A (2) part question directed towards senior (4th Dan and over), but all are welcomed to participate.
1). How does a senior practicioner (regardless of discipline) go about looking for training venues? Some examples of how this happens. Short term relocation (job related). You no longer have a school/teach (somewhat retired). You have been inactive, due to an injury and now you are able to return to training. I would venture an assumption, that the vast majority of school instructors, would not be very open to letting someone senior to their rank participate.
Hmm... I've been with the same sahbum for 21 years, so I've never gone looking for another instructor. If I were to do so, however, I'd follow the same suggestions I give to prospective students: find an instructor you like, find a class you feel comfortable with, and go from there. For seniors, I would add that you need to find a class that is comparable to the one you came from; if technical similarity to where you were previously is important, then that would be a factor as well.
As far as
how I'd find a new instructor - it would depend on why and how I left the previous one. If I were leaving for reasons not related to my instructor's competence and/or integrity, I would start by asking my instructor; if I left for reasons related to my instructor's competence and/or integrity, I would ask other seniors whose opinion I trust. I would also research possible classes for a variety of factors that come down to the instructor's personality and methods, the feel of the class, and technical similarities and differences.
2) Second part: If you were fortunate enough to find a willing school/instructor, could you keep your mouth shut, if you observed poor/harmful/flawed training aspects?
Thanks in advance for any and all responses.
For a long-term move, I would observe the class - and if at all possible participate on a trial basis - before joining on any type of long-term basis. I would hope that I would see such things before becoming a long-term student. I would have to decide if the technique were poor/harmful/flawed, or if it was simply
different. There are lots of people out there who were trained differently, and/or teach differently, than myself. That does not make them good or bad, perfect or flawed - just different, and
different is not always bad. I would have to decide once I had experience a range of the training available if I wanted to stay long term; if I had been there long enough to decide to stay, I would hope I would have seen enough to already know if I considered the techniques to be poor/harmful/flawed - because if I really felt that way, that wouldn't be the class for me. Nor would I, as a newly acquired student, tell the instructor why s/he was
wrong. I would, quite likely, try to find a private venue to ask about the differences, but I would attempt, at least, to withhold value judgments until I had sufficient information.
For a short-term situation, I would probably be less particular - and even less likely to tell the instructor I felt the techniques being taught to be poor/harmful/flawed. As a guest in a very short-term situation, it would be rude to return my host's courtesy with such comments, and chances are I would not have sufficient experience with the instructor's style and any technical differences between that instructor and the one I came from to make such judgments... and by the time I did, I would be in the situation described previously.
