Jukaado Academy Of Martial Arts

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Affiliations race is destroying traditional martial arts

In the world of most traditional martial arts there exists an organisational hierarchy built on the foundation of affiliations. A foundation which is weak and responsible for splitting and crumbling many organisations and indirectly affecting the martial arts itself. Every organisation has a headquarters, let's assume it is in Japan. Now it has branches in many countries, let's assume India is one branch. So there will be a chief instructor for India, who is paying affiliation fees yearly to be associated with the organisation. Now other instructors under him will again pay affiliation fees for being given a city or state etc as their area to teach. In many organisations it's not just yearly affiliation fees but other things like registering a certain number of students on the website for a price, and lots more. All these costs then make instructors try more and new ways to earn money. Some even make it compulsory for all students to buy a whole training kit li...

In martial arts, belts are to be earned, not bought.

The market in general in any industry or line of work will always cater to what we ask from it. Like we want bigger fruits and that ends up use of excessive fertilizers etc to grow bigger fruits. Similarly if parents or students keep wanting new belts then not all but many will bend to that demand and over time the belts will have no value in general. Belts are not a measure of how many months or years you have been training but a measure of how much you have grown. So just because you have been going to a class for a few years doesn't mean you should be a certain belt. With our fast paced lives today, students are not able to dedicate the same amount of time that students a few generations before did. So that obviously slows down the growth, this itself is enough to actually slow down the belt grading process. We are all different, we learn at different speeds, we have different preferences etc. Some may love cardio based drills, some may love sparing or some ma...

More sparing or more drilling combinations, What to focus on?

There is a debate that continues whether one should spar a lot more than practicing basics or drilling combinations or vice versa. Different schools of thought or maybe just a personal preference of the instructor. But what is truly needed for a well balanced development of a student or practitioner in order to be able to successfully apply what was learnt in training into a real life self defense scenario? Let's look at what both these training practices bring to the table and understand what is truly needed. In reality if one is attacked there will always be an element of surprise involved. Yes, we may read the pre attack signs and gestures, but the actual moment when an attack begins remains a mystery and a surprise. When we are attacked, the time it takes for us to process the attack and respond to it, is already much slower than the time taken to execute the attack. So we are virtually up against something that should not be able to be stopped. Any defense i...

Are you obsessed with checking you weight?

Do you check your weight daily, weekly or monthly? It is good to check your weight once to have a reference point. However it is very unhealthy to keep monitoring ones weight on a regular basis. It not only impacts your physical health but also your mental and emotional health too. We call it monitoring our weight but it is actually something that causes anxiety and even hampers our health and fitness journey. The weight chart is just an average chart and not a hard and fast table to adhere to. We are all different - our genetics, our bone structure, our body type, our activity levels, our diet, our profession etc and so we can not compare ourselves to a prefixed table. Unless you are a professional athlete that competes within a certain weight category, you don't need to obsess about these numbers. It is sad that with so much information available today, people are still falling prey to false practices, perimeters and beauty or health standards. Weig...

Woman's Safety - What needs to be done?

There is a lot that needs to be done with regards to women safety by all the parties involved, by each one of us, the Society in general, Government bodies, NGOs, Corporates etc. I totally agree that crimes, sexual assaults and violence against women should not happen and we need to raise our boys to be better men. But till that change comes about, women should not sit and hope that they don't become the next victim. Just like robbery is bad and should not exist but we take precautions by locking our doors etc or cyber crime is bad and should not exist but we take precautions before opening unknown links etc. Similarly we need more women to take precautions and be ready to tackle a situation than just hope not to become a victim. The first line of defense needs women to get fit and tough along with training in a realistic self defense based combat training system. Just going for a sport based martial arts system will make you have the false belief in your a...

Why is martial arts called - A way of life.

Very often we hear people say that martial arts, is a way of life. Why is it so? What does it mean? One may start training in martial arts for numerous reasons. For some it could be just a form of exercise, for others it may be for self defense, or a childhood passion or anything else. It starts with just training physically but as one starts training over a few months, they either notice changes or they don't notice much change. Irrespective of that, in both cases one wants to get better. This desire to get better slowly starts creeping into various aspects of life. We start looking at all angles and aspects of our life, to find ways to get better at training. If one approaches martial arts training in a disciplined manner, the discipline enters other aspects of our life too. For example - one gets scolded for being late to class, may be the instructor sends us home too for being late often, now either we will stop going to the class or we will start being...