So, even though I am a young man, I’ve trained martial arts, Jiu-Jitsu, for 8 years. So the story begins about a month ago. I accepted a temporary job in central Taiwan. My boss is one the nicest guys in the world. Once I got to the job, my boss wanted me to be his training partner, I started training weekly sessions with his martial arts instructor. His instructor, although friendly and meaning well, is an older man who is in his 60s. He claims to have been doing judo and kenpo since 8 years old. But when I trained with him, he didn’t seem to know what he was doing; I don’t mean this in a mean way but an honest way. I probably do have a grappling bias, but looking at his traditional martial arts technique, although I like the guy, was almost cringing worthy (I don’t like that phrase either ). I just kind of went along with it because I felt really bad for the guy. And it was hard to do so because he kept telling me that grappling was inferior in a street fight to traditional martial arts like aikido, kenpo, and judo. And he kept making up stories like he dated a famous Jeet Kun Do practioner’s daughter and was a bodyguard for a world famous martial artist.
I would never burst his bubble, because I genuinely like him as a person. But I felt bad for my boss getting instruction from him.
I know in Taipei this type of bullshido is not so prevalent, but has something like this ever happened to you in Taiwan or anywhere?
PS I’m back in Taipei now for a prospective job opportunity.
Hi BHL4life, that is an awesome question; there are a lot of good places to train. I guess it depends what you are looking for.
If you live closer to Taoyuan, Andre at Bon Sai is super nice. His style is more sport Jiu-Jitsu oriented. I’ve rolled with him quite a few times. From what I’ve seen, he is a really good teacher (when I was in Taichung, he explained everything people asked him really well).
If you live closer to Taipei City, Taiwan BJJ is a really good place (where I train). The head instructor is Makoto, he is really nice. It is a hub for Jiu-Jitsu, as the academy often gets many different people from many parts of the world. It is not super geared toward Vale Tudo style Jiu-Jitsu. It is a really technical academy and a lot of guys are well versed in “modern Jiu-Jitsu” with a ton of really good berimbolo specialists.
PMA is good if you live near Taipei 101. I have never trained there, but one of my friends who teaches at Taiwan BJJ (Taichung branch) told me it is more geared towards no-gi Jiu-Jitsu.
If you would rather train Muay Thai, I know a super nice guy who helps manage O3. He tells me its a good kickboxing gym.
I don’t know much about martial arts, but this is very normal behavior amongst some of the locals.
They like to play themselves up to sound superior to you (probably because they know they’re inferior to you). There’s this customer that regularly comes into my friend’s store that boasts about how he’s got a 200,000NT bike at home, but doesn’t ride it because it’s too expensive. In our minds, we think anyone who buys such an expensive item and doesn’t use it has major issues haha, but we just play along. All in all, people like to brag indirectly about how great they are or how much money they make, just let them go about their ways. You’ll get used to it.
It’s good that you were passive about it because there’s no reason to get riled up. If there’s one thing you learn from this experience, it’s that he’s not the right instructor for you.
I wouldn’t necessarily characterize this as a purely Taiwan ( or Asian, FTM) phenom.
MA instruction is (and pretty much always has been) loaded with poseurs who make their living rampantly overstating their own abilities and experience, whilst crapping all over those of anyone different from them.
Only difference is that here he’s likely to be some wizened old goofball who’s banking on newbs assuming that because he looks like the master in some C grade STV kung fu movie, he must know what he’s doing.
In the west, he’s more likely to be a 30-something dude in an Elvis gi with a skeezy ponytail, working out of a strip mall.
True, it’s not solely Taiwan or Asia. There’s people like this all over the world. I just tend to see it a little more often here than when I was back in the states.
You are right in your last paragraph. I think the guy was a nice and we’ll meaning person, just a little insecure. Being so, I’d actually rather have him believe in his own legend, rather than burst his bubble. Because he has defined his life by his martial arts, and that’s where he gets his self esteem. And I think honestly he is a good person and a nice person.
I love training for fun, and playing guard is one of the most fun things in the world, but I don’t want to define myself by martial arts, I want to be so much more.
He is actually a foreigner living in Taiwan. He is from Europe.
