It also seems rather insular to me... as if she's never looked at martial arts outside of her Dojo/system. As someone who carries the title "Sensei", I would expect a higher level of knowledge/expertise about Karate. I was already quite surprised that, as a Sensei, she couldn't even tell me GKR's lineage. And GKR's a modern style of Karate (its founder is still alive!)... it's not like older martial arts where the origins of their styles are really hard to trace due to records being lost or destroyed (if indeed they ever existed).
So anyway, on the advice of some of the brown belts, I went to another class this morning. I'm usually not able to go out on a Sunday morning because my wife usually does stuff and I'm hope looking after the baby (I give her advanced notice if there's any collector fairs/conventions that fall on a Sunday
). But this morning she let me go, so yay.
So I met another Sensei, and this class had a lot less "down time" compared to the Friday classes. There were quite a lot of new students there, so the entire class had to go through the basics again... I found that kinda frustrating. Why not get one of the brown belts to take the first timers aside and go through the beginning stuff with them, and let the rest of us do other stuff? It's like
everyone has to do the same thing, and any time a newbie comes along, everyone else has to go back and do the beginner's stuff all over again.
He was able to give some of the colour belts more complex variations of what he was teaching the newbies, but as a white belt I had to do it all over again.
On the plus side, I did arrive a bit early and I asked this Sensei if he was cool with martial arts shoes and weights - he said the shoes were fine, and weights were okay as long as they weren't "too obvious" (e.g. bulky, brightly coloured). I showed him the weights and he said they were fine.
So at least while I had to do all the boring basics again, I managed to get some weight training done. The funny thing was, when we were practising stances even some of the coloured belts were whining about how their legs were hurting. Considering that I was standing there in deep stance with weights on my wrists and ankles, and that I often practice my Tai Chi forms slowly with weights, and in Chen Tai Chi we often
meditated in our stances (sometimes holding up to 29 postures!
) I had
no sympathy for these people who were just whinging about holding
two stances for a minute.
Sensei took all the white belts through first kata - he then allowed me and three other white belts who had already learnt first kata to learn second kata. Which is basically the same as first kata with some punches and kicks added.
Sensei just looked at me and told showed me the punch and kick for the 'sideways' movements, and the kick and punch for the 'lengthwise' movements, then told me to lead the others through it!
No contact work today though.
Just drills in the air and kata.
I had an interesting chat with Sensei after class, because in the beginning Sensei asked me if I had done martial arts before, and I told him that I've done some Tai Chi and I also explained that I was interested in learning martial arts for self defence. Sensei and I discussed GKR and its effectiveness in self defence both before and after the lesson, and these are some things that this Sensei said about GKR:
+ One big problem is the fact that GKR teaches students from the very beginning to hold back and pull their hits. To always stop short in front of the targets and not through them; so students don't start off learning how to issue power and their strikes are often ineffectual.
+ Kumite and competitions impose lots of restrictive rules, and once you introduce rules, your fighting form becomes less effective. He said that some GKR fighters get a rude surprise when they go to train in Dojos in Japan where Japanese fighters will just begin the fight with a sharp kick to the family jewels and drop them like a sack of potatoes. He said that Kumite really doesn't well prepare students for a real fight.
+ I told Sensei that 2 weeks ago I had witnessed the coloured belts on Friday sparring in Kumite, and it was all long-range "tit-for-tat" fighting... like aggressive patty-cake... but nobody tried to close the gap, not even elbow/kneeing range. Sensei nodded and said that was no surprise because the students are all
too afraid to come any closer! So because of the point-scoring nature of Kumite, it allows them to comfortably play patty-cake with hands and feet, but ill prepares them to get any closer. Sensei said that if you ever just go right up close to the average GKR fighter, they'll freak out and they won't know what to do! I told him that I would wonder how they would handle fighters that specialise in up-close fighting, like Brazilian Jujutsu - and he said, yeah... they just wouldn't cope. And since I'd brought up BJJ...
+ GKR has does no grappling, wrestling or throwing, and as such doesn't teach breakfalls. He said that none of his students know how to fall - and even he only learnt how to grapple and fall by Jujutsu - and that GKR itself never equipped him for any of that.
+ Sensei said that as a fighting system GKR is 'incomplete'. He said that their defences are good in terms of blocks (I suppose only good against basic long range attacks -- I'd like to see how GKR fighters would defend against more advanced mid to close range fighters including grapplers and wrestlers etc.) but their attacks are lacking. He told me that I want to learn a fighting form, then I might consider looking elsewhere. He also said that if I'm already trained in another style then it'd be more beneficial to continue doing it rather than starting from scratch with another style. I explained to him that my Yang Tai Chi school: (a) doesn't teach apps and rarely has contact work, and (b) only has ONE class a week, which happens to occur on the one day that I have to work late.
So I joined GKR because I was desperate for
some kind of martial arts training instead of just sitting on my bum thinking about it.
So Sensei gave me some interest food for thought and I must say that with what I've seen and experienced of GKR so far, I'm inclined to agree. But I'll keep persevering through the rest of my three-month trial period and see if GKR shows me anything that will convince me to stay on. I've already started making friends with some of the brown belts there... I'm thinking that if I decide to drop out after the trial period, I might keep in contact with them and we might cross-train with each other privately.
I must say kudos to this Sensei for his no-nonsense approach and open honesty in his discussion with me. Another thing I found out though... GKR Senseis are
unpaid! They're all volunteers who don't receive a single cent for their teaching (other than maybe a paltry token $30 "bonus" around Xmas).
Now... considering how much money GKR generates (I often hear other students talk about how expensive GKR is; just this morning I heard 2-3 students complain about it) surely they can afford to pay the Senseis some money for their
time and effort! Sensei was like, "Well we all do it for the love of the sport," yeah but... dude, it's your _time_.
Everybody's time is important... and considering that GKR is reputed to be such a big business, surely they can afford to pay their teachers (fair pay for fair work).