Squawman

I started to get cauliflower ear and it hurts. How many wear ear guards and what is a good brand name?

Yeah, you need to find out what the $115 is for. It sounds like a load of you-know-what if they just come out and tell you you have to pay it. If they didn't tell you up front and you didn't sign anything AND they can't give a good reason why, then you should just walk. We are getting to the point of having to tell students that we are raising their monthly rates by $5 or $10 dollars because of inflation which I think is totaly different than saying "give me $115 bucks extra a year if you want to stay."

I was just wondering how other schools were doing with summer retention. Are alot of students taking the summer off and what kind of special activities do you do in the summer? i.e. camps, picnics... We seem to have alot of students go on hold for the whole summer, this summer more than the recent past. We heard that if the economy is good then people tend to take bigger vacations. But what ever it is it sure is a pain to try and get them back at the end of summer.

A program director is very important. Actually, you should think about having a program director before you get any more instructors. While you are out on the floor teaching you have somebody selling for you. They can make the calls to set up lessons for new students and also help keep a good grasp on how many students are coming in and how many quit . There are many different things a program director can do and they can free up your time to focus on classes and the other bussiness of running a school. I would make it simple for paying the person. Salary and some commission from students that sign up.

What you try to do is get around to every student at least 3 times during class and give them a quick word of encouragemt or comment on their technique while also using their name. This can be easy if you only have a few students in class but when you get around 20 or so then you really have to work at it. And the hardest part is finding something ecouraging to say because you are always seeing the things they are doing wrong. They have to be doing something right even if its keeping their hands up. Praise, correct, praise. Also, you need to have enough instructors so you can keep the student to teacher ratio to about 6:1.

I got my Adidas uniform from https://www.heimas.com They had good prices and fast delivery. The thing that amazed me about some uniforms is the price. There are some for $300. For that much it better do the fighting for you.

I talked to a Brazillian Jiu-jitsu Black belt one time and he said he sparred a pressure point guy before. He told him he could do all his pressure points during the match. The Jiu-jitsu guy took him down and held him to the ground and then he said he could see these fingers slowly crawling up his shoulder trying to do a pressure point. He said it was a very funny sight.

It sounds like a butterfly kick which in a sense is a horizontal cartwheel. You see alot of kung fu guys doing them. I have tried and they are pretty hard but not impossible to do. I actually have a great video explaining how to do it but it's pretty hard to explain it in writing. There are web sites for trick kicks like bilang.com

Alot of women don't want to take the regular MA class because it's just not for them and I will agree with them, although I have alot of women in class. But women do want to know self defense. As Beka stated a women should know how to get out from underneath a man and I agree. I think a person should know how to fight off an attacker but I also think that you would be doing a person alot of disservice if you didn't show them how to keep from getting attacked in the first place. Men want to control women by intimidation either with verbal threats or a weapon and women need to learn how to take control of a situation. 80% - 90% of the time you can talk your way out of a confrontation so why don't self defense classes focus on that huge percentage and not the little 10% - 20%. I can teach a person how to get out of a wrist grab 4 or 5 different ways but when the adrenalin is flying can they actually do it? I teach a class called EZ Defense which was developed by Bill Kip and Peyton Quinn. The class is totally different than any other self defense class around and we have excellent success with them. Not in terms of people saying that they fought people off but that they have the self confidence to take control of a situation if they are confronted. I even teach kids from 4 yrs old to 15 yrs old doing the same seminar just varying it to suit the age. My biggest concern is that people with a black belt have a false sense of security and that if they are not trainned in real life senarios then they probably cannot defend themselves on the street. Anyway thats my 2 cents and I will give the web address for EZ Defense and also my e-mail if you want to talk about it more. https://www.fastdefense.com/ezdefense.htm eflener2004@yahoo.com

We have physical requirements at each belt rank (i.e. push ups & sit ups). I was wondering if you instructors talk to your students about nutrition. Like good things to eat and what to stay away from and maybe some basic biology on what food does to the body.

I kind of have a problem with push ups as discipline. If a kid associates push ups as punishment then how do you approach push ups a way to get stronger which is a good thing to do? If I have an unruly student I tell them to shape up or sit out. If you have to sit them out then have the whole class do something really fun so the student wants to come back to class. If the behavior continues then you need to sit down with the parent and student and tell them that they are disturbing the whole class and if it continues then they will have to train somewhere else. This is only for extreme situations.

