Why people are losing interest in Karate?

[ramymensa]

Let me put my 2 leis in this thread. In my opinion the title is not suitable (hopefully). People are not losing interest in Karate (MA in general), au contraire, they become more and more inerested. More girls and women enter the dojo in order to become something else than couch potatoes, parents dropping their kids in karate classes, and adults who have the courage to step into it, though some would say it's too late for them.

 

Society is becoming more interested in this and little by little we are edicating it in order to accept this.

 

So i don't see how the interest is being lost

[Fat Donkey]

Theres also a lot more MA's to choose from now! And Karate has been getting a bad rap because of MMA's events where no pure Karatekas has succeded yet. It's also not a soft trendy style like Tai Chi. It's middle of the road euphemisticly speaking. Karate organisations need to start co-operating fully like the WTF and ITF schools have. They are gigantic and yes many of them are McDojos but their unity means they actively promote a unified front of massive support for their MA. In stead it seems Karate organisations are splitting even futher apart with everyone and their dog inventing his new style.

[Gyte]

Theres also a lot more MA's to choose from now! And Karate has been getting a bad rap because of MMA's events where no pure Karatekas has succeded yet. It's also not a soft trendy style like Tai Chi. It's middle of the road euphemisticly speaking. Karate organisations need to start co-operating fully like the WTF and ITF schools have. They are gigantic and yes many of them are McDojos but their unity means they actively promote a unified front of massive support for their MA. In stead it seems Karate organisations are splitting even futher apart with everyone and their dog inventing his new style.

Not only are there a lot more MA's to choose from nowadays. People are also more familiar with other martial arts than Karate. For example when Taekwondo was first introduced to western countries, Taekwondo teachers profiled their martial art as Karate. If they would use the name Taekwondo they wouldn't get any students, because in those days nobody knew what Taekwondo was.

[italian_guy]

I agree smr......certain persons don't have time, money or have more important thing to do....but my question was another...i personally heard people that they would rather do nothing that wasting their time doing karate.....they don't say that because they don't like it but there's a certain lazyness these days that if you try to say karate need sacrifice and patience they immediately think its not for them.

In Italy maybe this problem is related with age.

 

When I go to Tai Chi I'm not the oldest student and nobody find strange that I'm doing that.

 

Instead when I go to Karate I'm the oldest in the class. Before my karate adult class there is the kids class and when I arrive dressed in my gi (with my white belt on so they see I'm not an instructor) I see the mothers of the kids having my same age (I'm in my 40s) looking me with a "what this old fart's doing here" look.

 

Somebody should educate them to the fact that karate can be taken at almost all ages surely before 60.

[Jade]

So i don't see how the interest is being lost

Well...of course that change from an area to another.......i was talking about where i live...and even if there're some good dojo i heard instructors in person saing they don't have the same good number of students as 10 years ago....

[Fish]

Another thing occurs to me. Here in the UK I see a lot of adverts for different Karate clubs. They all tend to lead with something along the lines of "learn self defence", but, when you think about it, it takes a long time before you can really develop enough skill to use it in self defence. Maybe these adverts create false expectations, and then people drop out because they don't seem to make the progress they expected?

[Jade]

Another thing occurs to me. Here in the UK I see a lot of adverts for different Karate clubs. They all tend to lead with something along the lines of "learn self defence", but, when you think about it, it takes a long time before you can really develop enough skill to use it in self defence. Maybe these adverts create false expectations, and then people drop out because they don't seem to make the progress they expected?

I agree Fish....

 

Indeed...next week our dojo will maka a demostration in a public area and our teacher and us were discussing how to handle the show to let people see a good and "true" karate. We don't want to create false expectations as you said...we'll see if that is a good advert.

[cross]

What do you have planned for the demonstration?

 

At our club when we do a demo (very rare) we only do things that we normally do in class, that way people only see what they will be getting if they join up.

[aefibird]

The last demonstration my club did was Heian Yondan and application, plus a bit of one-step sparring. At least then those who were watching could see it wasn't all 'haiii-ya' and karate chops at our club, which is still the way that a lot of people in the UK see karate.

[Jade]

What do you have planned for the demonstration?

 

At our club when we do a demo (very rare) we only do things that we normally do in class, that way people only see what they will be getting if they join up.

Just the same things we do in a normal lesson as you said:

 

Since we are only the advanced belts to do the demostration we were planning to start with some basic kihon techniques(blocks, punches and kicks)...

 

-Tate Shuto in the four directions;

 

-a personalized conbination of techniques that include some high level moves;

 

-A kata...Kanku Dai...i'm a bit worried because i've to show it all alone...

 

-at last...two of us will do very few minutes of fee kumite...a soft version of course.