if you already have other places to train … then all you’re looking for is a gym with a heavy bag …
a membership at such should cost around 400 a year … so leave and save 150$ …
simple …
You do not respect your teacher anymore, you should leave.
If the classes are useless, you can probably get a regular health club membership for less, and do your workouts on your own.
The end part is hearsay but here goes.
I trained at a school for 9 years. Now most of it was before the internet so, there was really no way to check. We had full contact sparring once a year and hard contact 4 days a week. We had a 45 minute warm up and the last hour was training techniques and sparring. Well, 7 years went by great. The school grew we had about 100 students. The great part was if someone got hurt sparring my instructor never blinked. The worse we had was 2 broken wrists from people panicking from falling. Well, my instuctor left due to family problems. When the new instructor started teaching sparring became basically point sparring.
Well, we had a hardcore group so as BB we sparred hard against each other. Then the workout shrank. Then the sparring shrank. Then the high ranking members started leaving. Then suddenly special classes were required for passing to the next level. Talking and promoting these classes took up more time. Then a rank that took me just under three years to reach was reduced to as little as 10 months. I moved out of state so I was considered still a member. I have a really good friend who still trains. Went out to visit my parents and good friend. Jumped into class some 3 year BB was running class who couldn't spar at all before I left.
Light contact and these people were whining. People would finish their Belt Rank requirment that night and the instructor would pressure them to test.
That was a wasted monthly fee. Luckily my perspective is weeding my friend out. As I was leaving he told me he was in class one day, listening to the "special class" lecture. Well , the instructor, says all those people who were sparring hard had no control. They thought they were skilled but it was just brawling. I laughed so hard, this is the same guy who broke his shoulder going to hard. That is what made my freind start thinking about quitting. I said who but you and me remember what Old School sparring is like? He said "you and me". Well what was the benefit of bringing that up if not to chastise you? This conversation had happened before I came out for a visit.
I remember my “last straw” point with WTF pretty well. But first, the context.
I was a senior in high school. Mind you, our school was pretty decent as far as TKD goes. But as time went on, membership increased so drastically that classes had to be combined. That’s right, I eventually had to train with TKD moms and little dragons. In addition, it seemed like people were getting promoted too quickly and fighting at tournaments was being deemphasized.
Anyway, I remember doing a drill that consisted of running to the other side of the dojang and doing a jumping front snap kick as high as possible. That’s a metaphor for TKD at its worst right there. Do the highest, coolest, flashiest, yet completely non-functional move possible. I was happier doing roundhouse drills on the bag and calisthenics. I thought to myself, this a fucking bullshit drill. After that, I just showed up for sparring nights and then when my membership expired that was it. The terms were basically indifferent, I’m sure they have enough customers anyway. It was a relief to quit the BS but at the same time I didn’t know quite what do next.
Going into college I was leaving my TKD school on good terms. College is where I met the guys I train with personally in MMA, and what got me to sign up at Straight Blast Gym the next summer. The rest is short history.
I haven’t personally came across a school I didn’t like the teacher, in fact all of them had been really good, there were some jiffs I had about the schools I went, but not enough to really want to leave. But due to time constraint, I had to drop alot of classes and focus only on sanshou.
Based on what I have read in this thread, I would recommend leaving the school at the best appropriate time, which would mean finding the next best alternative. I find a home gym is soemtimes the best thing to plug the gaps that might be missing out in your MA scene. Just don’t go overboard and start getting stuff off the web to fill up your gym because you think it is innovative, stick to the basics
I go about with a medicine ball, a banana bag, skip rope and a small mat area of about 9 square metres if you can afford the space.
CT, welcome to my world.
In my case, my shift was also prompted by something else, namely an instructor eloping with another instructor’s wife. Both instructors happened to be good friends of mine.
I couldn’t really face the one that eloped. The other one closed his club. 
Interesting how the eloper always liked to talk about ethics and martial arts… while he wasn’t hitting up on the young female students anyway.
Your story somewhat reminds me of mine, only worse, because my school sucked more. We didn’t have any heavy bags, weight equipment, or really anything in general.
But anyhow, what happened at my school was I stopped doing Karate (kept missing the damn promos for one reason or another and just stopped caring because people I know I could have beaten up were higher then me, pfft). So then I got extremely lucky an amateur boxing club started up very close to the bus station downtown so I started going there. I would go from there straight to Jiu Jitsu, at first it was…alright, but the day I failed to break a sweat (we weren’t really doing much) AFTER going there from boxing was the day I lost all faith in it. Luckily my decision to stop going coincided with my payment, so it was all good.
I know what it’s like to ‘lose’ your first school, but I have to say, it is kind of nice to experience new things. Wish you luck, make sure you do what ‘you’ want to do.
My last straw with my old kung-fu school came when the new promised sparring nights where actually, uh… forms night. I also had an epiphany when I did a kick blocking drill with one of the senior students and he started limping around and had to stop the drill because of the intense pain after I, very lightly, blocked one of his roundhouses with my shin. I realized that this school just didn’t have tough people in it, so I left.
In only slightly related, but somewhat amusing, news, I actually ran into my old sifu at a party last saturday. It was three in the morning, and I was getting ready to leave. Then I see the guy lying in a couch, roaring drunk, decked out in an old jeans jacket, looking like an 80’s metal head. He shouted at me to come over and started badgering me for quitting his school. I just said I was tired of pretending to be a crane, and that I did BJJ now. He just said “fair enough,” and almost looked a little hurt. I would have loved to have had a drunken debate about training methods, but sadly I had to catch the buss home.
