“Why do you take Karate?” It’s a question I’ve asked almost every single student I’ve ever trained at almost every single belt test that I’ve ever run. To give credit where credit is due, I stole the question from my own Sensei. It’s a question that a good sensei should always be asking his students. […]
Last week I talked about why some schools break a lot of boards, why some schools don’t break boards at all, and why we’re somewhere in between. This week I’d like to talk a bit about breaking itself. There are a lot of myths out there about breaking. Many of them are perpetuated by martial […]
Some karate dojos break an awful lot of boards (and bricks and other things). Others don’t do any at all. At Madison Martial Arts Academy we fall somewhere in between. We do break boards… and sometimes other things. But we don’t do it very often. Before I explain why we do it the way we […]
A rotating curriculum is a great tool for teaching large classes with few instructors. For those who are unfamiliar, a basic rotating curriculum works something like this: First, take your curriculum and divide it into cycles. Typically, three cycles are used: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced. Typically, each cycle lasts a year. In our case, however, with […]
Madison Martial Arts Academy is not a “Black Belt School”. Most students who enter our dojo will never wear a black belt. Even fewer will actually make it “on time.” And even that phrase, “on time,” means something different when the minimum time to black belt is three and a half years rather than two. […]