Teaching Karate is not an easy thing to do…wait, teaching Karate with any sense of competency is a hard thing to do some times. I often equate it to the children’s story “the three bears”! Or in other words it all about equilibrium in your approach…for those of you wondering what that means…its about finding a nice balance as an instructor. Not to much talk, but just the right amount of instruction….not to much “look at me” demos, but not just standing their barking orders! Just the right amount of touching and pushing but not so much that you look like an octopus trying to teach and touch every part of a student’s body…and that leads me to knowing what is appropriate and what is not when it comes to touching.
I think that to be a good instructor…you first have to be a professional student! By that I mean you have to seek out different teachers, different styles, learn the art of teaching and learning…looking closely at both sides of the coin then practice…practice…practice! But over the last 30+ years (no I am not telling you what that plus mark actually equates to…..or if its more than 10….its not....but now you are thinking how old is this guy…and that’s fine by me). I have trained with literally countless numbers of “Teachers” and by “teacher” I mean in school, Karate, university, Judo, collage, Kung fu, and other arts. I have trained a few times (not enough to call it learning from) kickboxing coaches, Sambo instructors, Aikido Sensei’s, Jeet Kun Do “guys” and other martial arts including BJJ, Savat, and other styles of Karate too. The point being I not only studied what they taught; I also watched how they taught.
By far the most effective and BEST hands down instructor I have EVER learned from was Dingman Sensei, which is why I keep going back to him. The second best was Saeki Sensei from Ottawa. Now its not a pissing contest to see who was the “best” but those two blow the rest out of the water, and I have trained with some Damn fine instructors…but those two connect well with the students and by far have the best teaching skills I have ever seen and both…read this carefully….BOTH avoid the to ten mistakes an instructor can make by a MILE or two. The other instructors all offered how to or how not to teach instruction to me in different areas, but most of them had their pit falls for sure. I am trying to form my own teaching style but really adhering to what these two instructors have passed on to me on the floor, and in Dingman Sensei’s case, off the floor as well. Someday, with a tone more work and thought, I hope to be as good as these two gentlemen on the floor and have as deep a knowledge pool as they have as well.
The following article was kind of brought about by my big brother Al. When we were kids and it was summer, with no curfew for sleep time, we used to stay up and watch David Letterman. The other day I read that Dave was throwing in the towel and finally going to retire, kind of a sad day for me because every once and a while I used to tune in before going to bed and watch my favorite part of his show, the “Top Ten”. Now Al, when he was still around, used to love the whole show, not me…just the Top ten. I hope his replacement keeps that tradition alive as it still reminds me of my brother and how we used to stay up late watching this show and I would wait for the top ten to come on before zipping off to bed.
Anyways, nostalgia aside, I started thinking that my last Blog of 2014 should be a tad funny and also informative for the up and coming students and instructors in the JKA/MB as well as those that read the blog. My suggestion is that if you are an instructor reading this, make sure you read it and learn to avoid these ten pit falls of teaching, and try to find other weaknesses of yours. Remember we are always students in one way or another and often we have to polish our skills teaching as much as we have to refine our Karate. And if you are a student, read this and think of others, then make sure you are avoiding instructors with major flaws. Remember its not just your money, its your time and faith in an instructor that you have to safeguard. Don’t waste your time with people who don’t care about you or your time!
Top Twenty mistakes that instructors make!
20. Talking too much in class! We have all been there, been to a class that we are waiting for all day, we want to get our Karate on and soak a Gi (blood or sweat we don’t care) and we want to be taught, but more so we want to be pushed to our physical limits and get some good training in….then we show up and get a lecture on some subject…but our Gis remain dry through the whole class, or worse we get a good warm up in and a bit sweaty and then next thing you know you are sitting in a cold, wet Gi while the instructor talks and talks and talks till we feel ill sitting in damp duck canvas suits waiting for the class to END.
The whole thing is a horror show of issues, first off we are paying to work out, but we are also paying to learn…a bit of talk is fine, but damn it I want my butt kicked! When I was young I would pick my instructors for their ability to draw blood, sweat and…yes…often tears from me. I loved Dingman Sensei’s driving nature, the one that you would really question your sanity by the time class was over. He made us do things we were fairly positive were not humanly possible! And after we were don’t doing the impossible he pointed out how well we did. You left the work out really thinking that you could take on a lion and walk away with a new lion skin jacket!
But I also had the odd instructor that made me really think I was in a university lecture…on cold war history or something equally benign and dull. I would literally start doing Kata in my head to keep moving in some way and day dream about doing Kumite or make up drills…and Have to go for a jog after class to get a work out in! It was painful!
19. being too strict in class! Now I have had my taste of the military and to be frank I also grew up in a house that had my mother in it, so I know what its like to be “strict” and to be lead by a strict instructor is nothing new. I am all for traditional strictness, but to be over strict…well there is no purpose to it. Now being far to strict is often a result of one of two things…personal insecurity or lack of understanding.
