ironsifu

hi i think about this question myself, because some of my teachers have the favorite student (which some people might call, a "close door" student) themselves. i even been one. there is a place for this kind of practice, but i dont have a lot of time to explain it now, but let me offer this advice, given to me by my grandpa. a good teacher, makes all of his students feel like he is the favorite student. a favorite student really is a close door student, which you do not show to the others, which can stop a student who is on his way to proving himself, from getting better because he is jealous. this is a good question.

hi i dont have much time to read all of the posts, but from the little bit i read, i have 2 sayings that i think would be good for this conversation. 1. a beginner is not dangerous at all in combat (to the opponent). the advanced student is very dangerous in combat, but the expert is both the least dangerous and the most dangerous at the same time. (this both are old filipino sayings about weapons fighters) 2. the man with the sharpest blades sheds the least blood. they are both talking about men who train fighting so much and become so good at it, they can kill anyone very easily. but they dont. when your skill is so high, above everyone else's skill that no one can even come close to matching your skill, you have less reason to fight. when i tell this to my students, i use the example of a child, about 8 years old, who comes to you (a grown man) who wants to fight. of course, you can beat an 8 year old kid. but the question is, would you? we strive as martial artists to have the level of strength, skill and lethalness (is that a word?) that any man on the street is as dangerous to you as the 8 year old boy. someone made the comment that a martial arts transcends fighting. this is what that means, at least in my art.

i agree with you, but i dont think poor teaching is the worst problem. many great masters have put out some very great students, and they dont "teach well" by our standards of teaching. in the west, we question, we challenge our teacher's ideas, we control our education by moving from school to school/teacher to teacher/style to style. back home, we listen to our teachers and we make our teacher's methods work, by working harder, training more, and drilling the same techniques until we can use them against anyone. it is a combination of things, 1. teachers who are good at martial arts, but bad at business. they don't like to collect money, they show favorite students (which is actually a tradition in many schools), they promote when they are ready, not when the student things he's ready. these things might be good for skill, but bad for business. 2. teachers worry more about keeping a student longer then what is the best way to bring skill out of these students. so, your retention is better, but now the students' sparring skill is weak. 3. many people think they are the master, because they are spending money. recently i lost a student who'se mother believes her son is ready for a black belt (he came as a brown belt). he is good (for a brown belt) by local standards, but where i come from, he is a good yellow belter. there is so much more to learn, so much more he can develop, but just because he's better than mc dojo black belts, they believe they can demand a belt. i am sure, he can walk into another dojo that will do it, for the $300 test fee or whatever. when the student believes he is the boss, you have already failed in learning. 4. many schools are not marketing correctly. you cant market a fighting school like a day care. and you cant market good teaching like a 99 cents hamburger. either you are the cheapest guy in town, the best fighter in town, the ONLY _____ style in town, but yo have to find the best way to find the kind of students who want what you teach. 5. when teachers are worried about paying bills, you won't get good instruction, no matter how good he is. he needs focus, he needs to be happy, and to be comfortable. these are emotional things, but teachers are human. imagine you come to work every day, and on pay day, there is no paycheck for you. many schools have this, when students quit, or dont pay their bills. now imagine you cant quit this job. how will you work? as hard as you can? or with a fake smile? good martial arts is a hard business, because 90% (i make this number up because i dont know what the number is) of the martial arts students are not serious. so we have to find good students who want more than mc dojo.

i think its more than just saying, there is no market for traditional teachers. its more of, how to help the serious student find you. since we like to say, mc dojos, let's use hamburger. some people want a good burger. they want best quality beef, good vegetables, nice atmosphere... and they know for this kind of burger you gotta pay. then you have the guy who's broke, or he's hecka hungry, and he just wants to eat. you sell the 99 cents burger to the broke guy, but you don't offer your $10 burger to him. and you definitely dont try to sell a 99c burger to the guy who wants to eat grown-up food instead of a happy meal. in the business of martial arts, we have to find the kind of people who want our kind of martial arts. if schools are losing students i woudnt blame the master, saying he's teaching too hard. maybe he just signed up the wrong kind of student for his kind of training. that said, i think hard core karate will make a comeback (shamelss plug, i have an article about it on my website) because of loyota michida. every martial arts has his day, and if we start seeing more traditional karate men in the octogon, more people will run to the hardcore dojos. i think every martial arts style has its place. the problem is when a school claims there hard core, then offers monkey dragon karate for 5 year olds. or when the daycare karate place next to safeway starts to advertise MMA classes (lol). the hard part for the school owner is to find a way to advertise the kind of school he runs.

