - so those less-serious students (let's call them hobbyists) will get basically *nothing* out of training in martial arts.

A school that can make class fun, approachable, and relatively safe can have a much higher retention rate among those hobbyists, so they actually learn something and get something out of their training. Maybe the training is less intense/rigorous in any particular class, but you're able to reach a much broader crowd of people, and more people end up learning the martial art and benefitting from it. I think that's a good thing, overall.

Of course, a school can also go too far, and lose the actual martial art in favor of basically just doing a fun light martial arts-themed workout class. (Not that there's anything wrong with workout classes, either, but that's different from actual martial arts training.)

 

[mrt2]

The other side of it is that MMA gyms and related schools (pure BJJ, Muay Thai, etc.) seem to have taken over essentially the entire commercial space for people who really want to get in there and fight. We can all debate how well they work for pure self defense or meet any particular individuals desire for a "traditional" martial arts experience, but I don't think many people will argue that they're a great choice if you want to get in some real, legitimate martial competition without much fluff. I think most people who want or are comfortable with some hard training and hard or at least hard-ish contact sparring are going to those gyms now. Or they're training with small groups in garages or only semi-commercial, almost club like schools.

I really think this is true. When I first started back with TKD training, I was wondering what happened to all the good fighters? And by good fighters, I mean people who are a little aggressive, maybe come to their training with a bit of an attitude. But who back it up in the gym. For sure, there are a few, but I think for those who want to mix it up right away, MMA, BJJ, or Muy Thai are more appealing than doing 6 months learning front stance, horse stance, basics and forms before throwing a punch or kick against live competition, and even then, only spar maybe 10 minutes out of a 90 minute class.

But frankly, it suits me just fine now, as I don't need to go to work with black eyes and broken noses.

 

[dvcochran]

I think there are pluses and minuses to the kind of old-school training you mention. For the really dedicated people who stick with it, they'll get a lot out of it. But like you say, most people in schools like that would quit after 1 month - so those less-serious students (let's call them hobbyists) will get basically *nothing* out of training in martial arts.

A school that can make class fun, approachable, and relatively safe can have a much higher retention rate among those hobbyists, so they actually learn something and get something out of their training. Maybe the training is less intense/rigorous in any particular class, but you're able to reach a much broader crowd of people, and more people end up learning the martial art and benefitting from it. I think that's a good thing, overall.

Of course, a school can also go too far, and lose the actual martial art in favor of basically just doing a fun light martial arts-themed workout class. (Not that there's anything wrong with workout classes, either, but that's different from actual martial arts training.)

I think it is paramount for instructors to be creative and develop workouts that parallel the "old school" workouts in new ways. Of course you had to have gone through some of the old school to appreciate the workouts.

 

[MetalBoar]

I think it is paramount for instructors to be creative and develop workouts that parallel the "old school" workouts in new ways. Of course you had to have gone through some of the old school to appreciate the workouts.

Very well said, I was trying to figure out how to express this myself!

 

[punisher73]

Back in the day (60's and 70's and even early 80's) schools used to pride themselves on the fighters that they could produce. Many instructors would sandbag their students belt level to do better in tournaments. Think about it, in general, a black belt will be earned in 3-5 years in most good schools. It took you 6 years to get yellow, now the teacher can boast that his yellow belt students beat other schools black belt students. Then there became a shift and instructors started to worry about the degrees on their blackbelt to draw in more students and then, how many black belts that they had under them.

Then, most instructors came to realize that if they wanted to do MA for a living, there was not a large draw from suburban families that had expendable income on "karate lessons" when they would leave with split lips and black eyes. Training was toned down to draw that in and then kids classes became popular and one of the biggest money makers. BUT, kids in the US have very short attention spans, so alot more belt ranks and colors were added to pull in more testing fees and motivators to keep plugging away to reach the coveted "black belt".

 

[Bruce7]

Back in the day (60's and 70's and even early 80's) schools used to pride themselves on the fighters that they could produce. Many instructors would sandbag their students belt level to do better in tournaments. Think about it, in general, a black belt will be earned in 3-5 years in most good schools. It took you 6 years to get yellow, now the teacher can boast that his yellow belt students beat other schools black belt students. Then there became a shift and instructors started to worry about the degrees on their blackbelt to draw in more students and then, how many black belts that they had under them.

Then, most instructors came to realize that if they wanted to do MA for a living, there was not a large draw from suburban families that had expendable income on "karate lessons" when they would leave with split lips and black eyes. Training was toned down to draw that in and then kids classes became popular and one of the biggest money makers. BUT, kids in the US have very short attention spans, so alot more belt ranks and colors were added to pull in more testing fees and motivators to keep plugging away to reach the coveted "black belt".

One of our yellow belts had to take belt test in order to enter a tournament, They knew him and they felt he had been a yellow belt to long.

 

[dvcochran]

Back in the day (60's and 70's and even early 80's) schools used to pride themselves on the fighters that they could produce. Many instructors would sandbag their students belt level to do better in tournaments. Think about it, in general, a black belt will be earned in 3-5 years in most good schools. It took you 6 years to get yellow, now the teacher can boast that his yellow belt students beat other schools black belt students. Then there became a shift and instructors started to worry about the degrees on their blackbelt to draw in more students and then, how many black belts that they had under them.

Then, most instructors came to realize that if they wanted to do MA for a living, there was not a large draw from suburban families that had expendable income on "karate lessons" when they would leave with split lips and black eyes. Training was toned down to draw that in and then kids classes became popular and one of the biggest money makers. BUT, kids in the US have very short attention spans, so alot more belt ranks and colors were added to pull in more testing fees and motivators to keep plugging away to reach the coveted "black belt".

Love your tagline. Words to live by.

 

[Bruce7]

I am still enjoying the school. One of the things I find hard to get use to is we never do more than ten reps of anything.
The other thing is we have not done a single snap punch or back fist, when they spar you are lucky to see a reverse punch.

 

[WaterGal]

I am still enjoying the school. One of the things I find hard to get use to is we never do more than ten reps of anything.
The other thing is we have not done a single snap punch or back fist, when they spar you are lucky to see a reverse punch.

I have to say we don't do back fist in our beginner class either. We cover that in the intermediate class, though we do exclusively KKW/WTF style sparring at color belt levels, which doesn't allow backfist at all. So they do it in their form and maybe in the air or pads a little, but they don't do it in sparring until black belt. (KKW/WTF sparring also doesn't reward a jabbing punch whatsoever - the only way to score with a punch is a strong reverse punch to the body, causing visible impact on your opponent. I don't know what sparring rules Tiger Rock uses, but these things do tend to inform the training.)

 

[mrt2]

I am still enjoying the school. One of the things I find hard to get use to is we never do more than ten reps of anything.
The other thing is we have not done a single snap punch or back fist, when they spar you are lucky to see a reverse punch.

You can do as many reps before, or after class as you want, and I suppose, incorporate some of those old moves into your game.

 

[Bruce7]

I have to say we don't do back fist in our beginner class either. We cover that in the intermediate class, though we do exclusively KKW/WTF style sparring at color belt levels, which doesn't allow backfist at all. So they do it in their form and maybe in the air or pads a little, but they don't do it in sparring until black belt. (KKW/WTF sparring also doesn't reward a jabbing punch whatsoever - the only way to score with a punch is a strong reverse punch to the body, causing visible impact on your opponent. I don't know what sparring rules Tiger Rock uses, but these things do tend to inform the training.)

They use the same rules as you described.