I have trained with literally countless numbers of students (as a student) and had probably a few thousand train under me personally as a senior or instructor in the JKA/MB and I can say that of all the instructors and seniors I have trained with I have only seen a few that were overly strict with students. By overly strict I mean I have seen seniors make juniors do 20 minutes of wall sits for being late to class or actually hitting them to “tune them up” in class for some minor infraction of etiquette that really should have just warranted a glair or even…at the most…a curse word or two (not a swear…just a “smarten up” kind of thing).
I recall one time that I was personally late for class, as a young brown belt, I had missed a bus and was late as I had to run to the Dojo from Portage and as the bus I took dropped me off farther away that I had planned. A senior took it upon himself to “not hold back” during sparring and landed a hard kick to the solar plexus that pretty much grounded me. Sensei Dingman Saw this and ripped a strip off the senior for nailing me. The senior looked kind of confused as Dingman Sensei told him to hold back and actually said “but he was late”. I had already apologized and explained to Sensei why I was late and as was customary I had done my penance by doing knuckle pushups before entering class. It did not matter that I had a reason for being late I knew that the regular punishment would still be enforced and I was fine with that. The senior had over stepped his place and tried to be overly strict about a situation.
Now the part of the story I should not tell is that once he was done getting ripped a new one and I had gotten my wind back I picked to spar with him again to show him that A) I had no hard feelings even though he was being a bit of a jerk and B) you can knock me down…but I will get right back at you! He became a bit of a mentor to me later and I always liked him, even after his slip.
If you find an instructor that is to strict or a senior to quick to bite your head off or enforce a bit to heavy handed approach to enforcing punishment you have to really think to yourself if you want to “play their game” or find one that will be much more intelligent and thought out!
18. Treating Karate as a business to much! As an instructor you need to go into this insanity knowing you won’t make a ton of money doing it, hell you will be lucky if you can pay your Dojo’s rent most months. It’s a hard endeavor and often thankless. You bust your ass thinking of things to teach, you work with specific people to make them better and try to put on a class that is half way competent over and over and then repeat it again! But you start thinking of it like a business and you are doomed to fail…..well if you think of it ONLY as a business then you are doomed to fail!
You start passing people because you don’t actually want to see them fail and leave, you drop your standards because being too “picky” turns off students and you start handing out belts on a monthly basis, adding stripes and lines in the belt or extra patches to students in the hopes that they wills stay motivated and stick around, then you end up marketing day and night to get even more students, you forget to teach and turn the classes over to juniors so you can focus on marketing and bringing in new students, which of course brings you to a bigger building, and a bigger rent…we need more students, more time spent marketing and you finally end up with a huge building filled with students….learning crap from a student that can barely teach…..but you got a new car, house payments and a big ass building to support so screw quality its time to get paid!
In a perfect world the instructor teaches, and an admin takes care of things like the books, collecting money and paying the rent. Teachers are HORRIBLE business people and business people often don’t make great instructors. First off you need to keep your standards HIGH and not focus on money. If a student is not ready to test you have some work to do, you should not be shoving them through just so you get more money, if the quality is not their the students will start to notice it and they will devalue what they are getting and leave. Don’t treat your dojo like a factory….a belt factory! Let’s face it a belt costs between $10-$20, but you cannot really put a value on great training that is close to that. Keep standards high and let the office manager worry about getting new students and getting the money in!
17. Being far too lax with Etiquette! The flip side to being overly strict is not being strict enough with students. There is a happy medium but we have to look at the whole class and not just one student or a handful when we work with groups. I have seen instructors to scared to enforce etiquette as they fear students wont like it. They came to a KARATE dojo man, not a dance studio! Yes they are paying customers and some instructors NEED that money, but you have to remember that if you let one student do what every they want and interrupt class, you might not Lose that student…but ten others might leave!
For the good of a class you need to be fair, strict at times but remember that you need to enforce the rules for EVERYONE. And like I said, they came to a Karate club for god’s sake…what did they expect? This is especially important when it comes to teaching kids. IN the old days (Breaking one of my rules) we had separate kids classes and when I was in them we did not have the “Play” time that some Dojos have for kids, if we did not line up or screwed around we were hit with a Shinai on the ankle (my excuse for having big ankles to this day). We were kept in line and no one stepped out of line to “have fun”…I actually saw my instructor slap a kid across the face for being to unruly when I was teaching them years later. It still comes as a shock to me and my foundation in karate when I see “Play time” in a Dojo…it makes my very soul cry when I see Karate time turn into KinderKarate!
I get equally upset when I see juniors lip off and talk back to seniors in any setting! I have actually been approached by older people in the past and “bitched” at by them for being to traditional and not having a “warm up” or some such thing. “back in the day” if I had been spoken to in such a way I could have rightfully smashed the person in a Kumite “match” and gotten away with it for “tuning” up the student for their lack of Etiquette…and probably gotten a beer for my efforts! Again, that is a tad excessive but letting juniors and students walk all over you in class or after class is also not acceptable.
