Lupin1

Disclaimer-- I've never opened my own dojo or even my own business before except for a lemonaid stand when I was a kid, so this is all just advice garnered from my observations of other people in your shoes. Take it or disregard it as you see fit. What ever you do, find an instructor in your art and KEEP TRAINING after opening your own dojo. Don't let the responsibilities of owning a dojo get in the way of your own training. Nidan and Shodan are still pretty beginner levels and if you leave it at that, your students are going to catch up to you very quickly. Keep learning and advancing yourselves-- study more often and have fewer classes at your own dojo for the first years and as you personally advance as well as gain more students, you can start concentrating more on them and go to formal classes yourselves less and less, but NEVER stop going. A good sensei is always growing and learning so really only the most dedicated and long-term student should ever catch up to him/her. As for the business end of this, especially since from your story I'm assuming you're both very young-- don't worry about buying an actual dojo building yet. With this economy and with the credit you probably have at your age, that's a HUGE risk. New dojos around here have been closing like screen doors in a tornado lately. Start by seeing if you can rent a big room in a community center or local school a few nights a week while you get started and people get to know you and you concentrate on continuing your own training and get some regular day jobs to support yourselves for now. Then as the years go by, you save money and build your credit, THEN you can worry about buying a building and doing this full time. They say one of the biggest risks for new businesses is growing too fast. Take it nice and slow and safe and I'm sure eventually you'll get to where you want to be.

So as some of you know I'm in a sort of transition point in my life right now. I graduated college last year with a teaching degree and haven't been able to find a teaching job, so I've been doing day-by-day substituting work and from what I can see, there aren't very many teaching jobs opening up and so next year looks like it was going to be a lot of the same. So I applied to AmeriCorps (the domestic Peace Corps) and after a very lengthy selection process (I applied in September) I just got an acceptance e-mail on Friday to the NCCC program for next year. NCCC (the National Civilian Community Corps) is a very unique branch of AmeriCorps in that it's only for youth 18-24 and it's modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps of the Great Depression and the US Military. You wear a uniform, do daily PT, and go where you're assigned and your unit can be deployed on a moments notice if an event occurs in the US that needs your help (earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorist attacks-- anywhere they need emergency volunteers). They have five campuses in every area of the US. I was assigned to the campus in Mississippi which covers the entire southeast region. I'd go down to the main campus for a month's training and then my team of 8-12 of us would be sent out to somewhere in the southeast that needs volunteers-- it can be building houses, tutoring in schools, clearing hiking trails, helping people file for financial assistance-- anything. And we do each project for 6-8 weeks and then go back to campus for a week for debriefing, a little R&R and preparing for our next assignment before we head out on that one. I definitely think it'd be a good experience and now's the perfect time in my life to do something like this since with the economy it doesn't seem like I'm going to be starting my career this coming year anyway. The only thing I'm sad about is that I'm going to have to leave karate for that 10 months (more if I choose to re-up for a second year) even though I just started. It doesn't start til August, so I'll probably be able to get my blue belt before I leave and I'll be able to attend a class or two during Christmas break to keep my memory fresh, but it is sad having to leave right when I'm really starting to get back into it and bring myself back up to a higher level. But part of doing a service program is making sacrifices, I guess.

Woah. So he not only wants you to learn a complete kata in 10 days, but he wants you good enough at it that you can act like a show off without looking foolish? I'd say that's asking a little much. My sensei probably would forbid us to enter a competition with a kata we've only been doing for 10 days because he'd be positive we'd make him look bad (and we probably would). I mean, it's up to you, but I probably wouldn't do it. I'd start working on the kata, but wait for the next competition to enter with it.

I want to cut my hair really short because I'm sick of having to put it up and it getting caught everywhere and being everywhere, but I hate going through that middle stage when I want to grow it out again. Ugg.

Are there any kata you already know? Is there a reason you need to do one of those two?

