All Wado Karate Forum

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oneya

Karate could have been on the list as an alternative curriculum but the Japan Karate Federation .....my blood pressure goes up just thinking about how they fubared that one. They were asleep at the wheel.

Federations/Organisations/Parliaments and committees are often candidates for logo-therapy Bob.

oneya.

There are few things that I think should be compulsory, and martial arts are not one of them. Available, yes, but compulsory, absolutely not.

I just read that my old school has now made kyokushin compulsory
Makes me angry at times
Although I think that everyone should be introduced to martial arts and made more aware of what it is
I think everyone should also have the right to choose

Plus I think Wado would have been a wiser choice for such a program :-/

Kuroi Tsubasa wrote:I just read that my old school has now made kyokushin compulsory
Makes me angry at times
Although I think that everyone should be introduced to martial arts and made more aware of what it is
I think everyone should also have the right to choose

Plus I think Wado would have been a wiser choice for such a program :-/

Why would you choose Wado over Kyokushin?

AJ

WadoAJ wrote: Why would you choose Wado over Kyokushin?

AJ

Well it all comes down to how the training is I guess
I speak out of the little training that I had in both
Wado is a much softer and more rounded off than kyokushin
I think studying martial arts is good for children as it helps them develop focus,patience,self control,respect for others amongst several other things
Fighting and self defence I consider is secondary at this age
Kyokushin training depends a lot on physical toughening
I dont really see a purpose in asking a kid to do 1000 punches on the makiwara(specially if the kid doesn't really aspire to punch the living hell out of some other guy in future) or getting them to fight in knockdown tournaments even with protective gears
Plus it makes more sense to teach kids the Wado way (how to evade and attack) than what we were taught in kyokushin (sort of a overkill like "block so hard that the attacker gets injured")

All that said I must also include that I myself had started kyokushin when I was 8 years old and I loved it
But sometimes I regret having damaged my left knee so many times at that age
Although the pun that I have a knee-dan in Kyokushin more than makes up for it xD

T. Kimura wrote:There are few things that I think should be compulsory, and martial arts are not one of them. Available, yes, but compulsory, absolutely not.

I agree.

But it's also worth noting the deficiencies of this "news report," which claims that "In the past few decades, more than a hundred Japanese high school students have died in Judo accidents." That sounds like a fecking [sic] disaster, if it's true--cause for a serious public outcry and, one would think, governmental intervention.

But is it true? Exactly how many decades are we talking about, anyway? Even if it were as many as 5 decades (and the word "few" suggests otherwise), that would mean more than 2 kids dying per year!

And just how prevalent is the problem of inexperienced teachers? My guess is that there are more inexperienced teachers out there than most people realize. But, of course, this begs the question: what qualifies someone as an "experienced" teacher? And does having "experienced" teachers in any way guarantee a safer environment for the kids? What kind of safety training do these teachers (experienced or not) have, I wonder? How are the kids taught general safety and effective ukemi before letting someone pick them up and throw them face-first into the tatami? What a nightmare!

Can anyone confirm the accuracy (or lack thereof) of this report?

Best wishes to all,
Greg

Well, apparently that report is in essence correct, albeit imprecise with regards to its numbers. The actual number of deaths is 108 between 1983 and 2009. That's an average of 4 deaths a year. The kids have ranged in age from 12-18.

See:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/school-j ... 19d03.html
http://judojiko.net/eng/

And the lack-of-experience thing is no joke:

"An apparatus gymnastics expert, Ito learned how to teach judo after attending training sessions at a local judo training hall. [...] School teachers do not require a special license or certification to teach martial arts classes. As of April, many teachers who end up taking [teaching] martial arts classes will be in a similar situation as Ito [because of the new mandatory martial arts classes]." (http://educationinjapan.wordpress.com/2 ... -excerpts/)

Might as well give them knives to play with and an art teacher to supervise.

What are they thinking?!

Greg

JAPAN does not have enough qualified martial arts instructors?