Karate

BigStu1972

I will take a look over the weekend

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When you say your cousin teaches Mix Martial Arts, are we talking MMA, like what you would see in the UFC?

If the kids dont deserve the belt they wear, they shouldnt be wearing it, more so as the belt get darker in colour. However I understand that to keep kids interested you have to reward them every few months but I dont think the parents should have to pay for this.


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Now this is totally wrong. Either someone is worthy of a black belt or they are not. It shouldnt matter how much money the parents have paid towards their training.

How much do you pay for each lesson and each grading?

willywinker

My cuz has taken all the bits that work from all the martial arts he has studied and made his own sylabus. He trains the police, bouncers bodyguards as well as having his own school.

On that video he goes through some of it at the end with his son. My son wont be joining his classes he will get a more intense fun private workout as he is family and insurance doesnt matter lol.

As for the belts its a fact of life that is how karate clubs make money. A belt means nothing to my son he wants to learn karate but for others its everything but means nothing. Its a junior bb away which..

i pay 60 a month for my son to do 3x2.5 hrs a week and the grading is 50 going upto 75 for a brown grading which is when i became unhappy. They make there money with the gradings.


EDIT:

This is one of his Sensei's former pupils

                                                                                                                                               

Mostafa 4 x cadet world champion

love this photo of 4 of sensei's former pupils, they made the opposition look like white belts.

                                                                                                                                               

If your going to get conned may as well get conned by the best Believe me they train hard! Very very hard, Egyyptians are hard task masters.

Sensei always puts our squad 2 belts up in competition and generally in England atleast we sweep the board so if we are a McDojo then nearly every other club we have faced is a Mcjoke. Sensei turned down the opportunity to coach the English karate feds coach..

This is the only reason i kept him there and drive a distance for the pleasure and kept the grading fee's at the back of my mind hence me initial post.

BigStu1972

£75 for a grading is ridiculous
Take a BJA run Judo club (The BJA are the governing body), most will charge around £6 for the grading and that includes your belt and a certificate. There is no increase as you go up the belts either.
I did Karate, when I was a child and the fee back then, albeit in the 80's, was around £1.50 per class and the same again for a grading. Hell most BJJ clubs, which are notoriously expensive charge around £60 per month for unlimited training and gradings there are free.

I also watched the youtube video

willywinker

A bag of chips was 10p in the eighties.  THe reason i swallowed the grading fees was because of the success surrounding the club. Just got back from a comp and we won gold in all the categories we entered which was about 40 or 50 kata kumite. Went to serbia for the worlds 2000 competitors for a week and they had the time of there life. There were a lot of bloodied and broken kids today. I wont pay 75 though or i will once a yr until he gets his bb at over 16. its only money i would spend it on beer or weed otherwise lol.

2quid an hr is cheap for anything nowadays thinking about it.

Obviously you dont have much to say about the vid or who his sensei has trained.

Thats cool though

repoman

40p yo.  80p got you a portion of chips and a sausage in batter.  Noms.

£75 does seem expensive but the lessons are cheap.  That seems fair at first but if the club are making all their money from gradings, the obvious question is do they put kids in for gradings when they are ready or when they want the cash?

The club seems legit.  Then again back in the day my old instructor had the best kicks you've ever seen, I couldn't kick for toffee though.

willywinker

Tiny tiny riku did well. Lost 4-2 but i like to think a lot of kids would have froze in his situation

gwyper

We are £15 a grading, which happens around every 4-6 months.  This includes a belt and the training session.

We have lots of children so they aren't ready in 3 months.  Some aren't even ready after that so they would be encouraged to wait until the next one.

We are £3 a lesson for 2 hours.  Under your clubs model our fees would be £36 a month.

What I will say is that whilst your son entered the World Championships, there are many World Governing Bodies so that is not the only World Championships available.  The Egyptian team you talk about, I'm sure they are part of the World Karate Federation.  Whilst I am not affiliated to the WKF, it is generally accepted as the "daddy" of all multistyle Governing Bodies and if Karate is accepted into the Olympics then it will by WKF Karate.  The WUKF is a very good standard though and some WKF stylists cross-compete in WUKF, but you can never compete in WKF unless you are a member of WKF.  It's a pollitical mess.

I think from a quick Google the instructors credentials are more than capable.  There is a big drive right now in competition, but try to keep your son rooted so that he trains as an allrounder.  This is what Karate is all about.

willywinker

Yeah the egyptians are wkf our sensei/instructor won male kata at the wkf world champs and one of our other instructors ashref was 2 x wkf world champion 90kgs kumite but he has gone back to Egypt sadly. We just switched from wkf to wukf..why i dont know? i think it was political.

So overall it seems like a decent club but a tad expensive.

gwyper

The Egyltian boy was the WKF junior champion but has done very well too since entering senior.

The switch was purely pollitical. I would say to steer cheer of that though. English Karate on the whole is a complete joke pollitically. There have been three major attempts to reunite all the governing bodies, however egos from all sides (not just WKF) have made them impossible.

All of this is basically due to competition Karate. If your son sticks to classes he won't go wrong.

I think your club is fine. There are a lot of traditional clubs out there that woukd say otherwise, but I would argue the face of Karate has slightly modernised and that is reflected in the standard of your boys instructor.

willywinker

i think my question has been answered so thankyou I have a judo club at the end of my road which i used to see The british team visit so i may take my son along there and see what thats all about.

After looking at the website it is indeed the first purpose built judo club in the uk so well worth taking him along to try it out. Its literally half a mile from where i live.

Dartford Judo Club