Online Personal Training Blog

What happened to Screw Up Karate!

Karate hit the United States back in the fifties. Advertisements promised that a slight woman could beat up a grown man, and showed men killing bulls. It was said that even a child. who was properly trained in Karate, could do amazing things.

So what happened? What happened is that there was such demand for the art that there weren’t enough teachers. And we must now ask ourselves what, exactly, does a person need to teach Karate?

Back then, guys with three years experience were getting their black belts, and then turning around and teaching. But it took a dozen years to master the art back then, and an instructor needs more data than a master. Being a master means that you have the data, but being a teacher means that you not only have the data, but you can get somebody else to get it.

Now we come to modern times. You’ve got guys with thirty years experience saying they are teachers, and they’ve mastered the art, but, like as not, they don’t really know how to teach. A master can be made by simple experience, it is true, but an instructor needs more than simple experience.

An instructor requires the specialized data of how to teach. Getting tougher doesn’t matter, he needs to find out the how and why of making technqiues work, and be able to get other people to understand those hows and whys. This is an entirely different education, you see.

So you make the opportunity to observe a teacher at work. Is the teacher actually getting others to really understand why and how? Or is he merely having people monkey see monkey do?

Yes, the first stage is Monkey see monkey do, but it only lasts a short while. The real real reasons for how and why something works must be inserted, or what is being taught will become nothing more than memorization. And when the fist comes out of the darkness, do you want to remember how to defend yourself, or do you want to have the instantaneous intuition that is available if you don’t just memorize, but know and understand the how and the why of why the moves are what they are?

So that’s what happened to karate, and to a lot of other martial arts. Karate could do all it claimed, but it became less than it was through the lack of adequate and educated black belts, black belts who didn’t really know why they were doing what they were doing. I trust this information will help you find an instructor, and really be able to learn an art.