“There is one place that you have not looked, and it is there, only there that you shall find the master.” – Quote from the Last Dragon
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It’s important to recognize when something doesn’t feel right, or is killing your motivation, or making you unhappy. When you know you have tried your best and it hasn’t worked out in any form, it may be time to move on, change your dojo, or work on something else.
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The bottom line is that you need to enjoy your training. Maybe you are no longer enjoying training, and that you feel you have no more progress to make? If that is the case, you need to put yourself in a position where you can learn more. Find and approach instructors who can challenge and direct you.
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But how do you find these instructors?
Unfortunately a great deal of the wrong people get involved in the martial arts. The community is full of bullies, keyboard critics, scam artists, liars, cheats (and worse), and arrogant unqualified instructors who claim their style is superior, stronger, or the only way to “fight on the street”.
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It seems to have become worse!…. It feels as though the martial arts community is toxic!
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The martial arts are largely unregulated here in the US. There are seldom background checks carried out on teachers like there are in other countries (as an example the CRB check in the UK), and you don’t need anything special to open a school.
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You don’t really even need to know much about martial arts to open up a school. You could do a smattering of training in a bunch of different styles, create your own style, follow a “legacy” and make up a bunch of crap about its origins and run a business. Those new students are not going to find you out for a couple of years.
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There aren’t really many barriers to entry for toxic people as long as they are tolerable to be around and don’t do anything openly that is too outrageous. Confidence and social skills can keep you in place at the dojo, and time has a way of making people forget, or simply become numb to your prior transgressions. It’s really about control at the end of the day.
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So if you are becoming tired of training and your motivation seems to have run off and left you, look around, it maybe right in front of you…. Find something new, move on, but… “hey… lets be careful out there.”