The Thirteen Things You Should Check Before You Decide on a Martial Art
1.) Being a martial art does not exempt them from needing to be an honest business.
All information should be available up front: monthly tuition, testing fees, equipment and uniform costs, etc.The prices and fees should be reasonable.
You should never have to sign some kind of contract that forces you to pay on an ongoing basis, with penalties if you decide to quit the art for some reason. You should always be able to leave a dojo at any time.
They should be willing to let you look up the background and history of the art, watch the classes, ask about the teacher's certifications, etc. If the background or training is “too secret to be revealed”, it is too secret for you to trust.
2.) A real martial art is focused on becoming more skilled. Achieving a black belt (or similar rank)should be seen as a mildly nice sign post on the way to actually getting good the martial arts, and not as the Holy Grail. (If what you really want most out of this is a black-colored belt and a sense of achievement, ignore this section.)
Any martial art that treats a black belt like the crowning achievement of a life is in the business of peddling self esteem. In most serious styles with a lot of room to grow within the style, black belt is the point that a student is assumed to be roughly proficient in the entry level things, or as one teacher put it, “marginally more likely to hurt others than themselves”. It's not a destination, it's a little first mile marker off to the side of the very long road of martial study.
If the only place to take your training after black belt is “learn how to teach”, it's a very shallow art indeed. A real, in-depth art should be one you could study your entire life, and still be improving to the end.
A martial art that offers to accept students from other arts at their current rank in their last dojo — or that tests and passes an entire class together — cares a loooooot about rank and doesn't really care at all about an individual's ability to do that specific martial art.
3.) A good martial art builds you up, not tears you down.
Find out how often students get injured, and what kinds of injuries they had. Injury in class should be a rare occurrence. Frequent injury does not “toughen you up” – it breaks you down.
Verbal abuse doesn't toughen you up either. Learning something difficult is a vulnerable experience. Go somewhere that gives you the freedom to open up and learn.
4.) To learn a real martial art, you need correction and precision.
“Ball up your hand in a fist and send it more or less in this direction – good” doesn't help you learn very much. “You should be centering your strike between these two knuckles, with the wrist straight and then energy coming more from the hips...” is more instructive. Find somewhere interested in actually teaching you.The teacher may have real martial skills, but unless they are willing to ensure that you get them, too, you will learn very little.
Some teachers try not to overwhelm new students with too much instruction … see what he/she does with the more established students. Are they receiving correction, or do they have to hope they figure it out by themselves?
5.) Teachers should not get carried away with their ranks and honors:
If they want to be called 'Sensei', their art had better be Japanese.
If they want to be called 'Sifu', their art had better be Chinese.
If they want to be called 'Master', that had better be a direct translation of some non-Japanese Asian teaching title, and their art had better be a highly traditional one handed down from past ages from said Asian country … and even then, consider carefully.
If they want to be called 'Grandmaster', I suggest you walk out the door right now. (Exception made if they are the president of a large Chinese style with dojos running in at least 10 states.) Even so, their own students probably don't call them that.
There are only 9 degrees of black belt (dan levels) in a traditional Japanese martial art: if they have 10th-degree, they had better be either dead or be a retired legend in their 90s. If they have anything higher, know that somebody made this art up to look impressive.
If you are looking at a 30-year old with 5th -6th degree black belt or above – look with greater suspicion. They may legitimately hold that rank. If they do, sometimes it's probably a cheap art, with not a lot of room to grow within it.
Actually mastering a martial art to the point that you can legitimately teach it takes a huge commitment of self. At any high level, your art melts into your blood, and becomes a part of who you are. Since we are what we persistently do, it influences your personality. Therefore, if the teacher teaches two martial arts (if younger than 30) or more (if older than that), that probably means they aren't qualified to teach either. There are some exceptions to this – if the teacher states openly that they are barely qualified in one of them, or if the teacher really did study two things intensely for at least ten years, full time (with no life beyond martial arts), etc. Note: there is nothing wrong with a teacher who casually mentions, “Oh, I study Krav Maga with Jim Gonzales on Thursdays”, or “I went to state championships with my high school judo team when I was young”, or says, “This is how they would do it in Wing Chun, and I think it's effective” or something. We are talking about claiming mastery and the right to teach.
6.) McDojos happen. Some of them are pretty decent places. A McDojo is a big martial arts place with a professional, full-time teacher (or several), lots of classes (particularly classes for children), and probably either is or would like to be a franchise.
The good: sometimes a martial artist wants to make a living on teaching martial arts. Some of them are very well-meaning. Depending on what you are looking for in a martial art, a McDojo may offer you everything on your wish-list with great service thrown in. They are often especially good for fun, upbeat, kid-oriented classes. Some of them manage to teach half-way decent skills. A lot of parents find that a McDojo can provide a positive atmosphere, great customer service, and a happy kid. Some adults love the social setting and fun of a McDojo class.
