Martial arts discussion thread

[GoktimusPrime]

I just had the VB commercial jingle playing in my head when I read your post, Bartrim.

[Bartrim]

What a awesome UFC event yesterday. Only one disappointment where a fight was stopped due to an unintentional eye poke but the rest of the fights were really good. Machida v Bader played out exactly like I thought with the wrestler getting impatient in the second round and lunging at the dragon who dropped him with a beautiful right hand. Vera surprised me in lasting 4 rounds with Shogun.

Now to wait and see who Machida will fight for the light heavyweight title.

[GoktimusPrime]

So the GKR sales rep actually called me today and asked me for feedback on what I thought about my GKR training during the 3 month trial. So I gave her my honest opinion as objectively as I could, although she kinda caught me at an awkward moment as I was mid-marking exam papers, so my brain was kinda frazzled. The main focus of my feedback was on how I've found my GKR training to be ill-suited to self defence and if anything, the training has been counter intuitive to self defence fighting. Some of the comments I made she didn't address... in fact, there was a point in our conversation where she kinda went silent and after a brief pause I had to go "Hello?" to see if she was still there. To make a long conversation short, the main crux of what I was telling her was how the teaching has only been superficial and that there's no real teaching for deep knowledge. i.e. that if I were attacked, I should be able to execute everything I've learnt so far in GKR as if it were second nature -- instinctively. Now in saying this I'm not at all suggesting or expecting that I'd be able to get into a serious fight with only 3 months' training in GKR, but as I told the sales rep, in the context of what I've learnt, I should be able to execute the basic techniques I've learnt in a fight. e.g. if someone attacks me with an attack that is ideally countered with a gedan barai, then my body ought to be defending it with a gedan barai without any conscious thought.

It's like say, if someone has only just started learning Japanese and maybe all they can talk about is greetings, introducing themselves and maybe counting to 10. Assuming that the student is serious and motivated, if they are taught these things correctly then they should be able to engage in a conversation about any of these things - at their level - with a native speaker. They may not be able to talk about anything more, but they should be able to at least do that. So likewise I should be able to execute all the techniques I've learnt in Taigyoku Shodan and Taigyoku Nidan like it were second nature. But the fact is that I can't. I've been taught to perform these katas for the sake of performing them. I've rarely done any bunkai, and all the bunkai I've done has been carefully choreographed/coordinated so that I _always_ know what kind of attack is coming. Everything is predictable and nothing is ever random. She told me about the importance of not allowing beginners to spar because of safety, and I said that's fine... but you can still have beginner-appropriate drill-exercises that use random variation to reduce predictability.

I mentioned how I found the pace of learning to be really slow, and how other more senior students I'd spoken to had said the same thing. She told me 3 months isn't enough time to get fight training done and that this doesn't happen until green belt. So I told her that I had sparred with some brown belts who -- well, I wanted to tell her how easy it was for me to beat them, but she interrupted me and insisted that the brown belts would've taken it easy on me because I was a beginner. Without even letting me finish my story and describe how the fights went... because if she had I would've told her how I just walked into some of these brown belts who just had no idea how to defend themselves when someone just aggressively violates their personal space. But she didn't want to hear it, so I let it go...

I told her about how the bulk of my training has been repetition of katas and practising basics in the air -- and while I recognise the importance of this, I told her about how this alone only caters for a superficial level of knowledge. Without more frequent and better designed applications exercises I found it really difficult to obtain a deeper level of knowledge. I told her that it's like learning a language without engaging in a conversation, or learning how to drive in a parked car without ever switching the engine on... (that's not a very good analogy - like I said, my brain was frazzled ) I also told her how I found the katas to be far too basic, and that I did some research into them (didn't mention about how they mispronounce it ) and that it was something developed in the 20th Century when Karate was introduced to school children. So while I can understand the validity of these simple katas for teaching children, I wasn't sure about the value of teaching the same simplified katas to adults (or even teenagers for that matter), and mentioned how I would prefer more traditional and relatively more complex katas. She then misunderstood this as me saying that I expected Karate to be more like Tai Chi (which she occasionally referred to as Muay Thai... I'm not sure if she realises that they're different martial arts...) -- and I told her that this wasn't the case. I told her that none of my criticisms are intended to be based on, "Because it's not like what I've done," but rather because I don't think it works in self defence, i.e. if I move in a certain way I'm likely to get smashed in the groin or face or throat etc.

