Over the years I have come to accept the fact and respect the fact that the art I love has some great practitioners in it and some not so great practitioners in it. By this I mean people who are open minded, loving and want to grow in Karate and help others…and then the others who have entitlement issues, or are very close minded about things or simply out for themselves.
The Good
Most of the people I have been lucky enough to be personally associated with fall under the first category! I have even had one instructor, Saeki Sensei, actually give me the shirt off his back when I commented on how nice it was. I still have that golf shirt and hold it as a prized position! I have also met instructors like Del Philips who would chat for hours about Karate and training, and even personal things as if you were his best friend! He would share things and never once did he hold back as if his knowledge was a secret! In fact he would go out of his way to open up to you and get you thinking!
I have also had the pleasure and honour of being Dingman Senseis oldest student and a close student whom he opened his home up to on more than one occasion and allowed me to be a travel companion on our way to different camps. His experience and knowledge was always on display as we travelled the long roads to camps and tournaments and he always listened and shared with me, and encouraged me to train with anyone that had something of value to teach!
I also Trained with Terry Proctor Sensei in East St. Paul who was a major influence on my early training and taught me a lot about Kumite and being a good person. Along with Terry were a multitude of instructors, seniors and fellow students who would openly share with me as well as train alongside me in the dojo and would help push me to learn and become the instructor I am today.
All of the instructors I trained with for any amount of time I can say the same things about their character over all. They cared about their students, they wanted to share their experiences and they wanted to see us grow as people as well as Karate practitioners. They did not hold back, in most cases and they did not mind answering questions, even from a 10 year old kid that would not shut up in the car on the way to a tournament in a near by city!
The Bad
However, I also ran into a fair number of the other kind of students and instructors. Those that showed Ego and insecurities that also flourishes in the arts. I had my run in with instructors who wanted to put you down and make you feel like you were worthlessly lost and with out a clue. All this to try and feel superior to you! The ironic part is that most of us saw right through those instructors and kind of laughed at them! Then you had the Marching Maniacs that choose to teach by blurting out broken English phrases and marching up and down the sides of a class yelling at students and never once doing a demonstration, but DEMANDING that you pay them respect as they had been in tournaments and taught for years…..big deal, when are you going to start teaching us!
The biggest issue in Karate for the “Second” kind of instructors/practitioners was POWER! The all mighty political influence and power over your Karate life that meant that you were under their thumb or heaven forbid they would strip you of rank or make your life training life hell. I have to laugh, what is rank in the first place? One persons evaluation of your skill at that time…..so, what….are they now saying that they were wrong about you and your skill level? So, not obeying their rules or bowing and scraping has now made them decide that their original opinion of you was not correct?? This would be why I stopped grading like a mad man in the first place! I will only accept rank from those I respect enough to take a ranking from! I respect the instructors of the JKA’s opinion and I truly respect Saeki Sensei and his thoughts, but to be frank some of the other instructors whom have offered to rank me if I were only to travel to their club and pay a fee….they can keep their ranks! Not worth the paper its written on!
The UGLY
The other “game” I see a lot of is the “Org Game” or the “King of the hill” game as I call it. Again, it goes back to politics and power, but its kind of like “he who has the most students loyal ONLY to them wins”….Crapola! The trueth is that the ones that get remembered are those that show something special about themselves! Besides who cares if you have 200-500 students in your club, if they all look and act like zombies and are not allowed to think for themselves! The whole game of “ you can not train at others clubs/ events” is old and out of date. Sometime after Nakayama Sensei passed away this idea came about that if your students went to another club and trained then they would leave you and your chances at “winning King of the hill” were over. CRAPOLA! If your students go out and travel to other clubs….and you are a halfway decent instructor who treats them right…they will come back….with more info to share and help your other students grow…and after a while…your club will be really strong!
Often, through no fault of their own, students are offered the generic drivel that their instructors offer up to those that they don’t want to give more than a good work out to. The class is 100,000 kicks with the equal number of punching up and down a floor and that is about all…other than 40 Katas at their testing level and perhaps some kumite…three step or generic one step with little more than an instructor barking orders at the students to go faster and harder…but NOTHING in the way of a good instructional class. After this the students get up to black belt and end up leaving or worse yet…thinking that this is Karate and teaching the same Drill instructor type classes designed to only work out. Now, nothing wrong with this kind of work out, I personally love getting the “spirit training” classes…but its only a fraction of what a class should be!
Lets get physical…and that’s all!
The instructor of the “Work out” classes think they are delivering a great product because the students are exhausted and sore after class, and “feel it” the next few days. Again, not a bad work out…but what did they learn? How did they grow? The instructors, often through no fault of their own…as a learned teaching strategy….end up keeping the students ignorant and “Stupid and drooling”. The don’t ask me any questions, or even better the instructor asking questions then barking at students when they don’t regurgitate the drivel that the instructor has been force feeding them word for word…it shows a great lack of genuine love of teaching and growth.
I once had an instructor actually tell me NOT to ask questions as his teaching should cover all “Important” questions! Arrogance and ego ruin instructors as fast as want for political gain in an organization! The very best trained athletes who train under the best instructors will turn into horror shows in the Dojo as an instructor if they learn the faults of political gain from their instructors.
