Who certified your shifu?

[Mulong]

This is a question/topic which I have been contemplating for a while; who certified your shifu to teach his/her respective discipline, or we assume because they are Asian that they are?

Personally, I know that two of my shifu were certified by their shifu; actually, one received his shifu’s wuguan after his passing. However, I’m not able to verified my others shifus.

However, does this take anything away from their ability, because at the end shouldn’t a shifu be judge on his ability/achievement or gung/gong功. Therefore, do we judge our shifus based upon their abilities or credentials?

[sanjuro_ronin]

This is a question/topic which I have been contemplating for a while; who certified your shifu to teach his/her respective discipline, or we assume because they are Asian that they are?

Personally, I know that two of my shifu were certified by their shifu; actually, one received his shifu’s wuguan after his passing. However, I’m not able to verified my others shifus.

However, does this take anything away from their ability, because at the end shouldn’t a shifu be judge on his ability/achievement or gung/gong功. Therefore, do we judge our shifus based upon their abilities or credentials?

I did.
The moment he was able to show me something I could learn and make me a better MA, that certified Him to me as a good teacher.
I have seen many a "Certiifed" teacher that couldn't fight OR teach his way out of a paper bag.
Some with lineages almost as impressive as my Johnson, almost.
:D
If there is one thing I have learned in over 30 years of MA, in different systems and in different countries it is this:
Skill counts, paper is good for wiping your butt.

[HumbleWCGuy]

I did.
The moment he was able to show me something I could learn and make me a better MA, that certified Him to me as a good teacher.
I have seen many a "Certiifed" teacher that couldn't fight OR teach his way out of a paper bag.
Some with lineages almost as impressive as my Johnson, almost.
:D
If there is one thing I have learned in over 30 years of MA, in different systems and in different countries it is this:
Skill counts, paper is good for wiping your butt.

This is exactly what was on my mind. Nice post.

[Mulong]

Thanks for your response sanjuro_ronin...

[Mulong]

However, the second half of my question: what if your shifu claims to be “certified,” but never shows proof or is later discredited?

For example, a student returns back to Hong Kong, and meets his shigong, and realizes that his shifu back in the states was only never certified to teach?

[sanjuro_ronin]

However, the second half of my question: what if your shifu claims to be “certified,” but never shows proof or is later discredited?

For example, a student returns back to Hong Kong, and meets his shigong, and realizes that his shifu back in the states was only never certified to teach?

Well, that has never happened to me so I don't know how I would feel, BUT I would think that IF whatever I had learned WORKED for me then maybe he SHOULD be certified, LOL !

I wonder if Cus D'amto or Angelo Dundee or Emanuel Steward were ever "certified?

[YouKnowWho]

a student returns back to Hong Kong, and meets his shigong, and realizes that his shifu back in the states was only never certified to teach?
This could not happen to me either because my Shigong no longer lived on this planet.

My teacher married to his teacher's daughter (son in law). My teacher's teacher married to his teachers's daughter (son in law). That tradition was broken in my generation because my teacher's daughter had her own girlfriend.

[Taixuquan99]

My teacher married to his teacher's daughter (son in law). My teacher's teacher married to his teachers's daughter (son in law). That tradition was broken in my generation because my teacher's daughter had her own girlfriend.

Your lineage rocks.

[sanjuro_ronin]

My teacher married to his teacher's daughter (son in law). My teacher's teacher married to his teachers's daughter (son in law). That tradition was broken in my generation because my teacher's daughter had her own girlfriend.

Pics please :D

[HumbleWCGuy]

However, the second half of my question: what if your shifu claims to be “certified,” but never shows proof or is later discredited?

For example, a student returns back to Hong Kong, and meets his shigong, and realizes that his shifu back in the states was only never certified to teach?

I don't know what good proof would be for sure other than their actual knowledge as SJ pointed out. If somebody knows their stuff. They know their stuff. I would be concerned about the lying though. I wouldn't necessarily leave their school if they had lied about their lineage assuming that they were actually very good, but as I said, I would probably start looking around because it is a major lie.

[Iron_Eagle_76]

However, the second half of my question: what if your shifu claims to be “certified,” but never shows proof or is later discredited?

For example, a student returns back to Hong Kong, and meets his shigong, and realizes that his shifu back in the states was only never certified to teach?

Read more into what Ronin said. I don't care if your shifu has been accredited by or has the papers that say he can teach, his skills will be what determines if his knowledge has worth.

Accredidation means little today, unfortunately. Mostly because of the fakes and phonies who made up their paperwork to allow them to dupe people into believing they have some secret undiscovered art, or to seem better than what they really were.

For example, if I walk into a school, and the instructor immediately begins talking about his lineage, his credentials, his 3,000 year old art, his super duper deadly secrets, a red flag goes up. If he asks me to watch and/or participate in a class, most of the time I will know he is legitimate or at least believes himself to be the real deal. As Ronin stated, paper is good for wiping your a**ss with, little else.

