 Today's subject is a little bit more on the serious side, as it stems from an article I just read recently about a young child in Taiwan who was partaking in a judo class and he has unfortunately passed away as a result to injuries sustained in that class. And from what I understand from the story is that the child was enrolled in class, his uncle was trying to demonstrate to the kid's mother that the kid is unsuitable for judo. And during the class, at some point, from my understanding, the kid mouth off, maybe he called the instructor a name, well, the instructor decided to have a classmate throw him repeatedly until he began throwing him himself. Now, what's upsetting is this kid did not receive any training yet, did not learn how to break fall, did not learn any conditioning, this was his first day in class. And because the instructor felt that he was slighted and that he was insulted, he decided to punish his kid by throwing him multiple, multiple times. Now, unfortunately, the kid got more and more injured, he started to complain of a headache, begged for them to stop, started throwing up, and it got to the point where the kid passed out. And the instructor even accused the child of faking being passed out. Now, I'm not sure who else has read this article or familiar with the story, but I personally have a real problem with this. And I think it's worth having a discussion to set the boundaries and discuss on what appropriate contact in the martial arts is and isn't. Some people believe that martial arts should be all out hard conditioning, while others feel that their children shouldn't so much as break a sweat and you have every level in between. And honestly, that's fine. That just means that there's a lot of options for everyone out there and lots of different levels of interest. But somewhere in that mix is a very fine line of what contact is okay and what contact is not. And while it might be a small step to cross over it, it's a giant leap into a bad situation. If the school is a school for fighting or self defense, then I personally think there should be a high level of conditioning. I have seen children go through rigorous training that toughens them up and then completely lets them hold their own in competition. There's no question. There's a huge difference between a student that is conditioned and knows how to take a hit and a student that doesn't. I get it. I agree with it. But at what point does it cross that line? For those of you familiar with White Bill Zach, he's the other mastermind behind this channel and he's been featured in a few episodes. Well, he and I sat down and we discussed this topic at length and we tried to discuss, you know, where this line is and we basically agreed on it comes down to intent and consent. When an instructor or classmate is rough with you, what is their intent? Are they trying to help condition you and give you resistance? Or are they trying to hurt you intentionally? I have worked with several teachers and classmates that hit hard and when we work with partner drills, the expectation is for me to take a hit and hit hard in return. The intent there is to help condition each other. The consent is also that we are both in agreement that there will be pressure applied and that we're going to take some hits. And that's fine. We both understand the intent so we give our consent. But when does it become a problem? When the intent becomes malicious and or when you lose your ability to consent? And that is when your right to say no is taken away. If we're doing a drill and it becomes too much for me, I should have the right to ask to tone it down or take a break. It doesn't mean I'm entitled to take it easy while others work hard and it could result in me getting kicked out of the school if they feel I'm not committing myself to training. And that's fair. I still had my right to consent. But if I feel it's too much and I ask for a break or to lighten up and it's refused and a drill continues or even ramps up, then you have now taken that consent from me. This holds true with adults, but it is especially more complicated when it comes to children. If you are an instructor or you teach children, a huge responsibility sits on your shoulders. Children are not usually capable of making the same judgment call of what they can or cannot take in terms of conditioning. They all think they're invincible. As the adult, it is your judgment to decide what is safe and appropriate. There are far too many stories of instructors around the world striking their young children and students with full contact. I saw a clip that I'm not going to name or link to that showed an instructor sparring a child that looked younger than six. This teacher, and I use that word questionably, was sparring that child with the same speed and force he would an adult. He was kicking to the head full contact. He was throwing techniques, all that spinning strikes. And this poor little boy kept getting knocked down and knocked over the ground. That is not okay. I have sparred our young students before. And if you really care about them and you want to teach them, then you challenge them, sure. But that means letting them work their techniques out on you while you give them resistance slightly above their skill level. Deliver light and slow techniques to them so that they have to, you know, research and react and work around them, but not so much that you're going to make contact and you're going to put them in the hospital. There's a lot of common sense that goes into this and that any instructor worth their salt should understand where that line is. Of course you want to push the kids boundaries and condition them and teach them how to persevere, but it's never okay to take