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[home > why ata sucks]
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Okay, it is my personal opinion that ATA (American Taekwondo Association) is a McDojo.
This is a personal opinion. I apologize to those that I recommended ATA to in
the past and especially for those that actually took the recommendation and got
sucked into the system. I no longer recommend ATA to anyone I know, even people
I don't like very much (such as those peeps I know that are greedy mindless
drones living in trophy houses and driving Cadillac Escalades or those hideous
Porsche SUV's :) ).
Support!
Whooo! Thanks for all the words of support that have been sent via my
contact page! Many people have happened upon this webpage using search
phrases such as: "ata sucks", "mcdojo contract", "ata taekwondo sucks",
"mcdojo", "ata sparring rules", "ata board breaking", "ata sparring uniform",
"used ata gear taekwondo", "ata taekwondo homepage"!
Apologies to those that happened upon this negative site searching for various Bujinkan
topics, please redirect here
quickly to continue your searches!
What is a McDojo?
Glad you asked. Conventional wisdom says a McDojo has the following tell tale
signs
rec.arts.martialarts newbie faq defines it as :
"These are usually schools who's sole goal is to part you from your money
without ever imparting any real Martial Arts knowledge. These can sometimes be
difficult to detect since part of the successful money-student separation is to
convince the student that useful information is, in fact, being taught while
devising ever more ways to implement the money-student separation. This
separation is often achieved by having fee after fee after fee and required
expenditures on and on and on. For instance, schools that require you to buy
only their branded uniforms and gear, require you to sign long contracts, have
no "move refund" option in their contract, or high-pressure sales pitches.
Another common tactic is to have numerous belt test requirements and sub-ranks,
all with a fee, non-refundable if the student "flunks" his test. An example
would be a school which has students ranked,"Second Stripe, Decided, Green
Belt" or similar. These schools may also require weekend training trips.
Besides the red flags listed above, a few others that may indicate a "McDojo"
include: Any school that promises you a Black Belt in under 3 years or
routinely produces Black Belts in 2 years. Any school which seems to have
overly young or inexperienced experts (usually "Black Belts" or "Dan ranks")
-for example a school recently made the news, noteworthy because they had just
promoted a three year old toddler to "Black Belt" and they had a five year old
child as a 2nd Dan (second degree) "Black Belt.""
(grammar and spelling mistakes in the above italic text are not mine...)
Why do I think ATA is a McDojo?
There are numerous reasons for my opinion, most have grown over the months that
my kids have been going there (I tried attending too, but had to drop out
because it was too irritating - with the kids in it I can sit in the car and
listen to cd's while they are there :) ).
Pay for everything - Pay for graduation ($55 each person, every 8
weeks). After being told all uniforms and such are free they are now charging
for uniforms. Uniform charges are a recent change, at the start of 2004 both my
kids had uniforms where the pants legs ended about midway between knee and
ankle. One kid got a new uniform and the other was told to wait 2-3 weeks until
theirs was too short, well 6 weeks later my daughter, the one told to wait,
asked for a uniform and was told her parents had to buy a new one. Paying for
equipment is not necesarily the mark of a McDojo, but unannounced changes and
fee's certainly are...
Oh, and let's charge additional $$ for skills required to graduate...
- yes, this is true. Board Breaking is required for Brown Belt rank and above
to graduate to the next belt. Now that students are reaching Brown Belt the
McDojo has removed board breaking from the Friday night Weapons and Sparring
curriculum and they are now offering board breaking seminars at $40 per 1 hour
event. So now we have to pay extra money for something required for graduation
(that used to be included in the standard curriculum)??? That spells McDojo to
me.
"Graduations", not "Tests", err, maybe - through Brown Belt the
student simply "graduates" from belt to belt, after Brown Belt they are
supposed to be tested and wait for certification of the results before
advancing. Supposedly there are is a required class attendance to advance, they
never pay attention to this, the student manual says 21 classes but if you go
once a week you can graduate with 8. Technically a Brown Belt is supposed to
test for the next level, this includes certifying the judges notes on form,
breaking a board 2 different ways within 3 tries, etc. Well, during the last
graduation there were Brown Belts that advanced to their next rank without
certification (in fact only one ranking judge was in attendance) and neither
Brown Belt in the graduation I watched broke boards within the required 3
attempts...it took them 4-5 attempts, and this with the head instructor taking
them aside during graduation to give them pointers! When I was taking martial
arts as a kid students FAILED if they could not do the required elements of a
test, and there were no such things as "graduations" without testing.
