“How long will it take me to get a Black Belt?”

This has got to be the most common question asked to any Martial Arts instructor by potential students.

“How long is a piece a string”  is probably the most common answer….

I try to equate it with other skills in life. How long does it take to get a degree at university?  If you work hard on a daily basis and attend all your classes and work hard it should take three years.

If you wanted to learn to play the piano or guitar, 3 years of daily practise and weekly classes should give you a basic skill….

Gymnastics…. Ballroom dancing…..  Ice skating…..  all about the same.

So generally it equates with a basic skill level – if you are moderately intelligent, reasonably well co-ordinated and attend three classes a week and practise what you are asked to daily at home you should reach basic shodan level in about three years. 

If you attend two classes a week and train at least three times a week at home maybe 5 years. 

If you attend only one class a week and barely train at home you will never make it.  That’s the facts of life.

Martial Arts businesses suffer from some of the worst marketing on this planet.  All the ‘hype’, ‘management consultants’, ‘Leadership Programmes’, ‘upgrades’, door to door sales, mass leafleting and buzz words that have lost their meaning such as ‘self discipline’, ‘confidence’, ‘self defence’, the self made ‘Masters’, countless ‘World Champions’, clubs that throw every Martial Art into the hat with lists that they couldn’t possible supply has left potential and existing students sullied, confused and lost. 

Schools wanting to develop relationships with outside sports clubs have had their fingers burned by the expansionist, badly run and heavily marketed clubs. Under the guidance of their marketing gurus these clubs used all the right buzz words to get into the school curriculum and subsequently taught poor quality and often downright dangerous Martial Arts.  They then rip off the children and their parents after persuading them to join their club with upgrades of up to ten times the original joining monthly subscription.

Business and life are not separate.  A Martial Arts Instructor has to decide exactly what his aims in life are and where he wants his dojo or kwoon to go.  As an Instructor and Martial Artist, he has to define exactly what success is for him.  Management companies and business advisors are rarely experienced Martial Artists and are therefore often prepared to sacrifice all that is holy in the Martial Arts to simply earn as much as they can from a client as quickly as possible.

So this guy from the local paper rings me up and wants to take some self defence type pictures for a “Vicars Are To Learn Self Defence” article.  “No problem” I say…. Any (reasonable) publicity is okay…

The reporter comes up and like all newspaper (and magazine) journalists and photographers wants the stupidest pictures that you wouldn’t be seen dead doing.  But being a veteran I was ready and irrespective of what he asked for gave him the right ones.

“Can you…….  (Steve immediately strikes up one of his poses with uke) Oh… OK…  fine….”  (Click, click) “Then could we have…..  (Steve strikes up next pose)  Oh… Yeah…..  (Click, click)….  And so on until he runs out of film…

It appears that Vicars are being attacked more frequently and there is a “call to arms” for them to be given self defence lessons.  Some are in favour and others, quite naturally, are not too keen.  Our esteemed Martial Arts establishment comments: “Any self defence training is better than none” and are quite in favour of the idea – but is that being honest?

That one day Martial Arts will not be thought of as ‘separate’ Martial Arts, that the politics of structures like Karate, Ju Jitsu,  Kung Fu, Taekwondo and Aikido are consigned to history – that Martial Arts will retain it’s diversity without the politics and have just one Governing Body dealing only with club structure, safety and the various types of competition….

That there will be no politics of styles, no Wado, no Shotokan, no Hun Gar, no GKR, no Tomiki, that everyone will be working to be the best they can and eventually transcending the ‘style’ of their teachers with their own personal development and style will be where they came from and not a prison for the future…

That there will be no restriction on who can train with whom…