black belts trying to impress their gf's/bf's?

[Grenadier]

The only yudansha who gets the all-class bow in our dojo is the chief instructor, and even then, only in formal circumstances. If one of the high ranking seniors from another dojo come as a guest, then they'll also get the all-class bow. Otherwise, no yudansha gets bowed to.

Anyone who arrives late, yudansha or not, has to do pushups before joining class. This does not make for a good impression, I would imagine. Yes, this includes myself (the senior instructor besides the chief instructor) on a rare occasion, since I have to fight that miserable rush hour I-65 commute every work day.

 

[xJOHNx]

Who brings their girlfriend/boyfriend to training? (when they do not train themselves).
They need them to hold hands when sparring gets rough?

 

[ap Oweyn]

Ugh. Doesn't matter how many rituals you devise or revise to address this sort of thing. The idiocy always has a way of leaking through anyway.

Regardless of who's supposed to bow to whom, what you're obliged to do when you're late, or what the overall "privileges" are of being a black belt, the root problem begins with the person.

How lacking in self-awareness do you have to be in order to actually get a kick out of this? You know that they're doing it because they have to. Most of them probably haven't even gone through the mental process to ascertain whether you, as a person, warrant any particular respect. They just see a black belt enter the area and protocol kicks in.

Seems to me that a goal (or at least a convenient side effect) of training is some heightened sense of self. But if you seriously create a situation like that one to impress someone, and then actually think to yourself "aw yeah, in like Flynn!" there's a level of self-delusion there that's kinda stunning.

That's the last place I'd wanna try and pull a stunt like that. Because I wouldn't be able to look at myself in a mirror afterward. And the whole damn place is mirrored.


Stuart