all joking aside, perhaps we could have formulate the definition more clearly if we could describe the component parts which makes a Karate Dojo McDojo.
CXT summed it very nicely here:
Anyway, do we differentiate between McDojo and FraudDojo? Is all McDojo has to be Frauds, and is all Frauds has to be McDojo?My opinion...which is of course ALWAYS subject to correction and re-evaluation....is that a "McDojo" is place that prioritizes commerce OVER imparting skill to its students.
Ben Haryo (This guy has low IQ and uses a dialect which vaguely resembles Bad English).
ops double post, prince san please delete this one. Thank you
Last edited by john_lord_b3; 19th December 2008 at 06:24. Reason: double post
Ben Haryo (This guy has low IQ and uses a dialect which vaguely resembles Bad English).
I don't think that all McDojos are "fraud" in the sense that many of them actually believe that they are "the real thing", or have produced different value systems, so that the black belt has suffered devaluation. They may not be actually aware of their lack of quality in some areas, so they are not knowingly defrauding the public.
Conversely, a dojo that trains hard but makes claims which are not true and are known not to be true is guilty of fraud.
Andrew Smallacombe
Aikido Kenshinkai
JKA Tokorozawa
Now trotting over a bridge near you!
Just to throw out another element, I think one key part of a McDojo is the uniformity. When we think of McDonalds, we know that each McDonalds is serving pretty much the same thing. If you go to Russia or China and visit a McDonalds there you can expect to find a couple of different items on the menu, but more than 90% of it would be exactly what you can find at any other McDonalds in the world. That's what McDonalds often stands for: the quality of the food is pretty consistent (in the minds of some, consistently tasteless) and the food on offer is uniform at thousands of different branches.
At a McDojo, whether the school calls itself Dojo of the Tiger (Tiger of the Dojo?) or Jake Smith Combat Karate, you'll find pretty much the same stuff on the curriculum: the type of watered-down karate that you would expect of a 10th-degree blackbelt whose highest rank in a style that he didn't invent was greenbelt in Shotokan. Compare a video of the eight-year-olds from Swooping Eagle Kung Fu and a video of the second graders of Black Dragon Ultra Karate and only the patches on their uniforms will allow you to tell them apart.
I think the sad thing about a lot of these McDojo is that no one there-- the instructors included-- have any idea what they are missing. They honestly believe that all martial arts systems are like them. Because they've never experienced anything else, they think that they are really performing excellent martial arts. And those trophies that their eight-year-olds bring back from some local McDojo competition reinforces that. And I guess that there's no harm in that, if you just want a fun after-school activity for the kids. Still, it makes me a bit sad when I think about how shallow the fare at the average McDojo is compared to the rewarding depth of the arts that I've been fortunate enough to study.
David Sims
"Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum." - Terry Pratchet
My opinion is, in all likelihood, worth exactly what you are paying for it.
Dangers of the McDojo:
Look at the video, then read the rest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unOmuQKTsxk
He is writing a memoir about his interesting 1-fight career as a heavyweight prizefighter.
This guy trained only 3 days as a boxer for the fight, BUT
he told me he had 8 years TKD, and several years in kung fu, aikido, iaido, and jui-jitsu.
I would say that he has "disgraced the Shaolin temple." No martial training that is worth a damn would leave him with nothing ingrained after all that time. He didn't look like a martial artist who tried boxing. He looked like some regular old guy off the street who tried boxing.
To his credit, he wasn't "scurrred." He showed heart to get in there.
McDojo victim.
Terry Miller
Hi Andrew,
"The Gracies blah blah, realistic training blah blah UFC blah cage fighting blah traditional stuff is nonsense blah blah Aikido doesn't work blah blah tap out blah blah real fighting blah blah uber!"
Hi Andrew,
So sparring and realistic training is bad ?
I certainly have no rights to speak on behalf of Andrew, but as a member of Andrew fans club, I think what he meant was that sparring and realistic training is not bad at all, but bad-mouthing aikido and other traditional stuff is.
Andrew san, If I am wrong, I will do 10 push-ups as fitting punishment Oops make it 20
Ben Haryo (This guy has low IQ and uses a dialect which vaguely resembles Bad English).
The only McDojo thing I've seen thus far, is a trainer who lets someone fight after only three days of training, that is downright insane and irresponsible.
The biggest fool however, is the boxer himself. Why decide fighting a match under a ruleset you're completely unfamiliar with? That's begging to get knocked out.
