[QUOTE=Tainan Mantis;915017]Do you wear shoes in the kung fu class for some/all of the activities?
If so, I have a question.
Are the students required to buy a pair of ‘in school only’ shoes?
I mean shoes that are cleaner because they don’t walk around on the street.
Right now, we are outdoors so we wear street sneakers. But, soon we will be indoors and I am wondering how to deal with the shoe situation.
The last kung fu school I went to in the states had concrete floors in a screened in gazebo, so we also wore outdoor shoes in that school.
In Taiwan we had an outdoor school and an indoor school.
At the indoor school we either had to have a pair of clean shoes or just go barefoot.[/QUOTE]
If you wear shoes, and you train on mats, IT IS IMPERATIVE that they use a different set for working out than you wear to come to class to cut down on the possibility of staph and other skin infections.
We go barefoot, but if I was teaching forms in class, I would probably have them wear shoes.
yes, you can absolutely require a specific set of shoes for the school…we had an incident the other night at the mma class where a guy was wearing some running shoes and tore the **** out of a mat because of the tread.
i never made anyone buy ‘new’ shoes but they did have to dedicate a pair of shoes for training if they wanted to wear shoes and believe me, the full wrath of de shifu came down if I found dirt tracked in…
not that you need to, but you can also cite sanitation issues with wearing shoes directly in off the streets
[QUOTE=Shaolinlueb;915031]during winter and bad weather, don’t wear thsoe shoes outside.[/QUOTE] If you spar on the same mats you work out on, I wouldn’t recommend letting them wear outside shoes ever.
MRSA is everywhere, and I trained with a guy at an Army gym that got a severe case because they wore street tennis shoes on the mats. Sure, they mopped them every night, but the next day everyone just gunks them up again with street funk.
[QUOTE=MasterKiller;915035]If you spar on the same mats you work out on, I wouldn’t recommend letting them wear outside shoes ever.
MRSA is everywhere, and I trained with a guy at an Army gym that got a severe case because they wore street tennis shoes on the mats. Sure, they mopped them every night, but the next day everyone just gunks them up again with street funk.[/QUOTE]
MRSA? I never had a problem with disease or anything on the floors we train with.
if we do “rolling” which is 2 times a year, we take off the shoes and sashes and i clean the mats before and afterwards.
sparring we don’t use mats. if we do throws and stuff with the advance, you just take it and hope your partnet doesnt slam you too hard.
i always keep a clean flooring, sweeping it everynight and mopping it once a week.
well it doesnt matter, i closed the school earlier this month. and have yet to spar on the place where i rent space each month.
[QUOTE=Shaolinlueb;915036]MRSA? I never had a problem with disease or anything on the floors we train with.[/quote] Knock on wood.
if we do “rolling” which is 2 times a year, we take off the shoes and sashes and i clean the mats before and afterwards.
sparring we don’t use mats. if we do throws and stuff with the advance, you just take it and hope your partnet doesnt slam you too hard.
i always keep a clean flooring, sweeping it everynight and mopping it once a week.
Mats are essential to help protect your students. I wouldn’t run a class without them.
Always thought it was a good idea for gyms with heavy mat use to have a public pair of crocs near the bathroom (Japanese style) so you didn’t have folks walking in there barefooted.
i try to remember to bring my crocs with me when i go to the mma gym for walking off the mats, but i always seem to forget & end up just putting my shoes back on.
My sifu recommends (but doesn’t require) everyone buy some lightweight, flexible shoes to train in, and not wear them outside in inclement weather. Dirt will still occasionally get tracked in, but usually not. We work out predominantly on tile, the mats coming out only once in a while. Haven’t heard of anyone getting staph thus far.
Hasn’t happened while I’ve been at class yet, but I’ve heard on occasion during the summer sifu will have the class train at the park instead of the kwoon, and I believe he has people grab their street shoes for that.
[QUOTE=Oso;915024]yes, you can absolutely require a specific set of shoes for the school…
[/QUOTE]
Very helpful information.
So, now we have a situation with two pairs of shoes per person.
Do you have a cubbie hole or someplace for all the people to keep their street shoes in?
Do people have a place in the school to leave their school shoes?
In the Taiwan school people just took off their street shoes before walking into the room.
So, it left a big mess of shoes at the door. Doesn’t look good. I am searching for ideas on how to make it look good with stacks of raggedy shoes.
Those people who wore clean shoes at the school just left them there, again, it didn’t look too good.
So, now we have a situation with two pairs of shoes per person.
Do you have a cubbie hole or someplace for all the people to keep their street shoes in?
Do people have a place in the school to leave their school shoes?
In the Taiwan school people just took off their street shoes before walking into the room.
So, it left a big mess of shoes at the door. Doesn’t look good. I am searching for ideas on how to make it look good with stacks of raggedy shoes.
Those people who wore clean shoes at the school just left them there, again, it didn’t look too good.
Kevin[/QUOTE]
It helps if you have an entry way or foyer (sp?) that is separate from the main training area for people to store gear, towels, shoes, etc…
I talked about the late great Maestro D’Saro and his shoe fetish in Monk Takes Off His Shoe: My Life as a Shaolin Shoe Salesman: A Shaolin Side-Trip. I used to be very strict about having ‘school only’ shoes. Then I went to Shaolin, where people wear Feiyues all the time. Most of those students trained in the dirt anyway, so there wasn’t so much difference between indoor/in-school and outdoor/not-in-school.
Now I’m rocking Feiyue Hi-tops and my pair are strictly for practice.
yea cubbies are cool…can be hand built or purchased…i’m sure tampa has a used office furniture type place where you could find something like that for not a lot of money.
you might even see if there is some sort of school furniture liquidator…gradeschools are cubbie havens
[QUOTE=MasterKiller;915023]If you wear shoes, and you train on mats, IT IS IMPERATIVE that they use a different set for working out than you wear to come to class to cut down on the possibility of staph and other skin infections.[/QUOTE]
I hate training in shoes, but some surfaces don’t give you much choice in the matter. I’ll train barefoot in mud and on clean cement, but gravel is a no-go.
Last year I broke my toe, and recently a classmate accidentally karate-chopped my foot during his breakfall… these toe injuries, even minor ones, are so troublesome during training and seem to take forever to heal. Frustrating.
Thus I’m trying to transition into being a shoe-wearer. I carry my shoes (used only for MA) around in my bag since I take classes at different locations.