The ironic part is that the student walked into the Karate program and should expect some form of traditional etiquette to be enforced, and we may be giving freedom to one student in an attempt to save them from leaving while others leave because of that students behavior. My suggestion, make the traditional etiquette known to all and enforce it equally across the board, and by enforce I mean in an adult and acceptable way!...not beating someone with a stick or kicking them in the guts to enforce a rule that simply could be done by sitting a student down or even dressing them down in front of class.
16. Living in the past/another country! I recall a time in the past that our instructor used to let other instructors teach in the Dojo by invitation. He had a few come out and one time this rather famous Canadian instructor who had trained in Japan came out and taught this “class” to us. Now at the time we had just come out of a particularly interesting time in our history and we were just ramping down our “athletic” Karate career and Sensei was moving away from Sport Karate to a more traditional view of training. We were all young and athletic and probably 80% of us were just off the tournament training and as I recall sharp and quick. This instructor taught a “typical” class and basically kept telling us how great Japan was and how rotten we were. It kind of hurt the Ego but this guy thought we plan sucked!
He blasted us with “in Japan…..” kind of rhetoric and kept telling us that we were horrible, granted he really did not teach us the right way of doing things, he just kept blasting us…not realizing that one of the people in class was a 5 time Canadian Champion and his sister had competed in Japan and beat the Japanese…..he kept up the insults and was really getting on our nerves. It was all about how in the past and Japan it was so much better.
After an hour and a half of this we were finally done, and most of us were rather put off by this moron, his form was horrible when he did the odd demo and he was basically a bully. He hit a few of us and told us that in Japan they would not even flinch if they were hit, after kicking one of my friends in the jewels we figured out that he was full of crap most of the time, no one gets nailed in the junk and just kind of smiles…..no one!
After the class we changed out and I stuck around the waiting area as Sensei Dingman and I often went for coffee between classes (I used to train four times a week twice a day and once a day the rest of the week…Oh, the good old days). The instructor came out of Sensei’s off ice and was chatting with Dingman Sensei and went from bashing students to bashing Japan and how he hated the JKA for being so ridged and how they were all two faced and he went on for about a half hour on how horrible Tanaka was and how their techniques in Japan were crap! Oh, and he was so happy to be back here (in Canada) and away from the horrible people of Japan, and …... how fantastic he thought our techniques were and how great Dingman sensei’s students were….I was completely shocked after an hour and a half of insults and critiques that made it sound like we sucked suddenly we were better than the Japanese.????
Point being this guy lived in the past, and taught as if the present was so horrible. You cannot do this. You can mention your past training but remember; those are memories and have a purpose. The purpose is to improve the training of the present and not to overwhelm your current teaching and training.
15. Not physically adjusting student’s techniques! There was a time when no one would get offended if you adjusted them physically. Granted the physical adjustment was normally done via Smacking, pushing, nudging and the odd grab and move a limb. However in the 90’s it seemed to become culturally taboo to touch another person for any reason and instructors were labelled as predators when they grabbed a student and moved a limb or touched a student’s hips…specific areas became “CODE RED” areas that saw everyone gasp when an instructor touched a student in that area! It became ridiculously hard for an instructor to properly teach a class filled with men and women without being seen as a pervert for doing physical adjustments. The norm became adjusting a student using a Shinai or Bokken or Jo stick and basically touching the student with the proverbial ten foot pole!
I remember a time when Sensei used to grab people by the hips or have them grab his hips and show proper vibration, now even doing this is seen as to intimate…trust me there is nothing intimate about a Karate class in front of 20 people violently rotating someone’s hips or showing them proper vibration….nothing if don’t right!
I think that the lack of physical contact…well other than punching and kicking a partner, has hindered the growth and development of the next generation. We have become Touch-o-phobes in the Karate dojo and we need to stop it. Explain to others that we will be touching you to correct posture, technical aspects of Karate and that we will be doing so for their own good. The use of physical contact should be done to demonstrate the violent rotations that limbs need to make and the violent and dynamic movement that has to occur for Karate to be effective. The nuances of Karate are important to feel as well as demonstrate to student and the new Taboo on touching hinders the ability for an instructor to get the message across to students.
14. Not treating your club like a business at all! When you run a club you need to think with a two track mind, and like I have said before you need to find a good admin that will do one part of the business for you….the business end. But even then you need to realize, as the instructor that you ARE running a business. This means you have to do your part.
I know of an instructor that forgot that this was his business and let his outside habits and life almost kill his organization. He was a fairly high level instructor, a good friend of my instructor and someone that I had also trained with in the past and he almost lost his whole organization. He had a family issue that lead to a divorce and he also developed a drinking problem, hey I am not judging him after all we are all human, but he let it spread to his Dojo and it almost killed it. He started missing classes and he started spending way to much time away “Sick”. He had an affair with a student and it started to affect his club. He had to move from a nice club in a great area to a church basement and then a community club. It took him years to realize that he was killing his club, losing a grip on his life and throwing it all away. To his credit he pulled himself together and got his life back on track and his club became the second biggest club in Winnipeg. He also developed a strong organization and really made it work!
