By Any Other Floor!!

[sensei8]

Floors!! Common definition is...

the lower surface of a room, on which one may walk.

Every school of the MA has one of a typical shape whereas classes are given. Not all schools of the MA are free standing, in which, many are found in a strip mall or in some other location, like, at a church, for example.

Where would we be if gymnasiums hadn't ever been created, or worse, made unavailable to us??

Many MA venues/events take place in gymnasiums around the world. Classes are held there...seminars are held there...testing cycles are held there...and let us never forget, tournaments are held there.

Big...spacious...only limited by ones imagination. A place given for spectators to enjoy the activities being conducted on any given day/night. A gymnasiums more then adequate to host any MA event due to, of course, it being BIGGER than life. Bigger than ones tiny school of the MA!! Bigger than ones modest rented space in the community center, or pretty much, anywhere else, for that fact.

SPACE!! Gyms have one extra gift...built in Embusen, called, the basketball court markings, to start. Markings going here and there and so on and so forth...FREE. Yes, they serve not much good for any MA tournament...maybe.

God bless gymnasiums!! After all, by any other floor, it's safe haven!!

Can you share any fond memories that you've experienced while doing the MA in a gymnasium??

[Fat Cobra]

My Dojo is currently located in a gym. It is on a US Army post and the gym is a combination of a functional fitness gym (think cross-fit) and combatives area. I am lucky that there are three long mats located there, along with mirrors, heavy bags, and speed bags.

The gym staff lets me turn off the music to this back area and gives me exclusive use of the mats during class time. However, there are other people that do train in the area at the same time as my class (not on the mats). These are mainly boxers who work the heavy bag and speed bag.

All of this has a great upside with only a few downsides. Overall, I am very happy with the current arrangement.

[Alan Armstrong]

Interesting when training in the past on a clean polished gymnasium floor, where training bear foot was normal practice 24/7 365 without change; having to take care of blisters and calluses was the norm.

Today however out and about training in urban areas footwear and the different types of surfaces vary from concrete to asphalt, patio boards to bricks and paving blocks to sand and gravel, earth, grass and rocks...

Destroying footwear with Pivoting and Torquing the body is a sure sign of doing something right.

Wearing three pairs of socks with trainers that lace up past the ankle, similar to boxing footwear.

Rubber glue now becomes a part of the normal activity repairing the damaged areas of the trainers whereas it was skin and blisters that needed the attention.

Personally today, fighting or Sparring bear footed would seem alien to me.

Going back to bear feet, I think not, enjoying the bound feet feel, with training gloves that also wrap tightly around the wrists, everything feels to me the way it should be.

Bound feet and hands matching with sensitivitities, with the ground and pound feeling, combines, comfort, compatibility and completeness all in one.

[DWx]

Sprung wooden floors are great as long as you can have exclusive use of the venue and its not a space people are walking in and out of all the time.

[bushido_man96]

Some of my earliest MA training memories are on a concrete armory gym floor. Cold in the winter time, always hard to land on...ah, memories!

[sensei8]

Great stuff, everyone!! Please keep them coming!!

[Alan Armstrong]

There is a suction aspect to training bear food with karate or TKD on a wooden gymnasium floor.

Tansferring that feeling in variety of different urban spaces and surfaces wearing training footwear does present a new challenge to the maist.

My daily footwear is very similar to my training shoes, kicking the heavy bag in shoes for me is normal.

Kicking while on different surfaces does train an awareness beyond the confines of gyms and mats; as safety first and insurance is to be taken in to consideration.

Hitting one's head on concrete is a sure knockout (having the pleasure myself) urban surfaces becomes an integral part of the fighters repertoire; as the floor can always be utilised as a weapon against the uninitiated.

[Shizentai]

I've had so many interesting floor memories in my time. For sure there were a lot of gym floors, especially the college clubs. Through a weird turn of events I ended up attending 4 universities in my 4 years of undergraduate schooling. In every one except for at my Japanese university we were on a wooden gym floor. I actually found the tatami in our training facility in Japan much harder to grow accustomed to.

It's true! When training in a gym there can be any number of surprises. I once stepped in an unseen blob of PB&J from someone who had used the space before our prescribed time. Just the other week we were in a training camp, and someone got the idea to spread talc around, to make it easier to crescent step. It made for some surprisingly slippery entrances to the room. A common use floor is always like that though. We have what we have. There is a certain amount of variability in it.

At one of the American Universities I attended we would get kicked out of the gym during the summertime. Instead we would train in the grass in front of the bell tower. This lead to a number of entertaining interactions with the terrain and passers-by alike. It was custom to have "grass gis" as we would call them: a single gi per person sacrificed to the gods of mud and slime, so that not all of our uniforms would look terrible through the rest of the year.

[sensei8]

I suppose the beauty of the Gym experiences for us is that our Hombu had a Gymnasium attached adjacent to it, and that was primarily used for events like our Annual Testing Cycle Staging Area or tons of kids activities, like kids camp. Of course, it was used regular for many fun basketball games too.