Capability??

[PangQuan]

One of the current threads sparked my interest in this.

I have been studying martial arts for roughly six years now. Three of those years at my current tcma school.

my teachers is skilled, through many years of hard practice. the first half of his life was spent in temple life, thus temple training. He has expressed in the past how little time many of today's martial artists have actually put into thier practice.

total hours.

as he once said, on average 2 years of a standard student of his, equals out to about 6 months of his early training. this is the average 2 hours a day 3 days a week type of student. Not all of his students are such. he also speaks of how rapidly skill will decrease with out continual practice.

with this in mind i often ponder at what point will i feel capable of teaching. sure i know i can take someone with little to no martial experience and make a big difference in thier life. Yet i still do not feel even close to comfortable with the idea of being a teacher. This i know will take time, i feel i have been lucky enough to have found a young master. one who has put in the time and is very capable still of performing everything he wants to teach.

So, the question i put to you all is this;

when is someone capable of opening a school? I have seen many people who hold the title "sifu" who have studied the same time as me, or less even! Are these people natural genius's? have they got something I dont? or do they have no scruples as to pass themselves off as masters of thier techniques?

pondering this has confused me to no end. at some points it is frustrating to think that people with roughly the same skill level as me are teaching and owning thier own schools.

also just wanted a new topic. this place is feeling stagnant.

[neilhytholt]

my teachers is skilled, through many years of hard practice. the first half of his life was spent in temple life, thus temple training. He has expressed in the past how little time many of today's martial artists have actually put into thier practice.
total hours.

...

when is someone capable of opening a school? I have seen many people who hold the title "sifu" who have studied the same time as me, or less even! Are these people natural genius's? have they got something I dont? or do they have no scruples as to pass themselves off as masters of thier techniques?


It's a matter of sales. There are all types of martial arts schools and sifus.

There are schools with highly talented teachers with great pedigrees teaching a number of students and training them well, and there are small schools with great teachers teaching them well ...

And then there are schools with martial artists who teach their students like crap, and they flail about like limp hoses. This seems to be the majority of schools out there.

IMHO somebody shouldn't open a school unless they're really good at what they do and want to put the time in and make their students good at self defense, but that appears to be the minority of schools out there.

So it's a matter of a) can you get students and b) can you live with the results. Can you teach them well enough so they don't flail around, or do you even care? It appears that most teachers do not even care.

That's my 0.02 on the subject.

[SevenStar]

So, the question i put to you all is this;

when is someone capable of opening a school? I have seen many people who hold the title "sifu" who have studied the same time as me, or less even! Are these people natural genius's? have they got something I dont? or do they have no scruples as to pass themselves off as masters of thier techniques?

pondering this has confused me to no end. at some points it is frustrating to think that people with roughly the same skill level as me are teaching and owning thier own schools.

also just wanted a new topic. this place is feeling stagnant.

There are lots of factors here, so I guess it's kind of vague. When you are truly ready, your instructor will let you know. The problem there is that not all instructors themselves are ready, so how will they know when you are? Also, you have people who leave their school early, make up some certifications and begin teaching on their own. These people decided themselves that they were ready to teach, for better of worse.

[SanHeChuan]

You don't have to be a "Master" to teach. you just have to know more than your students and be able to pass that along. The united states is a highly mobile society most people don't stay in one area long enough to train at the same place for 10 years. Say a student is only with you for six years, You've trainned for six years so presumably you have enough knowedge to pass on for six years. If they want to stay on longer than six years, you've now been training for 12 and should still have something to teach. Aslong as you continue your education you stay ahead of your students. Martial arts is a life long journey, so it's not like you can wait till your done to start teaching because you're never done. After 4 years it becomes mostly self study anyway, like college.

Look at it this way, do you thing you need a BA, Masters or PHD to teach?
4 years, 6 years, 8 years?

If you start teaching with a BA by the time your first student get's his BA you've got your PHD.

Just don't stop learning. One of the things that I love about teaching anything is that you learn it so much better than just studing it. You truly become profiecent through teaching.

[PangQuan]

Just don't stop learning. One of the things that I love about teaching anything is that you learn it so much better than just studing it. You truly become profiecent through teaching.

This is a great thing. I have noticed this as well. Often sifu will have students who understand technique, or form, teach the new students.

when i get the opportunity to do such, i notice my reflection will be from a different angle then when i am simply in practice. i have been able to more accurately understand portions and correct myself though the observation of teaching.

[PlumDragon]

Sorry if this post gets long:


as he once said, on average 2 years of a standard student of his, equals out to about 6 months of his early training. this is the average 2 hours a day 3 days a week type of student. Not all of his students are such. he also speaks of how rapidly skill will decrease with out continual practice.Certainly it is true that you gain more knowledge/skill when you are spending greater amounts of time per day/week studying a given topic. However consider this:
With most things, as time spent increases, there is a diminishing returns in relation to ability/knowledge gained. Working at something--be it MA, calculus...shaping bonsai trees--spending twice as much time on something does not necessarily manifest itself as a gain of twice the skill/knowledge, albeit its near impossible to objectively measure those skills. I imagine each person has a best "exposure time" to a topic to maximize absoprtion/retention rate, and while you certainly improve faster with more time spent, 8 hours a day/6 days a week of training is probably not the most "efficient" learning curve...Time inb etween practice is time that your brain is working to internalize what you are learning, and its important. And thats an encouraging though given the dynamics of life as we know it today! ;)
Always a balancing act...



with this in mind i often ponder at what point will i feel capable of teaching.An interesting question. The way I see it, the longer you have trained, the more profound your training, and hence your teaching becomes. its not black and white, its a sliding gradient. If you know the material and can apply it, then the only obstacle for you to overcome in teaching is how to pass that info on accurately (there are plenty of great martial artists who cant teach for crap, and plenty of martial artists with little to no martial talent that are excellent teachers...and everything in between). As time passes, you tweak, perfect, advance your use of your style. The same process takes place with teaching, you tweak, streamline and balance your teaching methods to become a good teacher. If you constantly try to compare yourself to your teacher, then you will never be ready to teach. He is your teacher: Of course he makes your kung fu look horrible. But as the cycle inevitably continues, students of yours will experience the same thing; just look at new students that come into your shcool, a mans kung fu ability is obvious.




when is someone capable of opening a school? I have seen many people who hold the title "sifu" who have studied the same time as me, or less even!?That answer probably varies among those who open schools. Probably everywhere from, "Time to make some money" to the more humble, "My teacher said thats what he wanted me to do".

Also keep in mind, that some styles are much less complex than others. Some styles deal with very rudimentary concepts while others are much more profound...some styles have very very few techniques to master while others have literally thousands. Take western boxing for example. No reason to train in western boxing for say, 12 years before you start teaching...I think really, this is a very case-by-case basis.



pondering this has confused me to no end. at some points it is frustrating to think that people with roughly the same skill level as me are teaching and owning thier own schools.While I certainly think its important to have a high level of skill before opening a school:

Everyone has different ideas about teaching...about life, opinions; about whats right and wrong, black and white, ready and not, skillful and not...We all have different goals and perceptions, different experiences and pasts, different ideas about what we want, what we are...How we got there, etc. None of which are necessarily invalid. But perhaps its important to give those guys the benefit of the doubt before it is decided for sure that they should not own a school yet... ;)

[PangQuan]

hey thanks for the response plumdragon.

waiting to get paid after a few months off from work. im jonesing for some of your jow.