Zaine

That's awesome! It must feel like a huge relief to be around people and train again. Good luck on your test, I can't wait to hear how you did!

So if you're at the point where you want to teach Karate and you feel the need to have a black belt to do so, I see basically two paths for you. You can A) Find a system that you like and train there regardless of how effective you feel the instructor is; or B) Find an instructor that you like and if it's a system you like, great, if not, oh well. I can tell you're someone who doesn't like the idea of BB emporiums, so I imagine that you're struggling with the latter option. My 2 cents is this: If you want to teach karate, and you feel that you are in a position to do so, then teach it. Label it some generic karate (like American Karate-do), and find some students who vibe with the way that you want to teach it. If people can teach MMA without any traditional MA training, then I don't really see a reason that you can't take up the teacher roll as well. I, too, got in to MA initially because I wanted to learn defense. I eventually fell in love with kata, and the other parts of the system as well, but, like you, my milestone for a solid black belt was, and in part remains, founded in being able to defend oneself. So I agree with you there. To me, a lot of MA value for myself comes in my ability to fight. With a traditional classroom structure, I think that you're going to struggle finding that. Schools that do so without focusing on MMA tend to struggle a little bit. Teachers, especially of MA, have to cast a wide net so that they can stay in business. Furthermore, they can't ignore the business aspects of their dojos. It's a hit we take to continue operation. Sometimes we don't get to focus as much on what we think is the reason for the art itself. This isn't a criticism of what you want to do in any way. I like the idea of an art that is combat based and focused. This is all just to say that compromise is necessary and I don't want you to have your passion dulled by some necessity of life.

HEMA does! Paulus Hector Mair wrote a treatise on how to use the sycthe in combat. Check out this Wiktenauer page for the details. As far as history goes, scythes were typically used as weapons in peasant uprisings. The English used it in 1684, when a Duke fielded roughly 5000 peasants in the Battle of Sedgemoor. In 1784 again peasants used them in the Revolt of Horea in Transylvania. In general, as you might guess, scythes were weapons used by peasants and anyone who couldn't afford weapons that we might typically see on a battlefield from the Medieval period onward. As such, Paulus is a weird exception to the rule that most fighting manuscripts dealt with weapons that one might see in a tournament of arms. Aside from this, you would have to look at the kama for Eastern Martial Arts. I'm not aware, nor could I find, any information that suggests that Eastern Martial Arts cares about the two handed scythe. Furthermore, I couldn't find any information on a system that currently practices with it a lot. Even within HEMA you would struggle to find someone who is using a sycthe, it's a hard weapon to manufacture a safe, trainer version of.

I don't have a lot of experience with accreditation and schools that partner with one another, but I'd have to imagine that it would vary with each school, even among the schools within the accredited network. Like you, though, I don't have an issue testing remotely. As a personal preference, I like to do so in person, but if virtual is what I have then I'm just as happy. MA is MA, and I'm happy to continue learning one way or the other.

I totally get it, and to your point, I actually really like virtual programs. It is my very firm belief that MA schools should use the pandemic as a means to start doing virtual classes. I would love to see Zoom class options, videos, online cirricula, the whole 9 yards. I've heard good things about GMAU certified courses, so I would definitely start there.

I haven't heard of that. At its core, I don't think it's the worst method in the world. The issue you're going to run in to is that this is a very "hardcore" method of training. A part of teaching in general is being flexible in the way you teach. With things like karate, a largely recreational activity, there are a good amount of people who are signing up for fitness, or a reason to get out of the house, or because a friend is doing, and the list goes on. For that group, that way of training isn't going to work. Human behavior loves milestones, which a belt system gives, it loves goals, which a curriculum sets, and it loves seeing quantifiable change. The method of your teacher can only realistically offer the last and only barely. If your goal is to be a teacher, then I suggest, on top of training with this teacher, start going to a traditional dojo who is going to give that pedagogy to you.

Without going in to too much detail, I've met a number of people associated with that website (I was a 5th kyu when the Texas rep started training with my dojo, which is not affiliated with this website) and I do not feel that it is a good program to pursue. Others might have a different opinion, and if they do I would love to hear their experience with it. It could be great and personal experience is just getting in the way. What I can say is that they're MSSR, which is what I am a Shodan in, and in their videos that I could find their katas seem different from what I learned so the main instructor must be from a different branch. Knowing what I know of this particular system, the videos didn't give me a lot of confidence. I am also a little suspicious that their VP is a 7th dan after 25 years of training. It could be legit, but to me that seems like a very short time to achieve such a high rank. Finally, I couldn't find many testimonials that were outside the organization itself. When I'm deciding on programs, one of the things that I like to see is credible secondary reviews to help me get an idea of what to expect and I can't find that here.

It wouldn't happen to be cranekarate.com, would it?

