Don't Make Our Same Mistakes

[JusticeZero]

These are all completely reasonable goals, and nothing in it is contrary to being honorable. It seems that you want other high ranking martial artists to recognise your art, which in turn would help your students in the wider Karate/martial arts culture. it is perhaps not enough to incubate your students well without preparing the outside world a bit for their arrival into it.

My thoughts on the matter stand; I feel that the best ways to achieve your goal is to 1: show up and represent where other Okinawan styles are represented, and 2: get published. Your student retention policies are not going to help with the goals you listed.

[sensei8]

While one might view some of these things mentioned here as insignificant, I can assure you that the layman/woman consumer, especially a parent, doesn't, and I'm not so sure that some MAists don't either.

Aligning ourselves with whatever is positive and solid in order to drive our bottom line, no matter local or not, might've been a good idea for my Hombu as well as myself.

My responsibilities as Kaicho are clear to me: Improve the betterment of the entire student body and of the Hombu. To drive the bottom line equitably and then some.

[JusticeZero]

Then you have more than one goal. That's fine; there is nothing wrong with having several goals. Just so long as you are able to be clear on what those goals are, how those goals interact, and what actions are intended to work toward what goals.

This is related to technique. If your goal is to arrest someone, that is to put them in some sort of control position without doing lasting harm, then you will need to do several things; you need to close on them for one. There are a few ways to do that; maybe you can capitalize on them overextending or doing something spinny. But you know "I need to watch for an opportunity to close on them." You will also need to not randomly smash their nose in with kicks, so you need to take that into mind too. Maybe you can make an opening and get them to move in a way that you can crash in on them.

If you do these things, it might be hard but you have a good chance of being able to get the guy taken down. If however you say "Oh, I want to grab this guy and not hurt him" but then you wade in on auto pilot throwing punches and side kicks at their face and maintaining your long range, it just isn't going to happen that way.

If you are grappling, but you are just enjoying the interplay of positions and dynamics and don't work toward a goal, you will eventually find yourself tapping to someone who wants the lock.

However, if you want to put the guy in an armbar, and your strategy to do it is to start throwing crescent kicks from range, (followed by "???", then "victory"), you're not going to get your armbar.

You need to say "I want -this-, and -that-, and so I need to work toward those." Then examine the actions available and chose the ones that work toward your goals and avoid the ones that run counter to your goals. Whenever you are about, keep your ears open, just in case some odd opportunity sparks that, hey, might be worked to work toward your goals.

[sensei8]

For now, I yield to you the high ground.

[shadowspawn]

Our style follows the same principals. Part of the process is to weed out the "bad eggs" that come along. If everything is done by word of mouth, you can be more confident that the people coming in are going to be part of the better bunch (assuming you started with a good bunch to begin with). I don't see anything wrong with the model personally. I mean sure, not too many other martial artists will have heard of you, but is that really too important? IMO, the only people's opinions that should matter to you as a sensei are your students'. Who cares if some Vietnamese Kung Fu practitioner living in Russia hasn't heard of you? LOL