There's a school around here that has a gift shop. The weird thing is you have to be a student to shop there, though. My mom went in there looking to buy a uniform for me for Christmas one year and they told her that I had to be a student for her to buy me something there. And I always thought money was money... I noticed that most of the really good schools don't advertise as much. Maybe because they're not worrying about hiring an advertising agent to put cool ads everywhere and make flashy webpages that don't give any information about the actual program but look cool. Many of the really good programs are run out of basements and community centers. I know my instructor purposely doesn't advertise for several reasons. First, he wants to keep the numbers down since it's a free program. Second, he knows he's only going to get serious students because you really have to go out of your way to find the program and get the information on it. Third, he's trying to run things as close to "old school Okinawa" as possible in this society and in old school Okinawa the instructors didn't seek out students, the students sought out the instructors. I mean, I know it's different for us because it IS a free program and most schools are businesses and need to make money to continue operating and so I know our way isn't better than other ways. I just like it for me and I feel lucky to have it.

I agree, GO YANKEES! And this is from someone born and raised a half hour north of Boston. Boy do I catch a lot for that...

Hey! That's the kata I'm working on right now! (sorry, just thought I'd share)

I'm not sure how realistic any knife-knife combat is. I don't know many people who aren't criminals who carry around anything bigger than a pocket knife. If someone's mugging you, he might have a knife, but I doubt you will and I doubt you'll have it out and ready to do those moves. And all that attacker had to do was step in and thrust is knife into that dude's stomach while he was doing his whole cat-fight slapping routine. Just doesn't look very realistic to me.

I always hated kiai-ing when I was little (we don't do it in the adult class for some reason, but we did it in the kids' class). I'm not all that shy, but I still probably wouldn't kiai very loudly if we were made to. I just don't like being loud. I hate making a lot of noise for what I see to be no reason. I was never one to cheer at sporting events and I always make fun of those girls who feel the need to yell "woo" randomly while dancing or drinking. And kiai-ing just seemed that same way to me-- like a pointless loud noise in an otherwise quiet room. It's not that I have trouble sceaming-- I'm famous for being able to yell over a cafeteria full of elementary school students (I've had good vocal training) but I still have trouble bringing myself to scream without a purpose and I'm not very good at the whole imagining thing.

I wouldn't call it that. It's sort of like when you go to a car dealership and they give you a free trial run of the car where you just drive around the block and come back and it only takes like three minutes and then they start pressuring you to buy the car with all the indepth knowledge you should have gained from your three minute ride in it. As opposed to when my mother really wanted a PT Cruiser and the dealership let her borrow one for a week to try it out first (my dad worked at the dealership). She loved it for the first day or two and then after that she absolutely hated it. If all she was going on was a three minute ride around the block, she would have bought and hated it after the first few days. I think it's unfair for a karate school to expect anyone to commit to any contracts without giving them at least a month to test things out. I like what a lot of schools do where you can buy a cheap package with like one or two months of regular classes and a uniform so you can try it for a fair amount of time and if you don't like it it hasn't cost you an arm and leg, but you're still paying for it so it's fair to the school, too. And I think that those lessons should be in the normal setting with the rest of the class. Last thing you want is to spend a thousand bucks or so on a one year contract only to find out you absolutely hate everyone in the class and can't stand being there or the classes are run in such a way where you don't learn anything.

I guess in my particular style lineage is pretty straight forward. There were a handful of Americans who studied with Master Shimabuku in the 60s and 70s who came back and really contributed to Isshinryu in America and who are still very well known. Most Isshinryu instructors today learned from one of them or someone who learned from one of them. Pretty straight forward at this point in our history.

Wow. I can't believe they let him be the head judge when one of his students is competing. Isn't that like a conflict of interests or something? That shouldn't be allowed. Hearing stories of these tournaments is making me more and more glad that my school doesn't enter them very often.

