14/02/2012 – Update: We have made a decision to modify slightly the contents of this blog, because the matter has been put to rest in a mutually satisfactory fashion, and I have no wish to tarnish the reputation of the club’s new administration, nor the greater organisation to which they belong, based solely on the actions of past instructors.
02/02/2012 – Update: My personal integrity is very important to me. I try hard to ensure that the information contained in my blogs is accurate and fair. As such, it behoves me to inform my readers that I have been contacted by members of the club in question, who advised me that the club is under new management, and that the instructor who was in charge at the time of this blog is now no longer a member of the club or organisation.
There’s a saying that goes “when a door closes, somewhere, a window opens”. Perhaps it is an altogether too finely tuned sense of cynicism that leads me to suggest and addendum: sometimes, people are waiting at the window with boards and a nail gun. This week, I had the uniquely unpleasant experience of being expelled from a martial arts club that I have been studying with for a number of years. Shortly after a seminar which we attended, during the post-seminar coffee, one of our instructors called T over for a chat. After a few minutes, he returned, and once we had left, T told us that we had been handed back our licences, and expelled from the club. Apparently, our behaviour had been deemed unacceptable, and our motivations for training had been questioned.
I won’t lie – this news left me absolutely devastated. After speaking to my former instructor myself, I left, feeling pretty distraught. I had, honestly, no idea that it was coming. Although our instructor maintained that we had been warned, I don’t recall ever having been told that we needed to behave differently in class. I feel sure that, if I had been told, I would have made efforts to change my behaviour – I would have done whatever necessary to continue with the club, to continue learning the system. Our instructor was asked if we could take this incident as a warning, but apparently, this was not an option, due to the fact that he had allegedly warned us multiple times, and had “had enough” of us.
Sadly, they felt it necessary to deliver a parting shot – apparently, I only ever trained there because T did, and not due to any interest or dedication of my own. This was a particularly cutting blow for me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, unfortunately, this is not the first club I’ve had to leave.
Some time ago, I was actively training in two clubs (in addition to my own home club). As my usual training partners were away for the summer months and variously busy, etc., I had ended up substituting a lot of my mid-week training by going and training in another style, with a very talented instructor. I made good progress there, and really truly enjoyed it. What’s more, I actually felt like the instructor respected me, and was glad to see me coming training. He seemed genuinely happy to teach me and to train with me, and seemed to consider me as an individual, and as someone who was really in it to learn. As a girl, I often have to work hard to get that kind of respect in the world of martial arts, so to be treated like this meant an awful lot more to me than I think that instructor could even imagine.
As any martial artist will tell you, unfortunately, there is no training without politics. No matter what style you choose, and what club you train with, there will always be fights, disagreements, and grudges with other clubs or instructors, and these clubs were no exception. After several months of instruction, I was getting on pretty well, and starting to progress, and so, as is often the way with these things, it was time for an ultimatum. Due to a long held grudge between the head instructors of the two styles, I was essentially told that, for as long as I was continuing to train with one club, I could not also train in the other. I had to make a very difficult and unpleasant decision then. With no friends or training partners around to help out, I defaulted to a old standard of mine – namely, if you ask me to make a choice, you have made that choice for me. So, with huge sadness and regret, I stopped training there.
Around this time in the first club, because my regular training partners away, I was attending classes alone. This meant that, each class, I was treated to one of two options – either largely ignored and left in the corner to practice alone, or grouped with the beginners, and left to train the first few strikes and blocks of the system. While learning all of the single strike patterns by myself in the corner undoubtedly improved my basics, it was hardly the most stimulating or rewarding way to spend class after class. After one particularly memorable class, during which I was left alone and not given instruction for the duration, I was given what has become affectionately known as the “dedication speech” (where I was told that I needed to be showing up consistently (I was), training my material outside of the class time (I was, and continue to do), and really dedicating myself to the study of the art). At this point, I decided to take a week off and consider my training options for the future. Having already given up one system to continue to study at this club, I needed to make sure I was willing to keep going to class, even if it meant being ignored, in order to learn the system.
As you may have discerned, I continued to attend the club. While the class format, and constantly being ignored, often brought me to tears, I wanted the knowledge. And so, I went to as many classes as I could. I continued to train the material outside of class, and tried to improve as much as I could. Meanwhile, I kept hoping that we (myself and my training partners) would eventually be accepted as part of the club, and would be able to progress to the higher levels of the system. Whenever I was asked, I bought the necessary equipment, attended the extra classes, went to the seminars (where possible). In short, I believed that I was putting in all of the effort possible to show that I really was interested in this system, even including, as mentioned above, sacrificing another system that I also loved, to continue in it.