She told me that 3 months isn't enough time to adequately gauge GKR, which contradicts what she told me when I first met her and I asked her if GKR offered single free trial lessons. She told me that one lesson isn't enough time but 3 months was. Now she's telling me that 3 months isn't enough... come on... how long does she expect "prospective customers" to trial a product before making a decision as to whether or not it's suitable for them? The vast majority of martial arts schools out there offer single free trial lessons (often with a free observation lesson too). You can pretty much get a feel for what the school is about after 1-2 lessons. Of course you won't know everything about that school, but you can usually tell what they're about and whether or not they're suited to your needs. That's the basic principle of "try before you buy," but with GKR they insist on "buy before you try" (i.e. you have to pay for trial membership before you can even step foot into a Dojo). I really dislike this part about GKR more than anything --- makes it feel so McDojo. The only other martial art schools I've seen that insist on buy before you try is stuff like Kenjutsu and Kendo - because they require a lot of personalised equipment. But even then they still offer free observation lessons!

So anyway, she called me looking for customer feedback and I gave it to her. The one thing I should have also mentioned but didn't was how so many of their lessons are based on rote learning, when countless amounts of research have shown that rote learning is a really poor way of teaching/learning compared to associative learning. And that's the real problem with the classes -- a lack of associative learning (through things like better designed application exercises). I wonder if they ever analyse any critical feedback they receive or if they just ignore them and focus on the positive ones. And the rep told me that most of the feedback they get is positive "because most of our students don't have a prior martial arts background." Hang on... analyse what you just said. Yes, of course they're going to think that GKR is great when they have nothing to compare it to. It's like people who say that Bruce Lee is a "great" fighter... often because they've never compared him with another decent Kung Fu fighter (some of them cite his performance in films as evidence... cos ya know... movies are real ) She did tell me that she was quite impressed that I had stuck to the trial period in its entirety -- training once/twice every week for 3 months. And to be fair, I was impressed that she actually did a follow up call. Whether or not she takes any of my comments aboard or just dismisses them I don't/won't know.

[Bartrim]

Well I had an interesting week at Karate last week.

On Monday arvo I decided to bite the bullet and take Marcus to his first kids class. I've been unsure about starting him as he is socially under developed and he is rather small. Eventually I thought hey the first 2 lessons are free so if he doesn't like or whatever no harm done. So he comes along and he loved it!!! I was so proud. Then I got annoyed because I was so happy watching him do it and enjoy it but one of the other mothers there was doing a "body shop" presentation to all the mothers. Then I looked around and about 3 of the parents were sitting in their cars listening to music, reading the paper and I noticed I was the only one who was watching and supporting their child. Even if it wasn't martial arts I support and encourage my kids. These other parents couldn't give a hoot about what their kids are doing.

Then onto my class on Monday Night. I was asked to warm the class up for the first 20 minutes. Now that I REALLY ENJOYED. Some of the teenagers in the class are real smartarses and decided to disrespect me. That didn't last too long after a made an example out of a couple of them. I was kind enough to explain to them afterwards that I only punished them because I was pretty nervous about instructing so I didn't appreciate being heckled.

