Why is it, that people come to learn karate and some don’t listen to what the instructor says?
Case in point, I occasionally make visits to a dojo to train, I always end up being asked to assist in correcting the students kata or techniques. When doing so, I take great care in explaining the correction, I demonstrate what I am talking about and almost go out of my way to make sure they understand what they were doing and how to improve or correct it. I then have them practice the correction or improvement several times and make sure they have it. Later when I revisit the dojo, the same student or students will again be making the same mistake, and again I will take time out to correct it. Now I must say that I am never rude in my teaching manner, I have even attended instructor development courses as part of my employment and used some of lessons learned there to improve my karate instruction. I also understand that it takes some people longer than others to learn certain lessons, no what I am talking about, is those people who understand what you are saying and showing, but just refuse to listen.
When I train anywhere, when a person senior to me makes a correction to my technique, I make sure that I practice that correction, so that the next time I see them, they will have one less thing to fix! I remember training at the Komakai main dojo and several of the branch dojos, whenever I was corrected by one of my Sempai; I trained on that correction inside and outside of the dojo, so that I made sure that they did not waste their time.
Today people come to learn karate and expect it to be handed to them; no one wants to work hard anymore. I remember training at my father’s first dojo, he would line us up against a brick wall and tell us to punch at it 500 times, as hard as we can. After several punches and bloody spots on the wall, he would stop us and say, no one told you to hit it, I said punch at it! Other times he would take us out and have us kick a tree. We trained hard, we did a lot of basics, we ran in the snow, we did tons of push-ups and sit-ups, we trained as close as we could too how they did in the old days.
Over the years I have had commercial dojo, some successful and some not, however many years ago, I decided that I would no longer cater to the masses, that I would do away with all the fancy colored belts and return to the old White, Green, Brown and Black. That I would only accept those in my dojo, that truly wanted to learn, not just anyone can walk into my dojo, you have to have an invite. I do not charge any of the current students in my dojo a training fee of money, what they pay me in is sweat and hard work.
Now days, people want that next colored belt, they want the shiny trophies. Perhaps it is a case of they expect that if they are winning tournaments, they must be un-correctable, after all they are champions, I mean how dare some old has been dare too correct them.
I started competing in karate tournaments back in 1978 and had a good run, I won some state, national and world titles and had a blast, I traveled all over the country and met many great people, but I always knew that tournament karate wasn’t real karate that was done in the dojo. It was something for fun and not for life preservation. Now don’t get me wrong I like to kumite and bang around still, but I know there is difference. Now days I am afraid that people have lost sight of the path.
So what do you do? I do not know, I just don’t know. 
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