[Mulong]

In the case of boxing; your fight career speaks for itself and or how many successful fighters you have developed.

A motivate behind my question is that individuals get caught up on their shifu credentials or dare I say hype/myth and then actually looking at his/her skills or personal achievements.

[Taixuquan99]

Certification only matters to me if there is a measurable test to get that certification.

Permission is a more apt term for what occurs in most lines.

The guy who taught me my style was certified, then had his certification taken away apparently(without being told), then the best friend of his teacher just cut through the middle man and certified him again. Drama and politics.

I was given permission by my teacher, those who train under me and learn the set, the principles and fundamental movements, and usage in pressure testing, are done learning from me, and I tell them, if they teach, spend a couple of years with the others of us who know the whole system first, not in a class, we get together twice a week and do tui shou and help each other with drills we want to work on. After that, I don't care what they do with their kung fu, it's theirs, not my concern, but at least they have all of our notes and have had to face all the variations in approaches we use.

[HumbleWCGuy]

In the case of boxing; your fight career speaks for itself and or how many successful fighters you have developed.

A motivate behind my question is that individuals get caught up on their shifu credentials or dare I say hype/myth and then actually looking at his/her skills or personal achievements.

I have no problem learning from someone who wasn't certified by their instructors. I only have a problem with them lying about it.

[Taixuquan99]

I have no problem learning from someone who wasn't certified by their instructors. I only have a problem with them lying about it.

Bingo!:D:)

[sanjuro_ronin]

In the case of boxing; your fighter career speaks for itself and or how many successful fighters you have developed.

A motivate behind my question is that individuals get caught up on their shifu credentials or dare I say hype/myth and then actually looking at his/her skills or personal achievements.

Until one has successful fighters, one doesn't and before their share of great fighters, those coaches had nothing.
Other than what they KNEW and could PASS on.
The same for any physical activity.
I am certified in ITF TKD, Kodokan Judo and Kyokushin karate.
So are some guys I know that suck the perverbial ass, some certified even higher and more directly from the founder than Me and they still suck ass.
They suck a teaching and at fighting.
I am not certified in SPM or Hung Kuen and probably NEVER will be, BUT I can show you how to use those methods to put some serious hurt on someone.

I think the issue of certification becomes and issue when it is FAKED.
When someone says they have the "real *insert MA here* taught from the original master or best student, and they are lying, THEN we have an issue.
EX:
My HK sifu was recommended to me from my contacts in Macao, he lineage in HK, like his brothers in SPM, is traced back to Macao.
The guys that recommended him are dudes I trust and having met him and his brother, I was convinced of their skill.
I never verififed anything beyond what I saw and felt.

[Ray Pina]

Grandmaster Wang Zhuang Fei... and my master himself, by being a certifiable badass with and without weapons. Wish I could have learned more.:(

[Iron_Eagle_76]

Many certifications many absolutely d**ick!! I was recently invited to a Krav Maga seminar so that I could be "certified" to teach Krav Maga after a week long course. A f**ucking week:eek:

So ask yourself this, would you rather learn from someone who trained hard for 10 years from an unknown but learned good skills and is a bad a**ss, or Dewey ****hard down the street who got a week certification and now is "certified". Certification in martial arts is like being certified in anything else, if you pay someone the right amount of money you get a piece of paper that says you know what your doing, regardless of whether or not you actually do.

[MightyB]

who certified your shifu to teach his/her respective discipline?

your mom! ;)

[SPJ]

This is a question/topic which I have been contemplating for a while; who certified your shifu to teach his/her respective discipline, or we assume because they are Asian that they are?

Personally, I know that two of my shifu were certified by their shifu; actually, one received his shifu’s wuguan after his passing. However, I’m not able to verified my others shifus.

However, does this take anything away from their ability, because at the end shouldn’t a shifu be judge on his ability/achievement or gung/gong功. Therefore, do we judge our shifus based upon their abilities or credentials?

words of many students and many other teachers.

people that interacted with or knew your teacher

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U0_riUGWs8&feature=share

---

[SPJ]

your mom! ;)

or your daughter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U0_riUGWs8&feature=share

:D

[ginosifu]

Mulong:

The skill of being a good teacher has nothing to do with a piece of paper. Some Sifu of the past certified their student by marking it down on a paper, some did not. The only reason to show certification is for those potential student who need PROOF that their Sifu legit. What is more important.... A whole lot of certificates on my wall or me (the Sifu) meeting your needs?

I would chose the Sifu who met my needs and I enjoyed being in class. Some peeps need RANK and CERTIFICATION and CREDIBILITY.

I had a student who was 4th degree Black Belt and a teacher of a Japanese style. He had the word SENSEI on his license plate. Dude could not fight his way out of a wet paper bag.

Certification really does not hold water to me.

ginosifu

[SPJ]

words from people in your specialty field

words from people that knew your teacher well

these are better than a piece of paper.

words from your peers, sort of.

