How to translate what you hear in Martial arts to the truth!

Bad Sensei says!

How to translate what you hear in Martial arts to the truth!


I have been training in the martial arts since I was six years old one way or the other and with little time off. I have trained in Traditional Japanese arts since I was young and had my shot at eclectic arts, Chinese arts, modern arts, some martial arts from around the world and basically the vocabulary changes, but often the confusion that is left behind after an instructor says something lingers and generates generations of false stories and such…and I am here to clear it up!

A interest and saying can grow into dogma, someone’s quick answer that is meant to put a student aside while an instructor moves onto more “important things” or an answer that is given to give an answer for answers sake can scar the very fabric of our social and intellectual worlds in Karate….Okay, maybe not, but the fact is that some instructors say things and it inspires levels of silliness and stupidity that are truly cringe worthy.

So, in this long overdue Blog entry I am going to translate some very misunderstood terms, some over used terms that mean the opposite or nothing at all and hope to clear up some long held misconceptions that others have generated over the years.

Things you hear that simply make you cringe…or should
Some cringe worthy things are horrible because they make you sick to your stomach, like when I tell people about my many injuries and start getting into the really gory ones. Other cringe worthy things are less about your stomach flipping and more about your sense of “Man that’s just STUPIDLY EMBARASSING TO ANYONE THAT HAS EVER STRAPPED ON A KARATE BELT” kind of cringy! This is a list of those, really what the F were you thinking before you opened your mouth kind of cringe worthy!

I’m a 12th Dan (any Dan after 10th…)
For those that Don’t know…and for those that do know better the original dan rankings that Kano created went to 10th dan. Funakoshi only gave out dan ranks to 5th because he felt that was the highest required rank for mastery of Shotokan, and many of the other masters refused to use anything above three for their students.

To be a 10th dan or above you would need to have a life time of dedication…actually a few! If your instructor or friends instructor or anyone else for that matter says they are higher than 10th Dan laugh a lot and walk away! No, wait…run!...BS stains!

I’m a 7-10th Dan (coming from any instructor under 45)
As a 40 year old and knowing what martial arts are all about I can truly say that if a person in their 20s stated to me that they were a 5-7th Dan I would really think that they were full of it…and if they were my age and said they were a 7-8th Dan I would laugh…and once a guy introduced himself as a 9th Dan in some karate style I did not know and he was 30 years old. I told him it does not count if you give yourself rank advancement and walked away!

The problem with high ranking instructors in north America is most are political or greed driven. They think that rank means they have power and or they feel that it will help pad their wallet, and the issue is that it does to some extent. Younger money hungry instructors tend to “grow” dan ranks to pad their resume when really hard work in the dojo and at home is all they need. Rank is Rank at the best of times!

I hold 3 (or more) high level black belts in different arts!
Can not tell you how often I have been told this. I have a shodan in Judo and Sandan in Karate and it has taken me this long in my life to get this far with family and work ext. If I was to not get married, Who needs school right…and work…well that’s for wimps.. Well, maybe I could get a Rokudan by now in Karate, a Sandan in Judo and add a kendo shodan…but that all takes time.

May favorite is someone that suggests that they have a black belt level in six different arts and they are all vastly different and one is BJJ. BJJ is one of those arts that not everyone is going to get a brown belt in, never mind a black belt. The second that they say that I call BS!

My hands are so deadly that they have to be registered with the local police/federal government!
Probably as a chronic groper (self or other)…but not because you could hurt someone physically with them. First off you don’t need to register your hands with anyone…its BS and an old stack of it at that. Secondly, no police force in Canada (my home country) has any paper work to fill out to say that someone, anyone is a black belt never mind a deadly one at that!

My art form is Ten thousand years old!
Reality is that anyone that says this has never cracked open the history books of Karate or martial arts…or anything for that matter. Read some basic history and stop exaggerating a bit for a second and you will make not that most Karate styles are basically a little more than a hundred years old and not a thousand…and kung fu styles can probably reach back a few hundred years more than that. Ten thousand years ago man had just started practicing sedentary agriculture and stopped wandering about picking berries and hunting small game for the most part.

The fact is that if you say “my Karate is five hundred years old” you basically show how little you care about researching your art and what a moron you are!

I teach a form of Ninjitsu…..
Oh, you do do you! Well, then you may be interested to know that Ninjitsu, as a traditional art form DIED out about the 1500’s and were never really “honorable” arts, they were seen as dishonorable and not some farmers that reved up against the Samurai, but “guns for hire” that went against Bushido!

The Ninja crap that you see today is pure marketing by men that refuse to grow up and live in “adult” pants! They follow self help gurus gone mad and wear black PJ’s with hoods and train in weak Karate/TKD and then say they are the mystic warriors of old…when the “mystic” warriors of old..were nothing more than assassins and soldiers of fortune. Reality…that guy in the black Pj’s is just having issues growing up.

If you don’t (add “tow the line” comment) I will strip you of your black belt!
So, you put your time and effort into training under a instructor and at first they seem nice enough, but then you start to see them demand more and more of your time and effort and…more than likely…your money. You put in as much time as you can and you get your Shodan. You are now a black belt….or are you. Did you earn a black belt or are you being loaned one by the instructor/organization?

I have seen instructors try and punish people by saying “if you (add horrible offence) I will strip you of your black belt, and I even saw a letter that a local guy sent to a student stripping them of their black belt because they were doing other arts and not spending all their time and effort fawning over the instructor and making them more money. Basically the letter said that the black belt in question, who had been teaching at a club set up by ME years ago was “Stripped” of her Shodan for doing Kyokushin on the side. It was very disappointing to say the least!

