Worst experience ever?

[bushido_man96]

Could be. I won't train anywhere the vibe is bad. I've been around too long to put up with an anyone who treats people without respect. Leadership means inspiring people to become better than they are, not beating them into it.

I agree with you here. I don't think I could respect a teacher like that.

[username8517]

Well from what I can dig up, it looks like the guy is Satoru Sayama. A former professional wrestler turned martial arts instructor (shoot fighting) and the video was footage taken his training facility in Japan.

[Ziyad]

Just for the record, this was one of his bad days. There was a huge difference between his good days and bad days.

At other times he kept pushing me to do somersaults even when I was really tired, afraid that this time surely I wouldn't land. But each time it would go succesful and from that moment on, I could do it on command without warming up. A week later he asked me to perform together with him on an event (the somersaults were a test) and that performance was even more taxing (because we had to do it 10 times a day for 4 days straigth). It was more taxing and harder than any performance I've done since. It didn't help that he took me straigth from the performance to his training two of those days. But in the end, he paid me generously and I learned a lot about persistance and how much my body can do when it's important.

Here, it just sounds like he was pushing you. Nothing really wrong with that...maybe he thought that you were really talented, and wanted to see how far he could take you.

That's my point, I wanted to show his good side as well. Besides being impossible at times, he could also be a very good trainer at other times and I have not yet met someone else who knew his techniques so perfectly and so precise.

"Somersault fighting? I am not familiar with the value of that."

I do capoeira. Besides the martial capability, we also train a lot of acrobatics which, if looked upon by a purely practical mind, improves your movement speed and creativity, as well as your landing/falling ability. It's also more easily used commercially.

If you look upon acrobatics as I do, it's something fun to train. If you play capoeira there's a fine line between playing and fighting. The line can be crossed at any time. I have been kicked out of the air during a somersault once, but this hasn't stopped me from incorperating it in the roda. There are few things which train your awareness in quite the same capacity.

[baronbvp]

Impressive! Thank you for enlightening me. I believe Wesley Snipes trains in that sport/art as well.

[aefibird]

Life is too short to train under bad instructors. I'm really lucky in that most of my instructors have been great people.

However, there have been one or two stinkers, such as the head of a karate association that my instuctor once belonged to.

My club and others in the association had gone to a training day run by the head of the asociation. He had split the day up into various sessions and one was just brown and black belts only. It was the worst training session I had in my life.

This particular instructor (the head of the association, remember!) was a bully and loved to play the intimidation card. He would shout at the senior students (some of whom had been training 20,25+ years) and said we were all worse than whitebelts, as well as making other comments and derogatory remarks, including personal remarks. He told one lady that she was too fat to be a blackbelt, a comment which really upset her as she had struggled with her weight for a long while and had actually started to lose weight recently.

I had an injury at the time and was wearing a knee brace to try and protect the joint. My own Sensei knew about it and was fine with it, but this guy just acted like I was making it up or attention seeking (I was an adult at the time!!).

One part of the lesson was free sparring, aprox 1 min rounds and after every minute we all had to change and find a new partner. For one of my rounds I ended up with this instructor. I threw a roundhouse kick with my bad leg and he blocked it with a kick of his own - right on my dodgy knee. I could see from the look on his face that he had done it deliberately.

Definately the worst lesson of my life and I'm glad that my instructor didn't stay with the association. It was the best decision he ever made to leave that group, as to belong to an organisation with such a bullying Sensei as the head of it doesn't do any club any good.

[baronbvp]

Great post!

Insecure people belittle others to make themselves feel better about themselves. No one likes or deserves to be embarrassed or humiliated. What an unprofessional and immature training technique, especially from one so senior.

Good thing your dojo got out of that organization.

[aefibird]

Good thing your dojo got out of that organization.

Yes, it definately was. My sensei is much happier with our current set-up, which is an informal group of MA clubs in the local area. There's 8 clubs as members at present, from different styles and it really is much better than belong to a formal group, such as the association we were with before.

This way every event is local (unlike the last association where the majority of events were at the honbu dojo and all students were expected to travel there, even though the chief instructor and the other senior instructors would hardly ever travel out to the dojos up and down the country - they expected us to go to them every time).

Plus, with the schools that belong to the group we have a diverse mix of MA, with Karate and Kobudo at my dojo, as well as 2 Karate clubs from other styles, a Boxing gym, a Judo club, a Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu group, who also teach JJJ and 2 Kickboxing and TKD schools. So, when we get together for meet-ups and seminars there's a god range of information to be shared and everyone comes away having learned something new.

The really sad thing about the association we were with before is that it is a fairly well-known "name" within the UK Karate community, with the Chief Instructor being a person who has appeared in and on the cover of UK MA magazines. I shan't "name-and-shame", a forum such as this isn't the place to do that, but I just find it interesting that someone who can be well-known in MA can be such a bully.

Often people with the biggest reputations are those who have an attitude problem along with them. This Sensei is obviously so aware of his status within UK Karate that he is very insecure about it and takes it out on the very people he should be helping - his own students.