06/05/2026
Don’t call me a “coach.”
One could argue semantics with me, but I am not a “coach.”
I’m not terribly picky. Call me an instructor, teacher, Mr., Associate Professor, my name, but not “coach.”
If you call your instructor a coach, that is a tacit admission that what you are studying is most definitely not a martial art. Not anymore, at least. At best, it is a martial sport, hollowed of any cultural patrimony and overspecialized into something that just might still happen to function in some combat contexts, if you’re lucky.
Now there’s nothing wrong with martial sports; as I say, I don’t hate these differences. I hate conflation. And that matters. Especially to people on the outside, who may not know the difference. Ergo there’s nothing wrong with a “coach” in said sports. But I am not one of them.
