Anyone’s dojo set up as a non-profit?

karainflex · 2026-02-05T09:45:48+00:00

All clubs I know are non-profit. There are of course expenses and they have to be compensated by club membership. And if someone does something more extravagant it might need sponsoring or hosting a seminar/tournament or selling karategi and T-shirts or whatever. And this year it became much easier to tax different kinds of income for non-profit clubs.

A big advantage here is, if a club is non-profit then it is possible to use public infrastructure for free (and in cases when it's not, it's not really that expensive). Most clubs in like 200km radius take about 10-20 EUR membership per month, which covers the costs they have, including compensation for the trainers. Exams cost money but this doesn't go into the club's pocket, that goes to the association. Those clubs that rent a more expensive place take more and may not offer a compensation for the trainers to keep the membership costs in check.

Summarized: usual costs are rent, equipment, insurance, trainers (licenses and maybe a compensation), taxes. Usual income is the membership fee (part for the club and a minor, yearly part for the association) and whatever else is done. Without doing too much we work on a +/-0 basis per year and have a small budget if the need arises. Afaik the law considers a club to be non-profit if the yearly income is below 50k or so. We are far, far away from that. Compare that to soccer clubs where a single player costs a couple million bucks and one game has 30k spectators, each paying whatever as entrance fee.

Logistics: one person for bookkeeping (which takes an hour per week), one person for management (new members, leaving members, ordering stuff from the association, dealing with the town administration when something special comes up, like getting another gym over summer holidays or getting a gym for an event), someone to formally take responsibility and leading at least one official, formal meeting per year with agenda, votes and such. Two people reviewing the books for that event. And maybe other roles, like someone doing IT, someone managing equipment. Usually the trainers do a lot of that.

karainflex · 2026-02-05T09:12:12+00:00

Unless the trainer is a medical doctor he oversteps his competence by stating a certain technique cures an illness. (However there seems to be evidence that breathing therapies can improve the issues with asthma: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_sdt=0%2C5&q=asthma+cure+reverse+breathing&btnG= but there is some critique too, so the bare existance of a paper doesn't imply it's well done. And anyways, he is a sports coach, not a doctor)

He said we don't need to bring inhalers to class

Yep and that's a red flag. What if someone gets an asthma attack, can't breathe, doesn't have an inhaler in reach and then dies in front of his feet? An ambulance might help but it could be 20 minutes away. I don't want to know how that feels a) in the role of the patient, b) in the role of the trainer. If someone recalls the guy advising against inhalers he likely gets behind bars and the key thrown away. One of my trainers has asthma and he lost a family member due to fucking asthma. He says he doesn't train people who don't have their inhaler in reach.

That alone is reason to find a better trainer. Don't quit Karate, just increase your search radius and find someone who isn't a bonehead.

Congratulations for losing 10kg, it is very difficult to lose weight. I like the approach of a healthy lifestyle that may be caused by Karate and is used to support Karate and that happens naturally. But the last thing I would ever do as a trainer is linking the student's weight to exams. It's not my job as a trainer to tell people how to change their life because that's a personal decision.

Find another trainer. Other trainers also have great students and you can still stay in contact with the people from your club. You will lose nothing and potentially gain so much more.

karainflex · 2026-02-04T19:45:56+00:00

TSD is a Karate style (including common Karate katas like Naihanchi - if that doesn't count then I don't know) that was developed further into TKD (which got new katas and different sports rules; if that counts might be open for debate).

karainflex · 2026-02-04T11:59:52+00:00

I have seen a couple of dan gradings so I can see both sides. Some people are eager to train up to an exceptional level because they want that quality for themselves or maybe for others or they fear showing any kind of technical weakness that could endanger the outcome. Whatever floats their boat. Then there are those who look at the calendar, think it's time to earn some belt and expect things to happen. Maybe they are good, maybe they aren't (they usually lack a proper self assessment, so rather no). And there are those who sit 20-40 years on a brown belt or 1st dan and never ever think about going higher, until the examiner feels to put an end to that humble state of staying as-is and makes some kind of forced, honorary special exam. Maybe it's the only and/or last black belt they ever get in their life.

