My McDojo's "Point of No Return"

**Navita** · Posted On: 5/07/2011 1:38am

Originally Posted by proteinshakez

If you have recorded evidence of him saying he'll come after you, then i don't see why you can't post that up as well. You think he'd be dumb enough to actually come after you, with actual evidence of him saying he'd do so that you could easily show the police? Actually from the sound of it he might be...but ya lol.

Let this story be a lesson to all those who date their instructors, it's usually bad news waiting to happen.

I knew better than to. That's the worst part. Lord knows I've seen it happen, we both agreed to be professional when it came to the gym.

And he has no odea I saved them and he would come after me, yes. I am looking for legal action

**proteinshakez** · Posted On: 5/07/2011 8:46am

Originally Posted by Navita

I knew better than to. That's the worst part. Lord knows I've seen it happen, we both agreed to be professional when it came to the gym.

And he has no odea I saved them and he would come after me, yes. I am looking for legal action

Then yes, you'd be wise to go the legal route. Put that douche bag in his place.

**kikoolol** · Posted On: 7/27/2011 10:58pm

My sob story :

I've actually been to only one club in my life (soon to be two, though). I had paid up-front for a month of _ing __un, and after careful consideration, I actually never went. Then I decided to try out judo, at the time there was only one dojo I could reach easily so the decision was easy.

For the first year it was awesome. We did the usual drilling, situation sparring, full sparring. In the second year randori was actually made optional. During randori time the class would split and those that wanted to do more drills had half the room and those who wanted to randori had half.

We were 10 to want to randori. Then 6. Then 4. Then 1.

Seeing that, the coach tried to have a randori day, perhaps to spark some interest. He asked that only orange belts and up come. Welp that plan was foiled when I and a couple colored belt showed up to finally do some throwin' but were met with a huge contingent of white belts. We got more drilling for our efforts.

By the third year the classes were almost completely dead. Yeah, I know. Dead judo. What the hell? I don't think the classes were dead because the coach wanted them to. There were simply too much people. We couldn't even train sutemi because we risked throwing somebody onto one of the ubiquitous white belts, so randori was out of the question. We'd usually do randori in the last two weeks of every "semester", when most of the nooblets had dropped out and we had some breathing space.

Two weeks per year of randori? I did not sign up for this. I don't dislike drills, they are important building blocks, but come on!

Third year was already going pretty bad and I thought of quitting right there and then. The decision was finally removed from my grasp when I was the unlucky uke to the most incompetent kata-guruma I've ever seen. Tori overspun me when dropping my ass and I landed on the point of my shoulder. I've probably done hundreds of kata-guruma falls because it was my weak technique and we mostly trained give-and-take. I've never seen someone flunk it so bad. Anyway, the result was a broken collarbone.

Sitting on the bench in plainclothes with a sling while others go at it is not my idea of fun.

Queue some time later. It breaks again on my first day. I don't even remember to what, probably some stupid crap, might even have been my fault (before y'all get on my ass, yes I was cleared to go, yes I know how to fall). Whole batch of fresh new white belts look on as I improvise a sling with my t-shirt and head home. Probably was a bad business year for the dojo, that third one.

Fourth year. It's funny because we actually did some randori but it was still few and far between. Coach seemed happy to have me back, even set me up as the official nage-no-kata uke for his son's shodan grading, since ironically, according to the coach I had "great ukemi". Plans foiled again, collarbone broke once more. Same guy as the first time (I tried to avoid him, but this time it was that or sit out, so I took the gamble and lost). This time he loaded me on his left shoulder (!!) doing a right-side seoi-nage. I think. I'm not sure, I just know I flew at a weird angle and I had no time to readjust or tell him to stop his crap. I overspun and fell on the point of my shoulder again.

I just couldn't understand anymore. I had gotten failed at tests because my technique wasn't up to snuff. This guy was my rank (nikyu at the time) and still could not do ippon-seoi-nage semi-correctly. The obvious conclusion : laxed standards. Kyu grades are left completely at the coach's discretion. I was beginning to worry about my ass too, but visits from judoka belonging to other clubs and visiting other clubs myself defused that feeling, since I could hang with outsiders, pretty well if I do say so myself.

Two collarbone breaks had their effect on my first year of university. My grades dropped, and I lost my sense of direction career-wise. I then got accepted to law school (not a graduate program here), probably based on my high school/technical college grades because my university ones just weren't very good. I decided that further breaks would just hamper this whole new career choice, so I had to get a safer club.

But I did come back a little. It was winter and I had nothing to do. The coach tried to push me into kata competitions to earn my points for shodan. I told him repeatedly I wanted to compete, but not in kata! I suppose that was somewhat creative on his part. Kata is less physically rigorous than shiai and it's still competing. It would have been a decent suggestion, I have nothing in particular against kata and those that like doing kata, but it's just not what I wanted to do! But still, the one or two times it was randori time (for 6 months), I did not do randori, I did nage-no-kata. *sigh*

Let's recapitulate : laxed standards, dangerously inept members (note : the old timers were actually of a very good standard) and dead judo. Yeah. I left.

So I decided I had to join another club. The university has one so I inquired. I plan on attending it this fall. They said it was possible for me to get prepared to compete, so I'm pretty excited to finally do some randori again.

**Tameshiwhaty?** · Posted On: 6/01/2012 10:54am

Ya know I love MA in general even the stupid **** is good for a laugh like point fighting witch is complete bullshit and I am a Shotokan guy but I do do a lot of training with a old school goju guy. Point is we look for self defense and to be Teh Death On the STREET but ya know the only way to really do is to just get a gun and go to the firing range, as my father -in-law says nothing beats a bullet lol.

**J0hnnyB** · Posted On: 9/22/2012 12:20am

Last night I decided not to show up anymore at my Shotokan dojo. Archaic 1 step kumite drills and knowing that I'll have to wait 2 more years for light point sparring threw me off. Its a shame really cuz I really liked the art. Too bad its taught by people who have no interest in fighting.

**Krijgsman** · Posted On: 11/05/2012 11:01pm

I left a no-gi BJJ school for a variety of reasons, but primarily because the instructor had no real interest in instructing new students (me) but remained busy with his fighters and promoting fights (he helped run a local MMA promotion). That and repeatedly being injured by people who muscled submissions during drills and I lost interests. The plethora of teenage blue belts who had no interest in helping a beginner develop skills and every intention of tapping me no matter the cost, and I was done.

Thankfully I found a Judo club that was great, and I was very sad to leave when I moved to a different state.