jaymac

I am glad for you. What luck to beable to leave that situation and still go to a great school, same system, great instructor!

I once attended a very small tournament (it was pretty nice by the way), and I was in kata competition with only one other individual. Instead of scoring the two of us, they had us turn our backs away from the judges and they pointed to whom they thought was better. I did win. I thought this was such an odd way of judging us, but later my friend told me that out of the 3 judges, 2 pointed to me and one pointed to the other. This judge was his instructor. By the way, my fellow competetor forgot his kata and had to start over.

There shouldn't be a problem with the fact that you two are dating, but I am concerned that you are flirting and losing concentration during classes. This would be looked upon in our dojo as being very disrespectful to the person teaching and to the others who are witness to it. Be mature in class and take your classes responsibly. You are setting the example of students lower ranked than you. Have your flirting and fun time outside of the dojo.

Confront the Black Belt and ask what his issue is before you decide to take this to your instructor.

My spouse tolerates my training, but I think wishes that I was not so passionate about Karate.

Swimming! Great cardiovascular and muscle building exercise without any strain on joints.

I can only restate what others have said, you need to try each class to see which one you enjoy because they are both very different styles. Good luck and keep us posted on what you chose and how you like it.

Not that it matters, but was this just a competition for your school only, or were there other schools attending. I assure you, had there been other schools present, you are probably not the only one complaining. Someone should talk to your head instructor. If he was short on Black Belts for judging, go to the next highest ranked adult. I have seen some tournaments that were quite small and some 1st kyu adult students were needed to judge.

I do like the ranking system, it makes it easier to organize and teach many different level students in a school. Each school is individualized though. Just because one school chooses to promote students through their stlye with colored belt system, does not make them better or worse than the school who does not>>>right? Isn't it more important that one is training in MA and trying to better themselves.

I am glad that you did not look at failing as a negative personal experience. Many would have. I think that you will do quite well the next time you are able to test. Good luck!

We do use the terms, sensei, renshi, shihan, kyoshi. I like the fact that we address our instructor by Shihan, it makes it alot easier in the dojo. When someone yells sensei, several people turn to look. When they yell Shihan, we know exactly who they want.

Karate Do means empty hand way. In our school, weapons are taught but not required for rank. It is mainly a way to keep the training interesting. When I was in Kung Fu however, we were required to know several weapons kata in order to advance.

Sohan, you do have a great insight to the MA.

GOM, I have to tell you, I have really tried hard to find a non open tournament in the area. Going online and posting tournaments for my area, only bring up point rated types of competition. I have even gone to individual websites to see if certain schools were holding tournaments. I have actually lost interest. My instructor does not promote nor does he discourage tournament competition. He used to compete alot in his early Dan grades. He said tournaments have changed alot and he no longer has interest in them. I now agree.

Black Belt is definitely not the end, but it differs from person to person. I realized at Shodan level that I really was relearning everything and learning to perfect my technique. Some people train to only get black belt and then quit. Too bad really. It seems so overly stated, but my true learning did begin at black belt and after I had began to assist with teaching, I gained even more insight.

Nobody has come to our school to challenge our instructor. He wouldn't allow it anyways. It is childish. However, a few years ago, a guy came in and tried a couple weeks of classes. He bragged on and on how he had trained for years in some style and that he was a high ranking black belt. I think he wanted my instructor to recognize him as a black belt. He did not. Anyways, all he kept talking about was getting into the ring and showing everyone what he could do. First time in, he lost. Second time in, lost again. Third time, lost badly. He was not thrown in with higher ranking students, but we also didn't put new students in there either, for fear he may purposly try to hurt someone. He didn't come back after that night.

If they owed them fees, I think that is one thing, but their actions were done to discredit them. Too bad. I am glad that our dojo does not belong to an organization.

I am saddened that I have not been abducted to sharpen my MA skills. I guess I am a measly earthling with poor MA training uuh whatever.

I need to ask my instructor if he is holding out on me. I mean he has never taught me to throw fireballs from my hands. No actually, it is a cute commercial that is totally aimed at bringing in little kids. As an adult, there would be know way that I would attend that school.

I followed my babysitter around all the time. She started taking classes and I asked if I could go along. She quit after a short time but I was hooked. I wonder now if she knows how much she has affected my life.

Hmmm, >>>flashy>>>nontraditional>>>acrobatic>>>no power in her technique>>>reason I quit going to "traditional" tournaments.

I agree with Aodhan, I think there are way too many people who claim to know what a McDojo is or isn't, when their own school could fit the term "McDojo" by somebody elses definition. Contracts-no contracts, headbands -no headbands. The only way to tell if you are going to enjoy the dojo that you are asking about is to try some classes. I think every dojo offers trial memberships. A website isn't going to prove to you or anyone on this thread if this guy and his training style is legit or not. Good luck.

Good question. I don't have a good name to place in front of a dojo name. I think I would want something like "heart of warrior" translated to japanese. That might be cool. Glad I am not making up my own style though.

I think it is great that you have achieved something in your training that you can be proud of, especially having your children along side you. That you can be extremely proud to brag about. However, in our school, we are not trained to do high flying kicks. We do not train to go to tournaments. We can and some of us have gone to tournaments, and done well, but with traditional techniques and forms. Actually, and I have said it before on other threads, the high flying non traditonal acrobats is the reason that I no longer attend tournaments. Please do not think that at anytime in this post am I trying to put you down, I am pretty much just responding. I am truly proud to train under such a traditional instructor. If I wanted to practice learning how to do acrobatic kicks, it would have to be on my own time, in which I have none between training, work, and marriage.

I think it can be done with proper conditioning. I too saw a clip of an instructor doing this on one of Discovery's Martial Arts programs. I had an instructor who would drill his index finger (very slowly mind you) into a red brick at least 1/2 inch deep. He did this for demonstrations. He broke his index finger everytime he did it. It was amazing, but I always wondered why he would do that for entertainment, because the end result was painful. As much as I love MA, I never thought that was MA skill. Just mind over matter sort of thing.