Flying Crane
Sr. Grandmaster
At the end of the day, you know what you know. Teach him what youve got. Rank him accordingly if it feels appropriate. Don’t worry about the rest of the world, or about how it may or may not translate elsewhere.
Teaching my son karate
- Thread starter philwhite
- Start date
J. Pickard
Brown Belt
This is an underrated comment, and not just for kids. I have found that when I teach students of any age a new technique or set of techniques if I tell them to find a heavy bag and have fun experimenting with the new techniques, they stay relaxed and are just trying to have fun and actually end up making improvements faster just because they aren't trying so hard.
Prince_Alarming
Master of Arts
I swear, I've actually learned more in warmup games than I have through more disciplined training. Part of that's the fact that I've shown an inability to adapt to discipline, but even so...
punisher73
Senior Master
Dumb question: What style of karate do you practice? That may open a few doors to some more specific answers to your initial question.
My other thought off the top of my head. Ranks don't really mean anything outside of the specific schools/organizations that gave them.
My other thought off the top of my head. Ranks don't really mean anything outside of the specific schools/organizations that gave them.
Our school was a bit of a hybrid (TKD/Kickboxing) using the name Karate even though it came from Taekwondo with the founders being students of Jhoon Rhee. Probably a little McDojo thrown in as it is one of the largest schools in the midwest. It was a mixed batch. I took advantage of the network and trained at a lot of the schools with some of the top point fighters in the country. As they maintain their own belt registry and are not part of any external association my belts kind of stay with them so its a dead end.
The karate politics were also through the roof. The black belt quality was very hit and miss. There were people who did no sparring, had zero skill, and continued getting promoted. Many like myself were never promoted and it was almost a running joke. I paid the dues, put in the work and was overlooked. It is what it is. I should have moved on earlier but I had the weird sense of loyalty holding me back.
I think some of the atmosphere there also led to ego fighting etc and there were many sparring session that went too far. I was probably part of this problem as its what we were taught.
Overall I'm glad I got into the martial arts through them but looking back I would have done things differently.
The karate politics were also through the roof. The black belt quality was very hit and miss. There were people who did no sparring, had zero skill, and continued getting promoted. Many like myself were never promoted and it was almost a running joke. I paid the dues, put in the work and was overlooked. It is what it is. I should have moved on earlier but I had the weird sense of loyalty holding me back.
I think some of the atmosphere there also led to ego fighting etc and there were many sparring session that went too far. I was probably part of this problem as its what we were taught.
Overall I'm glad I got into the martial arts through them but looking back I would have done things differently.
Yokozuna514
2nd Black Belt
Interesting post. I don't know how old your son is but regardless I would be honest with him on what he is learning and how it will relate to outside organizations. If you teach him the basics and come up with your on reward system, this can be a double edge sword. If he does want to continue a martial arts journey, he will join a school and will be evaluated based on the skills he can demonstrate as he attends classes. If his skills and knowledge is sufficient, he may be able to skip some levels but it would probably be better for him to learn patience and go through the process in the regular time.
I think it would be better for his confidence to be the best but advance slowly, than to think he is very good only to find out he doesn't know as much as his peers.
Good luck
I think it would be better for his confidence to be the best but advance slowly, than to think he is very good only to find out he doesn't know as much as his peers.
Good luck
He's 8 and he is having a blast so far. I'm not overly concerned about outside organizations. I think I have an opportunity to do things the right way with him and we have some open tournaments that we can drive to if we'd like to test our skills. Hopefully he sticks with it. If he wants to continue on somewhere else later in life he should have a good base. I'm very honest about what I know and I'd never claim any different.
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