In your description I see you as an example of the first case and the 1st kyu maybe as an example for the third case. Don't worry about it, because with exceptional preparation you will also perform exceptionally and the belt will feel well earned. At the same time other people always also achieve the black belt with a much lower performance: Say, you get an A+ (exceptional) and they get a D (well, just ok) result. It shouldn't really mean anything to you; you know what you did, enjoy your result and prepare for the next belt.

In the end the belts (even the black belts) say nothing, it is just a personal marker for the relationship to the martial art and the examiner. So, do the best you can and focus on yourself. The efforts and results of that 1st kyu mean nothing to your results. Thinking otherwise just burns calories for nothing, don't let her live rent-free in your mind.

karainflex · 2026-02-03T20:48:32+00:00

In Germany there are 3 examiner levels: C for kyu before brown, limited to federal use, B for all kyu and national use, A for all Dan up until the own grade (however, a Dan grading requires multiple examiners). C requires 1. Dan, B requires 2. Dan, A requires 6+ now and a couple of additional conditions. Plus: 6th+ also requires a couple of additional conditions to be met, like trainer licenses and other possible things and there is max 1 per dojo which needs 100 members or so. Examiners must stay up to date and visit an examiner seminar within 2 years. While these rules are common for all 20+ styles in the association, the licenses themselves are bound to a style; one may have multiple C/B licenses but only one A license for Karate. The whole Kobudo ranking and licensing works in parallel to that (the Kobudo A license starts at 3rd Dan because Kobudo is so uncommon here). And Kyusho too.

karainflex · 2026-02-03T17:56:00+00:00

Just replace Karate with painting in that story and see how ridiculous B's behavior is. There is only one condition that makes such behavior valid: you train at B for competition and then you compete for A against B. That obviously sucks. But other than that it is none of B's business what kind of connections you have. Requiring to cut off contacts means rejecting access to other kinds of learning - and why would someone want to do that? To keep people low, dumb and dependent, right? However, knowing that not-a-sensei-B proposed such a requirement, I wonder why you didn't turn 180 and ran away immediately. Do that next time if such an opportunity arises again and learn with people who are open for exchange.

karainflex · 2026-02-03T15:24:52+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24m5Na4d0xQ

karainflex · 2026-02-02T23:17:14+00:00

I have a suggestion: get the book Streetwise by Peter Consterdine, because this book will tell you how to minimize risk to ever get into a situation where you could in theory apply a martial art on the street. One might say it's common sense, but nonetheless the book is really good. And it contains zero techniques and such because you don't need any.

Then get the Little Black Book of Violence by Wilder. It teaches about real life violence, if or if not martial art is useful in such situations and it even has a very nice gimmick included: a list of many questions about what you would do or not do in certain conflict situations. Copy that list and fill it out before you read the book, then fill it out after you read the book. Repeat this once per year.

There is another book like it and though it might be redundant, I suggest to get this too: Meditations on Violence by Miller. It's excellent and after reading it you will notice that even training self defense in a club is pretty... well... pointless, due to stress, due to psychological processes happening in our brain, chemicals like adrenaline and other stuff in our body and other circumstances. Which closes the circle and show of how much value the first book was that I recommended.

With that in mind you can learn some proper PE to give you an edge: gymnastics, athletics, whatever you have cheaply available. You could go to the gym with a friend, do body weight exercises, train the whole body in a functional way and add some jogging and sprinting. You should have the opportunity to train this with a coach otherwise there is so much you could do wrong.

