You are at a McDojo when…Your “master” wears leg warmers and a Hulkamaniac headband.:eek:
All these have hapened to me…
-
If your told you have to be able to do the splits in order to be deadly…
-
If your told that after 3 months your instructors will start teaching you one deadly move that you can practice over and over. “Its good to have at least one move thats deadly… that you can kill with…”
-
If the music you listen do during class consists of kung fu fighting or the remix, and or micheal jackson…
-
If your told that sparring isn’t important, and you will intuitively know how to fight after 5 years of kung fu.
-
If your sifu tells you that UFC guys don’t know how to fight, and they would be overwhelmed by a kung fu guy who could hit there vital points, and do qinna. (But of course no self-respecting KF guy would go into ufc cause they are above it.)
-
If your schools tae kwon do or contemporary wushu is 1000s of years old and is the real traditional way.
If your school teaches the original “Tai Chi” from 960 AD…ahh er… never mind 
can you guys please explain to me how you would define a ‘cult’. I dont really get that?
craig
right here man… http://www.furyu.com/archives/issue8/zanshin8.html
anyone making that claim is most certainly entirely full of shyte.
You might be a mcdojo…
If warmups include smoking from a hookah.
you might be a mcdojo if you tell your students this, and your grandmaster/sole inheritor of the art is this guy.
caveat tai-chi emptor…
That was so rediculous I couldn’t even read it. I was continually waiting to find that he charges $160,000 for lessons…:rolleyes:
i live within walking distance of that place and always wondered about cross training in tai chi…until i googled up their website..What more do they need to say? They should just have a splash page on their website with the warning, “Unless you are completely uninitiated in the martial arts, or are unable to find your own @ss with both hands and a flashlight, LEAVE THIS SITE NOW!!”
You might be a mcdojo if you’ve been married three times and still have the same in-laws? 
Here’s some Mcdojo names that I’m always fond of…
(the basic run of the mill strip mail type using crap like ……..
TNT Karate…
Super Kicks martial arts studio…
Billy Bob Thornton’s Tykwando academy…
Lee Kim’s Karate…
Rex Kwan do…lol…always loved that!..
Some Chinese types
Qi rejunination center for the Taoist studies
Peaceful Dragon martial arts
Spiritual Taichichuan and Qigong Center
Anything that head line in big bold letters " Real Kung fu and Taichichuan instruction"
The macho types
Anything with the word “combat” in it ….
For example Combat taichi…Combat Karate….etc..etc….
Or “Street lethal”
… you use the “Star Wars Kid” video as a “Training Aid”.
omfg!!!
Is that guy an outpatient at a psychiatric centre or something?
I looked over the site. It reminded me of my early days at the Shao Lin Temple. [sniff sniff]
The training was hard but as I look back it’s like it was a dream.
Oh wait, that’s right it WAS a dream. Never mind.
You might be a McDojo if
your main concern for the next class is whether you have enough snacks for the kids, er, I mean students.
your Sensei wants to have a talk with you about your repoort card.
the front 1/3 or the school is separated by glass with 2 rows of chairs for watching class.
How about
Path To Enlightenment Martial Arts Center
Bulldogs Karate
Victory Martial Arts
Alternately
You know it’s a MMA schoool if …
… the brochure has the words “alive” and “pressure test” in bold more times than you care to count
… the training floor is a mat and the walls are padded (never been to one, just guessing)
no guys, that place is an actual brick and mortar ‘tibetan tai chi’ school which has existed for some time, i first noticed it at least two years ago, probably more… So if it’s not being run at a constant loss, someone is coughing up some bucks for instruction there to keep it open. Unless they chi-blast the bill collectors into amnesia every time they call up on the phone or turn up at the studio.
DJ–as far as the mental state of the faculty there, I am afraid you’ll have to draw your own conclusions: I saw all that I needed to know on their website. I am a bit skeptical about the history provided on the origin of the ‘soringi temple.’