Time to join a bjj school and quit all that nonsense about bags and whatnot.
I warned you about Yamanaka and Japanese Goju but,
NNNOOOO !!
Jou no lisen !!
Luke at jou now eh?
In my old school, the instructor was moving in a few months. So miraculously this student who was pretty good at forms got promoted 2 belts (over a few months) to where it was the minimum to teach a class, with the understanding that she would be on the fast track to black belt since she would be training us. This woman was very very small, and nowhere near skilled enough to do anything to me when we sparred, except get the ‘little tappy shots’ that score points but never hurt.
So that was it for me. The old instructor was very skilled and had a thirst for learning ‘outside the system’ that we shared. Several others in the style were very good and we could spar to the point where I felt like I was learning something (just not at my school, since others were leaving also)
I was interested in learning to fight as if a full-sized guy or more was trying to beat my head in, not to ‘perfect my form’ and dance around sparring. I could not respect this student at all, and lost some respect for my old instructor and the whole system for valuing keeping a location open more than keeping standards.
First time I should have quit a school was when we got a new instructor and about ten minutes into class he started to explain something to a n00b. The rest of us just stood there cooling off. I asked if I/we could work out and he got annoyed and made me stay in line. I didn’t last very long, but I should have walked out then.
The first time I did walk out was when the same instructor told my son, who was training for brown, to spar a bb. The bb wouldn’t fight, just pushed and taunted. After a while my son said that he wouldn’t continue because the bb wasn’t fighting, he was just being a bully. The instructor told him to continue. He refused. The instructor said then he couldn’t test for brown because he had a bad attitude. The test had been planed for months and we both thought that this was complete bs. We left and he was still talking about testing when his attitude improved. We walked down the hall and my kid said, “Well, that’s the end of that.” Later the instructor tried to justify it saying it was a test of behaviour, to see how my kid would respond. I felt he responded just fine, bs is bs, and his idiotic “testing” meant my kid shoud obey mindlessly and continue to try to attack a larger stronger older bb? The bb had hurt him before and he knew if he unloaded on him that that would be considered loosing control. My kid didn’t whine, freak out, or behave poorly. The instructor was and is a moron. And now one of the schools I’m in wants to unite with this idiot. Great. The school’s sensei gave clownfuck his black belt years ago and explained to me that this sparring test is designed to show how a student handles it. Does he get angry or cry or whatever. So I said my kid did fine then, he maintained and was reasonable.
Next school (same system in a nearby town) he got his brown under a good instructor (and his ok wife, another bb). Then they got conned by a TKD bb who started teaching them TKD, and had an affair and did drugs with the wife. That school died.
Last time I walked out of a school was when the instructor had been acting odd, then one day I and two teen green belts were doing a kata in front of the class. The instructor waved his hand and said, “OK.” We thought he meant to start over and we started to go from stance to the attention/starting position and he freaked out, “I DIDN’T TELL YOU TO MOVE!!! I DIDN’T TELL YOU TO MOVE!!!” So I went to the side of the room, caught his eye, bowed and never looked back. I did email him about it and he said with my attitude I wasn’t welcome in his class ever again. Gee, like I’m dying to go, man. Several months later he showed up in Kosho Shorei Ryu Kempo as a student and took me outside and said, “I’ve been thinking about what happened for months and all I can say is I’m sorry.” I told him no problem, apology accepted, but I didn’t add that I’d never work out in a class of his again.
Thanks to this site, my age and experience, and having trained in good Kyokushin and Kempo, I’m less happy with most martial arts schools now. Like last night we did a little warm up and then wasted ten or fifteen minutes doing static stretches and other worthless crap. It was somewhat redeemed as the instructor (an ass’t, sensei was working) then asked me to lead us in punching drills. I didn’t do what they expected, karate punches from horse stance, but had them in fighting stance, left jabs, right reverse, then combo’d the same, then other side, then left hook/right upper cut, then the other side, then put it all together as a routine and drilled it both sides with ducking (me punching their faces). Then he led us in takedowns/pins/wrestling and I got to do some arm bars. So the class wasn’t all bad, just the beginning. I emailed the sensei stuff from here @ static stretching. I hope he isn’t too attached to TRADITIONAL DUMB METHODS.
You think striking bags is nonsense?
How about pad work?
edit Oh, and CT, the school sounds like it’s gone downhill, you’ll find something better, I’m sure. Good luck. As the Quakers say, “A way will open.” One looks like it’s opening for me and my son; last nite in class (once a week rec/gym thing) he said we should check out the new school opened by a local (eclectic american karate) champion. If I, being asshole fatherperson had brought it up he’d probably refuse to go. I happened to run into the sensei of a trad Okinawan hard style in the store a couple days ago and he said he thought the style kind of sucked but that that guy could fight (highest compliment he ever makes). Since the Kempo class is off, maybe this will work out.
Are you retarded? How can you practice bjj on a hanging heavy bag?
You can put a heavy bag in your garage if you feel like it, or go to any of a gazillion gyms that have one. No reason to continue to go to a place you disdain.
No I am not retarded. I just wanted to be certain that you think that boxing, kickboxing, karate, kungfu,kempo, shidokan, and every and all striking arts are worthless, and that there is absolutely no point in doing bag work.
Cool, we need another ‘BJJ vs. standup’ thread instead of something interesting, like last straw classes.
Anti-Brazilian propoganda.