Quote Originally Posted by Bartrim View Post
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!