A “McDojo” is a term used to describe a martial arts school or studio that prioritizes making money over providing quality martial arts instruction. The name is a play on “McDonald’s,” the fast-food restaurant chain known for its standardized, mass-produced menu items.
Sadly, there are many martial arts academies today still sharing the same outdated, and often content that was never functional to begin with.
McDojos often charge high fees for classes, testing, and uniforms. They promote students quickly, sometimes without demonstrating required skills. Instructors may lack proper credentials or experience in the martial art.
McDojos overemphasize competition and winning trophies. They push expensive gear and merchandise purchases on students. Limited contact sparring can hinder real-world self-defense skills. Some McDojos foster a cult-like loyalty to the school and instructor.
The cult like mentality is obviously needed considering that there’s no defending this particular technique once challenged.
While BJJ has it’s ups and downs, one thing we can say is that even the academies that have blue belts teach have a lot of useful techniques to choose from.
Recently, Renzo Gracie helped shine a spotlight on a particularly problematic technique.
A systema like martial art suggests you grab your opponent by his pectoral muscle and use that to manipulate the body into submission.
The shady technique was brought to Gracie’s attention by Mark “Mugen” Striegl. Mugen is an MMA artists who saw fit to test this theory. Of course he has an MMA record consisting of 18 wins and 5 losses at age 35 – he’s currently competing in the UAE warriors, having been cut from UFC in 2022 after back to back losses to Chas Skelly and Said Nurmagomedov.
Mugen made fun of the ridiculous technique showing quickly what would happen if you actually tried this on a stranger. OF course this technique has a weird aspect to it – so it’s unclear how one even got the idea to implement it. For starters, unathletic people don’t have a lot of pectorals to grab on to begin with.
It’s unclear if Gracie was reacting to the ‘technique’ or the skit mocking it, but regardless this is one for the history books.