out your personal grudge on them. That child in this judo class was wrong on both counts. The instructor got angry because the kid mouthed off. His intent was not to teach the boy a judo lesson. He wasn't even taught the proper falls yet. His intent was to show the boy who was boss. And it was about ego and establishing dominance. It had nothing to do with teaching the martial arts. That intent was malicious. Also, once the child begged for it to stop and said he was dizzy and started throwing up, that is already far past the point it should have gone. That poor kid had his right to say no taken away from him. This was not martial arts conditioning. This was outright assault. Striking a child because you are mad and want to exert control over them is not acceptable. But it goes beyond working with children. You know, years ago we had a guest instructor join our school. He was a friend of my teacher and he taught a different art, but he had lost his location so my instructor invited him and his handful of adult students to share space with us at the school. He was a higher rank and he would often teach our class and share techniques, which was really cool. And he would often choose me to demonstrate on, which was even cooler. I personally find it an honor to be the Ukei for an instructor. In Kempo they say, feeling is believing so I like to experience the effectiveness first hand. I was the highest rank at that point in time so he chose me a lot, which was fine. Until it was becoming clear that he was demonstrating it a few more times than was necessary and he would often veer from the lesson and apply other unrelated techniques on me. After a while I got the impression he wasn't choosing me as a respectful Ukei but rather he was expressing his dominance. I was the highest rank so he had to exert his dominance over me. It became even more apparent when he started abusing his own students. He would strike them and berate them in class and constantly put his ego over the lesson. His actions were about making them submissive to him rather than making them better. Eventually they all left him and his reputation was getting around. I myself eventually just stopped going to class on the nights he was there because it was obvious he was more interested in hurting and dominating us than teaching us anything valuable that we could use. And even his own students their techniques were poor. We were doing warm-up kicks one night on the pads and one of our white belts corrected one of his green belts on performing a round kick who didn't even seem to understand the basic mechanics of it to begin with. Pro tip, if you want me to be impressed with your teaching I'm not judging you on how well you can throw me around. No, I'm judging you based on how your students perform. I already expect you to kick my butt but if your students can't even do a basic kick well that says a lot more about you as a teacher. And before anyone says if you want to fight hard you have to train hard and suck it up. Not many people are going to train or fight harder than MMA guys. My instructor trained MMA fighters. I took class with them and I sparred them. They were very tough but they all knew that line and they never crossed it. Conditioning and drills even hard contact was all about improving each other's fighting. They didn't have to break each other's ribs or hurt each other on purpose to make a point and they still went on to win local competitions. There are boundaries that you shouldn't cross and as an instructor especially in America you need to always be aware of those boundaries. This also includes inappropriate touching. At a school I taught at several years ago we had an assistant instructor that had to be spoken to a few times. When the kids were in their horse stances he would walk around the room and test their stance by taking his hands and squeezing their thighs to see if the muscles were tensed. I honestly don't think he meant anything wrong by it but it looked bad and there's just some ways that you do not put your hand on the child. He was also demonstrating the stance in class once and he asked one of our female instructors to assist. She took the stance and then without asking he just lifted up her pant leg and began to run his hand along her calf and squeeze it to show the class how the muscles were in play. Not okay. He put her on the spot and if he truly felt that it was necessary to demonstrate it that way he should have asked her first to see if she minded giving her her chance to say no. Needless to say he didn't teach her all that long. So I'm sorry if I'm getting a little heated or a little bit passionate about this topic. There's not too many issues that I take a hard stance on but when it comes to abusing students and overstepping your authority and being a bully and hurting other students I take great exception to that so I thought that was worth talking about today and if any of you teach or help teach classes please be extra aware of the contact that you make with your students. I believe that strong contact in class is good and conditioning is very important but you have to be aware that there's a very fine line between what is okay and what isn't. If you don't understand or respect that line then quite honestly perhaps you shouldn't be teaching. So for all of our teachers and students out there where do you draw the line? Have you had an experience where you felt that the contact was not appropriate and what advice can you give other viewers who might be in the same situation and aren't quite clear on how to handle it? If we can work together and prevent at least one more of these situations from happening then this discussion will have all been worth it. Thank you so much for watching.