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shughes
shughes's picture
A club with no equipment?

Inspired by the recent article about Karate in the public school system, I began thinking about ways I could make this a reality in the near future at my school. However, I begin thinking about logistics of what is required equipment-wise for a good quality martial arts program and contrasting that with the likely limited funding available in a lower-income school district.

I thought that this would make for a fun thought experiment: You teach a martial arts club for 15-18 year olds. You will never have to worry about bills, student enrollment, or making enough money to stay in business, because this is part of a public education institution and kids love this stuff. You have the freedom to teach these students in any way you please. The downside is that you have only have an empty basketball gym and no equipment whatsoever. The school has no budget for your program so any equipment you want you must purchase yourself, which you cannot afford because you are a school teacher in America (:p).

First: How would you structure a program around having absolutely zero equipment? What kinds of drills and exercises would you emphasize? How would you modify things that require equipment do be done without (sparring, throwing, etc), or could they be removed entirely without compromising the integrity of your practice? Can you have a proper martial arts program that teaches striking without having anything for students to actually strike?

Second: Let's say you have some funding from the school or scraped a minor amount together to pay for equipment out of your own pocket. If you could choose only one type of equipment, what would you prioritize to add the most value while being cost-effective? Focus mitts? Heavy bags? Tatami? Kicking shields?

Flooring would allow you to safely practice throwing and ground work and would be literally everything you need for a Judo- or BJJ-based club, but would be very expensive and add little to no value for striking on its own. Could you get away with a handful of folding mats? Heavy bags would allow students to actually hit things and not simply punch and kick the air, but are mostly good for practicing static techniques in isolation. Focus mitts are versatile and inexpensive but do not allow for full-force striking practice, plus we now have the terrifying prospect of teaching 14 year olds to hold focus mitts for one another.

Now obviously younger students wouldn't be doing the same drills that I practice with adults, but around 16/17/18 years old they're capable of more and likely require more than kata to stay interested and motivated. This has got me thinking about the importance of training equipment to facilitating good quality practice and which pieces of equipment are truly essential for that. How would you approach this?

Dennis Krawec
Dennis Krawec's picture

Who says you “need” equipment. What you describe sounds like my Shotokan club back at Assiniboine Community College in Brandon, MB decades ago. The only equipment available to us was the standard gymnasium floor mats (1 1/2” thick) already supplied by the gym, and some chairs and benches that we used to practice kicking properly (if you banged your toes on the chair seat you knew you weren’t lifting your knee high enough when kicking). Granted at the time we practiced standard 3K karate, and occasionaly added specific drills. Only “blocking” techniques were allowed to have contant, otherwise no contact allowed for punches or kicks.

The mats already in place at the gym would be sufficient for practicing throws, after that for purchased equipment I would consider focus pads/mits, as to allow for striking contant when practicing drills from kata.

Quick2Kick
Quick2Kick's picture

If I could only choose 1 piece of equipment it would be open handed boxing gloves. They can double as focus mitts and allow for rambunctious sparring sessions, something teenage students would enjoy. 

Marc
Marc's picture

Shughes, it seems you already have put some thought into this. You describe possible options as well as potentials and caveats.

If you have access to standard gymnasium floor mats, as Dennis mentioned, that's fine for breakfalls and takedowns.

Then, if you have to select a single kind of equipment, I would suggest focus mitts or some of those big kick shields like in this image:

a kick shield with an angled top end

But depending on where you live in the world, you might be required to spend some money on insurance.

All the best,

Marc  

Chris R
Chris R's picture

Dennis Krawec wrote:
Who says you “need” equipment. What you describe sounds like my Shotokan club back at Assiniboine Community College in Brandon, MB

I think you do need it. I've also trained in a Shotokan dojo where minimal (and at a time zero) equipment was used. Impact work was often neglected and was mainly done outside of class by students, either on a heavy bag or in some cases a makiwara. In terms of sparring, the rules were similar to "kumite" but it was far more free and realistic than what you normally see. It was done in many cases without gloves etc, and people did get hit. If you fell during training, you landed on the hard floor. This was all useful as a learning tool, but cannot be recommended for the obvious health and safety reasons. Now I would ask ... Why not just buy some equipment? That training gave me some great memories, but I don't pretend that it was optimally efficient or ideal. In more recent times, that dojo has got more equipment and now uses activities like padwork to teach students. A mouthguard, gloves, and pads are the minimum for teaching usable karate in my opinion. Other equipment would be nice but cannot always be used if you rent something like a school's basketball gym. So in my opinion ... Buy some pads, and if you have spare money consider getting mats. If your students will be sparring, mouthguards should be compulsory and you should figure out how to get hold of some gloves (either provided by you, or thethstudents students could get their own).

