[QUOTE]Originally posted by ThinkAboutIt:
Course prices....

I received Geoff Thomson's newsletter last week. He is advertising a day's course (running from 10am-4pm) in December for £60.

From previous posts, the BAMA courses are £150 and last for a whole weekend.

Comparable prices I think..

Are the BAMA ripping you off? I don't think so...[/QUOTE]

I can’t believe you are trying to compare Geoff Thompson to the BAMA.
Mr Thompson is a well respected martial artist and world recognised author, an unfair comparison really.
I personally don’t care what the BAMA charge, if people are willing to pay the money and feel they get something out of it, so be it.
Ridiculous argument on the other hand is another matter.

While I agree that Private Lessons are good. I also disagree with the way the BAMA ran them.

I used to pay my £15 every time I have a private lesson. But I was also paying the same for a group lesson too. Sometimes there would be 10 of us at the Cheltenham dojo.

The courses I went on weren't that good. We'd watch a Video, then copy the technique. I could do that on my own without paying £150 for it.

From what I can gather from this thread all us ex-students can now see it for what it was / is. I've mail enabled my profile if any of the ex students want to get in touch.

Lesson prices...

BAMA £15 an hour (private)
Other schools £2.50-£5.00 an hour (in a class)

If you are in a private lesson, the insructor is focusing his attention solely on you. Errors that you make will be picked up immediately. You can work at your pace. You can work on the things you want/need to work on. How fast are you going to improve?

In a class-based lesson, the instructor has to talk to the class. Errors may not be picked up for weeks/months. You work at the pace of the slowest. You have to work on the things the class or the instructor wants/needs to work on. How fast are you going to improve?

Are the BAMA ripping you off? I don't think so...


When I had private lessons I found the £15 an hour private tuition to be fine. But it didnt last long as 1 on 1 and soon become more like 8 on 1. Now this at £15 an hour is a complete rip-off which im sure you will agree.

As to the £150 weekend courses, I cant comment as I never went on one due to the high price.

can anyone confirm or refute the rumour that the cost for a four hour seminar jumped from £30 to £60 so that pete delane could fly in by helicopter?

almost hope its true coz i wet myself laffing when i heard

[QUOTE]Originally posted by SilkScarf:
can anyone confirm or refute the rumour that the cost for a four hour seminar jumped from £30 to £60 so that pete delane could fly in by helicopter?

almost hope its true coz i wet myself laffing when i heard[/QUOTE]

The price of his seminars were £60.

He did fly in by helicopter once, i have also seen him fly me x-sensei round my county in a Helicopter, all on video tape that my Sensei was proud to show me in a £15 lesson i had paid for where i should of been learning martial arts.

This is a really interesting thread. I am a current BAMA student at a fairly middling grade - so as you'll expect I'll be careful about what I say that might identify myself! At the moment I'm getting a lot out of the BAMA - and will continue to do so I'm sure - but I've always had doubts and consequently I'm a bit wary about how deep I get involved (a bit of skepticism is probably a healthy thing though) ...

I joined BAMA about 18 months ago and it's the first (only) martial art I've done. My instructor is great and I get so much out of my physical lessons, it's really very rewarding. I've learnt loads about myself since I started and I'm learning more all the time. Each lesson seems to bring a new level of physical and psychological understanding of who I am. Of course I may well have got the same rewards if I'd joined another MA, that's not really relevant - the point is like what I'm doing and I will be sticking with BAMA for some time.

However, there really are some strange things about BAMA. When I joined I was very interested to learn about the history. But you can't learn about it. The way it is all shrouded in obscurity and the way I was fobbed off by being told I would be learn it all 'later' was a bit odd (it's been interesting to read other people's posts on this).

Then there are the teachings of the school which encourage open-mindedness towards life - a very valuable lesson and one which I tried to remind myself of every day. But strange that that openmindedness mustn't apply to martial arts. No, when it comes to those you mustn't be open-minded at all. For a BAMA student must only train with BAMA and must only think good things about BAMA.

But what really annoyed me was a philosophy lecture given by Grand Master Chusan Pete Delane which I paid £60 for the privilege of attending. This was a lecture on quantum philosophy which is a fascinating subject and has interested me for a few years now. It's not the content of the lecture that annoyed me, it was the way it was sold. Master Chusan was standing in front of a room full of people saying that this was a new field of philosophy which he was pioneering along with a physicist friend of his. Well that's simply not true. Quantum philosophy is remarkable and I love it but it's not new at all - it's been around since Einstein got worried about it in the 1930's. You can even do degree courses in it. So whilst Master Chusan's lecture was accurate and interesting I'd heard it all before. And £60 it cost me!! Of course if you don't know much about physics (that'll be most of the people who were there) you probably won't know you're being told regurgitated material (which you can read about in numerous places - for much less money) - so you'll pay £60 for the lecture the next year!

