People having issues with hard training. Thoughts?

[HelloKitty]

I'd love your thoughts about a story I'm going to tell you...

I started TKD when I was 14, back in Southamerica. The city I was living is big and dangerous. It's very common there being robbed and even being hit, so when people practice a martial art, they do it with all the possible energy because it really can save you. Specially for women (It's not uncommon for a woman being rapped after a robbery...). Besides, my instructor trained with the special forces of police, so we, as students, really needed our 110% in every class.

Had to quit for a few years for medical reasons but I came to the US and started to look for a new TKD school. It was "family friendly", so we trained full of protection to exercise softly and you were asked to give only your 20%. No competitions, no nothing. If you trained a little harder, they saw you as an agressive person. So I started to look for some other place, and I find my actual school. But even here, in a "more adult" environment, I have seen some issues with kicking and hitting. Several people feel offended if their partner even do the exercises too fast.

I think it's reasonable in martial arts to have some contact and even have some bruises once in a while because somebody can make a mistake, etc. Why were people are so sensitive about? Is it kind of an "american way" of training? Do you see the same in your schools/academies/etc? Here are several instructors posting, what do you think about?

 

[terryl965]

HelloKitty as you have been told by me and some others come by the school o0n fight night we do not pull our kicks and such we do not try and kill you but we do want you to understand that bumps and bruises are part of training. MY invetationis an open door so anytime. Youa re only maybe 1/2 hour a way. One of my fromal student is coming back because he found the training where they moved was to soft and he now drives about 45 minutes to train at my school.

Hopefully we will meet you and remember I am hosting the MT meet and greet for the southern area in April.Come on by and meet some of the folk for the wekeand.
Terry

 

[HelloKitty]

Thank for the invitation to train, Terry.

I just want to share my worries. I have tournament this saturday, and I'll spar with a girl who's always complaining about other people, etc. I want to have fun, to compete but I just want to avoid drama as well... Don't really know how to manage the situation...

Hopefully we will meet you and remember I am hosting the MT meet and greet for the southern area in April.Come on by and meet some of the folk for the wekeand.
Terry

I didn't know about the MT meet. Is there a post with info? I would like to go!

 

[terryl965]

Thank for the invitation to train, Terry.

I just want to share my worries. I have tournament this saturday, and I'll spar with a girl who's always complaining about other people, etc. I want to have fun, to compete but I just want to avoid drama as well... Don't really know how to manage the situation...



I didn't know about the MT meet. Is there a post with info? I would like to go!

It should be up by the end of the week. Also what tournament are you doing, I thought the Chang Lee schools did the Friendship tournament in HEB last weekend. I know there is a Karate one in HEB we are doing that one.

 

[HelloKitty]

Yep, the school had a friendship tournament recently, but we have an internal tournament in dallas location this saturday also.

 

[Kacey]

Different schools will have different areas on which they focus. If you're not happy with the focus of the school you're at, then you need to look around for other schools. I think that Terry's school is a great place for you to start if you want to try something other than where you are.

 

[swiftpete]

I think if you're not going to put the techniques in and give each some good hits and feel some pain, there isn't really much point training. There are a lot of people that don't feel like that though and dont like to get hurt in class. I don't understand it personally either as it is supposed to martial arts training rather than dancing but there you go.
Keep looking, there are other people out there that think like you so you'll find a class eventually!

 

[still learning]

Hello, Good point about South Amercia? ....What is the purpose of martial art training?

To learn to fight back in the real world and survive! This means training with contact in several forms. One must learn to take a hit and learn how to give a hit.

If you school does not allow for more contact and real world situtions? ....they are NOT preparing you for the real street fighting?

False sense of training....MOST OF US WILL FIND OUT IN THE REAL SITUTIONS HOW OUR TRAINING HAS HELP OR NOT HELP OUT!

By then too late! ...to learn to fight for real? ...one must face real life situtions.....Aloha

 

[theletch1]

A thousand times I've seen the old thread "What's the best martial art for a beginner?" The answer is most always the same...the one that gives you what you're looking for. In this scenario it doesn't sound like the art is letting you down but just the particular school. Different schools in every style are gonna have the flavor of the instructor imbued within it. It will also reflect the character of those folks who train there. A great deal of the martial arts experience is the social interaction with others. Even if it's one on one that interaction is still there. As humans we tend to gravitate toward people who are most like ourselves. Someone who is overly meek will not last very long in the dojo that I train at. Someone who is far too aggressive and injures folks on a regular basis won't last long either. We, as students and instructors have reached a comfortable balance with the brutality of training and with one another. Seek out and find folks of like attitude and your training will be much more worthwhile. Good luck, Hellokitty. May you soon have some bruises to smile about.:btg:

 

[exile]

Some very good answers here, so far. I just want to note a few things raised in the original post that I think make sense in terms of the MA culture. I'm thinking aloud a little bit here, Kitty, so bear with me, but there's a reason why things have come to the point that you've noticed (and don't much like), in American MA culture, I think...