The bad: it's awfully hard to make a living teaching real, genuine martial arts. In this degenerate age when local warlords aren't hiring hand combat experts and your boss won't promote you for learning a new sword style, genuine martial arts have a limited audience. Few people want to work that hard, train that intensely, and be that dedicated. Children (the best paying group to teach) are especially unlikely to want to go through the process of a true martial art. Repetition and drilling basics can get boring fast. So when you see a huge, successful dojo with dozens of classes, you probably either live in a big city that can honestly provide that many dedicated serious students, or else the teacher has had to bastardize their art to make it a more sell-able and fun product. It's hard for a teacher to get to know all those different students, their individual strengths and weaknesses.
The worse: a few McDojos pretty much outright sell belts for money. If you pay for the advanced course, you can get belts faster. Some of them hire teachers for personality and people skills, no prior martial experience required.
A small group in a hole-in-the-wall meeting place is much more likely to teach real skills. It's just how the world works. They might meet in a dance studio, someone's garage, a gym, a community center, a public park, or someone else's dojo.
7.) Train with good people.
Watch the students in the dojo. If it is a classic or traditional martial art, they should be polite and courteous. If it is a more modern or rough-edged martial art, they should still be kind and not have ego issues or coldness. Make sure that the students seem to get along with each other – there aren't rivalries, tensions, or indifference. The group should never seem grim, on-edge, or out to put others down.
Students should be focused and work hard. They shouldn't goof off, chat endlessly, or break away to work on their own things. They should seem to respect the teacher, but not hold him/her in awe as an unapproachable being. They should ask honest questions, which are answered satisfactorily.
Senior students should never act cocky or prideful and insulting to junior students. Seniors in any good dojo should either politely leave their juniors to learn or else gently help them along.Get away from any place where there is any kind of hazing or errand-running duties where new students are at the mercy of the senior students.
If the senior students hurt the junior students, including in the name of teaching (I'm not talking a small bruise when landing a punch during sparring, but bad things that a senior student should be able to avoid perpetrating: joints wrenched, big bruises, heads hit, etc.): then it's an abuse dojo, leave it immediately.
8.) A good teacher has gone through a lot of formal training, and is upfront about it:
If it's a highly traditional martial art, ask what lineage they come from, whom the style is affiliated with, whom the teacher trained with, and why they are legitimate.
In a moderately traditional art, they should tell you their affiliation first of all, and be more than willing to answer questions about who taught them, when, where, etc.
If it's a combat sport, you should be able to know where the teacher trained, what honors they won, and why they are qualified to teach.
If the teacher says their art is shrouded in mystery and you can't find any info anywhere on the internet … know that this is unlikely. There are a lot of martial arts geeks out there. Ask for the names of their teachers, and the other teachers of that art, and how to contact a few of those. Ask who those teachers trained with, and where and how their martial art came to be.
If the teacher claims to have learned from 'masters' in a distant country and doesn't like to answer questions about: his teacher's name(s), who taught his teacher(s), how this teacher learned the style existed, what this teacher was doing in a foreign country anyway, how long they trained, etc – their story looks sketchy. If the teacher doesn't fluently speak that language they claim they trained in, it's time to back away slowly toward the exit.
Avoid a teacher who has never formally studied with anyone (or not for very long), but feels they have nevertheless gotten good enough to invent and teach their own martial art. People who had to re-invent the wheel don’t have sophisticated technology.[If they tell you Musashi had no teacher, that's false. He had formal training his entire youth, with his master-swordsman father.] Go to an art gallery sometime, and ask how many of the works displayed there are from entirely self-taught artists who barely looked at a few pictures in their lives. Look at the history of science and see how many brilliant breakthroughs came from people who had never even heard of science, and had to reinvent Newton's Laws and Euclid's principles before they could make their massive discoveries. It turns out that innovation strikes people who have years of expertise in a field, and a complete knowledge of other's work to build on.
Note: If the teacher studied something for a long time, then their life experiences and vast combat experience caused them to alter it somewhat, that's okay. If the teacher is under 40, it is not okay.A real teacher should be able to tell you with pride that they studied fifteen years with some Caucasian woman in New York. Whoever taught them, they should respect that.
9.) A real martial art has confidence in its efficacy and worth, but is sufficiently realistic to not think they are the One True Way of the entire universe, and that every other art places nowhere against them:
Allowance should be made for enthusiasm. Obviously, everybody likes their own martial art best. If they thought others were better, they'd probably be out studying those others. Still, be leery of people who tell you they have 'the ultimate martial art' or an 'invincible martial art'. Teachers who frequently smack-talk other styles are either arrogant or insecure and should usually be avoided.
If they claim to have absorbed the good parts of a handful of totally different martial arts styles, back away now. (If they're a combat sport, and tell you they adapted what worked in the ring from several styles for their specialized ring-fighting, that's totally okay. That's valid MMA.) But if they tell you they absorbed everything of value, the cosmic essence from several totally different styles, it's time to walk away. If they tell you they take all the good parts of every martial art out there, you should actually sprint in your hurry to escape.
