What happened to Mess Up Karate!

[I:http://www.uniquearticlewizard.com/extras/pics/bowzerimage20.jpg]Karate arrived in the United States some 60 years. Advertisements of the time claimed that a slight woman could defend herself against a grown man, showed men killing bulls. It was said that even a child properly trained in Karate, was capable of astonishing ability

So why didn’t it all happen? The reason is that so many people wanted the art that there weren’t enough teachers to teach it. And what, you might ask, does a person need to teach Karate?

When Karate first was being taught in the US, guys were getting their black belts in three years, and then opening their own schools. But it took a dozen years to master the art, and a master doesn’t even have the information that an instructor needs. Knowing the data, and being a master, doesn’t mean that you can teach somebody else.

Now we come to modern times. You’ve got guys with thirty years experience saying they are teachers, and they’ve mastered the art, but, like as not, they don’t really know how to teach. A master can be made by simple experience, it is true, but an instructor needs more than simple experience.

To be an instructor requires specialized data. He doesn’t just need boot class to get tougher, he needs to find out the reasons why things work, and be able to get other people to understand those reasons. It is a matter of a real education, you see.

So you want to take karate, and you walk into a school and observe a teacher. Is the teacher explaining why things work? Or is he merely asking people to mimic him?

Yes, the first stage is Monkey see monkey do, but it only lasts a short while. The real real reasons for how and why something works must be inserted, or what is being taught will become nothing more than memorization. And when the fist comes out of the darkness, do you want to remember how to defend yourself, or do you want to have the instantaneous intuition that is available if you don’t just memorize, but know and understand the how and the why of why the moves are what they are?

So that’s the story. Karate could do all it claimed, but it was reduced by quick black belts who wanted to make money, and who didn’t really know why they were doing what they were doing. I trust this information will help you when you seek an instructor, and when you are actually learning the art.