In the old days, one of my instructors told us he wanted to see blood at every workout. And he did... along with a lot of broken bones. I got my best friend involved in the school. After a month or two, someone asked him what he would do if he were attacked, since he hadn't trained for long. He said "I get beaten up by experts three times per week. What can the average guy do to me?"
I've always tried to remind myself of the following when supervising the training of my students: A student should never get more badly injured while trying to learn how to protect himself on the street than he would had he not trained and actually gotten beaten up on the street. What's your thinking on this?
I agree with you if it does not work in the dojo its not going to work on the streets. That is why I started my own dojo, got tired of seeing black belts given away.There was a group of us would go in a room and I never walked out of there gimping,bleeding or just hurt in some way,that was back in the mid 70's early 80's than thats when Oyata came around and made life alot easier. My opinion.
ReplyDeleteI heard an Instructor once say, "If you don't get hit hard you won't know what it feels like." My brother spoke up and stated that in his line of work he carries a handgun and that he didn't need to be shot to understand its effectiveness. Conditioning is good. Realism is good. Injury only leads to less training.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid studying karate in the "old" dojo my mother was convinced I had mental problems. Every class day I would go off with a clean white dogi folded correctly pressed fresh and ready for training tucked under my arm. Conversely when I'd return it was sweat soaked and bloodied on the front side and dirty on the backside from my behind hitting the dojo floor after being run over repeatedly by my sempai! That was all I knew about karate then and it was good enough according to my Sensei. But now after years of training, many casts, and the long term "issues" from that type of thing, I realize the difference between hard training and brutality. You need hard training to correctly absorb what Karate teaches this I agree with, however you do NOT need brutality to effectively learn karate. I would encourage everyone reading this to examine what goes on in your "good- because it's tougher than all the others-dojo" and see if what you are doing bears up under scrutiny. Is the training demanding but doable if you are persistent and apply honest effort, or are you being a walking talking human punching bag for a sociopathic sadist? I submit that you can correctly teach without the brutality. I know I could tread on a few sacred cultural cows here if not ginger with my delivery, but I think you understand my meaning. While training you really do not need to be hit at 90-100% power to the body all the time to understand the full potential of what you are learning. Nor do I need to play in traffic to accept that a car can kill me. I further disagree that is it psychologically needed either in my (non doctor) humble opinion. Contact yes, and it should be frequent to build up "tolerance" to incidental contact, but sustained pummeling no! My motto has become "Train today so that you can train again even better tomorrow" and certainly parts of your body in plaster make that a difficult goal to achieve. Great food for thought Mather Sensei many thanks for doing what you do! Osu!
ReplyDeleteRespectfully Yours in Budo,
Rick Georg
I'm lucky as I train under CKA. I have however trained in other martial arts before finding my niche with California Karate Academy, and haven't really looked back since.
ReplyDeleteIn the past, I've trained under a "9th Dan" Budo TaiJitsu instructor who quite honestly nearly beat the living daylights out of me with a boken in my third week. I happened to have brought my friend to the dojo on that night to join in, who had extensive training in Aikido. He intervened with the beating, and we both walked (I limped) out never to return again.
If you where to ask Renshi Johnson, He'd tell you how I asked him what his teaching style was like before even joining an initial class. I had explained this situation to him, and he assured me that CKA was different and it certainly is!
There is definitely a difference between learning to take a hit using just the right amount of force and getting the crap beat out of you.
When it comes to using full force, we have actual punching bags. =)
Also, I think that I've learned better control in being controlled.