 Today's topic is inspired by a video that's been circulating for a few weeks now in which a Jeet Kune Do student gets into a confrontation with a Wing Chun instructor and that made me think about the topic of dojo storming and is it good or bad for the martial arts? So I'm sure that many of you have seen this video already, it's been covered by many channels and it's been a topic of a lot of recent discussion and if you're not familiar with it I put it in the description below if you want to take a look. But bottom line is to give you know long story short a Wing Chun instructor was teaching a private class in his backyard when just a passerby off the street came in who was supposedly a Jeet Kune Do student and he was watching and he decided to interject his opinion into the lessons and correct the Wing Chun teacher and teach him what was right and what wasn't and of course the instructor took offense to this and you know called him out and said why don't you come up and show me how it's done correctly and there was a discussion going and honestly bottom line is you could see right off the bat the instructor was not impressed and the challenger couldn't even really articulate what he was trying to say you know he was stammering he was stuttering he wasn't really clarifying what he was trying to say but the incident escalated to the point of throwing blows to each other and you know I started thinking about this you know what was the purpose of this video my my impression was this was unnecessary because the kid who's kind of claiming to the property came into the class he went there apparently with the intent to cause a problem or maybe just to inject his wisdom on someone else's class and of course when the instructor took him up on it said let's demonstrate it let's let's do a test the guy's like oh no no no no let's forget that because I would have to kick you for real when I'm not doing it without any sparring gear and when the sparring gear was offered again it just escalated to the point where it went to a throw down now was anything proven in this video no obviously the challenger the Jeet Kune Do student didn't really validate his art because he got trashed and I won't even say he's a good representation of the art he was just some kid off the street now on the Wing Chun guy side was he validated either no because honestly his technique went out the window and the whole thing really kind of came down to more of just a street brawl there really wasn't many elements of either art in play and overall I don't think the whole experience was worth it all it did was cause a confrontation so where does this fall into the whole idea of dojo storming is dojo storming even the valid you know it goes back a long way and it was often an old-school way for academies to challenge each other superiority in the arts and it was often between members of rival schools now there are a lot of polarized opinions on dojo storming and I have seen the occasional comment on this channel pop up on how some of our viewers claim to challenge other schools or they want to so I thought this was worth discussing why would someone want to go to another school and drop a challenge anyway two primary reasons first to validate their own art or training over others and two to weed out the frauds and fake arts challenging another school or instructor in order to validate your training or to establish superiority over the school is a very real thing we typically see this today between practitioners of some of the more contemporary arts such as boxing BJJ and MMA themed arts there seems to be a subculture of this in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and with good reason BJJ as a community holds themselves to a very high standard with regards to training and skill in my observation BJJ is one of the few martial arts with the most consistency and belt rankings and expectations across various schools and organizations in the art earning a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu often requires 10 to 15 years of hard training and is taken very seriously within this community if you are a BJJ practitioner and you have a black belt around your waist you better believe you will be expected to uphold that and are more than likely to be tested than a lot of other arts that being said there are a lot of schools out there with instructors claiming to be BJJ black belts who are clearly not and there are many YouTube videos of them being tested and revealed so many people feel that dojo storming will reveal these fraudulent instructors many also feel that they are doing the community of service by exposing the fake arts and preventing them from spreading bad teaching for example Chinese martial artists Jiu Jiu Dong is well known for this challenging many self-proclaimed masters of the respective arts and then destroying them there are also many videos out there of the mystical arts and the no-touch systems being challenged and debunked so it's very easy to see why dojo storming is a popular and common way to test the school or instructor because sometimes it can be hard to argue the results however I'm going to do just that and like any other controversial topic that we cover here we need to look at the other side of the coin first there could be any number of reasons a challenger can defeat an instructor of another school maybe you truly are a better fighter and had better training maybe their school isn't up to par with what they're claiming but context is everything is the school even a fighting school not everyone practices or teaches martial arts for the purpose of fighting some schools are tournament and sport focused other self-defense others lifestyle