I have also seen instructors spend money foolishly on marketing or throwing money at things that have no way of making any betterment to the business. Sometimes you have to realize that you don’t have specific strengths and that you have to make good business decisions and good personal decisions that will benefit the Dojo and not give in to bad purchases ideas, lack of education and training in specific areas and also keep your personal life out of the business of the Dojo. I have seen my share of Dojo Drama started because people tend to not think of the Dojo as a business and they cripple it with stupidity. As much a place of training and education in the martial arts you also have to be a grown up and think of the business as well.
13. Not using social media and technology enough! I remember when Sensei Dingman decided to put together a Web site and start using technology to provide a new dimension to the Dojo marketing. It was not his strong suit to say the least…but he realized we needed to use internet as an option to market our club to grow and continue into the next generation of students. At the time I had no idea how to make a web site, and at the time it was VERY difficult to do. I had a student that was a “Computer Geek” and proud of it however and I recruited him to generate our clubs web site.
Over the years we have used Emails to contact students and cut down on using paper and we have also used electronic presentations to help us with our marketing and programs. Embracing the new technology has given us a cheaper marketing edge over others who have not used it. We have our own Facebook page and we are looking at ways to really push our ability to reach out to the students and potential students going forwards. If you don’t learn and develop new ideas you soon will sink and fall behind.
12. Demanding Respect! Respect is a very funny things and its something I have kind of informally researched as a student, senior and instructor over the past 30+ years. Some instructors give respect out and treat you as a person right from the get go and others treat you like dirt and continue to do so the whole time you know them. Some want respect and demand it from you, others just go with the flow and others “Command” respect with their actions.
Now people like Dingman Sensei and Yaguchi Sensei never DEMANDED respect for themselves, you just gave it to them. They commanded it with what they did, how they held themselves and the great amount of resepct they gave their students. You just could not help yourself and the odd time that you saw them disrespected you felt it and you reacted to it. The odd time I did see a student disrepsct Sensei you saw the backs of every brown and black belt start to raise and one time I did see a young green belt that had treated sensei poorly actually tossed out the Dojo door by a very upset brown belt the next time Sensei was not in class…his clothing tossed out after him by a Purple belt.
Normally people felt very protective and respected Sensei because of his attitude towards students and his dedication to Karate. However I have also seen the flip side, instructors that are cocky and think that you OWE them respect as they have a black hunk of cloth adorning their midriff! They walk around making horribly disrespectful comments, they care less about students and juniors and feel that they are somehow royalty because of who they are…bullocks! Those that display this kind of attitude are difficult to deal with, need tones of special coddling and basically tire you out with the attitude they have. They demand something they are not willing to give and end up self-destructing and proving the worst of Karate is still out their!
To get respect you must demonstrate regularly that you are willing to give it, you have to live the true Budo way and not be an ass hat about things. You have to listen to people, give back when you can and show a deep level of commitment and respect to Karate itself. You cannot expect and demand respect and wait to see what your hard work has provided for you now that you have “reached your goal”. Being a black belt, and more importantly being an instructor/Senior comes with much more responsibility and requires a specific level of selflessness not selfishness! You have to show what true respect and dedication is, not demand things and act like a baby!
11. Relying on newfangled marketing to much! Sometimes the old way is the best way. We have learned over the years that fliers, handouts, bill boards, signs and other “traditional” forms of marketing….especially word of mouth….work 10 times better than new electronic marketing. Its just a reality that some don’t want to realize.
I once sat down with a “Marketing” guy that had just graduated from the RRCC course on marketing and he was telling me how going 100% electronic was the way of the future. He argued that those that fail to embrace the new marketing “reality” were doomed to fail and we would watch them burn and fall as the new electronic era came into being in the next few years. Hell even the yellow and white pages were going to go fully electronic (of which I agree 100%) but he assured me that the new way and future only way of dealing with marketing was 100% online! Boy was he in for a rude awakening and in short order!
The truth is that even today in 2014 if you fail to use fliers, posters and have great signs you will shoot yourself in the foot! For every $1 we spend on electronic marketing we spend $50 on traditional marketing and it pays off. How do I know this, well we did an informal poll about 10 years ago and asked who saw us on line and who found us through paper and traditional marketing like fitness guides through the city or word of mouth and out of every 100 new students only 1 said they found us through electronic mediums. Over the last five years I have looked at all the new students and done an informal poll of new members and the numbers are not changing at all. Word of mouth is still #1 way to get members and next is posters and mail outs. After that is in traditional media and after that we have electronic media….far far down the list.
An instructor or club that goes 100% electronic is foolish and will fail shortly…especially if they don’t spring for a killer sign out front. If you are hidden away and don’t tell people how to find you and why to find you they wont be able to after a while as you will dry up and blow away! Keep pushing most of your time and effort into traditional media and marketing as the newfangled ways…well they are tried and proven to be about 10% as effective as the old ways!
10. Not Talking enough! I recently read a article suggesting that an instructor start NOT talking in class at all and not demonstrating things, just bark out the odd order and go at it with the students. One of the dumbest things I have ever read from a particularly silly writer that tends to think way to much of himself! Now that Aside, it’s a bad idea to go silent on a class…it will eventually kill the program you are teaching…if you fail to teach it!