Dennis Krawec
Dennis Krawec's picture

Chris R wrote:

 I think you do need it. I've also trained in a Shotokan dojo where minimal (and at a time zero) equipment was used. Impact work was often neglected.

That would entirely depend on the syllabus you would wish to teach. Without a doubt more can be gained by the use of equipment. Certainly a more contact orientated style would require an initial investment in equipment. Every gym I have been in has had gymnastic mats available for use, so purchasing floor mats should not be required. After that additional equipment purchases would depend on school funding (if any), donations, and fundraising, but until those resources materialize all you have is mats and you are stuck adapting your syllabus to that limitation.

Could you effectively teach karate without equipment, yes. Could you do more with equipment, certainly.

Chris Jvrn
Chris Jvrn's picture

The bigger kicking / punching shields tend to be quite versatile actually, as they can be used on a large range of hand and foot techniques. 

A heavy bag is also quite good but since you can generally only hang one or two at a time that in itself can be a bit of a downside. 

So I think also look at what you are allowed to put up / hang up. If they say you can't drill holes into floors / walls then things like makiwara or heavy bags tend to be out of the question. 

As for matts, they help for breakfalls but they are not always a proper necessity as you can teach someone to roll on a wooden floor (Not the most "comfortable" but it can be done.) 

So I think see what can be prioritised or what is "more" needed for the time being with future plans to expand?

Anf
Anf's picture

At our club, we have all the equipment, but we use it quite rarely.

Of all our kit, the focus pads see the most light of day. We use them for all sorts of drills. Not just striking. We use them in various coordination drills where we pass them to each other in lots of imaginative ways, we use them as markers to run round or to gauge the height of a pushup by demand that the forehead touches the pad on the floor, because sometimes in endurance drills there's a temptation to cheat by only doing 'little' pushups.we use them for all sorts.

But even they don't come out all the time.

Very often, we train either against thin air, or partnered drills also with no equipment. The former being largely cardio and the basic striking and blocking drills as well as forms. The latter being things like one step sparring (predefined attack and counter techniques, I think karate folks have a different name for the same idea), stretching exercises, and a personal favourite of mine, tappy sparring. This isn't sparring at all but it's great fun and good cardio. The goal is to tap your opponent's shoulders as many times as possible, while preventing him from tapping yours. It's surprising how competitive it gets and it's great fun and because nobody is walloping anyone, there's no need to mess about getting head gear and gloves and boots on.

I guess how you teach depends on your students and your and their goals. Will it be mostly technical, or will it be practical? Mostly cardio / endurance, or more 'internal'? I guess if you're teaching a load of hormonal insecure teenagers it's going to be more about endurance I'd guess. See if you can burn off all their energy so they behave themselves better :)

Dennis Krawec
Dennis Krawec's picture

Anf wrote:
tappy sparring. This isn't sparring at all but it's great fun and good cardio. The goal is to tap your opponent's shoulders as many times as possible, while preventing him from tapping yours.

You wouldn’t happen to have a video that you could share? This type of practice sounds quite interesting as a mean of learning how to “feel” your opponents movements and intentions.

Anf
Anf's picture

Dennis Krawec wrote:
You wouldn’t happen to have a video that you could share? This type of practice sounds quite interesting as a mean of learning how to “feel” your opponents movements and intentions.

Unfortunately no videos. But it's quite basic. Just like in sparring we face each other. Then as soon as we get the signal, we begin trying to tap each others shoulders, until we're told to stop. You're allowed to block and evade, but not strikes or grabs or anything. There's no winner. It's just a bit of high energy fun.

Neil Babbage
Neil Babbage's picture

We manage free sparring without equipment, although you'd need to be more careful with children. I was going to say focus pads as the one piece of cheap equipment, but a good alternative is the Krav Maga "melon". They are very cheap (an empty bag you stuff with old rags), very versatile (can be used to practice punches and kicks from multiple angles) and are very easy for the pad holder unlike focus pads. That is, you just need to hold it still as opposed to meeting the blows on the way in, adjusting the positions for different strikes and so on.

Chris R
Chris R's picture

Dennis Krawec wrote:
That would entirely depend on the syllabus you would wish to teach.

Yes it would, I'd say we were referring to very different approaches in regards to training. Certainly for practically oriented training I believe that investing in equipment is necessary from a health and safety perspective. For kata and kihon based training however, I agree that you can teach easily without equipment.