Karate has and always will be a dangerous martial art to take part in, with this safety can never been 100% guaranteed. Injuries happen as karate develops skills that if used can be extremely dangerous and even fatal. However the environment that we practise these skills is where we see the greatest progression of a karate dojo.
Karate-do training habits a unique environment, with each dojo having a different atmosphere; it is these atmospheres that people have to learn. It is this atmosphere that if not accepting to someone ends or flourishes a karateka. If a dojo atmosphere is tough, dangerous and violent, where people are regularly bleeding and hit it will take a certain sort of person to perceiver to accept the danger and learn from one’s own mistakes. It’s that sort of thought that if you get hit you must block faster, if not you will get hit again. This type of atmosphere is often seen in what has become to be known as a ‘tough dojo’, true to its word it does produce ‘tough’ karateka, with fearless attributes when entering into kumite fighting.
However the relationship between karate and society has changed, the reasons for people starting karate have changed. Karate has entered into the social realm of commodity, in other words people can no longer live a life of just karate without involving some level of revenue. We do see many people that run karate groups like a charity, where they volunteer their time and all them income generated goes back into the group so that it can still run efficiently. As karate acting like a commodity it does have an affect; firstly by gaining revenue and income karate associations and organisations can work more to expand and introduce karate into more societies and areas across the globe. Secondly it can sometimes have an affect upon the way karate is taught, with regards to how students are treated and also the atmosphere in the dojo. The description above is a very generalised and stereotypical view of what is normally seen as a tough dojo, and to be honest I’ve never personally trained at a dojo that could fit that description.
So where has dojo atmosphere changed?
Well the best way to describe how a dojo now works is to relate it to a school class room. The aim is the same for everyone, to progress and develop knowledge; but the method of how a person does this is down to the teacher’s ability of various teaching techniques. We often see in school these tests that apparently can tell what type of learner a person is, normally resulting in audio based, visual based, or motion based. It’s highly unlikely that you will get one class full of students with the same learning type, so different methods have to be used to explain the same concept, so that everyone from a learning category has on opportunity to learn in their style.
The same can be said for karate, obviously not in the same way but could be said to work with dojo atmosphere. Some people may be in tune to a rough and often dangerous way of learning karate, where if they don’t block or move they get hit hard. Others however may learn more from a seminar type of lesson, others from more relaxed and friendly atmosphere, and others may learn faster when with a partner or with one on one tuition. It is these different methods that karate sensei have to think about when planning a lesson. Can everyone learn from this? Is there another way of putting the point across? What sort of atmosphere do I need to create during the lesson?
However this is the pinning point for any dojo. If they have only one way of doing something, then they will only attract one ‘type’ of person and they will see many students starting then leaving. Therefore we have to look at student a little more like customers, in that we need to work for them so that they can learn properly. Also with this attitude we see many more people starting and achieving great things in karate as they way that we now teach progression is elastic and diverse, giving instructors limitless amounts of ways of teaching karate.
In my eyes, this change in our evolution is only going to benefit karate. Firstly it opens the dojo door to many more people that would not be able to survive learning in certain dojo atmospheres, but that can now have variety and work to their advantages. Secondly it opens the door to a lot more variety of exercise, senseis have to think deeper about what they want to teach and have free choice over the method of doing so.
If you have any thoughts please leave a comment. Osu
Sounds spot on mate.
ReplyDeleteI agree totally that the dojo has changed and that instructors have to be able to deliver the same lesson in a variety of ways to cater for every individual learning style.
One thing I would argue for you to say is that the "rough" and "dangerous" nature of Karate is sometimes missed with some people who train.
By this I mean some people don't have any spirit or the heart to get involved in a good old dojo kumite scrap - so this could be detrimental to what they have learned. If they don't know what it's like to being hit in a controlled environment then they've got no chance if they have to fight in the outside world..... just a thought.
Osu!
A good article.
ReplyDeleteI once trained in a dojo with a tough training regime. We did some exercises you'd never get away with in this day and age - e.g. bunny hops round the dojo, zenkutsu-dachi with a 13 stone bloke balanced on your shoulders.
Kumite was also something else - for Dan gradings you had to fight a number of opponents until you couldn't take any more and people got injured, sometimes badly.
One thing's for sure, you knew that outside the dojo, someone would really have to go some to get the better of you.
I remember a quote by Benny "The Jet" Urquidez -"The way you train is the way you react". If you hold back in the dojo, that's what'll happen in the street as well. It also relares to conditioning - i.e. if you've felt that level of pain before, you can continue, it's only when someone hits you harder than you've ever felt that your brain tells you to stop.