# seminar certifications



## thekuntawman (May 14, 2003)

i decided to make a new thread because my reply to "dishonesty" is a change of subject.

seminar certification is okay i guess, the way some modern arnis do it, with probably 7-10 lessons a year. but to be certified as a teacher, i dont believe it should be given  with seminars alone. and what test is given for the certification? or is there even one test that can determine if somebody is qualified or diserving to be a teacher. i dont think so.

in many tae kwon do styles, all that is needed to be a teacher is to know how to perform all the movements in the style, from white belt to black belt. in arnis eskrima you learn most of the movements by the time you are a intermediate student, and your higher levels are determined by your fighting ability. some people will judge you as advanced or expert by your ability to fight against different opponents with no rest, or to hold your own against very good fighters. in my school for example i fight my intermediate students myself. but in the seminar, if they put a lot of weight on fighting performance to be considered an expert, that would be good. but i dont think they do. and then, can you have a test to see if someone is ready to be a teacher, i dont think so. this is like to certify somebody as a "wise man". you cant do it, because wisdom cannot be tested. so the qualification of "teacher" should be earned by time and your accomplishments, not some test.

also, in the seminars, do you separate the learning by level, or do you lump everybody together in one class. i saw many seminars, and they put everyone together. so the advance guys are the ones who saw more because they came to more seminars, and they remembered more. this is not how to train advance and intermediate students. advance students need a lot of lecture and feedback from their fighting. you cant do that in a seminar and get people to come back. so what do you do? show them stuff they never saw before. spend very little time on basics. and eat up time doing drills. i have seen seminars from almost every FMA style represented on this forums, and i know what they do.

how you improve the seminar, is to separate them by topic and level, like how billy mcgrath does it. when you go to his seminar, you know what your going to learn, not to go and do your basic 12 again because 5 people are there for the first time. but you still should spend at least one hour retraining basics, especially since you dont see your student that much. in bill bcgrath's seminars you have to be a certain level to go to certain lessons, so the impatient people will have to earn there learning, not just pay for what they want to do. and finally, you have to make sure they spend a lot of time fighting, and much of this time, one fight at a time so you can give them feedback. cacoy canete does this.

once somebody gets the expert level, they should have at least 2 or three years before you let them teach. can a guy who just got his law degree start teaching law? no, he has to apprentice under somebody to "learn the ropes" learn what the real world has to teach you, and learn what they dont tech you in class. finally, you have to earn a reputation. a real reputation, not "i am certified by so and so" reputation. your reputation should speak for itself anytime a person challenges your knowledge. a good way to carry a business card for the eskrimador is to carry sticks in his car. this way, if they want to see what you know or what level you are, you can show them exactly what you can do. any expert who is not willing to do that is unworthy as a teacher.

for example, someone asked a few weeks ago about greg alland. he will spar with anyone who asks. that is why most of the people who talk bad about him probably havent met him yet. but isnt that how it usually is in the martial arts.

i know i talk bad about seminars a lot, but they arent that bad, just how people use them. but the argument that most people would not have FMA if not for the seminars, i dont agree with that. not everything is for everyone. mcdojos, are for everyone. hard core martial arts, is not. but when you make FMA for anybody, you just made FMA into a mcdojo. not everybody is cut out to be a lawyer, or doctor, or prize fighter. but what if you made it so easy anybody can study law, or medicine or become a pro boxer, the easy way, without keeping the high standards, just so "everybody can do it too"? this is what the seminar industry did for a very good fighting art.


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## bart (May 15, 2003)

There is a lot of difference of opinion regarding the role of _teaching_ in the martial arts. I could handle myself pretty well before I started teaching, but when I began to teach, I really began to learn the subtleties of the art. I also had a drive to analyze each principle and technique that came across my plate. 

If a teacher passes on skills to his students with the understanding that they are valuable in regards to defending themselves, then the teacher does have a responsibility to make sure that the techniques and principles are sound. However, when it comes to actual fighting, martial arts are like doing a fire drill over and over again. When the time comes and the house is actually on fire, you have a better chance of surviving than you would have had without the practice. There is no guarantee that your martial art will get you through a fight one hundred percent of the time. But it does raise your chances of getting through it.



> ...you have to earn a reputation. a real reputation, not "i am certified by so and so" reputation. your reputation should speak for itself anytime a person challenges your knowledge...



I think it's important to point out that years, depth, and intensity of training should count for your reputation as well. In my past jobs I've dealt a lot with physical violence, but I don't have a reputation to the general public as a fighter and I don't want one. To the people who know me I have a reputation of being more interested in the fighting aspect of martial arts than in say, rank or money. 




