Yokozuna514
2nd Black Belt
Good grief, Tez3, you do realize that is how the OP described this opportunity. He called it a 'side job' in his very first post but thank you for taking the time to respond to something I was clearly not saying.
Enough experience to teach? Yea or nay?
- Thread starter Oni_Kadaki
- Start date
Good grief, did you realise you came across as so patronising when you said it because you added extra words to make it so? 'Clearly not saying', did I say you had? I am talking about the tone you are coming across with ie 'I am a martial artist, I have trained for years and years serving my art and you think you can teach after just a few years of not my style martial arts pah'.
Yokozuna514
2nd Black Belt
I don't believe I said that either. If I did, it certainly wasn't in the context you are describing.
OP
OP
Oni_Kadaki
Green Belt
I very much like the idea of the technique not having a pre-determined outcome, and this flexibility is a concept I've emphasized in my curriculum in the past. At the same time, I do not believe competition is as good a representation of a real confrontation as people give it credit for. If anyone on here is into shooting, I see martial arts competition as pretty analogous to a USPSA-style match... good for getting out out of your comfort zone, but still not representative of actual combat. My (limited) real world experience is consistent with this viewpoint.
Also, it would seem my verbiage has caused a bit of a stir. Please understand, I'm a full-time doctoral student who also serves part time in the Air National Guard. Between those two obligations, my time for any additional work is limited. Despite that, I'm in the dojo an average of five times weekly. If I saw teaching the martial arts as merely a source of income, I would not routinely choose the dojo over going out with my colleagues. I merely said that it would be a "side job" because right now my top priorities are my schooling and military duties. The term was not meant to disparage the martial arts, or the responsibility of an instructor.
I didn't read his posts as that condescending. I don't agree entirely with his point about focusing on a single art, but he seemed to be making it fairly neutrally.
That would be because men rarely recognise when they are either being condescending or when they are being condescended to.
Old Chinese saying said, "When a teacher teaches his students, the teacher and students grow together."
Flying Crane
Sr. Grandmaster
My initial comments are focused on the few months of this system, few months of that system, and a few months of some other system.
In my opinion, a good system has a specific foundation and methodology upon which the techniques are built. If the foundation is not properly understood, then the techniques may not function well. If techniques are worked from a foundation from a different system, kind of a mix-and-match, the techniques may or may not work well. It depends.
In my opinion, a few months is not enough time to properly understand how the foundation really works, nor to have developed any real skill in using that foundation to execute the techniques.
So when someone has spent a few months each in several different systems, I suspect they have not yet understood any of the foundations well, and while they may have collected some techniques from each system, they don’t really understand the engine that should lie underneath them and give them real authority and effect.
I guess I don’t really see those few months spent in several methods as being cumulative. Rather, they are incomplete starts.
Now, seven years in aikido, dan grade or lack thereof not withstanding, is significant. This assumes the training has been regular and reasonably intense, and not just dabbling now and again, over the course of seven years.
Instructor grading in a military combative method is a form of instructor “credential”. I don’t know enough about the military methods to comment further than that.
From the standpoint of presenting yourself to prospective students, your instructor credential and your depth in aikido give you what I would characterize as a reasonable credibility.
The other methods in which you have only a few months give you some level of perspective, but I would not play that up too much. That is my opinion.
Overall, I am in no position to judge whether or not you would be a capable teacher. I don’t know you. Maybe you would, maybe you would not. But you have some things in your training history that I feel are credible.
This is my opinion.
Edit to add: the two years each in Hakkoryu and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and the two years between two different Karate methods may be enough to have some level of legitimate significance. These things add to your credibility.
In my opinion, a good system has a specific foundation and methodology upon which the techniques are built. If the foundation is not properly understood, then the techniques may not function well. If techniques are worked from a foundation from a different system, kind of a mix-and-match, the techniques may or may not work well. It depends.
In my opinion, a few months is not enough time to properly understand how the foundation really works, nor to have developed any real skill in using that foundation to execute the techniques.
So when someone has spent a few months each in several different systems, I suspect they have not yet understood any of the foundations well, and while they may have collected some techniques from each system, they don’t really understand the engine that should lie underneath them and give them real authority and effect.
I guess I don’t really see those few months spent in several methods as being cumulative. Rather, they are incomplete starts.
Now, seven years in aikido, dan grade or lack thereof not withstanding, is significant. This assumes the training has been regular and reasonably intense, and not just dabbling now and again, over the course of seven years.
Instructor grading in a military combative method is a form of instructor “credential”. I don’t know enough about the military methods to comment further than that.
From the standpoint of presenting yourself to prospective students, your instructor credential and your depth in aikido give you what I would characterize as a reasonable credibility.
The other methods in which you have only a few months give you some level of perspective, but I would not play that up too much. That is my opinion.
Overall, I am in no position to judge whether or not you would be a capable teacher. I don’t know you. Maybe you would, maybe you would not. But you have some things in your training history that I feel are credible.
This is my opinion.
Edit to add: the two years each in Hakkoryu and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and the two years between two different Karate methods may be enough to have some level of legitimate significance. These things add to your credibility.
That's a pretty condescending remark, Tez.
Flying Crane
Sr. Grandmaster
What does condescending mean?
Flying Crane
Sr. Grandmaster
double post
Do you need me to mansplain it to you? (I couldn't resist that.)
Flying Crane
Sr. Grandmaster
Oh I’m clueless. I just blunder through life like the Hulk on a roid rage.
drop bear
Sr. Grandmaster
An Italian guy walking down a set of stairs.
drop bear
Sr. Grandmaster
Again it is a set of objectives. The system creates the method in which you reach those objectives.
Mix and match works fine so long as you keep creating paths to progress.
Quite often the issue is the reverse. You are given an objective but try to find the solution as per the system.
Looking at you wing chun ground work.
Last edited:
No it's the remark of a woman who has had 65 years of experience in condescending remarks from men. It's the howl of a woman sick to death of having things explained, being told women can't do this or that. It's the cry of a woman who had spent over 20 years getting men to accept that women can fight MMA, over 50 years of pushing to get more women into martial arts without being patronised by men, 50 years of trying to explain to men that women know what sort of self defence they need, and quite a while now wondering where all the fine martial arts women who used to post on here have gone. I actually know the answer, they told me when I tried to get them back. This is now just a boy's club.
I tend to agree with this. I might not pick up the system-specific mechanics when I don't study a system long enough (which probably varies by system, instructor, and student), but if I find a solution to a problem - and can integrate it into my personal approach - then it works in my system.
drop bear
Sr. Grandmaster
As a side note. We have women fighters and there has been almost no societal pressure on them.
Log In or Sign Up to View
Lara and Annette cracking each other in the skull.