When I searched that I got different results. Could you post some links so that we can have a better look? That said, in general, martial arts flourishes in person because it's helpful to have friends to practice with. I'm a little wary of the set up you describe as it screams "cash grab" to me, but I could be wrong. At home karate is possible, in my opinion, it just takes a lot more work. There is no one there to correct things in a fast manner so if you're unfamiliar with the art (or just MA in general) you can develop some bad habits that will be difficult to break. I would be a fan of programs that are relatively close by, so that you can take a trip there every other month to get some in person corrections. I would also want to be a program in which there was some sort of private forum in which you could post videos of you doing techniques to get feedback that way. But, as I say above, some links would help so that we can take a look at what they have going on.

Congrats!

Congrats!

Similar to Wastelander's point, if Shodan isn't the end of the curriculum, then I definitely wouldn't be okay with staying put. If, on the other hand, that at Shodan I had everything available to me to learn, then it wouldn't really matter either way.

I played them a few years ago after the first season of the show came out and I went down a rabbit hole. They're fun, if a little limited by the technology. Completely skippable if you're no interested in emulating it or tracking down a copy, in my opinion.

Congrats CTTKDKing! Very well deserved!

In the timeline Trevor comes before Simon. Trevor was the second to fight Dracula in Castlevania 3, with Simon being the 4th after Christopher, who stared in the Gameboy games.

This one is based on Castlevania 3, so it has Trevor and Sypha, so if you like that one (it's my favorite of the NES era) then it's perfect.

Karate was there for me in exactly the way that I needed it at the exact time I needed it. I've been doing this in one way or another since I was 12. Karate, for 19 years, is how I've framed a lot of my experiences and learning. Without Karate, I imagine that I would be a lot angrier. I can see a person didn't bond with his brothers as keenly as he could have. I can see a person who did not have the outlet to frame his understanding of who he was to himself. A big part of Martial Arts for me is introspection. I learned a lot about how to pick apart my feelings and get to the source of them. Without karate I don't think that I would have come to the idea that learning is 70% self-study and that would definitely have made getting a Master's a lot more of a struggle.

We have a really nice record store really close to me. I'll have to set a calendar reminder

I just finished catching up on it. I thought it was really fun. If you liked the games as a kid, then you'll like this.

If you're looking for a book about teaching, then I would suggest you get a textbook for classroom teaching (as in, K-12 classroom). The reason for this is that it will go a little more in depth on pedagogy and use scientific studies to back up some of the psychology and the like. At the end of the day, there is not much difference between a classroom of K-12 learners, and a classroom of people (of any age) learning martial arts.

I didn't even know there was a new record day! I'm very knowledgeable about new comic day though.

I think Bob hits the nail on the head with this sentence: As someone who has had ADHD all 30 of their years, I can definitely speak towards the idea that teens are lazy. Sometimes, teens are actually lazy. Sometimes, like most people, they need to be engaged. Teenager's brains are still developing and that means that they don't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the part of our brains that, among other things, controls our focus. So it's no wonder that a teenager might be struggling to focus during class, their brains are there for it yet. I've been doing Martial Arts in one way or another for 19 years and I still have trouble focusing (because ADHD more than anything else) but I remember being a teen and MA was all I could talk about. It wasn't that I was lazy, it was that sometimes I didn't find that my instructor engaged the class. As my instructor got better at engaging the class, I got better at holding my attention on the instructor throughout the class. The point of all of this is that if you're having issues with teens being "lazy" and not focusing, find a way to engage them in a way that gets them excited for the lesson. When I was teaching middle school, doing this was most of my lesson planning. If you can engage them in a way that they enjoy without alienating the class or embarrassing them then you'll have a student for life.

It would be awesome to see it! I stopped following MMA in the late 2000s so I can't speak towards what older star fighters are doing. I know, however, that Bas Rutten has gotten involved in Karate Combat, which seems less MMA focused. All in all, if people like Bas are doing this, I can imagine that Karate will see a "comeback," as you put it. I remember the boom of BJJ in the 2000s with schools popping up all over my area. Few survived after riding the fad, but the point remains. I hope we can start to see more traditional Martial Arts schools coming back, I would love more options.

Sign me up!

Fusei Kise happens to be a Yondan in Shorinji-Ryu and taught Coffman the Shorinji kata that shows up in the American versions of MSSR. He later stopped teaching it and did not carry it over to Kenshin Kan when he founded that system. So I would say that it's probably more accepted that Coffman added it, as he states that Kise didn't remember the kata later in Coffman's training. That said, you are correct in your assumption. Ananku no Sai is just the unarmed version with sai. The way it was explained to me was that Ananku no Sai was the true version and the unarmed version is to introduce it. Not sure if this is true, you know how Martial Arts legends pass down. As far as the kata's relation to Matsubayashi-Ryu, I'm not familiar enough to comment if the form made its way to me from there. Interestingly, despite it bearing Soken's name, as far as I know MSSR (or at least the variant that I learned) had only Ananku no Sai as its Sai form. It is entirely possible that my instructor either hadn't learned or had forgotten the ones post Shodan. I can't find a reliable list for MSSR katas post Shodan so I'm not entirely sure either.