Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Females in Karate


Recently I was accused of being sexist and against female black belts, or females in karate in general. I find this accusation laughable but thought I would pen my thoughts on the matter just because.

First let me say this I have seen some really bad female martial artists, but then again I have seen some really great ones, for that matter the same can be said for men. I have seen some great male martial artists, and I have seen some really bad ones.

Back when I ran the Marion Komakai dojo for my father, I had a female student named Tracy that hit hard. She would get out there and kumite with anyone and gave 100%. Training and teaching at the Komakai Honbu there were several females that made it to black belt, some really good and some not as good, but they all gave 100%. Mr. Eddie Bathea had a female black belt, that used to train with me all the time in the 90s, Ms. Dunn, she was excellent.  I have been out to teach seminars at my good friend Rudy Crosswell Hanshi dojo, he has a female black belt that has exceptional form and technique.

To date in my dojo, I have only had maybe a dozen females join, out of that I have had one make it to 5th kyu and one to 1st dan, the rest quit because of their own reasons, but what I guess is because I hold everyone to a standard in the dojo.  I have a high standard that I expect out of everyone that joins the dojo, which is that regardless of how good you are, or think you are, that you always give 100%, that you keep going no matter what.

I have been training 35 years now, last year I went to train with an Okinawan Sensei and he watched my kata and said good, good. I asked him if there was anything I could do to make it better, so he pointed out a couple of things, I asked him sensei, if I had mistakes, why did you tell me it was good? He replied with oh you have good kata, nice kata, but always room for improvement.

When I teach at my dojo, I will watch and make corrections, to everyone. Even my best students will tell you that they get corrected all of the time. When I am a guest instructor, I do the same thing, if I am asked to watch or correct a kata, I do that. If I give a correction and make you do it 100 times, it isn’t because I am being mean to you, it is because you still need the practice, you must do hundreds, thousands of repetitions before you build muscle memory.

The way I see it, I have two jobs as a Karate/Kobudo Instructor, 1. Too preserve the teachings of the old traditions, pass it on to the next generation, and instill good moral attributes and 2. Too teach you a skill that will allow you to at the very least too stay alive if you ever need it (hopefully prevail) and to train you in such a way that you do not fool yourself into believing you can survive a conflict, if in reality you cannot fight your way out a a wet paper sack.
I do not care how many trophies that you win, how many titles you have or how great you think you are in your own mind. What I care about is that you show up at the dojo, that you give me your best effort while you are there and that when push comes to shove and you are in the battle that you fight it with everything you have.  In short, holding that trophy up to a mugger and stating your credentials is not gonna keep you from getting killed. There is no whining or crying, there is no quitting. What I expect is that you pull your big girl panties up and get down to business. I do not care if you are a man, woman, child, white, black, red, yellow or whatever. What I care about is that you come to train, that you give your best, and you act like a proper person your sex or race makes no difference at all to me.