Old topic, but I am new here so I thought I'd drop in my $0.02. Being a Kyokushin guy, we usually train without gloves. That said, we still use them sometimes. Glove use, all by itself does not indicate you are in a mcdojo. I actually wrote a whole blog article on mcdojos but here are a few signs you may want to change schools: 1. Lengthy contracts are required. 2. The sensei never spars with his students for fear of causing them terrible injury. 3. The sensei has far too many dans (degrees) to his black belt for his age. (Such as an 7 dan 30 year old.) 4. The sensei claims to have a black belt in far too many martial arts styles. 5. There are prepubescent black belts. There are exceptions to these and any one on its own is not a "smoking gun" but when you start to find several warning signs then you definitely have some thinking to do on whether you are going to get the best training you can at your current location.