That day re-affirmed some doubts I'd always had and since then I've taken a different attitude towards BAMA. I still enjoy all my physical lessons and continue to have them. But I won't get pressured into paying for courses/events that I don't want to attend (unfortunaltely many people will though). At some point in the future - maybe a year, maybe 2 or 3 - I would love to, and will, try other martial arts - how else to become a well rounded martial artist?! But on that day I will have to quit BAMA. Because they like open-mindedness, except when it comes to Bushido!

In the meantime tho, it is a great thing for me. One last word - if anyone reading this is a current BAMA student, just keep an open mind!!

[This message has been edited by sonnyjim (edited 11-25-2004).]

[This message has been edited by sonnyjim (edited 11-25-2004).]

Hi,

I have just stumbled across this forum as i was flicking through the internet looking at martial arts and decided to see if my old school had any more advertising around and what they were doing now.

When i found this thread, i was very surprised to hear all the comments made by old instructors and former students who know things about the school that i never knew. I feel like a bubble in my past has been popped and i have been dropped quite a distance.

When i joined the school, i knew little about it like most others. When i left 5 years later i knew little more of the origins of the style other than what shudin (As he was referred to then as) had spoken about in Bushido Weekends, and what little my instructor had told me.

I would not knock the style of karate it teaches though as i have studied several types of karate and find the Bushido karate to be most effective (The style i was taught when i was there although it may have changed now as the sylabus was quite dynamic though the core techniques remained constant). I never really thought about the lineage until 5 hours ago when i started reading this thread (Not the fastest reader on the planet!) Although we had been told stories of the origins lying with a single samurai who more or less single handedly killed a whole army at a battle at a river (Mentioned earlier in the discussion) and the style had been passed down from master to master from there and that we were destined to receive great possibly secret knowledge for our commitment and loyalty to the school.

If this is not the case (The lineage i mean) I see this as a real blow to bushido as it means that they have lied to so many and without trust, the kidi (Relationship) is broken and to have been lied to by people that you respect as much as i respected those guys isn't great. I am not saying that I know they have, but if what i have read is correct then that is what has been indicated.

Having said that if you want to learn karate, I beleive Bushido are as good... atually a better school than any other i have come across since being there (I dont pretend to be an expert) and pay a lot of attention to fine detail which is missing from a other schools I have experienced.

The money is an issue for a lot of people and it was one of my reasons for leaving because i was being pushed to do more and more which i couldnt really afford.

After reading this discussion I still dont know if Bushido is a legitimate honourable organisation or whether it was engineered to make bags of money (Although there seems to be a lot of evidence to support this) or whether that just happened as Bushido evolved. I do know that Bushido as a martial art has a lot to give but maybe The Way has been lost somewhere along the line.

I would be interested to receive any info (Other than that posted here) that anyone has of the origins and realities of Bushido.

Thanks,

A Slightly deflated ex-bushidoer

p.s. Sorry to crash-on i didnt realise i had written so much

Just a note:

I have just remembered when i joined i was told that shudin had 16 black-belts in different martial arts and bushido was formed to raise the standard of martial arts in the country, or something like that which doesnt really tie up with the old samurai at the river link and the penny has only just dropped, but as has been mentioned before you kind of get lost in Bushido and accept what is being told to you as the truth as you would follow these people (The higher grades) whether they are following a tradition of 1000 years or if they invented the style last year because when you see them you know they are good and want to be as good as them. The big kick in the balls is that they would lie about the lineage... whats the point!?

Right, I'm really going now. Hope i havent offended anyone as it was not my intention.

I'm quite enjoying reading this thread.... It seems that more and more ex-students are coming out and voicing the same opinions that we all have.

Am sure we can't all be wrong, maybe this thread will spark some thought in current students and maybe get them asking questions.

With reference to the Helecopter thing in an earlier post, I heard that as well. We were shown pictiures of Pete in new York while on on Trainign week-end and I can remember they all of him in a limo, drinking champagne and generally having a good time on our money....

While the Karate being taught was good (Although the style did vary depending on who your sen was), the Pods, InterZen and Week-ends were only designed to make money.

I used to do shifts working through the night. Sometimes it would get quiet and we'd all be stuck there twiddling our thumbs.

The managers decided that if it was slow, they'd let people on double shifts go home early. It could be anywhere from 1-3 hours early.

After a few months of this, people used to start expecting it. They'd moan if they had to stay all the way to the finish of their shift.

After another few months they stopped it all together. Then everyone was moaning about how the company was just in it for the money - and how tight and thieving they were...

Weekends/Pods/Interzen... Give an inch...

Know what I mean?

Does anyone know why they told of their roots being with the samurai? Is there any possible link from any of shudins teachers?

Would anyone have cared when they took up Bushido as long as the training was good (I know i didnt)?

Does anyone else wonder why they would have had a reason to lie to us because there doesnt seem any sense in it. We've all seen shudin and he's blinding. He has abilities i've experienced that i havent heard of other instructors (In this country) possesing. (Which doesnt mean they dont)

So why make up a story about the roots of the school when you don't need to? It just doesnt make sense.