I strongly warn you not to send any of your kids to All Star Martial Arts. We just completed our first week at All Star Martial Arts. Yesterday my husband went in and talked to the owner and requested a refund of our money (minus uniform and 2-week trial fees). Which they probably will not give us, as they spent a lot of time making excuses and arguing with my husband. So we are out quite a bit of money.

Our son was attending the day-time classes for beginning students with no prior experience. The class also includes kids who have a little bit higher rank. Here is what we observed:

1. The kids are not warmed up properly, which means that when they
do more strenuous moves, they get injured. Our son got injured during his second day there. When we brought this to the attention of the dojo owner he made a lot of excuses but showed no concern whatsoever.

2. The instructors did not demonstrate or teach. There were two
very young instructors and they kept walking around the class telling the children to "practice their forms" (which most kids didn't even hear because the class was such chaos and no one was listening). When my son asked the teacher what to do, the teacher said, "well, just watch the other kids and copy them." That might have worked except it was clear that the other kids had no idea what they were doing either. The teachers did not demonstrate the proper way to do any punches or blocks. As anyone who has taken martial arts knows, there are a lot of wrong ways to do a kick, punch or block that can result in serious injury. No responsible teacher tells any student to just start kicking or punching away without proper instruction first.

3. The class was huge -- about 50 or 60 kids -- with 2 instructors. The instructors were completely overwhelmed and the class was complete chaos. It took half of the class time for the class to even get quiet and organized enough to do a simple kicking exercise. No attempt was made by either of the instructors to correct any of the kids' technique during the exercise or to correct anything during any other part of the class.

4. The class could not hear the instructor. In the next room, which
is divided only by a fabric partition, a class was exercising to extremely loud music. Many of the kids in my son's class could not hear the instructor and kept asking him to repeat things so that they could hear. I went out to the front desk and told the woman at the desk that the kids in the class could not hear the instructor because of the music. She said "well it's never been a problem and no one else has complained." The music did not get turned down and many of the kids went through most of the class without hearing much of anything from the instructor.

5. There was zero discussion of the responsibility that comes with
learning a martial art. Martial arts are dangerous. You learn how to disable and kill people. This comes with a lot of responsibility to use the art in an ethical, responsible way. One of the precepts we recited during every karate class I attended was "there is no first strike, " meaning that you are NEVER to use your karate aggressively to hurt or intimidate others. It is to be used defensively ONLY. There was nothing about this during my son's lessons at All Star. Respect and self-discipline are essential to responsible martial arts and this was sadly lacking.


6. When my husband spoke to the dojo owner about our concerns, he was told that the day-time classes are not really serious classes, that they don't really teach much, that we could come to an evening class to actually learn the basics (the morning class was full of beginning students who should be learning the basics), and that we had not been there sufficient time to make an accurate judgment. My husband and I and our older children spent 5 years studying karate at a dojo in Oregon. We are perfectly competent to make a judgment about the quality of teaching in a martial arts dojo. It really does not take long to observe that students are not being taught anything. If no one is requiring the students to pay attention, no one is demonstrating anything, and no one is correcting anything, then obviously no learning is taking place.

I'm appalled at what we observed and experienced at All Star. I will not take my son back. Not only is this a waste of my time and money, but it's irresponsible and dangerous. This has been a very expensive learning experience and I'm hoping to help some others avoid a similar experience.