---

[lkfmdc]

CTS baai si'ed with several of his teachers, in a lot of circles if you are "in the door" you are expected to be of the level you can pass it on

The Chinese army had him coaching hand to hand (san da), the Chinese gov't had him coaching the Guangdong province team, those are pretty good reference points in the CMA world where you have no belts or real standards

He was also a member of the Taishan Regional Wushu Association, composed of guys who pretty much most people recognize as "teacher level"

And if I didnt' know any of those things, I would have still studied with him (in fact, DID start studying with him without knowing ANY of those things)

[SPJ]

words or letters of recommendations.

it is like a pyramid.

my teachers were very good in their counties.

recommended to learn more in provincial guo shu guan.

they competed and won more championships.

they were then recommended to central or na king guo shu guan to learn

--

they migrated to Taiwan, --

teaching students privately and publicly in guo shu clubs in high school and college

---

:cool:

[Mulong]

Cool, that means we look at the shifu ability; however, what happens if you actually don’t see his personal skills, especially that he doesn’t personally gets on the floor with his students; how do you judge him?

(I’m glad to see that some are able to see beyond the myth of a shifu.)

[sanjuro_ronin]

Cool, that means we look at the shifu ability; however, what happens if you actually don’t see his personal skills, especially that he doesn’t personally gets on the floor with his students; how do you judge him?

(I’m glad to see that some are able to see beyond the myth of a shifu.)

IF he is too old or perhaps some other issues that keeps him from "touching hands" then one need only measure his students skills.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Funny thing is that IF you go back far enough, all you get is some "self-taught fighter" with NO certification at all, that learned and perfected his "trade" the old fashioned way:
Trial and error.
And even fro the most tradionalist of tradionalists, that seems to be perfectly fine.

[MightyB]

Certification questions and/or statements never come up in good schools. The only people who hang on certifications are the people who don't know anything. This is where Lineage comes in old school TCMA - Another legit TCMAist will ask you "who's your Sifu?" or "what's your lineage?" only if your skill level is soooo low that it calls into question your credibility. And that's so they can talk bad about your sifu.

[Shaolin]

Certifications are a misleading. There's no governing body that has established which art is good and which is bad nor who is good or bad in those arts. Credentials can be just as misleading, just because an instructor/coach isn't very good at the arts him/herself doesn't mean that don't have knowledge and experience to share with the students and help them to improve their lives. In my short decade and a half of martial arts training/teaching I personally look for and advise new comers to the martial arts to look at several qualities in the instructor/coach before choosing to train with them.

For example:

How long have they been formally training?
Where/who did they learn from?
How long have they been teaching?
Are they open about their training and credentials or do they appear secretive?
Do they hold any certifications?
Have they or do they currently compete in anything?
Are they a family man/woman?
What are some of their personal and general philosophies about the martial arts?
Do they come across as a positive person and do they help others rise to success?
What kinds of community services are they/their school involved with?

There are many other questions one can ask when seeking an instructor/coach, the point is ask. Ask as many questions as possible. If you feel they don't want to answer or they're trying to rush you into a trial class or to sign up there's a good chance they don't care about you, just your pocket book.

[Lebaufist]

I had the honor to meet my teachers's teachers and their teachers were still alive. So yeah, I kinda don't have to worry about tarmac masters.

[Mulong]

I ask, because lately I have seen the new generation of so-called shifu, who hang up their certifications and shifu’s photo, but have no substances. :confused:

[Darthlawyer]

I think the best bit of Kung Fu instruction I ever got was from the movie Kung Fu Panda. "There is no secret ingredient." Provided that you are being shown a number of basic punches and kicks and basic blocks and given an opportunity and motivation to practice repeatedly and to continue to push yourself physically and spar competitively, you will get better. Whether or not a sifu has a certification doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot. The idea that some sequence of punches and kicks that may or may not have been the same sequence of punches and kicks used by master Lo Hung Dong in the Shaolin Temple's super-double-secret Great-Grandmasterflash's super secret dragon scroll doesn't mean squat.

I've seen fighters who train nothing but basic low roundhouse kick, front kicks, and western style punches for a few years mop the floor with people who have studied with teachers with amazing paper credentials. How?: they trained harder and more often.

[hskwarrior]

Yeah i was lucky enough to know my sigung for a while. even though he was a man of very few words.

[Mulong]

Frank, the old guard was like that...

[David Jamieson]

His Sifu.

although, "certified" isn't the term I would use.

My personal take is that a Sifu is a sifu when someone takes him as a sifu and calls him sifu.

A teachers' teacher would indicate that it is appropriate for the new teacher to teach though.
But without students, what are you? A practitioner. :)

[Mulong]

I’m glad to see these responses, not everyone is glamour by the sparkle, but look at the substances.

[hskwarrior]

A teachers' teacher would indicate that it is appropriate for the new teacher to teach though.
But without students, what are you? A practitioner.

true. and you become sigung eventually when your student takes a for himself. even if you teach, coach, or whatever you should always consider yourself as an eternal practitioner.