A less-than-ideal introduction

So this dude in a military-green jacket and sweatpants walks in 45 minutes into the session and asks to have a chat with my instructor. He's apparently already had an email invitation sent to him, and as such, he should have no excuse for not knowing that we want prospective students to participate in the training, rather than just spectate. Yet he proceeds to do the latter.
I can only overhear bits and pieces of the conversation he's having with our head instructor, but several words and phrases are mentioned more than once; "serious training", "knife fighting" and "disarms" being the most popular. And just when you think he's going to sit there quietly for the remainder of the session, he asks to feel the weight of one of our sticks, and if he could have a few unarmed techniques and/or knife disarms demonstrated for free - in order to "make up his mind about starting class". And all this while the rest of us are actually training.

Anyone else see where this is heading? :yeleyes:

 

Downhill...rapidly too!

 

Trying to understand if the class is legit?

 

Was it Master Ken?

 

Master Ken wouldn't bother. He already knows if it's not Ameridote, it's bullcrap.

 

More like Master Kareem.

 

Sounds like a macho doofus who needs a good slapping. That's the kind of guy that I would honestly want to just outright refuse to train with.

 

Why not? They're the most fun to train with!
Last macho man at my gym still remembers being beaten by the small girl....:whistle:

 

I wouldn't classify him as macho. I'm more inclined to believe he's looking for instructions in, and excuses for, how to shank right-wing extremists.

 

If he really goes around with military stuff he's most likely a Full Metal Jacket sergeant/ Kobra Kai master wannabe.
I can picture him opening his own school and sending his students to challenge your school...

 

Am I the only person here who doesn't have any particular problem with the guy's behaviour?

What's the issue with the guy wanted to watch a class before taking part? Why is it a bad thing he's talking about working with weapons (isn't that one of the hallmarks of FMA?)? Why is his clothing relevant?

 

Because he's showing little, little respect to the people training by constantly interrupting them, distracting the instructor and showing up late?
As told by the OP, seems to have a general arrogant attitude. The kind of person who can just benefit from being ridiculed a bit.

 

The issue with that is that we are not an official school but a semi-public training group. Newbies apply for training by email and are responded with invitations to come and participate. The least you could do so as not to come across as a self-indulgent me-me-me asshat is to do just that, and not the opposite of what we've asked you to do in said invitation.

Knives and their disarms are the #1 pet peeves of What If Monkeys.

Because it always tells you something about the person wearing them.

 

Aw crap. Frank Dux just walked into your dojo.

 

Sounds like a guy who wanted to train with me who said that he could block anyones punch...anyones....I just told him then why does he want to train in the martial arts, he must already know everything he needs to know.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm one of the first to scoff at somebody wearing military style clothing but there are quite a few exceptions. Some older guys who were in for a while really cling to the culture and some people just like wearing it. Dude could have been coming in from a hard labour job (reason he's late?) and that's his normal attire. I think you're a little quick to judge on that one.

I don't really see a ton of problems with what the guy did. It's his first visit, at least wait for him to attend a class or two and get to know the ropes of what's appropriate and what's not. He may be new to all of this.

 

For me it's not the jacket. It's the sweatpants. And he said he was 24.

People new to all of this don't ask about "serious" training, knife fighting and disarms.

 

What if he'd been wearing Tapout and was late because he'd been at a Charmed convention?

 

Then he should die.

 

It's funny you should mention that, because a guy wearing just that showed up after the session was over and asked to come and participate next week (we share our training locale with a TKD dojang and a Krav Maga group, the latter of which conducts training at the same time as us in the next room). He was mainly interested in how often and how hard we spar.