A instructor has many jobs and there are many moving parts of a successful class. Part lecturer, part drill sergeant, part cheer leader and part technician! The instructor has to use his voice properly and often to get students to work and to correct form and functionality and reach the body and mind of a student. Now having said that we already know I am not a fan of the lecture format for a class, but I also think that teachers teach in many ways and you MUST find a good balance between not driving students enough and not actually saying a single word. You are a group leader and as such you have to talk about what you are teaching.
People learn at different tempos and in different ways and you need to feel them out and find out what works for them. Essentially we learn by hearing, thinking or doing (very simplistic way of looking at it) but those are the three ways. If you talk only then students don’t get to do, if you just bark out orders and don’t correct then they might get to do it, but they may also do it wrong! Some need to hear every detail of a techniques before they do it…so by cutting out the spoken word…you cut out their learning!
9. Not knowing when to jump ship and move up/on in life! Most Dojos have multiple “Live cycles” that they go through and as long as a instructor pays attention they can surf the cycles very well. So, you start off in a community club/church basement or even your own basement or garage and you build a solid group. You start thinking about moving into a bigger facility and make the leap to a bigger community club that can manage your growth. Then you sit and grow and sit and grow and sit……eventually the twice a week training program at the community club is just not enough time for students to progress and they leave to find a four or five time a week program. and you start to see your long time students bleed off or stagnate with the short training times. If you are lucky you have options to send them a few times a week to train at a Dojo in your organization but even then the stress and pain in the butt of making it across town to the other club loses you a great student. What do you do?
Its probably past due, but its time to commit a few more nights a week of your time, or find someone to help you teach a few more times a week and jump into a store front Dojo! The act of “taking the plundge” is a scary one, but if you refuse to jump into a bigger club when you have the chance and the need you end up struggling in a smaller box than is needed. Think of it like buying new shoes when your feet got to big for your current ones when you were a growing kid. If you always bought and used size 3 adult shoes your whole life, but needed a size 4, then 5, then 6, then eventually 9 you would not be able to wear the size 3 for very long. Growth of a club, be it membership size or ranking of students ends up requiring the growth of the program and the expansion into a new club and newer, more flexible hours of operations or you end up suffocating and stunting the growth of the club artificially.
The opposite is also true in some cases. You have this big club, but for some reason you end up losing membership, but you want to hold onto that big club, you poured tones of money into it and its YOURS. But now you went from 400 members to 50 and you are working as a pizza delivery person to pay the rent, your apartment is now a bed in the back of the club and your life revolves around finding ways to pay next months water and heat bill so your dedicated 50 students can train!
It can be time to dedicate yourself to working your day job, giving up the pizza hut job and just sliding back to a two times a week program in a local community club till the economy turns around. Sometimes it’s a personal responsibility that takes you away from being a full time instructor. You have to look at the situations you are in and make smart choices, do you move your program, take on new teaching partners or ride it out for a bit and see what happens. But you cannot be scared of change for the good of the students and yourself.
8. Teaching with far too much EGO! Some people live in the past glory, some people have delusions of grandeur and others just think their feet don’t stink (And by feet I mean…well you get it). The truth is that when you teach as if you are THE best you make the class all about you…and forget its not about you, its about the students you are teaching!
I personally don’t give a rats shiny end if you can do the full splits, can kick way over my head, if you are a Kumite king or kata EMPEROR…if you can’t improve my Karate…..you are pretty much useless to me! I have trained under far to many Ex-athletes that treat Karate as a way to reconnect with past glory or people that actually believe that they are some kind of Gods and that what they can do or have done means one iota to me beyond maybe…and just maybe being able to pass on some of that to me! And by passing on to me I mean by instructing me…not by some kind of weird osmotic exchange of talent that does not exactly exist!
Teaching should be, in the correct form, the mostly humbling slap in the face reality check a instructor can get. It’s a window into your own flaws and weakness. You cannot teach, care about your students and do so with a Ego protruding from your psyche. You have to teach with a passion and compassion to the students and love what you are doing. You can’t do this if it’s purely a self-serving situation for you.
I remember training under a senior and one time he told me that he loved teaching because his students adored him and he felt the awe and complete worship that he got from them. Suffice it to say He may have been mentally ill and probably needed help more than any human being I had ever met…but I went with it. He taught things he loved and left the fluffy details to the other instructors and showed up to put on his bleach white Gi and his worn black belt and strum around like a peacock so his students could rain praise and love on him…well not really but that’s what went on in his head! A instructor should be very self-aware of their weaknesses and try to make them strengths and they should teach knowing they have flaws and students are there to learn and grow…not praise them and worship at their feet.
7. Going too big too soon! You start your program and you get 30 active members….WHOO HOOOO…then you rent a store front and pay 130K to renovate hand in your notice at work and go all in…you may be mentally ill! You have to be smart for a few reasons…first of which is your own wallet and family. You have to make smart business decisions that help your family and also keep money flowing in. You cannot just throw caution to the wind every time your passion directs you to! There are tons of pit falls, hurdles and a myriad of things you need to know before you move a community club or small group based program into a expensive standalone program in a store front. First and foremost is martial arts done well don’t pay very well. You wont be a millionaire running a Karate program unless you have a bunch of rich morons throwing money at you all day…in which case I want to read your blog and figure out how to get that kind of cash dropped on me!
