One of the most common questions that people are most likely to ask you regarding the martial arts is who was your instructor, or maybe the name of the style that you learned? How embarrassing it must be however if they asked you what was the name of the martial art school that you went to? - and it was called ‘The Power Rangers Karate Club’ for example. And yet for sure there must be a few instructors still around today that were trained in the 1990’s under that, or some other silly name, back then? Not really a good image to promote yourself, is it, if you wish to be taken seriously as a hard combat expert?
Power Rangers of course was a very popular children's TV show back in the mid 1990’s and some instructors would use such a martial art school name to attract children to their classes, and for sure it did bring in child paying customers, but of course I think it is fair to say that no one really took those lessons seriously under such a name? Would you? In an effort to promote a business brand name some would even use terms like ‘ultimate’ or ‘supreme’ but is that a wise thing to do? In most cases these days many people will ask about the style of combat that you do or the name of your instructor, as already mentioned, but what if they asked you the name of the school of combat that you attended? Could you really say that you were trained at a Power Rangers Karate Club, or that you were trained at a club that uses the words supreme or ultimate within the title without blushing? Come to think about it, would you attend such a martial arts club that used such titles anyway, now that you are older? Some parents, not all of course, send their children along to martial art classes without having a single clue what real martial arts are all about. In many cases they regard such classes as being no more than a game, or a martial art themed playgroup for the very young, but the difference in standards is more than clear to see when you compare it to how standards are in the east, such as Japan and China as a perfect example, compared to the soft versions that we see today in the western areas of the world. Do parents understand the difference between the various martial arts? One woman many years ago asked me what type of martial art I taught? When I told her I taught traditional Kung Fu she said oh no - I want my 2 year old son to learn proper traditional eastern martial arts like Kickboxing. Clearly she had been watching those kickboxing films at the time. This was back in the early 1990’s by the way. After explaining that I didn’t teach little kids of that age anyway I walked her out of the door. But the real question that I do need to ask is - would parents even listen if instructors took the time to explain the difference anyway? More to the point would instructors bother to explain or would they just take the money? For a related article click >HERE< Comments are closed.
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