I think for him it's more that he changed schools and his new school has different standards. It's hard when schools all have different standards. The school I'm at now has pretty high standards in order to get black belt and I know if I worked hard and got up to 4th or 3rd kyu at my school and then switched schools and my new school wanted to hand me a black belt right off the bat, I'd feel cheated. You want to feel like you earned your black belt and if you've been working towards one standard of black belt and then all of a sudden someone has a lower standard and wants to just hand you one, it can cheaper your sense of accomplishment in achieving that black belt. I understand what he's saying, although I don't have many ideas on how to handle it. If it were me, I'd see if I could continue training at the new school, but explain that since you did the majority of your work with your old instructor, you want to get your black belt from him. Be sure to explain it's a matter of him having trained you and so you want to allow him to give you your black belt, not that you don't respect your new school. Then after you train with your new school and you feel you're ready to test for black belt, see if you can arrange with your old instructor for you to go back there just to test and, if you pass, receive your shodan from him. If they're the same style, it shouldn't be a problem as long as you word it in a way that doesn't insult your new school (unless they're really commercial schools and money's an issue. All I know is the old school Isshinryu scene where everyone's worked with everyone else and they're all in cahoots with training the new generation and all the Masters have trained together and know each other and respect each other's teaching and students and stuff. I don't know how all these more commercial dojos work). That's what I'd do, anyway.

Yay! Another girl! We can always use more of those. Welcome!

Remember-- your instructor doesn't bite (at least I hope not). There's no harm in asking your instructor what's going to be on the test, how it's going to be formated, and anything else you want to know. Instructors want you to pass, so I'm sure if you just ask he'd be happy to tell you exactly what you need to work on so there are no surprises the day of the grading.

Haha. I'm sure when he said we could ask him anything he didn't really mean ANYTHING. Welcome, Matt!

You mean you can actually see the eye chart? Lucky! All I see when I look an an eye chart without glasses is the white wall with maybe a little black smudge where the E is. All the other letter blur to the point they don't exist. I wear glasses to do karate. I've had them knocked off already once or twice (I've only been back to karate for 2 1/2 months), but my eyes don't like contacts (I wore them for a year in high school and they completely irrated my eyes the whole time and moved around on them and stuff) so I guess I don't have much choice. I guess as long as we're careful with them...

Yay! Tonight's my first class wearing my (kinda) new belt! Sure, I'm still the lowest in the class, so it doesn't really matter, but still! Squee!

When I get my black belt (a few years from now) I plan on getting a kataaro belt. They're cotton (although they do offer a satin covered black belt-- very expensive) and are very well made and good and thick. I may even get my brown belt from them since at my school we're brown belts for a year and a half to two years, so a good quality brown belt would be worth the extra 10 bucks. http://www.kataaro.com/Default.aspx

Unfortunately I think it also has to do with being the only female in the class. But I've noticed the past few weeks that if I hit THEM harder, they're more likely to go harder on me. I'm pretty big and strong for a woman and not some weakling who doesn't want to break a nail or whatever and they're starting to realize that. Haha. I punched my sensei in the head last week. He was using me as uki and he blocked my right hook punch to the head and he was like "now what happens if she comes in with a left?" so I did and his block missed and I got him right in the head (not hard, though-- I think his head hurt my hand more than my hand hurt his head). And I immediately apologized really quietly and he said it was his own fault.

Congrats, hx!

That's crazy dude. I've only ever tried point sparring once in my life and that was in my own dojo and we were allowed to make head contact because, well, that's what we learn. I probably wouldn't have entered a competition when I didn't know all the rules. I know figuring it out as he went worked for Daniel-san, but competitions seem to be overly cautious nowerdays just like everything else. You gotta let guys be guys and I see nothing wrong with some light head contact and moderate body contact in a contact sport as long as you're wearing the right gear. Maybe stick to the kinda stuff your dojo does like kata or whatever. Or ask your instructor if you all can do some sparring just to help learn what to do for competitions.

You guys do stripes though, right? So I guess maybe getting your first stripe or two is how you prove yourselves in the beginning.

Well, my class only has seven people in it and they're rarely ever all there (the average class is around four people) so it's hard for anyone to ignore anyone else, so I guess I can't relate to that. I do have to say that the guys are starting to be more rough with me, though. Because I'm the only girl in the class, especially a girl beginner, they were almost afraid to even touch me at first. But now that I'm getting a little higher up there and getting better and I'm hitting them harder, they're starting to treat me a little more like an equal and they're hitting me harder and faster when we do partner stuff.