Teaching Aikido and other MAs in the same place [Archive]

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Bud

03-01-2003, 02:47 PM

In your dojo, are there other martial arts being taught aside from aikido?

Are these arts taught by your sensei?

What's the most incongruous combinations of martial arts you've seen being taught in a aikido dojo? For examples, pencak silat and aikido

My current dojo does not teach anything else but aikido but I we do have some members practicing arnis / escrima in the same room before the aikido class.

No. Another guy does the escrima practice

I've seen one dojo that teaches karate, jujitsu and aikido (shin shin toitsu) but that's about it.

Dirty Dogi

03-01-2003, 03:31 PM

My dojo is actually a big room inside of a gym. On diffrent nights of the week they teach Aikido, Karate, Kali (weapons), and Jujitsu. All of which are taught by diffrent teachers.

I usually get to class early and begin to set up the mats. After Aikido is over the Jujitsu guys pile in and use the mats as well. They pick them up at the end of the class and the karate and kali guys are set up for the next day.

They also teach Yoga and something with these body ball things in the same room.

DaveO

03-01-2003, 03:37 PM

Our dojo is one club within one large club; Club Olympia.

There are several disciplines taught there; Ki Society Aikido, Karate, Judo, TKD, kickboxing and most recently boxing and hapkido.

Great for interaction between disciplines; not so great for mat time with so many clubs - Well; it's a trade-off. Overall, it's an excellent arrangement - lots of ideas, low rent to pay and a long-established club to work in. :)

Patrick

03-01-2003, 03:38 PM

In our Dojo the sensei also teaches Judo.

Qatana

03-01-2003, 06:03 PM

Our dojo is in a ballet school which is quite distracting for me as a dancer, specially when i hear music that i've performed to..the dojo is in one of the studios there.

Before the ballet school the dojo shared space with a karate dojo.

My sensei also teaches Tai Chi and some esoteric energy work. Makes for a full Saturday morning.

Q

Carl Simard

03-01-2003, 06:44 PM

This thread remember me of one of our older dojo was located in a building were there was a boxing club. The two rooms were separated by some windows, so we can see each others.

We found these big guys somewhat mad to punch themselves on the head. The fun thing was that, one evening, some of them were looking at us training, so our sensei invited them to join us. Their answer was:"Not a chance! You're just too mad for us with all these throws and falls!". ;)

Bronson

03-01-2003, 11:45 PM

In my sensei's dojo there is also tai chi and chi gung. Both the tai chi and chi gung are taught by people other than sensei.

In the dojo where I teach we have several arts (aikido, judo, BJJ, karate/kobudo, yoga, a strength training program, and possibly tai chi soon). Each art is run as a seperate entity by the respective instructors. We share the space which allows us to have a bigger/nicer facility than any one art could afford on their own. The $25 monthly dues cover all programs (except yoga), all instructors/coaches volunteer their time and all money collected goes back into the dojo in some way.

Bronson

03-02-2003, 02:01 AM

There's an aikido dojo near me that finds time to pack in yoga classes, BJJ, and Muay Thai! These are not frequent, once or twice a week, and taught by others.

The Muay Thai teacher is an enthusiastic student in the Aikido class, and the sensei enthusiastically participates in the Muay Thai.

--JW

bob_stra

03-02-2003, 04:11 AM

Aikido, ju-jitsu, penchak silat, yoga and contact classes (boxing with no headshots).

All taught by the same set (6-8) of instructors AFAIK.

MikeE

03-02-2003, 09:45 AM

In the dojos I started I wanted the mat to be used as much as it can in a 24 hr period. That is why I recruit different instructors from different arts to lend more flavor to the school and be interesting to to wider variety of people.

rachmass

03-02-2003, 09:57 AM

Hello Mr. Ellefson,

That is exactly what I am trying to do. I own my mats, and have leased the space, and have been approaching other MA's as well as yoga and pilates practioners. So far, no go. I think it is a good idea to share the space, and we all learn from each other. As long as the MA are not directly competing for students, it should work well.

Best,

Rachel

achilleus

03-02-2003, 11:15 AM

rachmass

03-02-2003, 11:41 AM

One thing I would like to know is how people who do have this type of shared arrangement work out the split on rents and all. Also, how did they approach the other MA's to come and teach/practice in their space, and what types of issues arose.

Bronson

03-03-2003, 04:20 AM

We charge the same thing now as when the dojo was strictly a judo dojo. Basically we make it up on volume. By offering five or six arts for low monthly dues we draw from a larger section of the population.

The people who founded our dojo were teaching judo at the YMCA and wanted there own place. One of them (Bob) put up most of the money to start it and he still runs it. My first instructor was also teaching aikido at the same YMCA and they told him their idea for the dojo and asked if he'd like to teach there. What Bob did was to invite people to teach based on their personality. We try to keep a big family feeling so a new instructor has to "fit in" with the feel of the place. We've had people come in with very impressive resumes wanting a place to teach but for one reason or another they just didn't mesh with the feel we've got going.

Some of the issues we've come up against in the past are:

People not pulling their weight. Since the dojo operates like a co-op it requires everyone to pitch in as they can for it's upkeep and/or improvment. We had an instructor in the past who pretty much refused to help out.

Class scheduling. At first, when you're relatively small, it's not too difficult to arrange the classes to everyone's agreement. If you continue to grow however some class or another is going to end up with time slots that are less than ideal.

Respect between arts. This is something that is very important to us. We think of ourselves as one big dojo. We regularly recommend the other classes that are available to students. We don't think of it as losing an aikido/judo/karate student to the other art we think of it as keeping someone in the martial arts by helping them find one that fits them. We also recommend other teachers in the area if the student is looking for something specific we don't have.

It's late now and I'm fighting to keep myself awake. If I think of more points good or bad I'll post them.

Bronson

p.s. Rachel you're not that far away from us. If you ever feel like driving over and seeing first hand how we operate you'd be very welcome...maybe you could even stay for class ;), although it's kinda late if you have to drive (see the less than ideal time slot comment above) :D

Judd

03-04-2003, 04:47 PM

We have a great setup at our school. We have lots of Aikido instructors at our dojo, who are all awesome. We also have a great 5th kyu who is a Nidan (I think) in Karate who teaches a couple times a week before/after aikido classes, which many of the Aikido instrctors attend. It's so cool to be learning from an Aikido instructor who then is a fellow student in the following Karate class, completely devoid of ego and pride, just like any other student. It's very inspriring :).

JJF

03-05-2003, 04:20 AM

We have Aikido and aiki-toho (a sort of iaido) classes. In our 'style' of aikido they are concidered as being very close connected, so it's not really different MA's in our opinion.

There's also one of the aikido student who is a nidan in some form of jodo, and I believe she teaches a class each week.

On different occasions we have allowed other clubs to use our dojo in periods of being 'between' dojo's. However I believe it has mainly been other styles of aikido and not so much other MA's. There might have been some Yoga as well, but not at the present time.