Con-Artist Martial Artists

[Tony Dismukes]

ive been witness to a high level promotion where the recipient paid an Okinawan master to come to the US and give a seminar and be promoted. this was not his instructor so what right did he have to promote him other than the monetary Fee?

The visiting instructor has the same "right" to offer a rank as anyone else. As I mentioned in an earlier post, any rank credential is just somebody offering their assurance that a person meets certain standards within a given art. The question is - what is that assurance worth?

I could issue someone a rank certificate in karate, but it would be meaningless since I have no significant background or expertise in any form of karate.

I could issue a rank in BJJ to someone that I just observed at a seminar. This would be "legitimate" in that I have significant BJJ experience and my expertise to make such judgments is recognized by the BJJ community. However my assurances on the matter would be much less informed than they would be if the practitioner was a personal student of mine.

Even if I knew a BJJ practitioner and their abilities well, I would not offer to promote someone who was an active student of another instructor. Not because the rank would be invalid, but because accepting it would cause friction between the student and their teacher. Best to have one person responsible for tracking the student's progress.

In some systems, it is common practice to have students tested for rank by a panel of senior instructors from outside their school. I can understand the arguments for such an approach, but I think it leads to a less informed judgment of a practitioner's capabilities than promotion based on an instructor's day-in and day-out observation of the student's performance.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I kind of like this idea. Though come to think of in, my daughter likes to earn things so one of the driving factors for her right now is to earn rank. I'm not a huge fan of the kids holding the same rank as adults, much for the reasons that have already been stated in this thread. I do like that, for the little kids (4-7) at our school, the regular ranks are broken down into thirds. It takes much longer for them to test for regular ranks, but gives them validation for their hard work. My daughter has an orange stripe on her white belt. Essentially she is a white belt that basically knows 1/3 of the material to get to orange belt (the next full rank). She still had to study and go through a test to earn that rank. She is very proud of herself for getting there. I watched her test and was actually surprised at how much she knew. However, white belts are not expected to have much power in their techniques. They just need to understand the basic movements. This age group is not able to progress past two full belts until they age up into the youth class. They have to be old enough and strong enough to do the requirements for higher level ranks.

I do feel like the youth (7-14) probably don’t have as stringent requirements as they should, but I feel the same way about the adult colored belts. It seems, in this style/school/association that things don’t get really good until 1st/2nd Dan. At least from what I can observe as a 7th gup and using the lenses from my memory as a 1st Dan in a shotokan offshoot called "shutokan" (16 years ago) that didn’t allow 1st Dan testing until the age of 18. Though this is all much better than the McDojo we tried at first where the kids got a (electrical tape) stripe for every few classes they attended then a belt after a number of stripes. No proficiency needed.

It’s certainly a difficult thing to determine. I really like the idea of no ranks for kids, but I don’t know if that would hold the attention of many children. My daughter is the type that likes to see progress and achievement (much like I was in that way). If not belts or a separate ranking system altogether, there might need to be something in place for the kids to work towards.

What age do you allow people to start training at now?

Currently, I only have "adult" classes (every time I say that, I think it sounds like "adult" in "adult film"). I'd allow age 15+ in, though I've never had anyone under about 23 show up. If I opened classes to "youth" or "teens", that would be about ages 12-15. I have a hard time imagining myself teaching anyone under about age 8. When I was teaching kids classes, my instructor had only just started allowing kids under that age into the school. Every time I've watched classes for 4-7 year olds, it doesn't look like fun to teach.

I wonder about the rank issue. When I played soccer (11 years), obviously there were no ranks. And kids often played for several years. Of course, that included a game every week, and lots of running about and doing soccery stuff at practice, so that might be the difference. Perhaps, absent the play and constant games, ranks provide something to focus on.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

what i was describing is a bit different. this was a high level ..say 7th or 8th Dan grade. what you are talking about is a testing board, or some such situation but in that situation your own instructor put you up and recommended you for that rank. he is just was not officiating the test for neutrality. this was totally different. this was a blatant side stepping of the student teacher relationship and pretty much just paying someone who is a high rank to come in and promote you because you want it and are willing to pay for it.

A fair bit of that went on in the late 70's and early 80's. My second (and primary) Shotokan instructor (also my Judo instructor) left the Karate organization he was in because he'd seen people basically buying rank from high-ranking members of the organization.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

A former coworker and good friend of mine started training at a BJJ school a few months before I left the area. One night he was telling me that his instructor was waiting for a black belt to show up at the dojo because a lot of people were due for promotion, but the CI couldn’t promote them because he wasn’t a black belt himself (only black belts could promote anyone for any rank). He told me his CI was a purple belt.

I was dumbfounded by it. My only reference was in systems like karate where the CI norm is a 3rd dan. He told me the CI also has a 4th dan in judo, which I said “ok, he’s qualified to teach judo, but BJJ and judo aren’t the same thing.” After he explained the whole ranking system and average time in grade in BJJ, I got it. With the number of years the guy had in BJJ, he’d be around 2nd dan in my organization - at 7 years. 3rd dan would be about 10 years. Doing the math: 5 years to shodan, + 2 years until nidan = 7 years if everything progresses exactly on time, which it rarely does.

7 years of experience seems adequate to run your own school. Purple belt just doesn’t.

