Originally published on Bullshido: No BS MMA and Martial Arts

 

(Key Words: Martial Arts instruction, Black Belt, martial arts for kids / children, credible martial arts)

 

a) There are more then one or two children under the age of sixteen running around with black belts on. This indicates they promote the students in their kiddy program often and early. The school will tend to water its training down to this classes level, for example no contact in their sparring.

b) They let these kids teach their lower ranking belts.

c) They have people under the rank of Brown belt teaching their beginners. (NOTE: Because it takes much longer to achieve rank in Brazilian Jujitsu, experienced blue belts can teach beginners though you are better off if the person has at least a purple belt in this art.)

d) They make extensive use of pre-black belt students to teach their full classes, typically for free.

e) Emphases is placed on teaching "life skills" to the children, and other students rather than combat skills. This is typically done under the guise of promoting a family atmosphere, or building the respect and focus needed to become a black belt. The bottom line is you can buy your motivational tapes directly from Tony Robbins and you shouldn't be paying your kid's martial arts instructor to tell him to clean his room.

f) Their sparring is no-contact, both for beginners and for advanced students.

g) Advanced Students only do "point sparring". A form of light contact sparring in which they simply have to touch their opponent, and the match is restarted. This encourages REALLY bad fighting habits.

h) The higher-ranking students who are not yet fifty or sixty are quite out of shape, this indicates that the art isn't physically taxing enough.

i) People need permission from the instructor to hit the punching bag in the school when class is not in session.

j) Students above the rank of yellow and orange belt, are flailing around and their strikes show no focus or power.

k) The instructor wastes more time in class talking about himself rather than instructing.

l) The school mixes children and adults into the same class, bad idea, they need to be taught using different methods.

m) The school says that it teaches multiple martial arts, Karate, Aikido, Bando, boxing, and does not have a separate class for each of these disciplines. "Well we teach the Aikido through our Karate class", yeh, right!

n) The school teaches Extreme Martial Arts, also called X-MA. This crowd pleaser involves the more gymnastic side of martial arts and while kids love the flashy kicks, it's worthless for self defense.

o) A good indication of a McDojo is the ridiculous amount of trophies. While not always true, if a place holds tons of trophies and medals everywhere, it generally tends to be McDojoish. Ridiculous uniforms are also not a good sign. It indicates the school likes to play dress up, which is the first step towards "Live Action Role Play".

p) Goofy stances equals goofy fighting. Real people generally don't fight like insects or dragons.

q) The school or its leader has an at home study program that gives rankings to those who study via DVD and or videotape from home.

r) The Instructor discourages or forbids you against going to open martial arts competitions where you will compete against members of other schools. Similarly he prohibits you from cross training in other martial arts, Gee I wonder why?

s) Schools, typically Kung Fu Schools, that train people using Chi or Qi for self defense. While such internal energy may exist, we are unaware of any documented example in which such internal power was successfully used in a real fight, sport or otherwise.

t) Many McDojo websites put up kanji symbols without understanding what they mean. Find someone who knows Japanese, (on forums like these), and see if the Japanese is actually legitimate. Its hard to have a legitimate Japanese Martial Arts lineage when the words on your certificates make no sense in Japanese.

u) The school teaches ATA Tae Kwon Do, or Ninjitsu, we've had more complaints about these two styles then anything else. For information on the ATA see:

http://www.bullshido.net/modules.php?name=Reviews&file=viewarticle&id=263
http://www.bullshido.net/modules.php?name=Reviews&file=viewarticle&id=191
http://www.bullshido.net/modules.php?name=Reviews&file=viewarticle&id=154

v) The instructor will not let you view a regular martial arts class before you sign up. Most McDojos will not do this but if it happens this is an extremely bad sign. And no we're not talking about their advanced class, we're talking about viewing the one you'd be placed in as a beginner.

w) The instructor teaches grappling or mixed martial arts (MMA) mostly, or primarily based on his exposure to a video tape or video feed instructional system. Systems exist (see John Graden's Prostar) which will provide canned lessons to an instructor with no background in these arts. However for grappling arts like Judo or Brazilian Jujitsu it usually takes about two years of hands on instruction and training for most people to start to master the small but important technical details that make most techniques work on a resisting opponent. Many members at Bullshido.net would suggest avoiding an instructor who would teach you grappling or MMA based on their own video based instruction.

 

 

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