true, true and TRUE! i agree with everythink you said brother. its all boils down to this, is the instructor a QUALIFIED instructor. just cause you have on the costume, doesnt make you qualified. you can put the whole roll of tape on your black belts, add 7 more patches, and get 2 more tatoos, your art is still going to depend on your skill. teachers who know, teach, and those who don't know, "cross train". you cannot add to poor skill and make it good, it takes learning from a good teacher and then training hard. that is a very simple concept, but so difficult for many teachers to understand. they believe good martial arts is for the masses. it's not. it's for the people who want to learn, and are willing to do what they need to do to learn. and like you said, hopefully they walked into the right school.

i didnt mean this literally, of course, since i am teaching that would mean i am doing it too. but i am saying that most of the teachers out there are doing a poor job. average black belters use to be very good compared today. what i see today (that represents "good" black belts) are gymnasts. its disgusting. a lot of these teachers do not have much to teach, and do not know HOW to teach, so for "advance" martial arts, they add things from other styles, gymnastics, capoeira, break dancing, etc. last saturday at a tournament here in town, i saw a guy do a MOONWALK in the kata division. not just that, but he placed. at the same tournament, i saw a flawless shotokan master named shaked (from philadelphia) who lives in california now, get a second place behind a completely made up, lousy basics form. but the guy who won, is a regular and brought a lot of students, where mr shaked only brought himself. back to the point. i was waiting for someone to say that the kids in the video are the exception. thats not true. its the exception if you compare to the rest of the community, but if you look in the schools they are from, most of their students look like them. its the teacher. here in CA, we have schools, entire schools, where the average black belter looks like that. if you dont believe me, attend japanese karate tournaments, and look at the average competitors. child prodigy, is an excuse for allowing poor karate to be the rule. if students are taught right, they all look like child prodigy. take for example a group called SKIF in the philippines. every single child black belt i have seen from this school is very, very good. there is a saying, that perfection does not exist to the artist who is not capable of it. this is like the saying, if you think you can, you probably will. if you think you cannot, you never will.

she better than a lot of black belters i know!

i agree with your second sentence, but in the first sentence, we have different idea about what the word "strong" is. my "strong" is not talking about new students who can already do 100 pushups. it is for the ones who are truly courageous, the ones who might be weak and afraid, but they train and train hard anyway. to me, this is a strong student. the weak student, who is not physically fit, can always become a strong student if he trains hard, but if we do not demand it of him, he will always be weak. this is the reason we have poor black belters out there. no one is doing what they are being paid to do... train and teach students properly.

intermediate at best. but consider that he is only 7 years old. but this like a 7 year old who wants to be a doctor right now, at 7 years old. i'm sorry mikey, you want to be a doctor, but you can't, your too young. the black belt is same thing, you dont just give it to a kid cause he wants it even he is going through the motions. this is not something we just award to kids because they want it and they hang around long enough. if your business depends on it, then give a "children's rank", but make sure they understand this is not the same thing the adults get. i said it before, but this is a different kind of business. our customers are not the boss in the martial arts business, and if you allow them to, you are no longer a martial arts teacher, you are a businessman. i am not such a poor understanding person that i dont agree that children should be rewarded for hard work. but you dont give awards to anything less than those who really earned them. black belt, is not a award for being average, it is for excellence. if you award the ones with poor skill, then why should the ones who train hard try harder? there has to be a line you draw, and ask ALL students to come to the line and pass it to receive the reward. this is what the good teacher does, he holds the standard high and then teaches everyone to meet the standards. he does not lower the bar just so everyone will be able to jump over it. not everyone is that kind of material... not every student is willing to work that hard, and not every teacheer is able to develop even the weak students towards good skill. real martial arts are for special people, it aint for the masses, and only the strong ones, or the ones with a combination of strong desire and good teachers, are good candidates to do it.

i think when teachers lower the standard for black belt, they dont realize that students can develop to a really high level if we ask them to. any kid who puts time in to practice and works hard can develop this kind of skill, no matter how they come, fat, skinny, uncoordinated. it is the teachers job to make anyone who wants the results, get the results. it is lazy teaching, to promote for the heck of it and not demand hard work and skills achievement. but yeah, those kids can probably beat up some school owners i know of many times a teacher might not know how to teach it is a special kind of skilled teacher, who can make a coward into a fighting machine. we all dont have the luck of signing up athletical students in our schools. many times, we will get the guys who did not do well in football, basketball or other sports. in my place, we have overweight guys, nerds, and everything else, but they are paying me to teach them to fight. so the result at the end is a good fighter, just that some guys have to work harder than others, but they all can do it. but again, not every student has enough courage to go through the training. if they can get past there fear of pain and hard work, that's the hardest part, then we teachers can take it from there.