And so, this brings us to Sunday, when I tweeted that I, along with my training partners, had just been expelled from the club, handed back our licence fees, and told to never darken the doorstep again, prompting many replies and emails asking what on earth had happened, and wondering what I/we had done to get kicked out. The truth is, I don’t know. I’ve spent the last few days running through everything in my head, and I still don’t know. My loyalty and dedication was drawn into question by my instructor, who takes attendance at every class, and who could quickly and easily demonstrate that I have the one of the best, if not the best, attendance record in the club. My longest absence from training there was in the immediate aftermath of surgery, when I was prohibited from training for 6 weeks. On the first day of the 7th week, I was back in training. I was told that I only attended when T did, and that that was the only reason I attended at all. Of course, only I know what my motivations for training are, but I thought that I had done everything possible to demonstrate that I was interested in, and dedicated to, learning the system, up to and including quitting another club to do so.
Finally, we were told that we were always messing and joking around in class, and never sticking to the one exercise. On this, I must hold my hands up – I will not say that my behaviour in class has always been one of submissive studiousness. Where people shared a joke, I joined in. While training, I did sometimes chat to my partner (while continuing to train though). If an exercise became boring after the 20th consecutive minute without change, I did work other movements in (sticking with the same drill, for example, but adding extra strikes). I did these things because I believed them acceptable, having taken my lead from the more senior students in the club, who sometimes stood and talked instead of training, who occasionally improvised within or changed the prescribed drill, or who often just did completely different things. Most of all though, I believed that it was acceptable because I was never told any different. While our instructor maintains that we were warned several times, I can honestly say that I was not aware that we were causing such a level of annoyance. Rather than believing that we were on the road to being expelled, I had thought that, recently, we were finally being accepted as members of the club. Up until recently, there was even talk about when our next grading might take place. This contributed significantly to the level of shock and upset that I felt on Sunday, as our expulsion came as a complete bolt out of the blue.
Upon hearing about some of the things that have happened in class, many of my friends have asked why we stayed – why we continued to attend class when we were so often ignored or, seemingly, punished for our attendance. Frankly, we put up with it because we wanted, more than anything, to learn the system. For every three classes of monotonous ignorance, there might be one class where we were taught some new material. This gave us something new to practice, and one more piece of the whole system, and this made it worth while. Every now and again, one of the other instructor level students/instructors would show us a small twiddle, or a set of techniques, perhaps from a higher level, or from the older syllabus, and these were the gold dust in the river mud that kept us coming back for more.
Some time ago, I promised myself that, once I had completed my studies with the club, I would tell the instructors that, while I loved the system, I often hated the classes. I would explain that we never once felt like part of the club, that we couldn’t understand why every other new student seemed to be brought into the fold, and we were still left out in the cold. I would tell them that it was profoundly frustrating, and frankly, a little insulting to be ignored every week, or to ask a question, only to be told to piss off, to be told “I’m not your instructor”, or to be told that that was far too advanced, only to see it being taught to another beginner who was two grades beneath us. I promised that I would tell them that they took some of their most dedicated students, and systematically chipped and picked away at that enthusiasm until it was almost all gone.
On Sunday, my former instructor did not even have the decency to tell me that I was expelled. Instead, he chose to deliver the message through T, one of my training partners, since we were “only there for him anyway”. To me, this neatly exemplifies the level of antipathy and apathy that we often experienced while there. I returned to the pub, and kept my promise to myself. With my former head instructor, and my other two instructor-non-instructors (depending on the day and their mood) sitting at the table, I told them all of the above and more. My former head instructor, once or twice, attempted to refute points I was making. I won’t lie – I didn’t let him speak. As far as I was concerned, he had had his opportunity to talk to me about it, and had chosen instead to deliver the message by proxy. The other two instructor-non-instructors sat at the table, refusing to make eye contact, and making faces behind their hands.We’ve been de-friended and blocked on facebook, and ignored via email. It would appear that the love affair is, well and truly, over.
While the experience won’t put me off training martial arts, it will probably change the way I trust instructors in the future. While I had never thought that I was friends with my head instructor, I had honestly believed that I had a pretty decent relationship with some of the others there. Myself and my training partners have made provisions to begin training in another style, to replace the training hours. We’ll continue to revise the material that we were shown, and try to add to it where possible, through seminars, dvds, etc. Another addendum to the “door closing, window opening” phrase perhaps: don’t forget your metaphorical crowbar.
A phrase that my friend, T, likes to use often is that, when it comes to training, “There are warriors, and there are wankers. Which are you?” By this, he means that, if you want training respect, you have to earn it. You do so by showing up time and time again, when you’re tired, when it would be easier to go home and sit in front of the tv, when you don’t feel like it. You keep trucking on, you keep showing up, and you keep trying, and that’s what makes you a warrior. I can, at this point, only feel sadness and regret that, when it came down to it, I wasn’t warrior enough for them.
Note: This blog is, by virtue, a one-sided account of what has happened. While I’ve been honest about what I know, I can only speculate about the motivations of the instructors, about how annoyed they were at us, etc.