Here I go again. When I was a kid and started Karate you wore a white belt and you progressed every three to six months, but you were working out hard every week…four or five times a week and even then you moved slow through the rankings, invited to rank two or three times a year. From the lowly white to yellow belt level you looked up at the high ranks of Shodan and Nidan and were convinced you would never make those ranks. The Black belts were the big boys, the gang of excellence. They had a look to them, a Pride and aura about them.
The black belt was the peak of training. You were
no longer held to the same rules of basics, Shitie Kata and controlled Kumite,
you were expected to be doing more advanced training and your level was such
that you could build your own training, select your own Kata and work in it….yes
you followed Sensei but you had specific freedoms we did not have. You were the
peak of training. Not everyone would make the elite level of Shodan. It was not
simply showing up, it was pushing through the harder and harder training
program. It was about pushing through increasingly difficult classes, becoming fitter
and improving your movement skills, your internalization of the Karate basics
and fundamentals, becoming more accustomed to kumite and becoming better.
When you got your Shodan you were just better. But
your ego was always kept in place because above you their were Nidans, then
Sandans the rare Yondan and back then maybe one or Two Godans in the whole
province…then their was Sensei. If he felt you had an ego…he fixed you. Of the
1000 new students that walked through the door each year (yah…not kidding)
maybe 100 stuck it out to intermediate level of purple bel. Maybe 50 stuck it out till Brown belt and
honestly 2-5 maybe got Black belts . Of those 2-5, only about 1-2 would stick
it out and continue on to Nidan. Even that training was seen as insane.
Contrast that to the new training and the new
martial artst hat we see, even my own Dojo has the “new issue”. Kids and to some extent adults seem to avoid
hard work like its going to harm them. They want to show up and be coddled and
spoon fed the work outs, no warm up time, no pre class work outs. If I had
shown up at the Dojo and sat around chatting I would have been a target for one
of the black belts to show the others that this behaviour is not correct. And the
work outs, I actually have kids training who complain allowed about how hard
the classes are. I would NEVER have done that growing up in Karate. You pushed
yourself till you threw up or till you passed out, both of which I have done as
a child Karate student and again as an adult.
I try and teach a more balanced, less meat head
approach to Karate now. I mean I don’t want
to harm kids and the stuff I did to my body back then has left me “marked” for
life in a lot of ways, and while on some level I absolutely loved that crazy
training and wear my pain with like a badge of honor knowing that others can
not say that they went through the same degree of self destruction, I also know
that my student are probably not interested in the same style of training, the
same intensity and veracity in training.
So, I watch and see what others are going through
to get their Shodan or first black belt level and I am often shocked! One of my
close friends put her kid into Tae Kwon do and when I found out he got to black
belt with out training in even the most basic of Kumite I almost fell
over. I also see kids show up and train,
they test and get what we call “B” belts or “Almost did it” belts and then get
up to black belt, having done very little really and they want that belt. They want
to be given the belt because they paid for it. They showed up.
We have somehow gotten weak. We try our best as instructors to instil the
same drive and determination we had as students. However we all know that they
are not the same. I don’t know if you
would say we have mental issues or something but it’s a special kind of crazy
to be so dedicated and to put yourself through the level of training we did in
the 70’s-90’s. However the new bread of
student expects that because they pay us monthly amounts and show up that they
will see progress in rank. I blame this on the styles like Tae Kwon Do that
split off from us (super simplification I know) and the Sport Karate groups
that seem to have take up the idea of participation equalling improvement. We
have lost the spirit that we once had that saw us value hard work and realize
that the only way to move forwards was to work for it.
We still tend to value hard work and things we have
to work for, but now we expect it to be easy and we don’t want to fight for it
or work for it at all. This is caused by people getting participation trophies
and not having to suffer a little to get ahead. We see people complain that
they actually have to work for a paycheck and not just show up and get it. They
get mad when we dare to insist that they get off social media to do their jobs.
And we get down right upset when we are told that we have to pay taxes on our
work so we can get things like health care, police and other services….how dare
they ask us to pay for such things. We showed up after all.
Today the students cower and even turn their backs
when faced with a challenge in Kumite. They refuse to actually fight. It is
rare that I get a student to face me and actually want to put the effort in to
push themselves and show progress. It all stems from the current idea that kids
in Karate/martial arts are some how not to be challenged. They go through a
watered down form of training and they get a false sense of accomplishment and
security thinking they are now somehow able to defend themselves. Worse yet they learn very bad habits that
will not help them out in life. They are taught that they don’t have to work
very hard and they will still get to an elite level. They don’t have to suffer,
they don’t have to work or do the extra efforts to build and grow, they just
get the fancy belts that others get…cuz they are here too.
It also is tied to a great deal of self importance,
lack of respect for others, intolerance to authority and entitled to everything
with out working for it. These are
dangerous lessons to teach kids, because as we all know…kids get older. I feel
failing a kid and seeing how they respond is a better gage of character than
just giving them rank because they showed up. Through this new “show up and
move up the ranks” mentality of some instructors the black belt has become
something it never was before….basic. We see this mentality in the seniors now
too. When I was younger in Karate the highest levels of instructors in Canada
were some place around Godan (5th Dan) and Rokudan (6th
Dan) and that was just accepted. You had maybe four 6th dans across Canada,
now…maybe five in once province. Its why
I stopped looking at rank as anything more than politics playing out.
We have to put off student grading to allow us to
have more time to teach them, and for them to learn. We have to step back as
instructors and stop doing what the sport people do in collecting
trophies/medals to prove that they are good coaches. We forget that the depth
of our training took us time and so much effort, but we feel we are giving it
away and they should be able to get it with out going through the trials we
did. We need the same amount of time, if
not more to pass on the lessons we learned, not all of which were physical and
we need to be able to keep the students humble.
Karate should be hard, all martial arts training
should be a trail of the spirit. The lessons that are passed on to us through
this trial will help build up our spirit and teach you things like respect, discipline
and goal setting. Karate should be hard….if it wasn’t everyone would do it…but
everyone should.
After chatting about my conversations and the
experience of my friends son I came to a conclusion, or more a question….what
are we teaching the students if we continue to give away the ranking and not
insist on doing the harder training with them.
Here is where my big suggestion comes in. First off
im suggesting we go back to the way that my instructor did things near the end
of his teaching. We SLOW DOWN ranking. You end up making it fare for others and
at the same time you do end up with exceptional students in each rank. They are
not rushed to the next rank just as they are becoming good at their current
ranking…and you find that your members stick around more as you may be
increasing the intensity and the work, but you are also giving everyone time to
grow, become better and more proficient at the skills you are to show at each
rank level.
Again, all this is just to say “slow it down” don’t
rush so fast to the next rank and push yourself as hard as you can to be the
best you can be at the rank you are currently in. And none of this is to bash
Tae Kwon do, we see this kind of Martial Day care in all arts today.