i dont have a problem if a kid has developed way above average. i think the problem is when the black belt is given to poorly skilled kids who really dont know anything or cant do anything. true the black belt has change, but it dont mean we should just throw it at whoever will pay for the test, which is what many schools today are doing. the black belt is supposed to be the best of the best, and at least the best a teacher can produce. the only except i would make might be a disable student who has a limit that he can do, but he pushed himself past his own limits. everyone can improve from where they are, and the moment you become a black belter should be probably the best you can be. schools who do not value the belt, dont care, its do you know the material and afford the belt testing? 5 - 7 years old black belts, well that is just baloney. i actually have 4 kids in my school (we are an adult school, with only 20 kids) who will probably be the first young black belters i promote, but they will be teenagers by then, but they are on their way. my idea of a kid with a black belt? check these kids out they really cannot be average, and every child can achieve it if he really works for it, even though not all kids have it in them to achieve it. but the black belt and true martial arts training is not for everyone either, is it? when teachers make it so easy anybody can do it, they make that martial arts training lose value.

i dont want to quote, because i dont want anyone to feel pointed out. but i like to answer a few things i read: i am a person who did both point and full contact. the best fighters i know, and i know real fighters, not just guys sitting in the audience, can do both very well. when martial artists talk about point fighters who hit like women, or just because you can throw a fast punch or kick you cant hit hard, this tells me you havent sparred that many point fighters. while i agree that there are some point fighters who cannot hit hard, this is a very small number, and most of those fighters are not very good at point. it is very easy to sit in the stands and say, if he fought me, i'd do this or that. this is something the martial artist does too much of, which is to guess and use theory, instead of testing out what they believe. like i said, the fighters who did point and then switch to full contact that i know, most of them, had no problem making that switch. i never met one who couldnt do it, if they were good point fighters. you need a good set of solid skills if you want to be a good fighter in point, its not just about "tag". Tag, is what the guys who dont know what they are looking at call point fighting. its like all these karate guys who look at boxing and think they can take a boxer. if you ever stepped in the ring with a real boxer, your talk would be much different. it is the same with olympic tae kwon do fighters. it is the same with muay thai, but the other way around, guys look at somebody with muay thai shorts and think, this guy can throw down. not always, but if you spend all your time looking at youtube clips or watching matches from the bleachers, you will always have misconceptions, because you dont get the experience. last month, i had a guy from my gym, enter rey navarros full contact kickboxing tournament, and he won his fights with SIDE kicks. now, some of my friends who go to the ISKA matches (but never actually FIGHT, even tho one is a muay thai), told me a few months ago, side kicks won't work against muay thai. oh yeah? look up my guy, his name is darrell spann, he won first place, and won 3 of 4 mix weight class matches. btw, my guys fight muay thai, tkd, kenpo, bjj, mma all the time, even my kung fu students can throw down. you see, i am speaking from experience on the floor, not the bleachers and watching youtube videoes. my advice, is that if you want to prove that point fighters dont know how to fight, enter a tournament that has "continuous point", basically, semi contact division, where you can fight point fighters, who are allowed to hit hard (they hit hard in point matches, by the way, at the BLACK BELter LEVEL) and they dont stop the action to call points. you will see it aint all that hard. i am trying to save some of you from embarassment if you ever end up actualling fighting one. in my fight nights, i had a tae kwon do black belter from a chain school knock out a bjj fighter cold. bjj/muay thai dont always = good fighters. just like point fighter dont always = sucker. i am not known for my point fighting, but i can do it and i respect it. i am not known as a boxer, but i can do it. i am not known for my olympic style TKD, but i can do it. if anyone can put those things down, i earn the right to do it. so somebody says winning point dont mean you can win full contact. of course, i aint stupid. but winning full contact also dont mean you can win a streetfight, they are very different. but every style of fighting gets you a little bit closer to complete fighting skill, and if you ignore something, it will slow your ability to improve. if you want to put down point fighters, then beat them at their game, or beat them at their game, using your style. hey , a hit is a hit right? so either you can land a shot first or you cant. boxers understand this, and sparring in a boxing workout is very similar to point fighting btw, its not always full contact. i did 2 years of "international rule" training in the philippines, which is what we call muay thai, and we did a version of slow sparring sometimes, and point fighting sometimes. this teaches strategy and timing. btw, point fighting is more about timing and reading movement, than it is about speed. a full contact fighter with bad timing and no speed is a punching bag with feet. i hope i was able to make my point with this post.

