Martial arts discussion thread

[Bartrim]

Yet it happens in a lot of schools. There are a LOT of martial art schools that allow even yellow belts to be the chief instructor of Dojos. (-_-)

Would this be like with GKR? I read on a martial arts forum that they run special instructor courses so they can have lower grades instruct yet still be a black and white belt. and thus open up more dojos.

[GoktimusPrime]

Would this be like with GKR? I read on a martial arts forum that they run special instructor courses so they can have lower grades instruct yet still be a black and white belt. and thus open up more dojos.

Yup.

GKR is also:
1) The most popular (most widely practised) martial art in Australia.
2) NOT an authentic Japanese or Okinawan style of Karate, it's Australian. If you go to Japan and mention GKR there, people will be like

I used to teach at this evening college and there was a GKR class that would started earlier than the evening college, so I would come in and watch the classes while waiting for evening college to commence. The instructor was one of those lower grade black and white belts - although at the time I had no idea what that belt colour meant. The funniest time was when he was sparring or doing drills with a student, and the student knocked him down -- he just fell on his back/bum -- NO attempt at _any_ kind of break fall or recovery technique... and this coming from an instructor that students are paying money to be taught by!

But I will give GKR credit for one thing: they are very good at teaching the bare basics of martial arts which is especially beneficial to someone who has _never_ done a martial art or any kind of sports or athleticism before (i.e. someone who has crap-house coordination). I find that Karate in general is quite good at building on core basic fundamentals -- but I find that GKR is especially good at it. But having said that, I have never been impressed with anything I've seen in GKR above beginner's level. Basically I would recommend GKR to someone who has problems with motor skills, coordination etc. -- but once they get those basic skills honed, I'm not sure if I'd recommend that they stay with GKR in the long run.

I used to train with this guy who was so badly uncoordinated that well, whenever he sparred he made Jar Jar Binks look like a graceful swan. I think the limit of his coordination skills was like... walking. He was trying to learn Baguazhang (8 Trigrams Palm) Kung Fu -- and he totally lacked the motor coordination to execute even the most basic moves in it... so I recommended GKR to him. I've lost contact with him since, so I have no idea if he took my advice or not.

I have sparred with GKR fighters twice:
+ First time was with a guy who was a relative beginner, and he was quite good - but then again, he also had extensive training in European martial arts prior to doing GKR Karate, so his fight skills weren't purely based on his GKR training. He had me pinned down using his much larger size to his advantage, so I grabbed his pony tail and yanked it - that got him off me pretty quick.
+ Second time was with a black belt - an instructor (although he was a student at a school of a traditional Okinawan Karate style)... I nearly ripped his janglies off... and again, this guy already had Okinawan Karate training on top of his GKR.

...so I've never sparred against a formidable opponent who was purely trained in GKR. And I'll be the first to admit that I'm NOT a good fighter (despite my athletic physique ), so if someone like me can beat these GKR guys, they really can't be that good... imagine how'd they go up against someone ya know... decent!

[Bartrim]

Speak of the devil.

I was walking through an arcade in Ulladulla today on my way to mail out statements and I see on a noticeboard that a GKR school has started up. I wonder how they will go.

[Bartrim]

About to go to my first lesson of "black belt club" which is an additional class for "students above the rank of orange belt who are serious about progressing to black belt. Class focuses on weapons and pressure points"

...

Should be fun... or painful.

[SkyWarp91]

About to go to my first lesson of "black belt club" which is an additional class for "students above the rank of orange belt who are serious about progressing to black belt. Class focuses on weapons and pressure points"

...

Should be fun... or painful.

how about painfully fun?

[GoktimusPrime]

I resumed training this week for the first time in months... so... painful! XO

[Bartrim]

I resumed training this week for the first time in months... so... painful! XO

Have you found a new school or are you still at the same one you were at last time we spoke? I recall you weren't to happy with the instructor there.

[Bartrim]

Just watched some GKR video on youtube as I am still learning about why it has such a bad rep (I am learning very quickly) but how in the world can you have non contact sparring? How do they judge who gets the point if noone makes contact? Also the company also has the appearance of a pyramid scheme... I thought those were illegal.