The issue of students traveling to other clubs or participating in other organizations tournaments or seminars is a common one. At the JKA/MB Dingman Sensei will give a fair evaluation of an instructor, if he knows them only, and will then let you go and make up your own mind...having been told his opinion, he wants you to tell him yours. He is not scared to lose you and will even find out about other instructors and have me go train with them if possible when traveling. No limits to trying to learn! However have found that this mentality seems to not be shared by other instructors. In fact I have seen instructors not only threaten to excommunicate others if they travel and go play in someone else’s sand box, but they also try to openly recruit students, including myself and say that if we move over we will have better training, higher ranks and a better organization…and more fun. But then we wont be able to train with our old group….no thanks.
The Style Game
Karate is not the only style that seems to house this level of stupidity! I have trained in Kickboxing gyms were instructors or coaches say that Karate and the other martial arts suck and that their style is better….I have to point out that there are NEVER any older kick boxers in gyms training and getting healthy and training into old age! I also was “taught” how to throw a Round kick by one of the owners/head coach…and even a slight knowledge of the body would tell you that repeated movements like this from the hip will lead to injury and a horrible limp! The fact is that I have trained in Judo, Aikido, Karate, Kick boxing and a plethora of different styles and the one thing I can say about pretty much all styles is that they play the “Style game”.
The Culture of western Martial arts, in north America is littered with this obsession with who is doing the best style, and as I have stated in the past it’s a misguided attempt to find the best of the best. What you need to look at is the athlete/fighter/practitioner that is training and what their goals are! We see movies like Blood sport, Kick boxer (1-99999), and the hordes of other movies that pit style vs style as if some kind of fight match will tell everyone what style they should be doing. The issues with this kind of thinking are MANY! First off you end up with a mismatch of goals. Someone trying to capture a full contact tournament title is obviously not going to take up Tai Chi and someone that is looking for a family way to stay in shape is going to avoid a very tournament-centric Tae Kwon do club! However, if you take the best of the best fighters in each club and throw them into a tournament…you will see what fighter is the best…not what style! The outcome may shock some!
My teaching style is traditional
The other load of Cow plop that I hear all the time from instructors that refuse to leave the “bark orders and pace” mentality and teach the same thing over and over again is that their style of teaching is traditional. Little do they know that this is so far from the truth. They may not realize that all they are doing is showing the style that was formed around the middle to end of World war two. Prior to Karate coming to Japan from Okinawa and even in the early days of training , most of the classes were small groups and the instructors spent a lot of time one on one, with no group training in lines. This was created to teach larger groups and mirrored the styles of military drilling.
Some styles of Karate, normally Okinawan styles, teach in clusters and have students training in different things through the Dojo. Its more traditional to do it this way than the way we do it today, which again was adopted around world war two to try and first get people ready for war and then after to try and give the American and occupying forces something to do that looked familure.
For an instructor to say that they are doing the “Right format” in training and others are not is ignorant, especially if they are doing the military marching. In our organization we have many different ways of teaching classes, from the Up and down the floors to individual drill practice and even special Clinics that are put on. Each is run a bit different and we never ever suggest one is better than then other, we simply try to push the students to learn more and be better.
However, I have seen instructors chastise and criticise others for breaking from the traditional pace up and down and yelp mentality of teaching, and every time I shake my head and walk away realizing how little they actually know of what Karate is.
Japan this and Japan that
The other one that I hate is instructors who insist on bringing up what the Japan is doing right now or what they used to do. Its probably as annoying as me saying “in the old days” and then telling war stories to new students. At first it may be interesting but if that is ALL you teach then you are missing the bigger part of WHY you are teaching.
I once took a class from a guest instructor who is fairly well known in Canada for his accomplishments and has a very dedicated bunch of students who follow him! But he is one of those, “in Japan they did this”, or “in Japan you would be scolded for that” and he never teaches anything but his view of history of his time in Japan…and that was the limit of what he taught us…how he felt we were pathetic because he remembered it was much better in Japan back in the day…???
The point being that he was a crap teacher, or at least he was that day, and he missed the point. We were their to learn from him and not listen to a hour long speech on why we were never going to be as good as they were in Japan back in the day. Secret is, my instructor went to Japan…Trained in Japan and watched tournaments…and had his students go to Japan and we were told by the same Japanese that this guy both bowed to and hated…that our techniques were some of the best they had seen and our instructor was great.
The reason that these instructors are so stuck on what Japan did and was like is that they are living in the past and not growing as instructors. While I am a stickler for tradition and correct form ext. I also try to research, do personal studies and learn the why of what we are doing…create new drills and try to get the best out of students NOW that I can. I don’t dwell on the fact that I had a personal student that was one of the best brown belt youth fighters in the history of the JKA. She was killer! But I know I can do that again with students and I train hard myself to be a good instructor…I don’t dwell on what used to be, I focus on what can be!
Those instructors that are so stuck in the past, well maybe they should stop teaching and write a book about history of Karate or some such thing, but if you don’t focus on today,……you will lose students eventually. Besides from what I can recall of the old days, they were FILLED with the good and the bad!
As with all things our great martial art is filled with the good, the bad and the ugly. As a instructor and student my job is to find those likeminded instructors and students and try to bridge a gap between them. Learn as much as I can and also pass on what I can. Its my job not to be so ego centric that I forget the real purpose of why I teach and more importantly to respect and love the reason I train!
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