You were talking about black belts who have had time
off coming back to training. World wide there seems to
be a lot of people who used to train coming back into
the organisation. Do you think chasing up the people
who have stopped for a while due to family or other
commitments is something member countries should be
doing?
Yes I do. What generally happens is when someone
has a week of the instructor tends to notice and if it
becomes a fortnight you think ‘I wonder where
they’ve gone’? If it gets to a month and you don’t
contact them, you can actually lose them. What you
should do as an instructor, after a fortnight or so is
get in contact with them and just ask how they are,
say I haven’t seen you for a while, hope to see you
soon, I hope everything is ok. You don’t have to be
pushy and say where are you, it’s certainly not that
type of thing. A lot of people do martial arts or Karate
as a hobby and they don’t what to be pushed. If you
ring up saying, ‘where are you? Why aren’t you at
the Dojo?’ then it becomes like they feel like they
have to turn up. You should never make it like that.
But having said that it is a two way street. If you
have people showing up every blue moon, they can’t
expect to be graded. It’s a bit like a double edged
sword if you will.
With people who are going to have a bit of a lay off or a break because they’re getting married or they’re off to university, whatever it is, if they do decide to come back, you should
provide for them to train. I know that in the past, even in my own Dojo, people have come
back after a long layoff and a lot of the other black belts think that is open season on them.
This is no good, because they won’t go back. It can also lead to an animosity feeling in the
Dojo or almost like there are two groups which isn’t how it should be. You can try to avoid it,
but unfortunately it’s not always that easy, all you can do is try and make it friendly for everybody.