Martial arts discussion thread

[GoktimusPrime]

It's evolution unfortunately. There is not much of a need for traditional schools anymore. The rise in popularity of sports martial arts over the past 10years has seen the public demand shift more to competition based schools.

Sadly I cannot disagree with you there. IMO losing traditional martial arts is also a cultural loss as well.

I trained with GKR for 8+ years and they are labelled a "mcdojo" and i would consider GKR and that video on the same level as an insult.
For Example GKR wins National All styles constantly due to a consistent quality of technique.

That being said, i'm not say you are comparing that directly to gkr but i think the use of the term is not called for in that situation.

The GKR schools around my area are what I would consider schools of dubious quality. I don't know about your GKR school -- I've never seen it so I can't judge it -- but the ones in _my_ area were incredibly disappointing.

Plus belts, competition and gradings are the way of the martial arts world now, it does not make the club untraditional or weak etc. They still have plenty of "substance".

I find the grading system is counter intuitive to traditional/practical training in two main ways:

1) Unnecessary prolonging of learning.
2) The problem with tests/exams is that some students tend to learn for passing tests rather than for actual learning.
I'm not necessarily saying that schools with belts/gradings lack substance per se, but I'm saying that the belt/grading thing feels like a massive (and costly) distraction from what I perceive as the core function of martial arts -- learning to fight.