Referrals Required - ATA has this kids program, where you get
stars for things (like attendance, school grades, etc), the details are
here. Basically a kid gets a higher level patch for getting a certain
number of stars. My daughter finally got her 25 stars and was totally excited
about going there, and adult like, asking for her new patch. When she told the
head instructor she had her required number of stars he replied "Oh, sorry, NOW
we require that you refer a friend in addition to the number of stars to get
your new patch." My daughter was crestfallen. Unfortunately, neither my wife or
I were there and I didn't find out about it until after dinner (otherwise I
probably would have driven there and demonstrated to the no talent a$$klown
what real martial art training enables you to do...I'm kinda a protective dad,
eh? :) ). Anyway, next time I was there I (very calmly) asked and the same
person who told her that and he said that is the way it has always been, I
argued with him in front of the other parents, another parent chimed in and
said "oh, they just changed that rule a month ago"; the instructor left quickly
without saying anything further, murmuring some excuse about getting ready for
the next class. Unsatisfied by daddy not getting the patch for her, my daughter
went to the website, printed out the info page and brought that in to show them
the official site said NOTHING about a referral on the page that
details the patches and stars. They quickly gave her a new patch and
said not to tell anyone else about it.
Speaking of referrals... - We've referred several people to ATA
(in the past). In general all the referrals are treated pretty badly and are
subjected to high pressure sales to get them to sign up for the $3000 for 30
month Black Belt program (yes, ATA guarantees a Black Belt in 30 months). One
kid we referred was yelled at by the Dojo's master about having food in the
school, she is a diabetic and he knew this. Still "NO FOOD". For their special
students, such as the teenaged males who compete the rules about no food or
water do not apply, in fact the same person that yelled at this poor little
girl GIVES the favored students bottled water and suggests they bring "power
bars" for added energy. How is that for respect?
Untrained "Instructors" - from what I can see ATA is full of
young, untrained instructors. They stop class 15 minutes early on Friday nights
because they want to go out on a hot date (and use the excuse that the students
"seemed" tired). Perhaps the last straw for me was the infamous Sword Seminar.
I signed up for this thinking, great, my focus in my youth was sword art. The
seminar was delayed for 2-3 weeks due to lack of swords, when it finally
happened they went through the first 13 moves of the first form and both
instructors admitted that they had not actually looked at the form until that
morning. Excuse me? This class was scheduled for 6 weeks including the delay
and the instructors (one of whom is supposedly a State Weapons Master) didn't
prepare? Their lack of preparation showed when 5 times during the seminar they
had to go back and refer to the book!!!
In another situation an older student twisted her ankle during forms practice,
the master and 3 instructors were there, they propped her up in a chair and
told her to "follow along" with the upper body parts of the form. WHAT?! In
figure skating if someone falls down and complains about being in pain they
call paramedics!!! These idiots insisted she try and keep up anyway. Can you
say "lawsuit"?
Disrespectful "Masters" - the owner of the Dojo used to yell
(used to as in he is only around for graduation now) at his instructors when
students and parents were still around. By yelling I mean profanity (not the
f-word) and complete disrespect for anyone around. Two days after this scene
the head instructor walked out and quit, never to be seen there again. You
cannot call people like this "Master", well, I can't. I am sure the "master"
has more than a little to do with the relatively high turnover rate of
instructors and helpers at the Dojo.
Volatile Student Body - for the most part students do not last
too long at the Dojo, there are a few people that have been there since we
started. True this is in part because of the nature of humans (got in over
their head excercise wise, got bored, no time, kids really didn't want to take
it). Still, my wife is a skating coach and the turnover in ATA is MUCH higher
than the turnover in figure skating school.
No Refunds - there are no refunds. Period. The only way to get a
refund is to move, and since there are thousands of franchise outlets of ATA in
America chances are you will be moving within the required distance of one of
them. If you want a refund I would suggest moving to Costa Rica, I think you
would have a good chance. Don't call the national office about refunds by the
way, they will refer you to your local school.
No complaints Either - the national office does not want
complaints about the individual franchise outlets. All complaints are to be
handled through your local school. Excuse me?! What if I am complaining about
my local school? No way, they don't care. The reason they do not care probably
has something to do with the number of complaints they get!
Why does my opinion matter?
Well, to put it bluntly I am a paying customer who is not entirely satisfied
with the service of the ATA franchise chain. Additionally, I studied Karate and
then Bujinkan as a kid. Thus I am well aware of the difference between real a
martial arts dojo and a poseur-dojo!
In closing...
We plan to keep our kids in ATA until our pre-paid time is up (in part because
we can't get a refund) and then we will find a real Dojo for them to train at!
Currently, ATA provides numerous excellent NEGATIVE examples to use when
teaching our kids such things as respect, courtesy and integrity. We continue
to recommend that people DO NOT sign their kids up with ATA, in fact
several of our friends have mentioned getting their kids in martial arts and we
help them decide on a non-ATA alternative. So far the thanks have been numerous
for helping them find a real Dojo.
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Copyright 2001-2004, Andrew S. Rielly all rights reserved.
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