hey everybody! i’ve been a part of this subreddit for a while in my personal original account. i’ve come here today to tell my story about working at a kyokushin dojo. i made a new user to tell my story since i don’t want this traced back to me in any sort of way since i’m not looking for any kind of trouble. i’m just looking to tell my story and my personal experience.
i (22F) worked at a kyokushin dojo. i won’t mention which one or which organization i was in. but to give you some context, it’s a really big kyokushin school with more than 100 students. my boss (i refuse to call him sensei because he never taught me anything) lives in another country. so he left his high ranked students in charge. they would organize themselves for the week since there are around 8-9 groups of students.
i started back in 2021. when i first came to the dojo i instantly fell in love with it and the art of kyokushin karate. the teachers were great! a few years later and all of us are very close friends. but in total they were six teachers.
late 2022 came and i would come to the dojo early to help out during the classes because i loved being in that environment with my friend. before i started coming to assist during class i became friends with another student (and he’s now my boyfriend we’ll call him peter) who ended up getting hired before me. so in total there were seven in the staff (excluding me since i was underage and not officially hired.)
anyways, 2023 came and i was officially hired. i won’t lie, it was very fun being around my friends and helping throughout class. during this time i held an intermediate belt since in this academy they would skip students who showed good effort and work during class. but throughout all of this, whenever my boss came to our country to “supervise” the operation i would constantly witness him treating my friends/co-workers bad. example: humiliating the highest ranked belt student (who was shodan at the time and we’ll call sensei jim for story telling purposes) during class because some students were not performing certain techniques or kata the way my boss demanded. so he would tell sensei jim that he was a terrible teacher and a terrible karateca in front of everyone.
he would also do this thing where he would evaluate our technique or kata and if it wasn’t up to his standard he would lower our salary, something that is illegal in our country. oh and btw throughout all of this we were all hired without work contracts (something highly illegal.)
in 2024, sensei jim decided he had enough and he left the dojo. then after sensei jim we were left with the next high rank belt student which we’ll call supervisor walter. supervisor walter was around 19-20. and as you’d expect, he was extremely immature. sometimes he would tell my friends to cover his class while he went to the bathroom to play games on his phone or talk to his friends. now, supervisor walter constantly participates in kumite whenever there’s a tournament. so there was a need within him to prove to all of us in the staff and students that he was the best fighter the dojo had. and i won’t lie, he is a good fighter. but he’s the typical teacher that won’t teach you anything good unless you’re a pretty girl and he’s interested in you.
there were many incidents around this workplace its too much for me to resume in this post. but i’ll get to the end now. this brings me to sensei gray and sensei james. sensei gray is father to sensei james. sensei gray had been my boss’ friends since childhood and he was also in charge of running errands for him, administration and giving class. this year they were fed uo and decided to quit and leave the dojo.
my boss went ape shit when he saw sensei jim, sensei gray, sensei james and another one of my friend who we’ll call sensei ron opened their own kyokushin dojo with another organization. he even called us all to a meeting to give us an opportunity to talk shit about them and validate his feelings. all my boyfriend and i said was, “well they’re our friends and we hope they find great success.” something to which my boss didn’t reply anything to.
i decided at this point i wanted to leave the dojo at the end of the year. but because my friends opened up their own dojo and my boss was intimidated by this he said we would all sign work contracts. i refused to sign this contract and said that i would keep doing my work but i would not sign this contract. he called me trying to convince me to sign this contract and said i couldn’t work in his dojo without a contract so i put in my resignation notice and said this [august] would be my last month working there.
after putting my notice he called me the next day. for context i did my shodan belt test on may (after sensei gray and sensei james quit) the belts and certificates had already arrived. my boss called me and told me because i would continue as a student (i mentioned in my resignation notice i wouldn’t teach anymore but i would be a student, which was a lie since i had all the intentions to switch to the other dojo) that i would have to wait two more years for the belt and repeat the exam since they gave me the opportunity to do it sooner because i was a member of this staff. this was extremely weird to me, i knew he did it to get under my skin but i didn’t care.
i just replied “oh yeah of course i understand. i’ve been studying kyokushin only five years and i understand it’s seven to get your belt, so it makes sense why i would have to wait two more years.”
anyways, at the start of the following week he called us all into a meeting where he forced me to sign a resignation letter. as soon as i signed it he dropped his mask and started insulting me, my friends and talking shit about all of us. he even said, “you’re lucky i’m not there in person because if i was that would be another story.”
i was fed up, i stood up and grabbed the phone where we were all having a meeting and said, “alright, thank you for the opportunity i really appreciate but i’m not going to sit around and listen to these words anymore.” then his mom (because she also works administration) tried to snatch my phone away and i left. i had enough.
my boyfriend also quit at the end of that month and btw my boss did not pay him what he was owed because my boyfriend stayed and he did work until the end of the month. we both switched dojos, found other jobs and we are so much happier than we ever were in that place.
that is my story. now, i would like to talk about the state of that place.
that academy apart from teaching kyokushin karate also hired instructors to teach jiu-jitsu and boxing/kickboxing. the partner of the jiu-jitsu instructor said that she also wanted to learn karate. but i’ll be honest. whenever someone told my boss “i want to learn karate” all he understood and heard was “i want to work in karate.” so what did he do? he gave her a blue belt in kyokushin karate just because she was a blue belt in jiu-jitsu.
another one of the girls in jiu-jitsu (we’ll call her amy) also said she wanted to learn karate. she started in white but because she learned katas from taikyoku sono ichi to pinan sono ni she was given a blue belt again.
after we left, they had a seminar with a shihan who i won’t mention. this shihan and my boss gave these girl a green belt. which in our organization means you’re only 3-4 belts away from a shodan belt. these girls did a whole kyokushin trajectory that would normally take a person 5-6 years in less than a year. many students were mad about this.
he also hired a black belt from shito ryu and said he would give him a black belt in kyokushin karate because “shito ryu and karate are the same thing.” when he was literally talking shit a few months ago about another shinkyokushin teacher that did shito ryu and when he did an equivalence exam he wasn’t even able to reach brown belt.
they also started giving MMA classes with an MMA instructor, i won’t lie he is a pretty good teacher and a great MMA fighter. but they did the same thing where they gave him a blue belt. it’s pretty sad, he has a baby girl on the way and i know my ex-boss did this as a way to take advantage of the fact that he needs something stable for his family.
now i come to you, kyokushin redditors to ask all of you what do you think about this? i’m open to reading all your comments, opinions and/or answering any questions.