Here is the way I see it, and the way that Dingman Sensei taught me, and the way that the head instructors have told it…right back to Funakoshi….You as a student work hard at Karate, you train and you test yourself. We grade you and we hand out rank, and once you are ready we announce that you are now Yudansha (fancy word for black belt). For your part you are now at a beginning level of black belt, once you progress and ask to be ranked you test again. We don’t turn around and strip you of a rank we have witnessed you make. What we can do is no longer recognize your rank…different?... You betcha!

An organization or instructor can always say “you ticked me/us off, we don’t recognize your rank anymore” and leave it at that. But they don’t take away your black belt. They would in essence be saying “oops we made a mistake giving you that, you don’t really meet our requirements”, and that would be silly. So, hard work and training will earn you a black belt and you get to keep it for life, but those that recognize it may say they suddenly do recognize you as a Yodansha….but that does not take away from you being one.

I once trained with Bruce Lee/Chuck Norris/add any famous martial arts name here!
Normally followed by “and I beat them up a lot” or “and I am the only one certified to teach his style of fighting, his true style of fighting”. And both are COMPLETE LIES for about 99.9999% of those that use these tag lines to get you in the door.

First off Mr. Norris is still alive and kicking and he has a solid set of black belts that can drive his organization. As small as it is in the states, it’s a Korean art and not some MMA game that others make it out to be.

Secondly, Lee died with a small amount of students, every one of them in a magazine or TEN and easy to verify. I have personally met one, Taki Kimura and he told me that true Bruce Lee students are as rare as it comes. Maybe a handful and we are losing them fast too!

If someone says they are studying Lee’s style…well that means they are reading a book! Anyone can read a book, so don’t put to much water in that one!

Karate came from peasants needing to defend themselves against Samurai!
Horse PUcky! Karate was created by Nobility in Okinawa that learned it from China and other sources and created a way of fighting that was more Chinese than modern Karate looks. It then went through major changes along the way and became what we see today.

I am still trying to track down the creation of that story and find out who made it up, and if at all possible slap them! The truth is far richer than some poor farmer figuring out how to fend off an armed samurai! Now you can argue that the Samurai of the time may have treated the Okinawan royalty as poor back woods gentry, but that is a stretch, they were wealthy government people that had benefited from generations of trading with the Chinese and Japanese and being on a major trade route, they were the wealthy of their time and they needed to protect themselves!

Karate has nothing to do with the poor Japanese farmers, it was created by wealthy nobility in Okinawa.

My Master………
Hold on! Put the Breaks RIGHT on that one…..I have a Sensei, I have a Instructor…I have a chief instructor…but I do NOT have a master (in Karate….my wife does not count here). The fact that some 20 something year old martial arts instructor now wants me to call them master…well that makes me laugh!

I walked into a Kickboxing school that was taught by a TKD black belt, no that is not the funny part of the story, and was visiting and figured I would get a work out in. my friend was training with the guy and he allowed walk ins so I figured why not! The work out was “Okay” and not really to my standards for a conditioning work out but it was enough to get me warmed up and having a bit of fun.

The class was fine but when my friend introduced me to the instructor, he said “Master Joe, this is James”. I said “good to meet you Joe..” to which he said “that’s master Joe” ….to which I said “ you can then call me Sir James”. I have never been knighted…and no one is my master!

I don’t recognize your black belt level, you will have to retest!
This one is legit, but I have to explain the situation! See a Black belt rank is a license in a way and a level in a way. When you test and grade you are assigned or recognized by an instructor as having met the requirements to earn your belt level that you are given. You are presented as a black belt under that instructor and you have his “stamp of approval” for that student.

Once you have earned a Dan Rank under an instructor that’s it, you have met the standard they set out for you and you earned your Dan rank…but that does not mean that everyone is going to see it the same way and or accept your ranking at face value! I have seen plenty of times were people are asked to retest for a rank they earned under a different instructor/organization and while it seems like a formality it is legit.

I have also seen some higher level instructor have to qualify that they have a Shodan under X organization and a Nidan from Y organization and then Z and A gave them a Sandan, but when they go back to X they are still seen as a shodan and need to retest. Also, I have seen people who were a Yondan from the JKA and leave the JKA. They don’t forfeit their rank from the JKA, but any new ranks that are given to them…well they are not recognized by the JKA. That’s not earth shattering as many of them will never return however.

I know of one instructor that graded to sandan under the JKA and left. He then trained with a different Shotokan group and earned not just a Yondan but a Rokudan, but in the JKA he is seen as a Sandan that left…and then he came back. The ensuing political dust storm settled and he accepted his Sandan with a test for Yondan scheduled three months later. Now its important to point out he did not pass his Yondan and left again…

I belong to an international organization that recognizes my every rank from white to 10th Dan!
And! If you are under 90 years old and claiming a 10th dan…you are a bit of a JOKE! The higher ranks are supposed to be about maturity in the arts…how is a 30 year old…training since he/she was 15 supposed to be mature in the arts…that’s only 15 years of training in total. I could see a nidan or even Sandan but really…a Judan!

There are several international belt factories that one can join and get ranking from. They call it recognized time in…but to be frank they are all a joke! I would rather be a lifer at Sandan than a joke at Rokudan.

This is just the first bit of insight I am going to provide, in the next two segments I will go through specific crap…er stuff a instructor can say, and what it really means and what your fellow students say and what it really means.

The most important thing that one should take away from this is that martial arts, like everything else, is filled with people that say and do silly things. The most important thing is to shut up, throw on your gi and obi and get your sorry butt out on the floor and train. Everything else is a distraction and something that you should avoid!