i have a lot to say about this post, but i will have to come back to it. but i do want to answer this part of the post. i believe that martial artists make excuses for not knowing how to spar well, by saying that, sparring is sport, and not real fighting. this like saying, well, you don't fight to the death, so your doing sport and not really fighting. so, my question is, are YOU fighting to the death? martial artist are saying, we dont spar lightly because we train for street, but those martial artists are not fighting on the street, are they? what are they doing? hitting bags, focus mitts and "simulate" fighting. isnt that what sport fighting is? even NHB is "simluated" fighting... there are rules, and i can't bring my boys or my knife into the ring. so saying " we cant use our [street] techniques in tournament" is like saying "my arts too deadly for tournament". i thought as a community we outgrew that a long time ago. contact is a non-issue, because if you cant beat this guy light contact, why do you think you will beat him full contact? if you can turn up the power, so can he. but the difference is that he already proved to you that he is faster and can land first, and that you cannot stop him. this is what point contact is all about. training to land first and to not get hit. why is this so bad? yes, there are point fighters who fight very unrealistic and use tricks to get points, but that is a small number. the bottom line is that point fighting develops speed and timing like no other form of fighting, and if you develop this kind of speed, you can carry this into a full contact fight and use it to your advantage. if you are slow, you have a disadvantage, i dont care how hard you think you can hit. the truth is, there is only two ways to prepare for real fights. one, spar, and two, fight for real. everything else is nothing but theory. now, the second comment. a teacher who does not have the ability and knowledge to teach his students to outsmart another student in a mock fight should not be teaching, period. its not a thing of, my path is my path you have yours. dont be too soft to call a spade a spade. there IS a such thing as inferior martial arts, and there is a such thing as unqualified teachers. fighting (not lineage, not "credibility", not philosophy) is the measuring tool we use to say if this guy knows his stuff or not. there are too many "unqualified" teachers in the bleachers, telling his students how to beat the fighters on the floor, when in reality he can't do it himself, and his students wont learn how. too much KNOW, not enough SHOW. you see, people seem to thing that even though i dont have the skills and knowledge to be a good martial artist/fighter/teacher, i can still call myself one. it doesnt work that way. we all choose our path. maybe some people choosed to be full time workers, part time martial artists. but they cannot put themself on the same level as those who do this full time with the skills to match it. the real pursue of martial arts is not for everyone. its that simple. but this whole "make your own path/to each his own" is a cop-out excuse for accepting teachers who have poor skill. whether you like it or not, teachers with poor skills, are not qualified.

well i see your point. i shouldnt say against testing often, but maybe promoting so often that you have a black belt in 2 or 3 years. but i know many schools are probably not testing because people are ready, but because they charge a fee for the test. i have students out of my area who teach, and i charge for testing those guys. but we only test a few times a year, and this fee pays my way to them. at the same time its not a lot of money either. training here in my school, i do not charge a test when i give one. oh, and "McBlack Belt"? lol i have seen a school (wont name them because i have friends over there) who brag, that they are the McDonalds of martial arts in the area. its actually on the paper script they give the salespeople (who are not martial arts people either, btw). you know whats sad, is that some of the McDojo people, dont know that they are McDojo. very sad.

Wa-No-Michi, i know, we talked about that when we made the typhoonma.com one. but because i thought about what kind of student i wanted, we decided to go after the people who thought about the school they would join, instead of the ones who got excited about pictures and fancy buildings. none of my schools are "commercial" or real nice. the main school is located in a ghetto area, with people selling dope right down the street, and police in our area all the time. we dont really compete against the commercial dojos, even my all-girls classes is for tournament fighters. in my yuba city school, the youngest kid is 12, and classes are 90 minutes long. so we are advertising as the alternative to the commercial dojo, and our students are older, and usually did a lot of shopping before they walk in my doors. soon we will add videos to the sites (not yubacitykarateschool website) which will be a little more attractive. but yeah our sites are aimed for the more serious students who do their homework. i'm actually going to have the guy do another website which will be more like the other schools sites, for my yuba city school. they gave me a good deal, so its worth trying a new idea out. i'll post it when its done, but the address will be https://www.kingeagleyubacity.com