Some styles encourage their students to go to other dojos and bring back a single technique or principle to teach to the other students at their home dojo. If it's done as cultural exchange (“...and these guys have a kick that comes way up here, sort of like this ...”) that's okay. If the dojo seems to think that the student, in a week or a month in another dojo, has somehow completely mastered the essence of the technique and is qualified to teach it to others in a clean transmission, get out of there. Obviously they have no idea what it takes to master a martial art to the point that you can fully reproduce real techniques the way they should be done.
Any art that promises that you will become unbeatable, untouchable, or invincible is either delusional or straight-up lying.
10.) A real martial art teaches actual martial (meaning 'of war') things that work.
(Note: if you wanted exercise, social life, yoga, hard work and achievement,moving meditation, or theatricality, etc., this may not matter to you. Use judgment.)
The martial art should pay real, close attention to what works and what doesn't. It isn't some beautiful dance form or yoga that you hope has real-world effectiveness – you are told to keep your knees where the opponent won't kick them in, or lower your sword in such a way that you could raise it again quickly when needed. They don't blithely assume that your first attack has always killed or disabled your opponent. The teacher and senior students don't leave themselves wildly open to attacks.
It should be science or art rather than mindless aggression. Technique is built on more than 'fighting spirit'. (Unless you just wanted a fight club.) Instead of just encouraging strength and aggressiveness, they should actually try to build a framework within each student of the best way to fight.
The techniques shouldn't be particularly flashy. Real things that work well tend to be simple and efficient. The more flourishes, the more you are looking at a style that is “all flowers and no fruit”, as the saying goes.
Avoid a dojo where a student does something that completely wins against a teacher or a senior student, and is told that this is because “Student, you did it wrong”. Note: Being told “Yes, but that's not the purpose of this exercise, we're focusing on this other principle right now” is just fine. Also fine is “That's not the technique we're working on right now”.
Make sure the teacher and senior students seem physically balanced. They should seem precise, like they know exactly where each foot/weapon tip/fist/etc is going to land long before it does. They should seem calm while doing complex things, rather than uptight, pumped-up/emotionally wound, or excited to be showing off.
Find a teacher who is still studying hard and practicing often to improve his/her personal skills, instead of resting on their laurels.
11.) Get a teacher who can, in fact, teach.
The teacher should be kind and attentive to all students. He/she should know all of their names (assuming they've been around enough to become permanent), their individual strengths and weaknesses, and give them all assistance when they need it. The teacher should not only have martial arts skills himself/herself, they should have the ability to convey those skills to others. If are looking for a dojo for a child, make sure the teacher likes children, and has the ability to teach to their level.
A good teacher should be enthusiastic about the idea of their students growing more skilled and powerful.
Some styles try to 'allow students to develop their individual talents'. To a certain degree, that's fine. High-level practitioners should begin to look different from one another, as each uses their individual strengths. However, all beginners should be pushed to learn all the basics, to get good at everything so that you can have the balanced skill to honestly become great at a few things. (And also so that your combat style doesn't have gaping holes and weaknesses in it.) If they don't think they can teach you to do anything you're not naturally good at already, find a better school.
Innocent technical questions such as “Why does that work?” or “What if the opponent tries this, instead?” or, “What do I do if the guy tries to stand up again?” should always be okay. Students should never be shamed for asking questions about what a phrase means, when a kata originated, or anything else regarding their art.
12.) To learn a real martial art, you need repetitive drills, not just cool new choreography (...ah, I mean, 'techniques') all the time.
Obviously, sometimes there will be new techniques. Ask the students how much time the teacher spends reviewing the basics, and how much learning new techniques. Basics should be at least 50%, probably 80% of all study.
Some arts, like Aikido, teach the basics mostly through techniques. Are they focused (with students who arent' brand new) on teaching a series of dance steps, or on “feel the person's weight here. Feel when they shift. Okay, this time, I just want you to keep your center...” Those are basics for Japanese Jiu-jitsu style arts.
Make sure the teacher gives the students time to really pick up on what it being discussed, not just blitz past and on to the next glittering thing.
13.) The martial art itself should jive with you.
There is no One True Martial Art, the exact right answer to all body types, personality types, and styles. In the world's history, there have been a lot of wildly different profoundly good martial artists. There are good martial arts styles and bad styles … but the good ones are powerful and worthwhile in different ways, and for different reasons. There is no single correct answer. No matter how solid an art is, it may not match up with you very well. Find one that does.
Make sure the philosophy, mannerisms, and methods … match your vibe, there's no other way to say it. It doesn't have to define you. You're not choosing a religion here. But it should be something you would like to be able to do. The philosophy of this art should make sense to you and be something you can respect. The movements may seem foreign to you, but they seem … beautiful. Or cool. Or profound. Or sleekly efficient. Something that seems admirable and worth a lot of work to achieve.
Anything we humans do for a prolonged period of time becomes part of us. That is triply true for a martial art: something we study intensely with body, mind, and spirit. As the saying goes, it melts into your blood. It influences your personality. Find something that influences you in a direction you want to go – a rabbit hole worth following all the way to the end.