Remi Vredeveldt
"Hysterical knowledge is often mistaken for historical knowledge"
Boni enim duces non aperto proelio, in quo est commune periculum, sed ex occulto semper adtemptant Vegetius Liber III, 9:5
Remi Vredeveldt
"Hysterical knowledge is often mistaken for historical knowledge"
Boni enim duces non aperto proelio, in quo est commune periculum, sed ex occulto semper adtemptant Vegetius Liber III, 9:5
Hi Tom. Thanks for asking. See Ben's quote below.
Thanks, Ben. You pretty much summed up most of my feelings on the subject.
Sparring and realistic training (and the two may not always go hand-in-hand) are in and of themselves good things. So are: training for humility and peace, self control, courtesy, etc., none of which are any good in "a real fight" (but may help prevent a real fight)
One of the points I was trying to make through sarcasm is that the cage fight represents only one perspective of combat realism. (I have never been in a combat situation, but I'm pretty sure that no street fight has an arena and referee)
The MMA have a lot to offer, but they don't hold all the cards.
Just my opinion. Feel free to cut me down.
Andrew Smallacombe
Aikido Kenshinkai
JKA Tokorozawa
Now trotting over a bridge near you!
Andrew, Ben, All.
This debate really touches on one of this era's biggest themes in the martial arts: the roaring debate between TMA vs post-UFC-'93 MMA, BJJ, & other ring-oriented arts.
Bad form to slag off other arts, fair enough. I think, though, many of those bitter MMA people may be "refugees" from arts like Karate or Tae Kwon Do and feel conned. Eddie Bravo, the innovative BJJ teacher, describes a typical experience in his book, "Mastering the Rubber Guard," where he started at what sounds like a McDojo.
I like to think of violence as a continuum. The continuum might start from very mild, say, being jostled in a queue or having someone angrily jab a finger in the face, ranging to moderate, such as shoving and pushing between fans at a football match. Finally, there's extreme, like, fighting off a homicidal maniac. In Australia, we have a roadside bushfire warning gauge, that goes from green (no danger), to yellow (mild), to orange and red, which means a bushfire. I think of violence in the same way.
Each art tends to come into its own at one of the ranges of the continuum. Krav Maga, for example, tends to focus on the homicidal maniac range. Obviously it'd be very inappropriate to hammer the face of your best friend with knee strikes for being sleazy whilst drunk. Aikido's good in the moderate range. For more extreme stuff, I'm sorry folks. I'm with those who just don't think it works.
(The only move I've ever used on the "street" by the way, was an aikido wrist-grab break -- perfect because the police man illegally grabbing me didn't think I was resisting as I slipped out of his grip).
I like JuJutsu in its different forms, Judo, BJJ, Japanese Jiu Jitsu, because I think it's very expansive across the ranges. But if you want it to be functional, it has to be trained that way.
That's my criticism of alot of traditional teachers. They often leave the question of combat effectiveness vague, not telling their students, as the Shaolin Monks now do, "we can't really fight."
I think the biggest problem with functionality and realism is the physical environment. Yes, it's true, real fights don't have referees, clean surfaces and cages. There might be broken glass, jagged rocks, or snow-covered stairs. In the last nasty encounter I had, I was carrying this MacBook, frankly, I'd prefer to get punched than damage it. Tony Blauer talks about the problems of sports-training, even with MMA people, in that there are a few split seconds when they "give themselves permission to be violent."
I'm going to stir the pot a bit with an opinion.
Just as there's a continuum of violence, there's a continuum of realism and functionality. MMA cage training and grappling on gym-mats is certainly not the street. But in terms of learning to fight, it sure beats, static two-person kata with no resistance.
But then again, the real threat to most of us in big cities in times of non war are forces like stress, job battles, boredom, for some meaninglessness and depression. For these bigger things, the TMA, do a great job. And as someone pointed out, humility and patience can help avoid a fight, thus winning it before it happened, as the great Sun Tzu advised us. :-)
Wonderful training to you all in whatever your chosen discipline is.
p.s. --
Just to define TMA, or traditional martial arts, probably too wide a category. For this discussion, I'd lump Aikido, many non-sparring forms of Karate, traditional Jujutsu, many forms of kung fu, etc. You get the picture.
Nothing against the above arts, by the way. I'm a big fan of Iain Abernethy, the British Karate teacher, who has a fascinating approach of reviving what he says was the original combat focus of Karate, through reinterpreting Kata. Is it "traditional", "modern", art, sport, or self-defense, oriented. I'd say all.
Thanks for your post, Tom. Looks like we are much more alike than I originally thought.
Andrew Smallacombe
Aikido Kenshinkai
JKA Tokorozawa
Now trotting over a bridge near you!