and culturally focused or some schools are just offering strength and exercise some schools simply just don't spar you can like it or hate it but that's a reality and not every school is a fighting school is instructor in top fighting shape you know they could be older have injuries or health concerns not immediately apparent to you or maybe they could have their fighting days behind them and they focus more on teaching it could also be a matter of a bad day versus a good day you know my last camp instructor would mop the floor with me every single time we sparred but there was one day one day I was clicking with the material and he was having a little bit of an off day and I dominated the sparring match out of like 10 years of training with him that was the only time it happened my point though is just because you defeat an instructor of another school does not automatically invalidate them or the art maybe you are just a better fighter maybe they aren't that good of a school or maybe there are other reasons to play and speaking of context the rule set is in play as well if you were challenging a different art than yours what are the rules are you expecting them to play and fight only by your rules or you willing to fight by theirs so is dojo storming even worth it here's my take I think that challenges and competition between schools can be very healthy but there's a productive and unproductive way to go about it now the video that we talked about in the beginning is a good example of an unproductive approach walking up unannounced and crashing someone else's class especially in their own yard and trying to interject your methods in training is a recipe for trouble if you just walking off the street and you disrupt a class and you drop a challenge one don't expect the school to even entertain that if they refuse to accept your challenge and in that scenario that is more likely that doesn't mean you've won or proven a point or that they're too scared to fight it means that you are an outside aggressor now trespassing and there are a lot of unknown variables at play they don't know you or know if you have a weapon on you or if you're on something or a dangerous individual or the slip it around liability most schools that have open mats and challenges between schools will usually require a liability waiver you coming in off the street you could be a very dangerous person or perhaps the opposite maybe you have a health concern or injury or aren't as good as you're proposing and they can be afraid of hurting you as well and that would be a very big liability especially on their own property so any instructor that would welcome and entertain this random challenge off the street is taking on some major risks the more likely and honestly appropriate response would be having the authorities called it's also a good way to get someone hurt there was a famous case back in 1970 when the martial artist known as Count Dante which is a topic for another time took part in dojo storming between schools and one of his colleagues was killed in the process just walking in off the street unannounced disrupting the class in progress insulting and challenging the instructor or top students doesn't earn you any moral high ground it doesn't prove anything except that you are a bully that being said however there are better ways to approach this if you truly want to challenge or test the school you can approach the instructor after a class and talk to them respectfully they might be more open to conduct an open mat challenge this way perhaps join them in the class and ask for time to be allocated at the end for a match a challenge should be mutually agreed on and conducted in a way that should demonstrate effectiveness in better context even Joe Jadong as we mentioned earlier he likes to challenge masters and weed out the frauds but he doesn't just march into the school and start fighting challenges are issued and a special exhibition match is set up both sides are willing participants with set rules and witnesses and judging so that it's a much safer and more effective way to go about it if your intent is to put your skills to the test that's one thing but if your goal is to humiliate cause trouble and beat up someone else because you don't like them or the school is learning entirely that is a complete lack of respect and a major disturbance to the integrity of the martial arts if you respectfully issue a challenge and it is refused honestly just accept it move on you don't have to like the school but you also don't have the right to but if you truly feel that the school is fraudulent or teaching something dangerous or detrimental and there are other ways of exposing them you know reporting them to the authorities or the media or other ways of putting the spotlight on them might be more effective but if you decide to storm into their school and cause trouble you're the one in the wrong and you're creating the conditions for something really bad to happen so tell me what you guys think about this I have a feeling that we're going to have a wide range of opinions on this and that's awesome and I invite the discussion for the comments but please let's keep it respectful and constructive and I'm also asking that people do not establish challenges on this channel that has been an issue in the past or been comments that have heated up to the point where people actually tried to set up you know back alley matches that will not be tolerated here that is not the point of the channel our point of this channel is to help each other exchange ideas and share perspectives so as long as you could do that all discussion is welcome thank you guys so much and we will see you next week