Yeah, I'd put a BJJ brown belt (or possibly even purple) as equivalent to time and technical prowess for a shodan in the NGAA. Mind you, that's coming from a very limited exposure to BJJ folks, but that includes one person who is currently a brown belt (I think) in BJJ and yudansha in NGA. It's possible his prior experience in NGA (as long as my own - we actually joined within a couple of months of each other IIRC) makes him a bit more technically competent than the average person at his rank, and his prior experience teaching almost certainly makes him above average for an instructor of his rank.

 

[wingchun100]

My favorite martial arts fraud has got to be Dillman.

 

[JR 137]

My favorite martial arts fraud has got to be Dillman.

Dillman’s great, but I’m more of an Ashida Kim guy, personally. Different type of comedy IMO

 

[wingchun100]

Dillman’s great, but I’m more of an Ashida Kim guy, personally. Different type of comedy IMO

Or what about the "Thank you, Paul" guy?

 

[JR 137]

Or what about the "Thank you, Paul" guy?

What’s that?

Never mind. How can I forget him. I genuinely think Master Ken is based heavily on Ashida Kim.

 

[pgsmith]

Never mind. How can I forget him. I genuinely think Master Ken is based heavily on Ashida Kim.

I agree, except that Ashida Kim is funnier because he's serious!

 

[JR 137]

I agree, except that Ashida Kim is funnier because he's serious!

Exactly. You can’t make up stuff that funny.

 

[_Simon_]

Dillman’s great, but I’m more of an Ashida Kim guy, personally. Different type of comedy IMO

... but what if I forget one of those steps.. will it still be a brutal killing and maiming combination??


(Oh wow.. this is actually my first exposure to this often spoken of Ashida Kim... that was truly something to behold... wow... did he really say rip the ear and the flesh off?? :O )

 

[wingchun100]

... but what if I forget one of those steps.. will it still be a brutal killing and maiming combination??


(Oh wow.. this is actually my first exposure to this often spoken of Ashida Kim... that was truly something to behold... wow... did he really say rip the ear and the flesh off?? :O )

He is buddies with Frank Dux.

 

[Kababayan]

Wow. I haven't visited this thread for a couple of days and I am missing so many good responses. On the subject of "con-artist" martial artists (if we still are...my computer is so slow that I haven't read the last few pages) I always found it misleading when a dojo would advertise something that they didn't teach and try to sell it to potential students. Jiu Jitsu, for example, when all that is taught are wrist locks and such. Or "Yes we teach BJJ. It's incorporated into our main (insert whatever traditional stand-up MA program.)" I taught Kempo for years and just because it includes kicks, doesn't mean that I teach Tae Kwon Do. Paul Vunak (name drop) taught me the straightblast, so I think I am going to advertise that I teach Wing Chun now. There is a dojo nearby that has started advertising that they teach Krav Maga within their system. I personally know the creator of their system and they don't teach anything that's Krav Maga.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Wow. I haven't visited this thread for a couple of days and I am missing so many good responses. On the subject of "con-artist" martial artists (if we still are...my computer is so slow that I haven't read the last few pages) I always found it misleading when a dojo would advertise something that they didn't teach and try to sell it to potential students. Jiu Jitsu, for example, when all that is taught are wrist locks and such. Or "Yes we teach BJJ. It's incorporated into our main (insert whatever traditional stand-up MA program.)" I taught Kempo for years and just because it includes kicks, doesn't mean that I teach Tae Kwon Do. Paul Vunak (name drop) taught me the straightblast, so I think I am going to advertise that I teach Wing Chun now. There is a dojo nearby that has started advertising that they teach Krav Maga within their system. I personally know the creator of their system and they don't teach anything that's Krav Maga.

I know some folks list the styles that influenced their style, because those are better known. It wasn't unusual back in the day (before "Aikido" was a recognizable art name in some areas) for NGA schools to have "Judo, Karate, and Jujutsu" (and sometimes kobudo, though that's a stretch) listed under the name of the style on their school window. I guess I'm adding "Boxing, BJJ, Kali, and miscellaneous crap I picked up" to my marketing. Or is that too much?

 

[TheArtofDave]

I know some folks list the styles that influenced their style, because those are better known. It wasn't unusual back in the day (before "Aikido" was a recognizable art name in some areas) for NGA schools to have "Judo, Karate, and Jujutsu" (and sometimes kobudo, though that's a stretch) listed under the name of the style on their school window. I guess I'm adding "Boxing, BJJ, Kali, and miscellaneous crap I picked up" to my marketing. Or is that too much?

I heard about a mcsensi running a mcdojo. The times he claimed to learn the arts he taught didn't line up properly with when he learned them. He was teaching his students garbage. If you can't spot one of these from the instructors. Yeah crap mcdojo just doesn't work for me.

 

[Buka]

My personal favorite.

 

[CB Jones]

The original McDojo

 

[JR 137]

View attachment 21430
My personal favorite.

Is that Jake “The Snake” Roberts? If so, he’s the real deal!

 

[Gerry Seymour]

View attachment 21430
My personal favorite.

Now that is some dedication to stripes. Doesn't he know horizontal stripes add weight?

 

[Gerry Seymour]

The original McDojo

That, sir, is disturbing.