A program and instructor owes it to the students that dedicate their time to grow naturally and to be sustainable but also to remember they MUST build for the good of the students, but at a rate that does not cause the program to fold. I remember a Goju guy in the city many decades ago that opened a program in a community club, a 10 week program. He was very good at teaching and charismatic as heck! He had a club filled with students, 50 member in the first 10 weeks and he taught them good Karate, but he was a horrible and impatient instructor that took the 10 week program (once a week) and with in the first month and a a half had already committed to opening a standalone programing a strip mall….being the most expensive option but one he thought he could handle. His thinking was that if he had 50 students the first month…what would have come 10 weeks’ time…well he had 20 really die hard students looking at him fail!
The program failed because he jumped to soon and relied on current statistics to suggest success later on. You need to develop a track record of solid seniors, good junior population and a solid program for marketing and for development and then you need to be even more cautious about what you do. The Goju guy lost his shirt, was sued by the land lord and filed for bankruptcy and had to find a new job after he gave up his trucking job to teach. Be smart and don’t jump in before you have a plan and the right timing.
6. Abandoning the old ways for the new ways! It is no secret that I see myself as a fairly staunch traditionalist and hard ass when it comes to new ideas and training methods. I kind of shy away from change in the sense of training and it takes a LONG time for me to change the direction of my own training and teaching. I however do see value in new ideas, better methods and ways of exploring training and functionality that may benefit students and or instructors.
I have seen far to often some people jumping on different trends when it comes to stretching, training, different kinds of work outs and such and abandoning the core basics of training. Essentially, or in a nut shell, Karate training consists of Kihon waza, Kata and Kumite. There are however some auxiliary training components that go along with training. Things like Makiwara work, different kinds of partner and individual drills and other impact training. Some more modern training includes elastic band training, Tabata style conditioning and use of the heavy bag and other things you hit! But far to often instructors begin swaying away from Makiwara training to go and hit a punching bag exclusively or they stop doing traditional three step and move to doing some kind of Kumite drills that they feel are “more realistic” and more beneficial…and the end results are always the same…the students Kihon waza suffers and they water down Karate training.
I once visited a “new age Shotokan” Dojo in Seatle to train when I was visiting BC. The guy swore up and down he was with a branch of the JKA and did Shotokan Karate…but he did warn me it was “…with a twist” I showed up with a Gi and belt and started getting dressed when he said “no the shorts and tee shirt you are wearing are fine” and suggested that putting on a Obi with the emphasis on me being a Dan holder would be “intimidating to others and would make training difficult for some”……????? Okay, Im a go with the flow kind of guy (not really but lets assume I was) and figured I would just see what happened.
I was wearing a pair of shorts and light training shoes that I used to like to train in and a JKA tee shirt….no Gi and no Obi…..it would be weird to do Kata in a club looking like this. The others were dressed pretty much the same as I was and the instructor had on a pair of sweat bands on his wrists that said “KIAI” on them…kind of tacky? Yes it was. They did not bow in, they simply clapped hands and shock each others hand to start…weird? Yes it was. It just seemed to get weirder and weirder from their too.
Warm ups were kind of a shadow boxing mish mash as the instructor called out the “move” you were supposed to focus on. “JAB, Font kick after a cross attack”….I was LOST! Then they said okay time for pad work. The instructor grabbed a few Thai pads and others picked up coach mits or a kicking shield and we practiced kicking the pads. Now that I liked….but he was not correcting form as much as he was barking out “harder” or “Faster”…no turn your hip or anything like that. I nailed the thai pads and he jerked back and looked at me like I had just shot him…>”WOW, that’s power” he said…and I had not hit it as hard as wanted to. I was kind of shocked that he said that as most times my instructor would have pointed out that I used to much power and did not turn my hip enough…But hey praise is good too right??? Well not at the sacrifice of technical instruction.
Now its important to point out the guy had said he was a 5th Dan in Shotokan karate and at the time I was a Ikkyu still so he was WAY higher rank than I was. But he taught like it was his first year in Karate! Next up we were to face each other for light sparring. As I did not have “Impact gloves” I could not spar but got to relax and watch from the side lines with the instructor. As it turned out IMPACT gloves were boxing gloves and they wore shin and instep pads and head gear from boxing too. The “Kumite” that followed can only be described as messy chaos! They jabbed and kick boxed in a pit pat way toe to toe with little movement and no evasion…I mean why bother moving if the worst thing that happens is your head pillow gets hit by their hand pillows right?
