chris

PugPaws posted a question earlier about learning your style that got me thinking. Are we actually doing justice to the martial arts? Meaning, we step on the floor and teach every day and pass on our knowledge to others. But in reality, it's a business. We have to turn a profit to keep doing what we're doing. We slam McDojo's because they churn out 'black belts' like an assembly line. They have 'masters clubs', 'CIT' and whatever else. I'll admit, ATF specifically, has a great business plan to make money. Present day life and thought is completely different from 20 years ago when you walked into a dojo. You trained, you fought, you got banged up, you passed your test, or didn't, but you didn't care about the color of your belt. Today, parents mostly, will yank their child right out of your door if their kid wasn't passed. You just lost money. We have bills to pay. Kids are the life blood of a dojo. Says every successful program out there: NAPMA, MAIA, and so on. These programs were put together by 'old school' martial artists. Ones who believed in 'if i don't pass, i try harder' but put together blanket programs to grow your 'business' through 'black belt clubs', 'masters clubs', best testing time lines. Everything a McDojo is. So honestly, aren't we all, at least to some degree a McDojo?

I would like some input because this issue is causing some tension between me and the owner of the dojo. Here's the problem. When teaching beginner students, white thru orange, I emphasize and stress proper stances. Sometimes we'll go through a whole class on making sure the front stance is correct (i.e. weight distribution, foot position, body posture, knee bend, etc.). I do this in the kids, teens and adult classes.

My belief is that any proper technique starts with the stance. The owner, however, doesn't disagree but he doesn't focus on the basics as much as I do. I can understand, but I've seen his advanced students look sloppy because of their stances and have had to stop their current belt skills to go back and work on the basics. When doing punching drills, he'll yell 'more power' but they don't know how to properly apply more power because they’re not in the proper stance.

I know it's hard to balance a class and keep people interested at the same time. I was taught when I started that all the power comes from the feet up, using the whole body to generate power. He was as well because he's got great technique but doesn't stress the basics in his students. Granted, there is a ton of techniques the students have to learn for each belt. For those familiar with Kenpo, my third style to learn and teach, there are over 300 self-defense combinations you need to know between white and black so getting the students up to par on those as well as fundamentals is challenging. Hell, for the first 2 weeks when I started, all we did was stances and movement up and down the floor, no punches or kicks just stances and movement.

The owner is a very good martial artist but lacks a bit in teaching skills, which I have found to be prevalent in the industry. Good martial artist..bad business person...good business person..average martial artist. My questing is, how do you balance between producing very good martial artists who's understanding of the techniques for their rank is up to high standards and not having to go back later in their training to fix things because kids and parents expect to be promoted and keep paying the monthly fee?

Why do SOME people believe that traditional MA is not MMA? My opinion is the term has defined a system. People seem to think it's new and from what I've read on here, only encompasses BJJ, Muy (Muay) Thai, wrestling, kick boxing and similar. I would like to have ALL MA explain their style and get people's frame of mind straight. If you notice we've become divided into MMA players and Traditional MA practitioners. Why are we divided?