Time to Fold, Time to Fade

2011

 

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2011/05/being-black-belt-knowing-when-to-fold.html  


https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2015/11/being-black-belt-knowing-when-to-fold.html

Time to Fold, Time to Fade

I just got a letter from an old friend (non-Isshinryu) who just shut down his school in a different part of the country.  Interesting timing as this somewhat parallels a different conversation I just had several days ago.


As things have it he’s shut down a modestly successful dojo of many years and leaving the arts.  When he came up he was only interested in hard-ass karate, and ran a tough ship.  He was one of many who thought I was crazy for teaching kids, regardless of my urging him that youth instruction for the commercial school was the growth potential of the future.  Yes as iconoclastic as I am, teaching for free, I’ve always supported my friends in their Commercial systems, too.


Well as times changed, he went to business seminars and eventually went into the youth programs, including the ‘kinder kid karate’ (a practice I don’t participate in myself). His dojo grew and his income. But what he observed, in his community was as more youth trained, it was harder and harder to find adults to join the program.  In part his town is a bedroom community and people commuting to work were less interested in spending free time training, but in part, as he became a successful youth instructor adults weren’t interested in training some place kids were either.

This didn’t just happen, but slowly over quite a few years, he ended up with fewer and fewer adults who wanted to train hard. As the adults dropped off, he also found his interest waning, and eventually realized that spending years in the dojo left many other things undone which he never had time to do.


On the other end, my friend Ernest Rothrock, with his in my opinion very successful Kung Fu programs teaches almost exclusively to adults  (yes he does have some youth programs but they are not his primary goal), and after decades of work, has a real word of mouth in the adult communities where he and his instructors have schools. Now there is considerable difference between the mindsets of Kung Fu students and Karate students (btw, the Tai Chi student mindset is very different too). The people who train with him aren’t interested in Karate training, and on the whole most karate students I’ve know really aren’t interested in studying kung fu either.


In a different example, a local combination Goju/Shorin instructor has over 1,000 students in his and his students schools and manage to successfully balance youth and adult classes. But in his case, his students do most of the teaching (and 100% of the youth programs). So variety is possible.


So my friend folded his program and has retired from the arts, to pursue other interests.


My own instructors have retired from Isshinryu. Mr. Lewis in part because he wanted to live out west, hunt, fish, hike et.al, and in part because he accomplished everything in Isshinryu that he ever wanted to do.  Likewise Charlie Murray retired from Isshinryu last year, his USAF duties so encompassing and little time to train on a regular basis, he’s choosing to concentrate on his Air Force and Church responsibilities.


The fact that some stay and some leave, and fold it up, is very rarely discussed, but is there.  Most never make it to Black Belt. Many more leave within 5 years of attaining their ShoDan.  And as time passes, real people choose different responses to life situations.


Not sure if this is pleasant, but it is real.


Victor