Dojo Disease

[CredoTe]

"Dojo Disease"... That is a great way to describe it...

IMHO, this is one of the biggest threats to true martial arts development, that which may save your life or the life of a loved one on the street. Dojo Disease may not be much of a problem to students that just want to look cool and win trophies at tournaments, or those that are in class that just "go through the motions". IMHO, this "Dojo Disease" and "just going through the motions" are related, but may or may not be the same thing (this may be a subject for a separate thread discussion...) I also opine that Dojo Disease, particularly those infected that turns into "Tournament-itis" or "Tournament Bug" in which they just want to look cool and win trophies, has contributed to the stigma that Karate / traditional MA are useless versus MMA (this could also be a separate thread discussion ).

Instructors can "inoculate" most students, but not all unfortunately, through various training methods (the experienced instructors here probably already know and use). For instance, when working through Kihon, instructors in my dojo will step in front of students as their targets. Our students know to strike with power against us, and we will take a few to gauge a student's power development, technique, targeting, etc. We're not totally stupid though, we carry target mitts or striking shield so that, after the first few power shots taken to our bodies, we have the students continue against the padded surfaces .

For our new adult students, it may take several months or more for them to mentally overcome their innate mental block of not wanting to hit anyone. For our youth students (9 - 15 years old), we have found it's actually easier to get them to start hitting us hard than for our adults, at least for the youth students that want to learn true martial arts development - at the same time, most of our students that "just go through the motions" are in our youth. Maybe someone here with some more insight can relay their experience as to why this is (easier to "inoculate" youth students that want it, but at the same time, we have more youth that "just go through the motions" than adults)? I may start a separate thread discussion with that question if it changes this thread too much.

Just my two pennies...

[bushido_man96]

I was teaching a small group yesterday practical self-defense applications from kata and traditional karate. I have one student who has a red belt in another style from a larger dojo in the area. His technique is usually pretty good. His application suffers sometimes, however, because he is too controlled. I see this a lot in students who have little practical experience, but good experience in the dojo, my nickname for this is dojo disease.

In this case I was instructing the student to push me like he meant it -like he was being a bully and wanted to dump me on the ground or shove me through the wall. He took one step, put his hands on my shoulders, pushed and stopped. I asked him to push again and he stepped in and faked a push off to one side of my body - no contact! I told him to push me like a football player would shove a blocking dummy and to keep pushing. Even after several tries my student had a difficult time making himself aggressively push.

Now, I'm not teaching pushing. What I wanted to demonstrate was evasion and response to common aggressive techniques, but without an active partner it is very hard to demonstrate effective defense. I know there is a time and place to passively practice techniques with a partner, but isn't there also a time and place to throw on some headgear and pressure test your techniques?

Why is it so hard to get my dojo trained students to buy into this?

I think for the majority of people, its tough to display aggression like that. Keep in mind that 90% or better of the people in the world lead peaceful lives minus physical confrontation, and most of them are perfectly happy for it to remain that way. So when you ask a sheep to turn into a sheepdog or a wolf, its tough for them to do so. He may also be afraid of the reaction, too. I think the answer is more time and exposure to this kind of training, to bring the students around. I don't think its necessarily a disease of the dojo. Its the way some people are.

[bushido_man96]

Maybe someone here with some more insight can relay their experience as to why this is (easier to "inoculate" youth students that want it, but at the same time, we have more youth that "just go through the motions" than adults)? I may start a separate thread discussion with that question if it changes this thread too much.

I think some kids just get to the point that they are either burning out a bit, or have done something so long they fall into a rut. They need a jolt, something to wake them up again. And some kids do just "go through the motions."

[sensei8]

Motions are ok, but quitting isn't. However, if one does quit, that's ok too. It's what one decides, and that's cool too!!

[CredoTe]

Maybe someone here with some more insight can relay their experience as to why this is (easier to "inoculate" youth students that want it, but at the same time, we have more youth that "just go through the motions" than adults)? I may start a separate thread discussion with that question if it changes this thread too much.

I think some kids just get to the point that they are either burning out a bit, or have done something so long they fall into a rut. They need a jolt, something to wake them up again. And some kids do just "go through the motions."

Yeah, for some of our kids that get burned out, we advise their parents to take a little break and come back in a few weeks, month, etc. That tends to work for those kids. For the kids that need a jolt, the difficulty is finding what works to "jolt them". I'm not sure I've found a good solution to that...

[sensei8]

Maybe someone here with some more insight can relay their experience as to why this is (easier to "inoculate" youth students that want it, but at the same time, we have more youth that "just go through the motions" than adults)? I may start a separate thread discussion with that question if it changes this thread too much.

I think some kids just get to the point that they are either burning out a bit, or have done something so long they fall into a rut. They need a jolt, something to wake them up again. And some kids do just "go through the motions."

Yeah, for some of our kids that get burned out, we advise their parents to take a little break and come back in a few weeks, month, etc. That tends to work for those kids. For the kids that need a jolt, the difficulty is finding what works to "jolt them". I'm not sure I've found a good solution to that...

That's why baseball, basketball, football, soccer and the like are great breaks to ward off burnout.