Just thinking about it. I know it would be easily to fall victim to in many professions, but it would be sad doing something for so long, and have a cognitive bias constructed in your mind that this is the only way.
Yeah, definitely (I mean in regards to martial arts, I can’t comment on Taiwanese culture as a whole, because I’m a newbie to living in Taiwan, so I don’t want to speak of what I don’t know).
I think it is less pronounced in martial arts communities in the states because martial arts on a whole is more popular and sunsequently more is known in the overall population. Same in Japan and Brazil, where martial arts are immensely popular, and where actual competition weed out preteniousness within the community.
Ah so.
Can’t speak for recently, but in the 90s (just before the global popularity of Gracie and other grappling exploded) there was a steady stream of Euro dudes coming here to study Wing Chun, for 3 to 6 month chunks at a time, with Master Lo (actually Yip Man’s actual nephew and actual Chiang Wei-Kuo crony), living in his little dorm and studying like 12 hours a day or more. At the time, at least, WC was quite popular in Europe so opening up a little school was a pretty sound prospect.
Most of the guys I knew who were doing it were well legit, but that was a long time ago.
Was your guy there maybe one of these fellows, do you think?
Yes. Guys people come here and write down they have like 5 black belts and stuff all the time. I won’t name people but there’s plenty of pretenders here. And many people who never been inside a ring and fought training people all the time. I had to stop people doing that at my gym. They say they are just “training together” but you know one guy is trying to get side cash teaching his BS which is dangerous. One guy asked if he could borrow head gear to practice defense… they banned head gear for a reason I many places. Getting hit in the head is not defensive just because you got padding. You’re still Getting rocked in the head without the bruises and bleeding. Stupid ass people.
I know, it is so crazy. I wonder how they can get self esteem from lying. Maybe they even fool themselves.
You are right, I’m sure that it can be very dangerous. I had no idea it was so prevalent. Especially in a Muay Thai school, because Thai boxing is such an effective stand up art. I will bet because of this pretenders get exposed right away, ala Jose “Pele” Landi flying knee style; just kidding, I wouldn’t ever like to see anyone get hurt.
Unfortunately, this is one of major reason why I stop training martial arts (Karate in my case) after a few months only (finishing at all-time low white belt).
I see that some people doing martial arts for show offs. Seeing a bully from higher grades at school doing the training at the same dojo.
The masters (Sensei, is it?) must be more selective on taking students. Some people didn’t have the right mindset on training martial arts.
It’s is an understandable reason to stop training. No one should ever be a bully, especially people you train with. Bullying at best is a sign if insecurities and at worst, well at worst, says an awful lot of bad about the bully.
My boss, now former boss, said something so weird, he said that his martial arts instructor told him that he “had to break his students arm once, because he was not being a good demonstration partner”. I sure hope my boss instructor was acting in hyperbole again, because that should not be accepted anywhere. That is cowardly behavior if true. It reminds me if the Shooto founder Satoru Sayama, in a video where he is teaching his students, he hits them if they don’t do the technique “right”. This made me so angry, he was being a bully and his insecurities were being reflected in the way he was acting.
Honestly, in our Jiu-Jitsu, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (Tanabe’s Fusen Ryu Jiu-Jitsu), it is so laid back that there are no pretentions in the class. The instructor is called by his/her first name, maybe sometimes “professor” (Portuguese for teacher) but even this is rare. It is looked down in higher belts to run over lower belts in sparring (rolling), as higher belts should be helping teach lower belts. And lower belts, or people who are jerks, or full of bravado, get exposed because they can’t fake their way through rolling. Everybody who train Jiu-Jitsu gets served a peace of humble pie when they first start, of course not in a mean way, but as one person put it, “you feel like helplessly drowning in the water”, and this is mostly because people who first start training don’t know what to do, and even after a year or two, no matter how much they train, are still at that beginner level.
). I just kind of went along with it because I felt really bad for the guy. And it was hard to do so because he kept telling me that grappling was inferior in a street fight to traditional martial arts like aikido, kenpo, and judo. And he kept making up stories like he dated a famous Jeet Kun Do practioner’s daughter and was a bodyguard for a world famous martial artist.