We finished the work out with some jump rope for Cardio and then stretched out…some going to some home made strange looking leg stretcher that while it worked…kind of looked scary! I thanked the instructor with a hand slap, like everyone else and we changed in the change room…well I put on a different tee shirt as I had no other clothing. I asked the instructor if they did Kata and if they ever wore Gis or used rank belts. His answers floored me. They did not use the old Kata as he felt that they did not promote good real life skills. They tended to shy away from ranking and only one of his students had a “yellow belt” that was awarded to him to show he had been training long enough to have been a senior..but that he had never taught him Kata. While the groups basics were definitely Karate and not some Korean form of fighting or Thai…they were NOT Shotokan.
I went home thinking that was the strangest new age Karate work out EVER and that tradition was better. And also that the ironic part of the new age training has been a complete lack of growth and fighting skills in the students. Basically if they got into a fight….they could probably out run the attacker as they were fit…but dear God don’t stand and fight!
5. Treating students like slaves/abusing and hitting students! I have seen it all, from an instructor telling me to carry his bags at camp because that’s what a good junior does…..to instructors using students as punching bags and hook kicking them in the head, a Judo guy using a white belt as a rag doll to a senior telling a junior to sell him a car a “a good price” or he would not move on in Karate with out a limp….which is called “ASSAULT” by the way!
Students pay a fee to train and use the facility and your knowledge of Karate to grow, not to be an indentured slave to the instructor and seniors! I remember going to a camp and the senior who told me to carry his bags was serious. I kind of looked at him as I carried my own bags and said “maybe after I get Sensei’s bags” and he shut up quick. But I did note that he did NOT carry his own bags, after I offered to carry Sensei’s he ordered the next junior in line to haul his bags and a ice chest to his cabin. I remember thinking that this guy was a complete JERK! In Ottawa a junior offered to carry my bag to my room once and I got very upset and asked how old he thought I was…Im a grown ass man and not a OLD Man I can carry my own damn bags!
I also remember a time when we had a visitor from Hong Kong that brought his instructor with him as they flew from BC to Ontario for seminars. The visitor had trained with Dingman Sensei years before when he had studied at the University in Winnipeg, he moved back to Hong Kong and was selected by Kanazawa Sensei’s group to accompany this instructor as a translator while in Canada. Sensei opened his doors for the instructor and his students to train and as a thank you the instructor taught a class for all of us. IT WAS HORRIFYING! The instructor had us do mostly Kumite drills with the students and when he was demonstrating he picked on a senior named Kanigawa who was a super nice guy. The instructor kicked him in the groin, punched him in the face…nailing him right in the chin and then the worst…after tossing him around and beating him up, he KO’d the guy with a hook kick to the back of the head!
I remember standing about six feet away and the instructor side stepped an attack and hooked his leg out and past Kanigawas head and then snapped it back, hitting him right in the back of the head with his heel! The lights went out for a few seconds as the defenseless students legs buckled and he fell to his knees totally out. The instructor let out a little chuckle and slapped the students face a bit till Kanigawa regained his marbles. After the instructor left Dingman Sensei called all the young instructors aside and said “I never want to see any of you do SH*$ like that our Dojos or you are out” and he walked away to go for lunch. He was nice to the instructor but firm with us…that stuff was not Karate…it was abuse!
4. Sticking to close to tradition! There is a time and place for traditions! I am a hard ass when it comes to sticking to tradition and at one point my seniors used to turn to me all the time for ideas on sticking to tradition. I thank God that many of the old seniors who have returned remember the good old days and know tradition very well because its tiresome being the only guy that is asked questions. However being to traditional in your teaching and training can stifle new ideas coming in and if training in JKA karate has taught me anything its to be open to change for no other reason than its change!
Traditional training in this case is Makiwara training, use of specific special weights, Kumite, Kata and Kihon training, basic stretching and the whole tradition of etiquette that we adhere to. However there are other ideas and systems that we should explore and look to so we can improve our training.
The Japanese used to be the single most powerful Karate force in the world. They took every single championship and they had good, strong and solid Karate. NO one was supposed to be able to upset the Japanese and their traditions in the world of Karate…then something strange happened! The Europeans (British mainly) who were not hand cuffed to traditional training began introducing conditioning and sport training from other western training elements and sports and began catching up and even passing the Japanese in competition, then the Americans began doing the same. It was wholesale new training that took over the arena and the Japanese saw their edge wilt away. So, what did they do...they adapted but kept it a secret.
90% of the time they were looking at new ways to get to better places in their training. Better conditioining, working on better training, rehabilitation, speed and explosiveness training and a myriad of other aspects that they were taking in from other sports and western training…but they taught the westerners that they had to stick to tradition or they would fail in Karate (okay, that’s the way a instructor from Toronto told me, but he was bit of a “chip on his shoulder” kind of guy). The Japanese again found themselves doing better mixing tradition with the new form of training. The balance between tradition and modernization is key to growth and development.
3. Dating or flirting with students! It goes without saying that it’s a No No to mix business with pleasure and it’s a no brainer that the “boss” does not ask out the employees, Generals don’t marry privates and you need to realize that with great power comes great responsibility…okay spidy! Clichés aside it is very bad for a “business owner” or even an employee of a business to start trying to pick up girlfriends/boy friends at work…and that’s what dating a student would be like. If it goes bad you lose a student for sure and probably a few friends of the students…and the respect of everyone else in the organization. Its however all to common a think in martial arts training to see and I have seen it a LOT of times. People who should know better acting like teens in heat and making an ass of themselves and possibly losing members and the respect of others (last part is a for sure thing) and in some cases treading far to close to getting charged.
