We are not your stereotypical “karate” class.
I’m going to start this off by saying, “Maybe I’m wrong”. That being said, I haven’t taken a step back in a while, and considered just how different our classes are from a lot of “main stream” martial art or “karate” classes. I say karate here, because that’s what most people with no martial arts experience usually call it. There are many, many different school/styles of martial arts available today: Tae Kwon Do, Tang Soo Do, Kyokushin, Isshin Ryu, Aikido, Japanese Jujutsu, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, Okinawan Karate, Muay Thai, just to name a few.
With the exception of maybe BJJ (because of it’s rise in popularity of the last few years), I feel like most people with no prior experience, have a preconception of what a martial arts class looks like. Maybe they have kids in their life that go to a “karate” class and they’ve watched it. Maybe you have practiced TKD or a variant as a kid. Either way, I feel like most people envision the same general thing: Standing in a line punching air. Stepping forwards and backwards practicing blocks, punches, and kicks in the air. Practicing solo kata. Punching/kicking pads. Point sparring. Breaking boards. That kind of thing. I’ve checked out some “typical ‘karate’ class” videos on YouTube. I briefly studied Tang Soo Do a long time ago. It isn’t far from the truth. But… here’s the thing….
We don’t do that.
Do we have solo kata that’s practiced “in the air”? Sure, they’re great tools for solo practice. Do we punch and kick pads? Sometimes — it’s important to know how to strike! Do we stand in a line, and step-punch and kiai (yell)? Nope. We don’t spend 30+ minutes ‘exercising’ at the beginning of class, either.
(You can learn more about what to expect for your first class here in an older blog post); What we do, is spend the majority of the class, paired up with another human, working through movement and techniques with each other. It’s important to understand how our bodies move, how our ‘opponent’s’ body moves, how techniques work, how they don’t work, and how to adapt to any changes. Our waza are practiced with another person — not just walking through movements — but, with an actual person TRYING to hit you, so you can study the techniques, understand the timing and learn the application.
More often than not, each class we work with weapons at some point. Sword, sticks, knives, rope, you name it. We often use weapons to explore different aspects, or shortfalls, of our taijutsu (body art/skill). This is also uncommon in other arts, I think.
All martial arts have their own approach, their own specialty, their own meta-strategy. Ours may seem a bit odd at first, but come give it a try for yourself; you may be surprised.