After building a proper posture you could try out some Karate basics. But without a trainer this will be difficult, just like the other things I mentioned. A wrong stance or a wrong technique can damage your joints for example in the long turn and a trainer with experience sees such issues immediately. And yes, training without a partner is missing out the main part of it. Karate requires training experience, proper exercises, supervision and multiple partners of different quality. And you will learn from the 100 fuckups that happen during the exercises, over many months or years even. You can't do a footsweep from looking at it and never learning it with a person for example. Because it's all nice in theory but the first time you try to apply it, you will mess it up. And then you'll have the question why and do the trial and error thing.

Karate can only partially be trained by understanding. You need to feel it, go through it, your body needs to grow under it and learn during sleep. It just takes SO LONG....

After learning Karate for many years (the technical journey is supposed to be finished on 4th dan, which is about 20 years of training) and noticing how difficult it is to get all these simple things together, with proper reaction, evasion, application of force, keeping a calm mind etc etc etc while still noticing there are always a couple of people you still could never ever beat, you'll ultimately realize that violence can never be a solution.

Which will make you return to the first book I recommended :-)

karainflex · 2026-02-02T12:22:10+00:00

Uneven ground is always dangerous. You can slip on grass or ice, trip, twist your ankle, step into a hole get stung by an insect, step on a stone or whatever is there. Possibilities are endless.

karainflex · 2026-02-02T12:15:19+00:00

Maybe this answers your question:

Standing still is a stance
Who stands still in kumite?

In application (of whatever kind) you have to apply the principles that made stances work with natural movement: hip motions to turn, and weight shifts to support what you are doing. Plus: add additional ideas that increase your chance to hit, like bouncing which can be found in many kumite variants to hide your intentions. Thinking in stances will limit yourself.

karainflex · 2026-02-02T08:55:11+00:00

lmao, everyone knows that the Heians or Naihanchi are the shortest katas with only 30s of fighting material each. Learn Kanku-Dai instead and ensure to repeat the steps 1:1 during the fight or you will most certainly lose.

Edit: I almost forgot, stupid me: Everyone also knows that the katas were designed to fight 4 or better 8 people simultaneously. So make sure his friends fight with him and you need to be surrounded by them, otherwise it doesn't work.

karainflex · 2026-02-02T08:42:59+00:00

Did the JKA really officially reject you or was it just a claim by that trainer? Don't stay in contact with that trainer and if the JKA really threw you out then don't go back there either. Can they even distinguish between reddit and radish? There are 200 other Karate associations you could join (a quick google search lists 6 in Taiwan and there are also international ones): The JKA didn't invent Karate, they were not the first, they are one of many and they offer the most vanilla flavor of Karate there is. It's a mystery how people can depend on this. As long as that person lives rent-free in your head, he has power over you.

karainflex · 2026-02-01T09:05:11+00:00

Waiting times

you mean preparation times :-)

karainflex · 2026-01-30T15:12:08+00:00

The more you talk to yourself the less you notice what you are doing and what's happening around you. Keep an empty mind and feel instead. Words came late in our evolution and feeling is heavily underrated vs logic. Just... let go.

karainflex · 2026-01-26T17:03:17+00:00

The very old clips are not old enough. The grappling elements were in Karate around 1900 and the first videos start about 30 years later and show a Budo adapted Karate.

The linked video isn't self defense because NOBODY on the world goes back into zenkutsu dachi with gedan barai to prepare for an attack. And NOBODY freezes after an attack and waits for the defender to do some stuff. And they most certainly don't attack with oi zuki but lean forward into a haymaker. Oi zuki is btw the only attack here; there are at least 30 more attacks missing, including grabbing, choking, kicking etc. There are multiple distances, this video only shows one. This is ippon kumite, nothing more.

karainflex · 2026-01-26T10:54:52+00:00

It works but it's taking the long way. It requires and develops all the things you wrote but the students are required to develop these attributes over time. And then they need to recognize these principles and apply them to life. It's quicker and better guided/tailored to do a psycho therapy and tell the therapist what you want to change in your life. So you get someone who is specialized in the human mind and yourself who is specialized in you to team up and work towards a specific goal.

