Originally Posted by
Ray Pina
This is the great question and the heart of all the arguments on this message board. It starts with the simple question: What do you want? And then it requires one being honest with themself.
You can tell after checking out a school for 30 mins if its a fighting gym or a form gym. And by form gym I don't necessarily mean they just do forms. I mean they concern themselves more with the form (uniforms, alters, etc.) than the substance. A hard floor, no pads or gloves, etc., is a bad sign. A martial art school without live play is not a martial art school.
A fighting gym doesn't mean all they do is fight either. There's lots of conditioning and drilling and technical training.... I'd avoid a gym that just fought too. I think ideally 1/3 class conditioning/coordination, 1/3 technical training but live with partners, and then 1/3 free play..... something like that.
Essentially there's oriental historical society type schools and there's schools looking to produce physically healthy, technically trained competent martial artists..... one becomes a martial artist when they can express they're training for real. You can chamber a kick countless ways.... it's the why during the certain where and when that makes it an art. And that takes time. And it also takes pressure. Like a diamond.
Careful Ray, you are generalizing a bit much.
Most Kyokushin schools have hard floors and no gloves or pads.
Not every school is big enough to afford wall-wall mats.
I visited this one school that was very small, you didn't see any matts, pads or gloves.
BUT the mats were put away and only came out for grappling and everyone had their own gloves and pads and face mask and took them home with them.
They only had live sparring on Friday, the whole class was just sparring and the rest of the time was drills and conditioning and basics with some sparring.
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !