home: http://wmtkd.us
Welcome to Kalamazoo’s longest-established, but possibly least well known, self-defense TKD school. And our rates, as always, are still the lowest.
Our instructors both persue other, professional, full-time careers. Nothing leeches joy from an art more than constraining it within the bounds imposed by a profit motive. Having gainful employment elsewhere affords ample freedom to promote martial arts purely for its own sake. This follows in the example cheerfully set by their own instructors before them.
E-Mail Mark is a Master Instructor of Tae Kwon Do having taught it right here in Kalamazoo for the past 30 years. He is currently away on a one-year's work contract in Pennsylvania. We expect, and very much look forward to, his return to Kalamazoo after that time.
Mark graduated from PNHS in 1972 going on to obtain a BA in Chemistry/Applied Mathematics and an MS in Applied Statistics, both from WMU. Mark has worked as a chemist, quality control statistician and quality engineer within the pharmaceutical industry. He currently teaches chemistry at KVCC and does contract forensic science work with a local PI firm.
E-Mail Ĝan is a personal friend of Master Gerger since 1973 and his intermittent TKD student since ’79. Mark has handed the class over to him for the one-year interval of his work-related absense.
Ĝan graduated from PNHS in ’74 then joined the US Navy until ’78. Upon his return he worked variously until obtaining an AAS with Honors from KVCC in ’83. He makes his career as a test engineer having worked formerly for Prab Robots and Benteler Automotive here in Kalamazoo. These days he commutes happily 60 miles to Woodward FST in Zeeland for his dream job as a senior engineer in turbine engine systems. Until centering on Tae Kwon Do as his most favored martial art, Ĝan branched off intermittantly to study others such as Hakko Ryu Jujutsu. Elements from these are now encorporated into our increasingly eclectic cirriculum.
Our class time and location are about to undergo a change. Starting in November we will meet in a new location on Saturdays from 1:00 until 3:00. For more information, please feel free to call Ĝan’s work cell phone at 616-928-4975 anytime from 6:30AM until 9:00PM.
We are organized more along the lines of a club than as a for-profit business. At present, we hold class only twice a week. Between our three instructors, activities during class may, on occasion, be sorted into age groups, as appropriate. In the main, however, we train as a group, all ages together...just as we have always done, and with good result, since the 1970’s.
We must therefor impose a reasonable minimum age requirement. This we set at 10 years of age for a single family member enrolling alone and 8 years of age for any having an elder sibling already enrolled.
For information on how to join please call Ĝan’s work cell phone at 616-928-4975 anytime from 6:30AM until 9:00PM.
Do you now practice another martial art? Have you any practical self-defense techniques from your current art you’d like to share? If so then please consider cross-training with us. Our rates, averaging $10/month will surely not strain your budget.
While not officially an MMA school, nevertheless we are still quite eclectic. Our GM’s motto is: “If it works on me today, it’ll be Tae Kwon Do tomorrow.” As he himself is quick to point out, the point-scoring system employed by judges in Olympic competition favor techniques which often show less-than-ideal practicality in the real world. Such rules being arbitrary, we ignore them. But favoring a more utilitarian approach does not require at all that we abandon our roots. So while also revering the more classical origns of our art we simply remain aware that any art that has ceased to evolve day-by-day is at a dead end and only a continual search for still better methods lends it both dynamism and vitality. We feel that practicing one’s art as a quest serves to make it ever more enjoyable.
Thus our aim is to train ourselves in realistic self-defense while having fun and getting a good, healthy share of exercise. That is to say, in the course of a healthy physical regimen, why not obtain a useful skill? And what other skill could possibly be more useful than real-world self-defense? Such is our school’s philosophy. Whatever you may wish to share in the way of practical MA variations, these we would gladly welcome into our own, ever-expanding repetoir.
Note: Documents in this section are works-in-progress awaiting review.
Here are outlines & schematic diagrams for the hyung (forms) we practice. They are deliberately terse, the better to serve as a memory aid for step sequence. Thus they lack for nearly all detail and nuance. These latter, it is assumed, are best obtained through close interaction with instructors.
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The three-fold Kicho set.
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The eight-fold Palgwe set.
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The five-fold Pyung Ahn set.
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The K-zoo WMTKD class of 1974
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Meditation — Generic techniques for the martial artist.
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Items with the WMTKD logo may be purchased on-line.
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Wikipedia definition of a martial arts diploma mill.
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Real or Fake? — Is Your Martial Arts School Legitimate? — Article by Wayne Muromoto
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Jujutsu Becomes Judo — Article by Jigoro Kano
Factoid: Once again Google bursts our bubble. It turns out that Bushido, the much lauded Warrior Code of the Samurai, is partly fable...just as term chivalry is here in the West. The truth is rather more complex. While some Samurai did avocate an ethos, it was hardly universal. Those who did described their systems variously, and none gathered their system together under the term bushido. Carbon-14 datable scrolls of suitable antiquity bearing the kanji for bushido are not to be found.
First use of the term Bushido in the title of any book was Christianity and Bushido, 1894, by Uemura Maashisa which presented a thesis that Japanese should rely on Christianity just as in earlier times Bushi had relied on Confucianism. This concept was later detailed...expressly for the West, and in English...by Inazo Nitobe (1862-1933) in his now famous work entitled Bushido, first published in the year 1905.
Nitobe himself was a Quaker and trying to present Japanese warriorship in the same light as mythical Christian chivalry. This now classic book was not even translated into Japanese until 1909. Thus, from a historical context, no single, uniquely specialized codification of distinctly Samurai ethics held universal sway. Samurai conduct was instead guided by generalized Confucian norms. And never prior to recent times were these referred to under the romantic heading of bushido.
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