# Teaching style



## Daniel Sullivan (Sep 23, 2009)

Just to drum up some conversation on an otherwise seemingly dead section, how does your school teach?

Do they teach fundemental principles and have the students practice those principles in a variety of different situations? 

or 

Do they teach a large group of specific techniques from which the student learns the principles?

What do you see as the merits of each style?

What do you see as the flaws of each style?

Daniel


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## Nothing (Sep 29, 2009)

Daniel,
My instructor is a 7th Dan Korean and trained under Ji han Jae. He only does private lessons and only adults. He is 65 and is very traditional. I have great respect and love for him. 

He was up front with me in the beginning about the limitations of training the way he does it. Things that he sees as important like sparring and training with different body styles (short/tall, light/heavy, etc.) being limited with the personal training. On the other hand - I get a complete hour of his time - every time I go. He corrects my mistakes before they become habit and gives me tid-bits I would otherwise miss in a more "school" environment.

I also take Tae Kwon Do - so I get sparring and such from that school. It also gives me a chance to compare both environments. I enjoy both and learn in both - so they both seem to work......


Not sure where to go from here on this - kind of inconclusive I guess.


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## goingd (Sep 30, 2009)

My former Hapkido school put a lot of focus on conditioning. A Class would go something like this:

Warm up/stretch
Kneeling jumping jacks (jumping up from a kneeling position)
Crab walk, bear crawl, and a lot of duck walks forward and backward
Falling practice
Rolling practice
More kneeling jumping jacks
Breathing and meditation
Self Defense practice
Sparring

We learned a lot of full body throws so their reason for focusing so much on building up leg strength was to make sure we could support our opponent's weight. As painful and it was, I genuinely miss it. But hey, I'll be doing private Hapkido lessons with my instructor on a regular basis again soon, so I'm very excited for that! I have to wonder what his Hapkido teaching style is like.


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## Daniel Sullivan (Oct 6, 2009)

Thank you for your responses, though they were not quite on the same page as the question that I was asking.

I was addressing the way that different instructor transmit the material.  In other words, does the teacher teach a small number of principles and then in each class run the students through various drills to exercise those principles or does he or she teach a specific set of techniques for each belt level, which collectively contain the principles in question and from there either allowing the students to discover the principles on their own or drawing the principles from the lessons as the student progresses?

Daniel


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## zDom (Oct 6, 2009)

Daniel Sullivan said:


> Thank you for your responses, though they were not quite on the same page as the question that I was asking.
> 
> I was addressing the way that different instructor transmit the material.  In other words, does the teacher teach a small number of principles and then in each class run the students through various drills to exercise those principles or does he or she teach a specific set of techniques for each belt level, which collectively contain the principles in question and from there either allowing the students to discover the principles on their own or drawing the principles from the lessons as the student progresses?
> 
> Daniel



"... a specific set of techniques for each belt level, which collectively contain the principles in question and from there either allowing the students to discover the principles on their own or drawing the principles from the lessons as the student progresses ..." seems to describe our curriculum pretty well.


Large number/small number of techniques is SO subjective when it comes to hapkido, I declined to answer when the question was couched that way.


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## goingd (Oct 7, 2009)

Ah, well, we were taught a specific set of techniques. During the self defense practice various concepts about the techniques would be explained and demonstrated to us. Though we also often were taught individual concepts, through motions and exercises, that we would translate into the execution of our technique.


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## JimR (Oct 7, 2009)

Our classes are very dynamic.  Our GM takes each student aside during class to review their last technique and teach them their next.  Each belt level has a specific set of techniques that he teaches in order. I could write a book on how the techniques are grouped and progress in order of difficulty and incorporation with prior techniques, but I won't.

The instructors are 4th Dan and above.  Each instructor has their own particular style and the classes are broken down into "all belt levels", "White to Purple belt levels", "Green to Black belt levels".  The instructors that teach the classes I go to will work on technique practice during the second half of the warm up period, then work on whatever they want afterward.  The classes are basically divided into four sections, warm up stretches/push ups/sit ups,  belt level combination practice/other combinations, whatever the instructor wants to focus on during this session, sparring.

The third section is the most dynamic as sometimes we practice for intensity or accuracy of techniques, sometimes concepts and approach, sometimes speed drills, sometimes grab defense practice with resisting opponents, occasionally one step sparring.


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## Daniel Sullivan (Oct 8, 2009)

goingd said:


> Ah, well, we were taught a specific set of techniques. During the self defense practice various concepts about the techniques would be explained and demonstrated to us. Though we also often were taught individual concepts, through motions and exercises, that we would translate into the execution of our technique.


This is very similar to our school.  We have a set curriculum, and then he has more free form classes where he applies various principles in exercises that are not a part of the "official" curriculum.  We also do free sparring, which is hugely helpful.

Daniel


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