Lets face it the Dojo is a intimate setting, we work out and we sweat together, trudging away at this crazy traditional martial art and often we are touching and grabbing each other…granted the way you are SUPPOSED to do it is not very intimate in the romantic sense but hey to each their own! The key component that makes it a dangerous playground for those that don’t have the barriers to keep personal and romantic relationships apart from their professional or martial endeavor is that those that are afflicted with a lack of control tend to often be those in a place of power and traditional respect…and that’s like giving crack to a junky in some cases and telling them its bad form to go smoke it!...its getting smoked!
Two situations that come to mind are a senior of mine who was in a bad spot in his life and took it upon himself to go hit on a younger lady that was training in his club while his relationship was on the rocks. He stalked the young girl at work and propositioned her while he was a bit tipsy (Read smashed). My first issue is of course that the senior had no right to hit on a younger girl who had shown no interest in him at all and was MUCH MUCH younger than he was…secondly he did it at her place of work while intoxicated (Read SMASHED) and could have cost her the job she needed. He is very lucky he did not get booted out of the organization and or lost all his students over this one. But we did lose the student that he had jaded with his advances…a shame, she actually had more potential than he had.
The second situation was much worse but did not happen in my organization. It was a local group, affiliated with us. The head instructor was a friend and protégé of my instructors and had earned a fairly high rank in our style. He also took it upon himself to hold an annual Christmas gathering for his students at his home….MAJOR issues with that right off the hop…..he served them booze and tried to “Get to know them” off the floor. I had never seen such a thing before in my life. It is important to note that the instructor in question taught at a university and a private club and most of his students were 19-25 years of age and he was…well not.
After a few years of the party going on it became known that the party started off as a social gathering and as students left he tended to scope out those that were left behind and one time at least was caught in the bed room taking advantage of a way to drunk student. The incident sent a shock wave through the organization but he “took care of it” pretty much and the suggestion was that the situation was not as bad as it appeared and one persona said that the instructor was drunk too and they just did not know what they were doing…well first off you don’t drink with younger people in a party and let it come to this. That’s just bad Mojo.
I was also told of a time, third hand, that a senior instructor in Ontario once told a brown belt lady that if she did not put out she would never get her black belt….my question, if those are the guide lines for becoming a black belt in your organization…who wants it?
I have had girlfriends of mine join the club and train for a while but I have never dated anyone from the clubs. It just seemed strange as I think of the Dojo as my shrine and my church to go hunting for a girlfriend in my students or fellow students. I only know of one or two people who dated fellow students and it worked out for the better in the long run. Just to be safe if you hear or see an instructor trolling for dates on the floor…turn around…walk out and leave…find a more professional club to go to.
2. Adjusting students just Cuz or moving that hand ¼ inch cuz that’s how its done! First off let me tell you that this is often not because the hand NEEDS that ¼ inch move…its because the instructor is a butt head and really just wants to look smart or look like they know more than you. The truth is that gross composition movements may be required, like dropping an elbow down in Shuto or tucking a hip down in Kokutsu, but rotating a fist 1/8 an inch in Oi zuki or pushing a knee to bend 1 more degree is not going to make ANY difference in reality.
Adjusting someone’s posture takes years of training to understand first the karate techniques and then to understand the human body. To often I have seen good intended but under educated instructors move people around and not realize that they are making useless adjustments or in some cases making a worse situation out of the whole thing. Also they don’t understand that everyone is built slightly different, be it mental or physical and some adjustments that are made don’t make a lick of difference.
I remember taking a class in applied Kinesiology and the professor
said that unless a movement is redirected by more than about 10 degrees the
outcome will remain the same. So if you hit a ball with equal force three times
and the angle and such is all the same on impact the resultant change will be negligible
until you make a change greater than 10%.....Which also brings me to another
class that Del Phillips taught us out at summer camp one year. He stated that
correcting someone arm movement in such a way as the change is so small that
you can’t really notice it unless you look for it…side by side with the original…the
change is a bloody waste of time.
1. Not being a student! One of the major mistakes I have seen is when an instructor stops being a student, they stop growing and learning. That does not mean that you have stopped training, its just that you shut down and you stop accepting new ideas. One of my favorite Japanese words is Shoshin, it means “Beginners mind” and I use it a lot. The idea is that you should always look for new things and even look at old things with “new eyes” focusing on always looking at something from new angles, change things up and realize that as much as you know about a aspect of Karate…someone knows better than you…and when you think that someone IS you…well its not anymore cuz someone just figured out things you never thought of.
Instructors need to go at things with Fresh eyes often
and review, research, search and practice ideas and methods foreign and new to
them so they can keep hungry and focus on keeping a proper perspective for
training. Otherwise you get bored and classes become repetitive and bleak! Keep
it fresh and keep digging.