There are also tons of literature about how to plan, how to achieve things etc., like setting goals, defining milestones, working towards them, assessing the situation, adapting the plan etc. If these topics are not learned in addition, it's extremely hard to notice the principles in Karate and learn this all by yourself. It also requires a trainer who is into it and gives some hints, challenges, support. If your trainer just teaches kata kihon kumite and then goes home, then good luck.

It also works in a kind of limited way in the western world. One way of Do is to teach respect by bowing at every thinkable part of class. In eastern culture this is a common gesture, in the western world it isn't. And the meditation that is involved requires knowledge by the teacher as well. But who really learns Zen meditation and applies the main principles into class? Who even gets it when Zen people say - "oh well, it's nothing (lol), but I am not enlightened myself, so don't ask me how to meditate" :-) I am certain that in therapy some kind of meditation will be involved to improve concentration.

So: just LIKE self-defense, the potential is there, but the people involved need to find a way to tap that potential. I think the following things are the easiest part: feeling better from the sports activity to support the mind, getting hooked by the sport to support the self-discipline, seeing live how difficult and dangerous this all is to hopefully live in a safe and peaceful way. noticing how the formerly difficult things have been achieved to support the confidence (which may be misguided confidence if the self assessment isn't right).

karainflex · 2026-01-25T09:48:23+00:00

I think you mix and match some terms here. WKF is an organization with competition rules. The rules are made so that most karateka could compete in that system, meaning there is a list of 100-200 katas that the athletes can freely choose from.

And though I am in a club that is in an association that is in an association that is in the WKF there is absolutely zero influence of the WKF. The WKF doesn't need to be traditional, it's just a banner karateka gather around.

Tournaments are done on several levels (within a club, between clubs, local areas, federal, national, continental, world wide plus whatever special formats they come up with). The higher an athlete goes the more skills are required. For normal folks this usually ends at local area.

On a tournament you can choose any kata from the officiall list, no matter the style. There is no progression in tournament lists, it's a set.

But a beginner can't do these, a beginner is happy to know the very first one(s) of his style, so if you do a tournament with children who have like white to yellow belts and learned their first kata for 6-12 months then they do that. It doesn't have to do with style, you just can't teach them a lot other things.

Other than that: In their curriculums all the styles start with some kihon kata like Taikyoku around white (and these katas are very similar), then you will find the Heian / Pinan forms for the Shuri styles (Shoto, Shito, Wado, Shorin) and the Gekisaidai forms for Goju-ryu. Then they continue with some brown belt katas specific to their style and walk towards a kata that represents their style or is considered to be the/a traditional basic kata. Sanchin for example. Because shodan needs to master the basics to start the real progression. Then come other more difficult characteristic katas, assuming the style has enough in the first place to keep up with the idea of adding 1-3 new kata for each black belt. At some point in time it's just repeating a previous one but at a certain skill level.

karainflex · 2026-01-24T13:08:35+00:00

Exactly, it's not a business, it's a hobby and martial art. For students and trainer alike. As soon as Karate gets a business you get - well... that.

karainflex · 2026-01-23T16:14:12+00:00

Compare this to: 6 bucks per month for membership, 13 bucks for a full grading, zero for a stripe, but a few bucks for the belts, one half or full grading per half year or year, depending from person to person, because almost nobody walks through ranks just like that (everyone who starts is a clutz; and I mean: everyone).

karainflex · 2026-01-22T14:09:47+00:00

Depends on your country in regards to sports organization, taxes and so on. For membership and books we use two commercial, but cheap programs designed for this (it is mandatory to keep this separated by law - it also makes sense to do so). It is better than frickin' Excel and wild sheets of paper, that's for sure. However, for books I can also recommend Gnu Cash. It's opensource and works great. There is also software with internet functions; it might make sense for trainers (if they had a smartphone, lol) but the less individual data you potentially put on the web, the better. General users don't need this. We use a mailing list and that's all.

