black belts trying to impress their gf's/bf's?

The only yudansha who gets the all-class bow in our dojo is the chief instructor, and even then, only in formal circumstances. If one of the high ranking seniors from another dojo come as a guest, then they'll also get the all-class bow. Otherwise, no yudansha gets bowed to.

Anyone who arrives late, yudansha or not, has to do pushups before joining class. This does not make for a good impression, I would imagine. Yes, this includes myself (the senior instructor besides the chief instructor) on a rare occasion, since I have to fight that miserable rush hour I-65 commute every work day.
 
Who brings their girlfriend/boyfriend to training? (when they do not train themselves).
They need them to hold hands when sparring gets rough?
 
Ugh. Doesn't matter how many rituals you devise or revise to address this sort of thing. The idiocy always has a way of leaking through anyway.

Regardless of who's supposed to bow to whom, what you're obliged to do when you're late, or what the overall "privileges" are of being a black belt, the root problem begins with the person.

How lacking in self-awareness do you have to be in order to actually get a kick out of this? You know that they're doing it because they have to. Most of them probably haven't even gone through the mental process to ascertain whether you, as a person, warrant any particular respect. They just see a black belt enter the area and protocol kicks in.

Seems to me that a goal (or at least a convenient side effect) of training is some heightened sense of self. But if you seriously create a situation like that one to impress someone, and then actually think to yourself "aw yeah, in like Flynn!" there's a level of self-delusion there that's kinda stunning.

That's the last place I'd wanna try and pull a stunt like that. Because I wouldn't be able to look at myself in a mirror afterward. And the whole damn place is mirrored.


Stuart
 

Latest Discussions

Back
Top