I'm old enough to remember when karate first entered the consciousness of people on the East Coast as mysterious, dangerous, fascinating bit of exotic knowledge. The earliest exposure many of us had to it was in The Manchurian Candidate, which was, I think, the first American movie which displayed MAs in use (and compared with what came later, it was grittily realistic). Karate was what a lot of New Yorkers were looking for—it was a dangerous city in the early 1960s, and it continued to get more dangerous during that decade, and as an undergraduate and then a graduate student there, I found that an awful lot of my friends, apartment mates and fellow students were studying it, and studying in a very serious, hard-edged way. And I suspect that during that time, most people who studied it were city people, that was where the schools were—there weren't many dojos, period, and the ones that existed catered to a mostly urban clientele that was looking for protection against street violence.

A lot of people in the city eventually left, taking their families out to the suburbs—especially Long Island—in the interests of, in large part, a safe environment especially for their children. And the culture of suburbia was based on a kind of shared belief that the suburbs were indeed safe places, that there was no crime, and that everyone was a good, well-adjusted little automaton. It was in that culture that the explosive growth of the MAs in the 80s took hold, where marketing geniuses discovered that they could pitch karate and other MAs to suburban parents as wholesome after-school activities and 'character-builders'. But the suburban myth of safety also dictated that you must never, ever present these arts as the structured violence they really are, with the at least to some extent violent training necessary to become good at them. Suburban = safe; so there had to be a different angle on getting the people who in time would come to be known as Little League dads and soccer moms to accept the idea of their children doing TKD, karate, gung fu and so on. Enter the MAs as good for training kids to have top-notch street-effective self-esteem and really devastating work-ethics!

I think that the transition from what had been, in the Golden Age era of American karate, a primarily combat-oriented activity suited to tough urban settings to part of the 'Dress for Success' mindset of the plain vanilla suburbs is a big part of how the MAs became defanged. A lot of people went back into the cities again, after decades in the suburbs, when the cities became increasingly gentrified; but they took their expectations from Nassau County and similar places back with them... and that's what you now find, universally.

Not a pretty story, but I think it does account for a good deal of what happened to the TMAs...

 

[Big Don]

Some people see the term Martial Arts and put the emphasis on Arts rather than on Martial.

 

[Cirdan]

We have a saying at the Dojo: "The best training partner you can have is the one that gives you a bruise"
Contact should be controlled of course, but we are learning a sophisticated system of avoiding and inflicting harm on fellow humans beings, not doing ballet.

 

[KempoGuy06]

at my dojo we train hard. Some days we only go 75% because we want to get or material down and get it right. Other times we amp up the intesity and throw out 150%. The bumps and bruises are my favorite part (kind of sick i know) but it gives me that feeling of accomplishment and at the same time something to work, because technically (correct me if im wrong) if I have bruises im not doing my stuff right and when I do it right I should have bruises.

B

 

[Shotochem]

We have a saying at the Dojo: "The best training partner you can have is the one that gives you a bruise"
Contact should be controlled of course, but we are learning a sophisticated system of avoiding and inflicting harm on fellow humans beings, not doing ballet.

My sentiments exactly. If you are not trying to actually hit your partner you are not doing them any good. You need to know if a technique works in a controlled enviornment before you try it in the real world where it is much less forgiving.

A false sense of security can get you killed.


-Marc-

 

[theletch1]

My sentiments exactly. If you are not trying to actually hit your partner you are not doing them any good. You need to know if a technique works in a controlled enviornment before you try it in the real world where it is much less forgiving.

A false sense of security can get you killed.


-Marc-

Wanna test your training partner? Don't move when they throw a punch. I've done this many, many times. If they actually throw to hit me I can still blend out of it. If they move their hand to the side of me to avoid contact I explain the importance of being a good uke. As a result, if you train with any of the higher ranking students in my dojo you WILL get hit if you don't blend. Not all dojo are like that. I'm lucky to have found one that is.

 

[still learning]

Hello, You will always hear this? ...THE WAY YOU TRAIN IS THE WAY YOU WILL FIGHT!

Learn to hold your punches/kicks and other techniques ALL THE TIME...may effect you on the real streets?

Than again with do not want to destroy our partners....bag work is a good way to punch thru your tarkets.

There has to be a balance in your training...one cannot alway blast away!

Aloha, rarely fighting becomes "soft" on the streets, most times extreme hitting....are you prepare?

 

[Big Don]

Hello, You will always hear this? ...THE WAY YOU TRAIN IS THE WAY YOU WILL FIGHT!

EXACTLY!!!
Train hard, fight easy and win
Train easy, fight hard and LOSE

 

[jks9199]

Wanna test your training partner? Don't move when they throw a punch. I've done this many, many times. If they actually throw to hit me I can still blend out of it. If they move their hand to the side of me to avoid contact I explain the importance of being a good uke. As a result, if you train with any of the higher ranking students in my dojo you WILL get hit if you don't blend. Not all dojo are like that. I'm lucky to have found one that is.

I have to teach that lesson every few months...

Students aren't willing to commit to attacks, for some reason.