Then on Thursday Night I have a seperate class with me and one other girl that is for senior students who are on their way to black belt that focuses on weapons, pressure points etc. Sensei got myself and Bec to stand facing each other (yeah okay), close our eyes (ummm ok), put our hands up not quite touching each other (why am I feeling concerned about this?), put your tongue on the roof of your mouth (hang on I've heard this before...), Now use your chi energy to push each others hands ( OH HELL NO!!!!!) I jumped back in total refusual. We ended up not doing anything practical in that class as Sensei and I spent the next 45 minutes arguing about whether all that stuff is real. He was saying that he didn't believe it until he had seen it done and he tried to push me over, he couldn't because he said I was subconciously refusing. My argument was if thats all you have to do to prevent being knocked over by someones chi energy then it's a pretty useless skill to learn. He was talking about the auras and energy of people and seeing high ranking members push people over using chi. I called it a parlour trick using smoke and mirror techniques like a basic suggestive hypnosis to weak minded people and said that this threw up a major red flag in my book that this was a McDojo. Thankfully Bec was there to stand in between us because it got quite heated. He didn't admit it but I think our karate class that is straight after that class suffered because we got put through one hell of a warm up. It was absolutely brutal. When we had our first water break everyone was complaining. Normally one or two slackers complain after warm up not the whole class.

Thankfully he was kind enough to talk to me after class and we came to a deal. He wouldn't try to teach me anything about chi as I didn't want to waste my money but only if I agreed to sit down and have an in depth discussion about with pur founder next time he visits. Hopefully Kyoshi Blundells visits are so few and far between that all this is forgotten by the time he comes down our way next.

[tron07]

I'm returning to Judo soon

I am 1st dan judo, though stop for a long while already....

[KalEl]

I am 1st dan judo, though stop for a long while already....

awesome!

[GoktimusPrime]

He was saying that he didn't believe it until he had seen it done and he tried to push me over, he couldn't because he said I was subconciously refusing. My argument was if thats all you have to do to prevent being knocked over by someones chi energy then it's a pretty useless skill to learn. He was talking about the auras and energy of people and seeing high ranking members push people over using chi. I called it a parlour trick using smoke and mirror techniques like a basic suggestive hypnosis to weak minded people and said that this threw up a major red flag in my book that this was a McDojo. Thankfully Bec was there to stand in between us because it got quite heated. He didn't admit it but I think our karate class that is straight after that class suffered because we got put through one hell of a warm up. It was absolutely brutal. When we had our first water break everyone was complaining. Normally one or two slackers complain after warm up not the whole class.

"And so the warriors of Kingdom A defeated the invading hordes of Army B, without having to touch anyone." - said nobody to no-one.

[Bartrim]

"And so the warriors of Kingdom A defeated the invading hordes of Army B, without having to touch anyone." - said nobody to no-one.

Maybe if Army B believed in it then Kingdom A could of used it.

Everytime it comes up in discussion I bring up the same argument "Whats the point of this awesome mystical power if all you have to do to defend yourself is not believe in it?" Can you imagine how crap Star Wars would of been if when Darth Vader is waiting for Han and Leia at Bespin he goes to use the force to take Han's gun and Han says "Nah I don't believe in the force" and nothing happens

[GoktimusPrime]

Everytime it comes up in discussion I bring up the same argument "Whats the point of this awesome mystical power if all you have to do to defend yourself is not believe in it?" Can you imagine how crap Star Wars would of been if when Darth Vader is waiting for Han and Leia at Bespin he goes to use the force to take Han's gun and Han says "Nah I don't believe in the force" and nothing happens

Hahaha, yeah.

They could even get beaten up by a crippled atheist like Dr. Stephen Hawking (he did once punch Homer Simpson in the face )

[GoktimusPrime]

Goki> At what level are students taught break falls?
Sempai> GKR doesn't teach break falls on account that we are not meant to do take downs lol

<throws.hands.up.in.the.air>

I haven't resumed GKR training, but I still keep in touch with some of the friends I made there I'm actually planning on resuming my Yang Tai Chi training tomorrow (now that the current Year 12 cohort have finished and I currently no longer have after school extension classes that clash! Although I gotta start the current Year 11's extension class soon... hopefully that won't clash again)