Music during class?

[The Law Of The Fist]

Personally, it would have to be samurai or traditonal chinese music for me. Modern music would ruin the mood to much. I get kinda absorbed in what I'm doing. I wouldn't mind it during warm ups. It would have to be really low volume or off during instruction time. Maybe silence is best.

[senseiblackbelt]

Pineapple -

Music is great for class (when used appropriately). We call it musical karate. It gives an extra flavor to the everyday mundane practice of martial arts. During warmups we play Oriental music, something that would promote concentration or meditation. During drills we play more upbeat music. We use a Television CD that you can probably pick up anywhere and that has all the old Saturday morning cartoon music. The other day I used "Speed Racer" overage while we were doing a speed drill. It went great with the activity. I've also used "Sesame Street" for younger kids that are doing obstacle courses or "Scooby Doo" for situps and pushups. The kids singalong with the music and actually having something different boosts their love for the classtime. Get creative. It's all about keeping the students excited and coming back for more.

[JusticeZero]

Capoeira music, obviously. Harder to keep the class in time without it, because there's nothing to hook onto other than visual to take a tempo cue from. It'd be irritating in other arts though, since they use timing differently

[mantis]

it depends whether it's old metallica music, or it's classic...

but i'd say NO.. no!

usually masters talk during practice, they correct you and they communicate, which is a very important thing to do during practice, and they like to make the students shout as loud as possible and while there's not background noise at all...

my two cents

[MasterH]

I noticed that some of the new schools are playing music during class. I would like to hear people's opinion on this. Good or bad?

Only durring sparring. Its a distraction everywhere else. In my humble opinion.

[trustkid1]

Music during practice is a distraction to me. But I saw one time in a Kung-fu school that the used music to help project the voice of the person that was in charge of the warm-ups. For example the music will be loud and she had to be louder than the music so the others can hear the commands. Also I saw in a TKD class using music to do their forms.

[koreantiger81]

I wouldn't recommend playing music during class. First of all, you would have to yell to have your students hear you. For sparring, i'm very vocal. I constantly yell to remind my students to keep their hands up, get out of the way, to maintain their distance and so forth....It would be a challenge to yell over music.....Secondly, it's difficult to satisfy everyone's music taste...Thus, keep it simple. Motivate students with your loud commands and supportive feedback.

[ninjette]

I don't see why you wouldnt play music. The only time we dont play music is when the instrctor is talking or during meditation. It boosts the energy in the class, it makes thing more inviting (people are intimidated by silence), and it helps juniors by challenging them to kia louder than the music. Plus we use it with various drills. We use techno music, music that wouldnt offend anyone of course.

[ShotokanKid]

no music......pay attention to your work out.

Ditto.

I don't like music during training because it is not traditional. It distracts everyone. We are doing a demo on Saturday and we had to practice with the music. It's kind of annoying... it turns it into a dance/ show instead of karate.

[Jay]

i hate music gets really enoying and destoys your concentration when doing a martial art you tend to go into a different mind set music destroys this.