[GoktimusPrime]

Maybe they judge on technique and if you make "close enough" hits?? <shrugs> I don't know...

There are some martial arts schools which don't have ANY kind of physical contact (like mine! ) -- but some purport to teach their students how to attack with their mystical "chi energy." You know when you're playing make believe, and you pretend of have powers like Force Push etc. -- that's what these guys do, only that to them, it's not make believe! And the instructor charges his students money for membership and lessons where he claims to demonstrate using these mystical powers on his students!

I know a guy who told me about one such school he witnessed. During the lesson the teacher would use Energy Attacks to repel his students. He'd make a gesture, and the opposing student would 'fly' back and fall over. Whenever he asked any of the students if they could do such moves, they would say, "Oh no, it takes years and years to develop this technique!" -- and when he asked the teacher if he could demonstrate an energy push on him, he said, "Oh no, I might accidentally injure or kill you. My students have been trained to withstand my attacks." (so... how did they survive the initial training when they were beginners?)

Even if we were to assume that these techniques are real... it takes like a lifetime to develop it apparently. In the mean time you're spending thousands of dollars on membership, lesson fees, gradings etc. -- wouldn't it be cheaper to buy a can of mace or a taser? Or take up jogging so if you do see an attack coming from long distance you can leg it!

The entire point of learning hand-to-hand self defence is because IRL an attack that you're going to need to defend yourself against is going to be one that you couldn't run away from (because running away is always your first option!) -- like say someone unexpectedly grabs you from behind. Force push? You'll both fly over wouldn't you? (and if he has you in something like a bear hug, then you can't lift your hands up to do the magic gesture...)

Imagine one of these Chi Energy fighters against a BJJ fighter. *sigh* If you go back and look at the history of these non contact "Chi attack" schools, they came from this period where snobby aristocrats watched soldiers and peasants doing cool martial arts moves and taking down opponents... and they wanted to be able to do the same thing, but they didn't want to you know... break a sweat or get physical! So they invented the religious concept of Chi (re: Daoism) and created this martial art where they can supposedly use The Force^Chi to fight and take down opponents just like those awesome Shaolin Monks... only that they don't need to get hot and sweaty in training!

So... non-contact sparring has its roots in upper class aristocrats. But of course, back in those days most of those people would never interact with commoners (if anyone attacked them it was up to their bodyguards who actually trained in sweat and blood to defend them! (then the aristocrat would probably take the credit)). But nowadays seeing regular folks train in non-contact with the intention of learning self defence is more disappointing, because of course, if these people DO ever get attacked IRL... odds won't be favourable for them.

As for a pyramid scheme... I'm not sure. A pyramid scheme is meant to be an "unsustainable business model," yet commercially speaking GKR is extremely successful considering that it's like the single most commonly practised martial arts style in Australia. There are many martial arts schools like this in Australia and around the world -- absolute commercial successes, but teaching questionable self defence techniques. These questionable schools are often referred as "McDojos" (i.e. commercial success over quality) and their arts are sometimes called "Bullshido."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial..._arts_industry

Asian martial arts experienced a surge of popularity in the west during the 1970s, and the rising demand resulted in numerous low quality or fraudulent schools. Fueled by fictional depictions in martial arts movies, this led to the "ninja craze" of the 1980s United States.[23] The rank system introduced for judo in the 1880s proved commercially viable, and "colored belt" systems were adopted in many martial arts degree mills (also known as "McDojos"; parodied in Penn & Teller: Bullshit! episode "Martial Arts", June 2010).

http://mcdojo-faq.tripod.com/

I find that the best martial arts schools tend to be rather obscure. Even in that "Kill Arman" episode in China, when he went to the Shaolin Temple it was all McDojo Bullshido rubbish... the only way he could learn authentic Shaolin Kung Fu was to go to this obscure out of the way school which also doubled as an orphanage and had no running water! I knew a guy who did something similar -- he trained in this small village in the middle of nowhere in rural China where nobody spoke a word of English and children would gather round pointing and laughing at him because they'd never seen a white man before! But boy did he learn to kick some serious butt while he was there!