Clubs, instructors and dojo approach.

[wadoka]

There are many different scenarios for a karate club. Some created say from a university's requirement for one and there will be a contractual agreement with a visiting instructor, some created through a collection of people needing to train more locally and some just as a personal decision, are a few examples.

There will be many approaches to how they are run and the environment embodied.

To start things off, and the thread is not just instructors, to you should a club be a personal expression of the instructor, a committee based entity to which instructors fulfill a need, should it act as a local service to the community, should the aim to be as big as possible so another one can be opened?

[wadoka]

For me, my club is a personal expression of the effort I have made in karate and the effort I am willing to make to pass on what I can to those with a similar mind.

I generally don't know what I am going to teach, there will be people that would find it boring to be honest.

I don't deliver a generic service to fee paying clients.

I have never told someone who has started training that they could no longer train at the club, the boring training usually puts paid to that. As mentioned on another thread and one of the reasons why this one was started, I have recently put some filters in place.

My website says I am not taking on new members unless through recommendations or introduction. I get more enquiries now than before and people have read that the message as they mention it. Is it that people want what they can't have?

For a long time I have said people could try one lesson for free. I have had quite a few, who never come back again. Boring training no doubt, but what else will you get for your first ever hour.

I then said that they can come down and watch a lesson first. Very few people want to do that it seems.

I now point people to take a look elsewhere. You might think isn't that all counter productive. I have recently let a French brown belt start to train whilst they are here for the year. She persevered through those barriers.

[andyb28]

I generally don't know what I am going to teach, there will be people that would find it boring to be honest.

I don't deliver a generic service to fee paying clients.

I have never told someone who has started training that they could no longer train at the club, the boring training usually puts paid to that. As mentioned on another thread and one of the reasons why this one was started, I have recently put some filters in place.

Thats quite an interesting word to use, considering the other thread about boring wado.
Did the girl in the shop come to your dojo ;)

[wadoka]

If you went to a yoga class and joined in, you probably do everything that the whole class does.

First karate lesson usually revolves around sonobazuki, junzuki, jodan uke, gedan barai, as do most lessons...

Pretty boring huh?

[Tim49]

Phew, complex subject.

If we were all operating in some virtual reconstruction of an idealised ‘Traditional’ Japanese Budo world I suppose it would be pretty clear cut. We could work within an unambiguous pyramidal structure having complete faith in the legitimacy of what we do and the authority/integrity of the person in charge.

Sadly this is rarely possible; life could never be that simple even in Japan.

In the West we are still struggling with bridging the cultural divide, we have our own traditions and approaches, and if that wasn’t a difficult enough hurdle to get over the culture of the fictional martial artists and public misinformation make the construction of any accurate model of Budo even more difficult to attain.

Having said that many of us struggle to maintain some kind of middle ground, where we attempt to be all things to all men.

Personally within my own Dojo I always try to nail my colours to the mast and make it totally clear from the moment people cross the threshold what we are about. But I always maintain an open door policy, and I have found that particularly useful when building bridges with other groups (we have long established contacts with other martial artists, not just Wado stylists). Personally I enjoy having visitors at the Dojo.

Tim

[wadoka]

I too welcome "visitors" and have had holiday makers come year after year. There have been people that come to work in the area and they have come too.

My filters are there for a different purpose.

[Mark]

Wadoka, just out of interest, how many of the people who you turn away or tell to try another club first end up coming back?

[wadoka]

In the last month I have told 3 people to have a look elsewhere. None have come back to me by e-mail.

I then had about 8 others inquire the past year, 2 did one lesson never to return. I invited the others to come down and then no reply or sight of them.

The French student I said come and have a look as she was brown belt. She was courteous enough to keep me informed when she couldn't come and then finally did.

I even got berated by e-mail from someone saying how it was sad that local people lost out on the possibility of training because I closed the Tuesday night.

[Wado heretic]

I am going to try your approach with the karate society I am president of Wadoka. We are opening a club for beginners but I shall try your approach, as we are students we do not have time to waste and this sounds like it would be the way to make sure waste is kept to a minimum.

@Tim49: Just to play devil's advocate; do we really have to bridge the cultural divide? I can understand the need to understand the context of the culture so as to understand the why and how of the technical system, as inevitably that has an impact on the way the techniques and kata are performed. Yet is there a virtue to emulating the Japanese culture in the dojo at least? In your experiance does it produce superior results?

[wadoka]

Wado heretic, I am not saying that my approach has any wider merit outside of my personal take at this point in time. As you can see from the past year, I have my reasons.