> a good way to carry a business card for the eskrimador is to carry sticks in his car. this way, if they want to see what you know or what level you are, you can show them exactly what you can do. any expert who is not willing to do that is unworthy as a teacher...someone asked a few weeks ago about greg alland. he will spar with anyone who asks.



I don't know who greg alland is or anything about him, but for his own sake he needs to carry around waivers and some good liability insurance. I respect the idea of sparring whenever wherever, but California is a litigation happy place and it is always best to err on the side of caution when doing that sort of thing. I would probably carry two helmets and two sets of gloves as well, so as to reduce the liability risk. If you do damage you may have to pay damages. If you have the sticks in your car and you're not on the way to or from class, that could be construed by a judge as premeditation, especially if the person states in a public forum that they would fight anyone anytime for any reason. So good for him, he has a lot of moxy, but if you'll fight anyone, anytime, that's shortsighted in regard to the rest of your life, like your home and wages and the livelihood of your family. 

I've never tried to train for certification in the martial arts through a seminar. I've been at seminars where some were doing that, but it wasn't for me. However, I've had good teachers who learned that way. They diligently studied the material they were given and worked with students of there own to build their knowledge and skills. They used teaching as a way to learn and become better. In some ways, this made them better in the art than some people who trained directly at a school in another city. They had to work hard and internalize what they were learning. Thus each component of the art became _their own_. 

I used to go to the Inosanto Academy in LA. There were some people, not many, but some,  that I met there who had trained for more than a decade. But the system was not _their own_. Other people who had learned in seminars and came to attend the school for a week or so to enhance their seminar based training, were sometimes far superior in skill and internalization. Much of this again boils down to the person and their individual desire to learn and work. But one thing about every single on of those people is that they all had students. They were teaching and using the teaching to become better at the art. There are many levels of teaching. To split it into two and only two levels is perhaps misguided. 



> ...in many tae kwon do styles, all that is needed to be a teacher is to know how to perform all the movements in the style, ...in arnis eskrima you learn most of the movements by the time you are a intermediate student, and your higher levels are determined by your fighting ability...by your ability to fight against different opponents with no rest, or to hold your own against very good fighters...



This is true in my observation as well. In a good style though the practitioner must internalize the principles or the system will not come out in a high stress situation. In most martial arts, you learn almost all of the techniques by the intermediate level. But I believe that there should be fighting ability at all levels of learning. Being advanced is more than just fighting ability, however I agree with you that it _MUST_ be there. In keeping with the original thread, I see no reason why a person could not get all this from seminars. 

Anyway, I'd write more, but it's time to get some sleep.


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## thekuntawman (May 15, 2003)

"There is no guarantee that your martial art will get you through a fight one hundred percent of the time. But it does raise your chances of getting through it."

this is very true. that is why the more you spar with your art, the better a "fighter" you will be. no one is saying, spar and you are streetfighting. but skip sparring, and you are doing nothing related to fighting, but theory.

"I think it's important to point out that years, depth, and intensity of training should count for your reputation as well. In my past jobs I've dealt a lot with physical violence, but I don't have a reputation to the general public as a fighter and I don't want one. "

no smart man wants to go around fighting people on the street. and a good martial arts teacher shouldnt go around wanting violence to beat up people and hurt them. but your reputation as a teacher of the martial arts and a fighter is based on what? how many seminars you teach every year? how many videos you sell? as a fighter, it should be based on fighting. and what people saw YOU do. as a teacher it should be based on how well your students "fight". now what am i talking about with "fighting"? sparring and matches. yeah its not the street, but its closer to a real fight than tapping sticks together. when people have seen you cross sticks, there is little argument about what you know. when they know you fight and fight hard, not many people question what you do. whats the number one thing people say about bruce lee, the man martial artist love to worship? he was a great fighter. either they saw him fight, or they saw his "ability" to fight. who ever questions the dog brothers, or another full contact fighter. who questions mix martial arts fighters and cage fighters. your political reputation, spread by friends and advertisements will always have doubters. your reputation which is spoken by your fighting ability almost never does, unless someone is calling you out.

"I don't know who greg alland is or anything about him, but for his own sake he needs to carry around waivers and some good liability insurance. I respect the idea of sparring whenever wherever, but California is a litigation happy place and it is always best to err on the side of caution when doing that sort of thing. I would probably carry two helmets and two sets of gloves as well, so as to reduce the liability risk. If you do damage you may have to pay damages. "

the fantasy many FMA fighters is, how dangerous is fighting with weapons, or how deadly was a match. but i know your own doce pares teacher, ramon rubia will spar against anyone, but this is not saying he will jump out his car and put somebody in the hospital. as a martial art teacher we all know how to spar with somebody and not to injur them. as a student dont you spar with your friends? when you go to a tournament arent you willing to "put your reputation on the line" with anybody there? the martial arts fighter is not afraid of a contest, but he isnt stupid, going around whipping people up. i have sparred all over the place, most of the time not in a tournament, and our matches have never got out of hand. there is a respect between martial artists who face each other, where you will see more "karate guys" doing than FMA here in the US. but you shouldnt be afraid of it, its part of the FMA culture to participate in matches. i think the "combat experts" have made all those excuses, and now people go "no you cant do that! you will get hurt/hurt sombody/get sued"! 