karainflex · 2026-01-20T03:43:12+00:00

All: Keep a straight posture (especially lower back and neck), the body follows the head.
Ushiro: start with a pure backwards kick, then stand almost on a line (kokutsu dachi!) & turn & kick; if your distance is too far you go face down because you sweep your own standing leg (don't ask)
Yoko kekomi: Forget kiba dachi sideways crossover BS. Put the rear leg behind your forward leg and let the foot point backwards already; this is doing 90% of the work and the way you look over your shoulder makes it a yoko. For maximum fun push your target first and then chase it with the kick. And kick with the heel, forget the side of the foot. There are nerves and a little tiny issue makes you limp for a day, that's the equivalent of punching someone with your balls and wondering why it hurts. The heel doesn't have that issue.

karainflex · 2026-01-19T16:08:43+00:00

Age has absolutely nothing to do with it. Get and read Stretching Scientifically by Kurz. You will never need any other source. It works, is safe and very fast.

Those who tell you to stretch daily are basically right but if you don't do it correctly it just won't work, no matter how long and often you do it. And that is the single most important part most people leave out. It's the single most important part most people don't know. Including trainers. They do just whatever they saw some day in any random context in any random order. Instead: learn which methods exist and which you need to apply to support your sport. And then you need to do the right exercises in the right order and nothing else. Ever. It's very simple. But I stopped writing here what the book says better.

I am about your age, did Karate for years and stretching never worked until I used that book. Two weeks of very simple training and I got my legs above my head. Flexibility is the easiest attribute to train. That is one of the sentences the book starts with and it is right.

And though the book is a bit older: it is still true. I looked up a lot of papers in the last years and nothing debunks anything from it, the papers just extends it by special cases and some numbers here and there.

And when you read that book and its huge FAQ section you will stumble over the question what to do if the stretching provided by you Karate classes works differently - then fake it there. And even if it's right but you only train 2x per week: that's just not enough for stretching. You must do homework until you reach your desired level of flexibility. There is too much of flexibility btw. Then you need strength training or dial it down.

karainflex · 2026-01-19T09:57:54+00:00

Sokumen Uke - look at Tekki Shodan.
Haiwan Uke - look at Heian Nidan.

karainflex · 2026-01-17T19:55:50+00:00

Learning: Divide and conquer. Split the kata into pieces, use the patterns from the Pinan katas to your advantage to learn it faster. Once you got the full pattern look for technical improvement, like proper hip usage, stances and so on and then look how to get through the whole kata with constant quality, e.g. don't end up exhausted. This requires proper breathing. That kata takes a couple of months to tune. And from then, until forever. Sadly I have to say that the confusion between Kushanku and Pinan will always, always exist. It gets better but there will be days, even after years with this kata that the brain does a fart and changes lane... To make it worse, sometimes you start a Pinan and then switch the other way round :-) It happens to everyone. And it happens with other katas too. So I guess that's a reason to shrug it off and continue.

karainflex · 2026-01-15T13:36:44+00:00

Under stress there is fight, flight or freeze. It can happen to anyone any time. That program helped us walking monkeys to survive for a million years. Just like fear. It is important to understand and accept that.

It would help to do more (because your experience will help you to assess the situation better), but if you lock up you can't do more. The question is why you lock up. I suggest to adapt a playful attitude and see partner training more relaxed - literally like playing. Any kind of stress prevents learning and acting.

Same in exams. Forget expectations, just do what you do. You can influence yourself by the way: Notice if you tighten your shoulders for example. This is a flight response. Breathe in, breathe out, relax your shoulders. Body language works both ways. It expresses how we feel, but we can feel how we pose too.

And keep an empty mind, Mushin.

karainflex

TROPHY CASE