Buddy Day. Students bring in how ever many friends they want to and you do just a basic class. The kids are in their uniforms and the friends are in street clothes. Hopefuly the friends also bring in their parents to watch but if they don't the parents have to sign a small permission slip so they at least know they are doing it. Then at the end of the class you pass out postcards for free trials and things like that.

Now if only we can get this thinking into some of the parents of martial art students. I don't know how many times that a student quits because the parent says the kid "just doesn't want to come anymore". And I don't mean that the kid puts up big screaming fight when its time to go they just say that they don't feel like going so the parent lets them quit. I read one way that an instructor deals with it is he says if the kid wanted to quit school would you let them? Then why would you let them quit martial arts? There are just as many benifits to martial arts as there are in school.

When I work my upper body with weights the stretch I like to do is puting my feet a little wider than shoulder width and then lock my hands behind my back. Then bend over at the waist and let my arms fall over my head. It stretches your biceps, shoulders, chest and forearms. I will also do this when I'm stretching my legs. I have my legs wide and stretching my hamstrings then I just come up and put my hands behind my back and then back down letting hands go over the head. It's a good multi purpose stretch. Another good one is sitting on the floor, legs out straight, hands behind me with palms flat on the floor. Then I walk my hands backward as far as possible. Flexibility and strength are the keys to injury prevention.

These are excellent questions. If a person pulls a knife or gun and says "give your money" then the best thing to do is comply. If the person pulls a gun or knife and says come with me or I'll kill you then the best thing to do is run or if you have to, stay and defend yourself. Situation B is always going to be worse than situation A. And in most cases the person doesn't even have a weapon, all they have to do is verbally threaten the victim and they will comply because they think that if they don't do what he says that they will get hurt. The best example of this is the girl in Florida. The guy didn't show a weapon but all he did was say something to the girl and lead her away. Now she's dead. If you are looking for some reading material I would suggest The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker or Strong on Defense.

I was wondering if there was some kind of Jiu-Jitsu organization. TaeKwonDo has the World TaekwonDo federation and things like that where you can be certified same with Karate. If I went into a Jiu-jitsu school what should I be looking for in certification.

Ugh... friggin' belts That's how I feel sometimes. I'm a 3rd degree in TKD and really don't want to test any more but to certify black belts through the WTF I need a 4th dan. I also started to get into Jiu-Jitsu in the last year which has no forms or goofy crap like that. Pretty much you get your next belt if you can roll with that rank and show you are equal in the ability. Like I've said before, a rank is worthless if you can't back it up.

Nobody really needs any certification to be an instructor in the martial arts. Anybody can buy a uniform and belt from a catalog, invent their own style and teach. But the question is, how much credibility do they have. If you are a blue belt and I walk into your school with no expirence then I probably wouldn't have any problem learning from you. But if I came into your school and had trained before I would probably ask myself "what the hell does a blue belt know". Especially in TKD because it is so popular around the world. My advice to you is to find another place to train, gain alot of expirence and get your black belt. Then find some small place (like a church basement or rec center) and start to build a student base.

I don't think this has to do with homo or hetero. It's just a very good question. And I hope with all the information given about AIDS that people still don't believe that only gay people have it. Although look at all the info on how bad smoking is and how many people still do it.

http://www.nwcn.com/statenews/washington/stories/NW_022404WABvoyeurEL.2580a4b1.html

I know of a guy who was going for his 4 dan so his instructor really didn't want to see him do forms or spar because he has seen him do it before. So they took him to a trail and said to start jogging down the trail and what ever happens you have to deal with. Guys were jumping out of the bushes and attacking him things for a mile. On a side note, how many tests have you seen where there are people testing who shouldn't even be there (especially black belt)? That they have no intensity or worst of all couldn't even punch their way out of a paper bag.

Bruce Lee actually taught dance .

If you got pushed then it means you were too close to begin with. If the person can push you then they can punch you. Once the confrontation starts distance is always the key. With good distance the person will probably just take a big swing or come diving in so you have time to react.

Since you are a smaller guy you really need to work on the shrimp (hip escape). And for the back to back there are a couple was to go. First be quicker than they are in turning around also as you come around stay low and go for a double leg take down. Get your shoulder on their belly button or lower and arms around their legs then posture up and take them down to the side so you don't fall into their guard.

An hour is a long time for 4 -7 year olds. If you keep it going without alot of down time then their attention span is pretty good. When I'm teaching really technical stuff I only try to do it for about 10 min then I run them around for a little bit then come back to it. Or find many ways to teach the samething. Just remember two things, a child has an attention span for about 6 seconds and CREATIVITY IS KING!