if anyone comes to sacramento, please email me, and visit my school. i will have my students spar for you, its not bad at all. and actually its kind of fun!

now i am not saying seminars are bad. i am only saying that the way seminars are today, are missing important things, which is bad.

you know back in the day, many fighters did not study with there masters that much. my granpa was a travelling fighter, and he only studied with some masters for a few days or weeks. the differences, is that he sparred a lot and practiced his basics a lot. now, where you will find "some" seminar goers who end up with good skills, "most" not because of that. but if seminar courses required participation in study groups and put the emphasis on sparring and testing skills under sparring. you will see more people with much better skill.

i still say the FMA is not for everybody, and if you make it easy so anyone can learn, especially in a "10 easy seminars to certification" style, it becomes a mcdojo.


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## Black Grass (May 15, 2003)

> _Originally posted by thekuntawman _
> 
> i still say the FMA is not for everybody, and if you make it easy so anyone can learn,...



Why can't it be for everyone, why must it be about hardcore combat. Why can't it be just for fun and health? Why can't there be FMA 'Do' (as in japanese 'way' ) styles right next to more combat oriented style.  As long as the practioner knows that the style they are learning will not make them a 'eskrimador'. 

Vince
aka Black Grass


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## bart (May 15, 2003)

> the fantasy many FMA fighters is, how dangerous is fighting with weapons, or how deadly was a match. but i know your own doce pares teacher, ramon rubia will spar against anyone, but this is not saying he will jump out his car and put somebody in the hospital...but he isnt stupid, going around whipping people up



The way you put the business card thing seemed like you meant "knock down drag out" style fighting not palakaw. I do a lot of sparring and I would spar anyone in the same manner that Ramon does, and I have on occasion.  The only caveat is that you do have to be careful. When I did the Dog Brothers in 2000 the waiver was very specific and protected both of the fighters. There was a lawsuit that came out of one of the fights, not mine, but somebody else's. I didn't see anything untoward in the fights except that some people's egos were really bruised. I think that's why they do it at the Raw Gym now instead of the park. The waiver protected the person in the fight. That's the kind of careful I meant when you're talking about a "knock down drag out" style of fight. Protecting yourself is also about protecting your assets. Ramon is pretty smart and he wouldn't fight someone that was the type to sue, only people who are serious about the art and its combative aspects. 

As for friendly sparring matches like palakaw, you're right, every eskrimador should be ok with doing that against a reasonable person. So if greg alland goes around prepared for palakaw, that's good. I think that's the type of sparring you were talking about.  Also when you're teaching, you have to guide beginners so that they can learn where openings occur. That type of sparring is much different than a "knock down drag out" fight. It's a combative exercise. Not a drill, but a free-flowing combative practice like counter for counter, a sort of light sparring. 



> Why can't it be for everyone, why must it be about hardcore combat. Why can't it be just for fun and health? Why can't there be FMA 'Do' (as in japanese 'way' ) styles right next to more combat oriented style. As long as the practioner knows that the style they are learning will not make them a 'eskrimador'.



I think it can be for everyone. Kabaroan is a great example of an art that has both and emphasizes both fighting and health. There's another art, Kalis Kalis Tinagalogan, that seems to be that way. I'm sure there are others as well. 



> As long as the practioner knows that the style they are learning will not make them a 'eskrimador'.



Good point. I have to say that I'm prejudiced in thinking that to be an _eskrimador_ you MUST be a combative expert and have proven fighting ability or at least proven fighting history. Eskrima is really combat oriented. It's emphasis is more for combat than for health or philosophy. It's similar to boxing or fencing in that respect. Many of the old manongs would look to daily walks for health or to church for any sort of spiritual fulfillment or to Socrates for philosophy. Their art was for fighting, settling differences, and for defending themselves, family, and property. To be a real _Eskrimador_, in my opinion you MUST be a good fighter or at least have proven yourself to have overcome the fear of a fight. 



> if anyone comes to sacramento, please email me, and visit my school. i will have my students spar for you, its not bad at all. and actually its kind of fun!



I agree and it is fun. I'll be up there a lot this summer so I'll be in touch for sure. I was actually thinking of paying a visit this last trip up, but mother's day took all of my time. I'll being doing Dexter Labanog's tournament on July 19th too? http://www.bahalana.com/tourname.htm  Are you going to send any students to that?


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