It’s kind of sad because for all i know, their tai chi could be the most beautiful, authentic, powerful and correct tai chi on the planet but the crap on their website absolutely exterminates every last possible shred of credibility they could have mustered.
On the bright side, providing precious moments of entertainment for the rest of us.
It’s a little weird you’re singling out Reeders school when you studied with a guy who evidently did most of his studies long distance.
Yes a lot of that stuff sounds implausible but if you search back through the major Silat lineages in this country you will find some common threads there. There’s a lot of politics and B.S., but that’s the nature of the thing. I guess you don’t know all the politics and controversy surrounding that.
I would at least go check out that school. It’s probably nothing but at least to see what’s left of that lineage would be interesting, wouldn’t it?
truly amazing.
just for the heck of it, Im going to pick apart that history with rudimentary understanding.
-
Bodhidarma = Indian word, Daruma = Japanese word
-
Bodhidarma was later called Daruma by the japanese who took up the zen as it came to them in transmission.
-
The Bodhidharma take is set in the early 6th century, not 6 centuries ago.
-
a man named shaolin? who has a city named after him? that exists now?
-
soringi temple?
who the heck calls asia “the orient” anymore? lol. ok, maybe some old people do, but yeesh.
When Willem was twelve years old, his great-uncle commenced sending him to China for 100 days every year. There, Willem underwent rigorous, intensive training in the temple for twelve consecutive years. After twelve years of study, he was certified by the 13th Dalai Lama.
-this is a complete and utter falsehood.
ok, this looks like nothing more than a couple of very poorly educated and even less informed hippy chicks propogating some sort of lesbian commando training perhaps?
This is incredibly funny if they are one iota serious about any of this.
~Gene, you really need to dedicate an issue to this kind of thing. Call it the oddities issue cllectors edition or something and have special articles on how the deadly technique of tongue in cheek can prevail over fist of the fraudster! 
by the way if you were to google grandmaster Willem Reeders, you would discover that he is also claimed to be a big cheese in kuntao/silat circles, and an indonesian war hero against the Japanese, beyond being the self-admitted living inspiration for young Kwai Chang Caine of the 70’s smash hit TV series “Kung Fu.” There is even a reference to him “Willem Reeders/ Siu Leong” in the venerable “Is Shaolin-Do For Real?” thread right here on KFTC mag forums, oddly enough as contained in a letter written to Judge Pen (whose incidental connection with this adds the one minor shred of credibility to be found in the subject so far). Unfortunately, Master Reeders has passed away, leaving behind a mystery, wrapped in an enigma (apologies to Oliver Stone).
okay. I am sure there will be some backlash from that sooner or later. WHat I am wondering is if the guy was so prominent in the indonesian arts, why is that kept compartmentalized (as we used to say in the defense industry) and this nutty folkloric “i inspired kung fu! (blind master Po character) was my real life uncle!” biography featured instead? But when you consider the tie-in with Indonesian arts and the perhaps apocryphal SOuthern Shaolin temple (each faction claims it was located where their art originated…but so far no-one locates it ‘outside Peking,’ not even by definition as “anywhere other than Peking(/Beijing)”
Anyway, why leave your home to receive instruction at a McDojo, when "Lieutenant ‘X’ can come to you with t34 d34d7y no-bullsh1t skillz in the privacy of your own home by means of the miracle that is distance learning? Now any home apartment dorm room or suitably equipped vehicle can become a McDojo…Man! They should make this guy at least a Colonel or higher so that he could become a base commander, turning out deadly hordes of fighting men to protect our nation’s interests at home and abroad cough[SIZE=“1”]iraq[/SIZE]
You know, Reeders lived for a long time in NM and taught. Did you know he moved to New Mexico in the late '60s? If his story is real or not, does it really matter that much?
And there is a ton of controversy, politics and bad feelings about all that stuff.
Anyway, whatever.