I had to laugh..

It's been a whirlwind few months, more on that once I get my monthly rant out of the way!
In Gravesend town centre today, Toyah and I spied a fresh set of 'martial arts' silky pyjamas handing out leaflets (didn't offer us one, we obviously didn't fit the brief, still having a push chair!). Well-advertised on their pyjama jackets, I did my civic duty by visiting their website this evening. What a load of b*****ks. I'm quite happy to write that statement knowing that it makes me a 'bad' martial artist for having the audacity to criticise another 'school', as well as for using bad language to express my opinion. I won't name them, purely because I don't want to increase web traffic to their sad little website, that has more contradictions contained within it than our recent elections and resultant coalition government!

'Martial arts' evangelism is alive and well. I remember an advert in the 1980s for some Black & Decker drill that was supposed to be for a product of better quality than their usual tat, the advert proudly pronounced 'higher price!', which I always found a little odd, reverse-psychology perhaps. This crew are much of the same that we've seen time and again around here, but they've really taken things further this time, too far in my opinion. Part of their website offers to guide prospective students in a supposedly unbiased manner with regard to selecting a martial arts school, and then proceeds to warn people not to join clubs with a lot of champions or trophies (even though the main instructor there claims to be a 'world champion' himself!). The suggestion that competing in tournaments would be somehow corrupting for your students when you yourself have used tournament success to boost your own credibility in your advertising is laughable. If character-building is so high on the agenda, then learning to accept competitive success and defeat and to, to quote Rudyard Kipling, 'treat those two imposters just the same' is an invaluable lesson in life and self-knowledge. The real world has winners and losers, why pretend otherwise?

The offending passage suggests that an instructor that isn't running his 'academy' (what a bullshido term that is) as a professional business is somehow less committed than someone that is funding their lifestyle from teaching! All self-justifying and self-perpetuating nonsense. Oh and try as I may, I couldn't find any reference on the website to training costs, what a surprise! No doubt the first bunch of sessions will be free or under some guarantee, and then the talk will turn to which 'programme' you choose to go on and how much you will have to pay up front`for it.
Funnily enough, one of the warnings of the above website was this:
"If they charge for your Martial Arts on a ‘Per Session’ basis you’re in the wrong school. This can mean only one of two things, firstly they aren’t intending on being around for long or secondly this is just a ‘hobby’ for them."
At our last venue, a young man from a local Wing Chun group broke away and set up his own professional group just across the way from me. Ironically, it was he that wasn't around for long, hardly more than a year. While he was still open, one of his students was brought across to my club by his mother who had concerns that, while he was learning a lot of apparent 'life-skills', in her view he wasn't learning much martial arts. Whether he was or wasn't, isn't for me to judge, I have no idea having never set foot in there, but he is still with me and is one of my most promising students.

I'm all for live-and-let-live, and rarely criticise other groups (if I do I usually do so openly on here), but if you're willing to display such arrogance and bare-faced hypocrisy by publicly slating all volunteer martial arts instructors as 'unprofessional' or lacking committment, and additionally claiming that if they criticise you in return then they are breaking some martial arts 'code' or that we are all somehow 'jealous', all with a view to coaxing readers into your 'academy' and, I believe, eventually parting with large sums of money, then all bets are off as far as I'm concerned.

I wonder what they'd have made of our session on 4th May 2010 when we finally reopened our dojo, at the fantastic Tonbridge School Centre. The reopening was a very special night for me and for a few other people. Back in February when I was having problems at St. Stephen's School after the caretaker walked out and nobody else at the school cared enough to act as a keyholder in order that we could train in our usual slot, I was considering closing the club, and not for the first time. Then, out of nowhere, I had an email from Barry. I hadn't seen Barry in more than 25 years, he'd disappeared into the ether, or so it had seemed. Anyone that had trained at Tonbridge Karate Club in the early 1980s would instantly know which Barry I was referring to. Black belts are many, especially these days, but naturally-gifted instructors are few and far between. Senpai Barry Henniker was my original instructor back in 1982, and was one of those few that had the ability to really inspire. He was the main instructor at Tonbridge from around 1980 to 1986, when the committee that ran the club was dissolved and went their separate ways following some very difficult disagreements. Barry also opened a club at Sevenoaks for a short period, but withdrew from Karate completely (or so we thought) after some personal difficulties. Along with Sensei Norman King, Senpai Barry was a prescence that I had missed within the BKK, and I was shocked to hear from him after all these years after he had found the Tonbridge club site quite by chance. He was very encouraging about the club and about what we were trying to achieve, and gave me a much-needed boost in motivation. One thing led to another and we were privileged to have Senpai Barry join us as a guest on our re-launch on 4th May. In addition to this, his original instructor, Ray Pearson (aged 73!), joined me out the front and shared the teaching of the class with me. Ray has been teaching Kyokushinkai Karate in Tunbridge Wells since around 1974, and as far as I'm aware still charges a 'per session' fee, I guess if any of his old students have read the above website then they must be getting a bit nervous by now that he's only doing it as a hobby and is going to give it all up!

We were also joined by students that have been involved in Kyokushin for periods ranging from 5 to 40 years (including the inspirational Mick Gooch). Obviously, the crap that's written on commercial franchise 'martial arts' websites shouldn't be taken too seriously, these people have bills to pay and a remortgage to pay-off after all, but it's very reassuring to look at the history we have within our own dojos and to 'struggle the struggle' that many of us do out of loyalty to our students as well as our instructors. After 23 years away from Kyokushin, Senpai Barry (over a customary Indian meal) told us that he'd never really forgotten about it or 'left', and it 's very reassuring to me when I see faces from years ago humbly bringing their kids along to today's tournaments, that most people never really leave Kyokushin, even when they think they have.

All-in-all it's been a fantastic few months. Good luck to 'blah blah franchise martial arts', I have little doubt that they will need it. We'll stick to teaching the hard way, it's what we're good at.