Certified seminar instructors?

[mun hung]

How do you people feel about instructors who were taught and certified thru seminars and three week courses, who use "how to" instructor manuals to teach class?

Is it really possible to learn from someone who is an ocean away or on the other side of the country?

I've heard of people taking trips to Hong Kong and receiving certifications to teach. How qualified can they be?

[Ish]

I dont like the idea of people only learning what they teach through three week courses etc, but people could be training all the time in this country and go to hong kong just for the certificate to teach

[bao]

Mr. Hung if that is your real name....

I personally don't think anyone can learn the complete system from any martial arts from seminars whether wing chun or jeet kune do. I have heard arguments stating that a really talented martial artist can become a sifu through seminars but what is the probality of that happening?

For example, if a student studied medicine through seminars to become a doctor, I don't it is odd or nutts that sincere patients, and the public, and the authentically trained doctors would doubts the abilities and knowledge of such a seminar doctor. The most important thing is that any person would be insane to trust their life to a seminar doctor.

For me, seminar doctors are practicing malpractice (period) and not medicine. If not, let the bloody fool open you open and operate on you. The same goes for a seminar martial arts instructors. It is not to say that all trained abd experienced instructors are good but "probablity" is on their side.

All in all, it is an insult to the martial arts and the intelligence of the people for seminar instructors to recognize themselves as in the same level as trained and experienced instructors. Buyers beware...

bao

[WongFeHung]

I am currently studying to become a gynocologist through a home study course from the back of a matchbook. I need lab partners for more in depth work. Please send your sisters, wives, girlfriends to my house. This is all in the nature of science and education.

[dedalus]

1. Doctors do attain certificates in such methods as massage, joint manipulation, accupuncture for pain management and so forth via seminars - often over weekends. Specialists also learn new techniques (like hypnosis in psychiatry or laproscopy in surgery) through seminars and lit review etc. It happens, and they do fine, although I'd still rather see my TCM guy for accupuncture because he knows more about the system as a whole - it has to do with how much you already have to bring to the process.

As far as the safety of medical practise goes, you might also consider the difference between the GP who has had 1 hour of instruction in sleep disorders in med school, and the patient who has gone away and spent hours researching the subject on his own initiative. Most topics get covered briefly in med school, and even postgrad training (which is largely delivered doctor-to-doctor on the wards) is vulnerable to the quality of your clinical mentors... so to its all dodgy to much the same extent.

2. Learning from a master who is far away also happens all the time, and is also fine. A great deal of martial arts practice lies in drilling techniques over and over and over. You need someone to show you how to do it the first time, and you need someone to correct your mistakes. You do not need someone to evaluate each of your hundreds of repetitions, and indeed part of the advancement lies in figuring things out for yourself.

You can't tell who knows their **** and who does not based on the location of their teacher. The only way to know is to feel what they do directly, and the martial arts represent an ideal discipline in which to practice this strategy.

[CerberusXXL]

I would personally stay away from people who learned through a few seminars and "how to" instructor manual.
This is definitely a sad part about martial arts today.

[bao]

To D:

Greetings and good health.

You mean if I "drilled techniques" over and over again, i have gung fu? How do you drill techniques? what is the paradigm? Are you copying or learning? Can you explain the difference of copying and learning a technique?


bao

[dedalus]

Greetings to you BT :)

I am fortunate anough to have a teacher who transmits his knowledge to me directly, but I still believe that the "hard work" of gong fu is conducted for the most part by oneself. I spend much more time in a week practising in private and trying to feel correct structure in movements than I do in actually learning new techniques or even in practicing two-person drills with my teacher. He *always* seems to have corrections for me, but often they will be of the form "ok, now let me show you a more advanced way to do that".

Now as for the distinction between copying and learning, I think that's a very interesting comparison to bring up. I feel that the learning I do is really a matter of discovering the way movements feel when performed correctly, although I always have an image of my teacher in mind so that I have an example to follow. Although I believe that each person must craft their fighting art to suit themselves, I also believe that this occurs at an advanced stage and that imitation is important for the many years comprising the "beginning". Imitation is a vehicle to understanding the feel of a technique for oneself, but that understanding is the ultimate goal I think.

When I initially wrote a response to this question, I had in mind a fellow student who lives several hundered kilomenters away and trains with us only a few times a year. Although he doesn't get weekly feedback from our teacher, his skill level is very high indeed and when he can attand he always receives a lot of information to polish up while he is away. I have also heard of fighters who have deliberately taken time out of their lives to study intensively with their teacher, only to be told to go away and spend their extra time figuring it out for themselves - which they often do! This sense of presonal discovery is one of the things that really keeps my interest in martial arts alive. I do need to be told and shown what to do, and I do need to be corrected, but only I myself can learn how to make those instuctions work, and that takes a lot of time spent looking inwards.

So it seems to me, anyway :)

[dedalus]

Bao Tran,

I should add that I train in bagua and taiji, which are initially form-heavy arts. Nevertheless, it would seem to me that practice in sil lum tao and the other wing chun forms provides a good analogue to circle walking etc.

[wingchunalex]

i certainly think it is ok to attend seminars and workshops, but to be "certified" by seminars is ludicrise (sp). if i attend a sil lim tau, chim kui, bil jee, muk jong, knives, pole, and chi sau seminar. does that make me a sifu, hell no!!!. certification through siminars is just a dishonorable way of making money. your paying for your "black belt/black sash/ what ever you want to call it". stuff like this is the reason martail arts all over the world have become tainted and have lost the true spirit of the martial arts. lets say each seminar is ohh, $70, thats about a good average fee. i could become a "sifu" for $450 plus they will probabley charge a ceritfication fee, ehh add $100. so i could become a sifu for around $600, lower than some peoples monthely rent. thats pathetic. martial arts is more than knowing movements and how to fight, its about becoming a better human being.

know yourself don't show yourself, think well of yorself don't tell of yourself. lao tzu

[dedalus]

Wingchunalex,

Surely the point isn't about seminar certification per se. If you went ahead and learnt wing chun in only a month's worth of seminars, your own students would beat the hell out of you as soon as you opened a school.

The broader point to be made is that any certification is crap. You could be just as bad after 5 years with Leung Tin, and still only have an instructor's diploma to defend yourself with. My first instructor in martial arts was exactly like that - now he's a bad accountant again.

In martial arts, skill is the measure. I'd rather learn from kick-ass you after a month of seminars than rat**** you after a decade with the gm.