IMAC, a pointless organisation or not

yomchi

Since the inception of the Irish Martial Arts Commision in the early 90's very little has happened in the way of government recognition and or high level sponsorship for international athletes of the various styles.

Most up and coming athletes have to rise funds locally to support their trips abroad and get very little if any help from the sports council.
Also the Anti-doping regulations introduced through IMAC seem to be a paper tiger as still some athletes use performance enhancing drugs (said from my own experience of some people)

So today, the question has to be aske - is there much point to the IMAC or do we need such a body for Irish martial arts.

Discuss:)

Roper

1) its fairly pointless and inequitable as some organisations are excluded, even in the sports/arts IMAC claims to represent.

2) affiliation to the sports council is a bit pointless for something like Aikido which has no sporting side.

3) sporting arts such as BJJ and MMA are excluded, although that assumes that anyone in these sports would want to be affiliated with IMAC at all

4) I have never, not even once, seen anything positive that IMAC has done except to advertise themselves as the ONLY governing body for martial arts in Ireland.

I wonder if the Sports Council have a review process for NGBs and if they would drop one if it proved to be unrepresentative?

Tim_Murphy

3) sporting arts such as BJJ and MMA are excluded, although that assumes that anyone in these sports would want to be affiliated with IMAC at all

Are these actually excluded? Why? On what grounds?

4) I have never, not even once, seen anything positive that IMAC has done except to advertise themselves as the ONLY governing body for martial arts in Ireland.

Don't they run coaching programmes with the NCTC?

Roper

Tim_Murphy wrote: »

Are these actually excluded? Why? On what grounds?

Don't they run coaching programmes with the NCTC?

someone with a better memory than me can answer the first one. As for the second, what is the point in someone from a martial art that has no sporting side doing those coaching courses? Especially when there are so many bodies around Ireland desperate for course places.

smacl

Roper wrote: »

4) I have never, not even once, seen anything positive that IMAC has done except to advertise themselves as the ONLY governing body for martial arts in Ireland.

I attended a free course they hosted a couple of years back on initial treatment of head injuries in contact sports. The guy giving the course was the then Irish rugby team medic and I found the course very informative. Particularly the bit that most permanent paralysing injuries are caused by people trying to help the injured party after the initial injury has taken place. I'd guess it would be a useful enough course for anyone running a MMA gym or doing any full contact striking / throwing.

Outside of that, yep, IMAC don't seem to do a whole heap. I'm very surprised that MMA and BJJ aren't represented.

columok

IMAC turns it's nose up at "makey uppy jiu jitsu" aka BJJ. MMA is for thugs as far as it is concerned.

Nothingcompares

It was my interpretation that IMAC has a light contact kickboxing and similar martial art fetish.

Scramble

I think in addition to mentioning "makey-uppey jujutsu" they also added they didn't want to be associated with "beat 'em up better merchants", although I don't have that to hand. Did I read it in the Irish Fighter?

Damo W

Tim_Murphy wrote: »

Don't they run coaching programmes with the NCTC?

Other organisations run these as well.