1. McDojo bait and switch: Oh, by the way, at XXXX level everything goes up in price, testing is by __________ whom you've never even seen, and who you later discover is an emotional 3-year-old--and a sexist, to boot, passing the women in far shorter testing-time and far easier conditions.
2. Incredibly silly 'self-defense' techniques of said McDojo.
3. Eventually taking up cross training, and running into ageism. Guess to some I look younger than my chronology, so when studio owner realized my true age (and I guess gave up on me as a possible 'disciple/inheritor' of the art), as well as my not readily accepting the art as crystallized in its 1960s form, when the world was very different--people could get into fights and no one got shot, or even sued!), everything went south--promotions dried up, etc.
Either that, or I'm just whiney today. :waah:
And I left one off: learning an art billed as street defense, then being tested on point sparring (game of tag, but
only to targets that I wouldn't bother with in street defense).
Why train in knife hands, spear hands, tiger rake, open tiger's mouth, palm heel, hammer fist, snake hands, immortal man, pinch and twist (as inner thigh) etc. etc., then be bound by boxing gloves to test? HUGE contradiction.
And why train in realistic street targets like eye rake/poke/gouge, groin rip or smash, all manner of neck and throat attacks, joint locks and hyperextensions, ankle and knee stomps/kicks, then be told these are off limits (of course!--couldn't really make them fair game), and you can only hit with hands encased in boxing gloves (as one GM said, I'd rather fight in hadcuffs, since I have at least the possibility of using much of my training). And the kicking--again only to select targets.
To me, this shows a serious disconnect in the overall strategy of those at the top.
PS:
This is not a rant against sparring (Hey, I boxed--about 300 years ago, but still). If an art teaches and practices sparring, then that's certainly what you'd expect to be tested on. But you'd already know the rules, both spoken and unspoken, and would be expecting to show what you'd spent all your class time practicing and learning. Nothing wrong with that. But if you spend 99.9% of time learning one thing, then are tested on something else, that's when I have problem. (And I hate sparring because as the 'big guy', they almost couldn't wait till I punched to tell me every punch was too hard [which is also not true--pride myself on my control]). So, I don't train in those misguided places anymore. :ultracool Now I use the Kung Fu
San Soo model of mixing it up. It's at least as rough as sparring, but more realisitic given the art(s) I'm learning and teaching.
