Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Brewer
That may be the turn-off for a lot of people here. Serious students in today's world tend to want to start out by training seriously, not enduring two or three years of "testing" first. Most serious students (rightly, I think) believe that they could really accomplish a lot with those first couple of years if they were allowed to train at the level of their passion in useful, practical concepts and ideas. The notion of students undergoing extensive examination periods is, in my own humble opinion, horribly outdated. You can accomplish the same thing by working them to death on the basics of the system in true combative form and still determine whether or not they have the right type of character and disposition to move into whatever the teacher might call "advanced." I'm not potshotting the TOAS methodology, mind you; rather, just trying to explain why a lot of people here might be put off.
This brings up another important question. Perhaps I'm unusual in thinking this way, but if one were trying to go for a good P.R. effect, wouldn't he/she want to put the best foot forward? I mean, in any other sort of advertising, the goal is to sex things up and make them look as great and wonderful as possible. You'll never see a car commerical with the new model car's right front hub cap missing and a bondo patch on the front fender. You don't see JC Penney advertising the new Spring line of fashions with tattered elbows in all the shirts. In literally ever other type of P.R. campaign, the intent is to showcase the best possible view of the product or service one can possibly muster. By your post, it's clear that TOAS chose not to do so. Why do you suppose that is? Why "hide" the "real" stuff when the ultimate goal is to sell the system for what it is?
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I hear you Mike. Safakhoo and I had numerous discussions regarding those points. He was very protective of his style, and didn't want someone that was "undeserving" for various reasons to represent him. My opinion was that he should teach the "real" stuff right off the bat. He would at least speed up the program for students that showed potential. Another part of the problem was that he didn't have enough students that were advanced enough to be good instructors. I thought he started using them as instructors too soon. The rationale was that there were too many students to be able to personally train all of them himself. Also, he felt that they were learning more by having to teach also. Both were/are true, but I just felt they needed to learn more first.
I also tried to talk him into doing some of the videos and demos himself. His rationale was that his intent was to show the abilities of his students and his teaching, not what he could do. I thought it was a shame, because he was very skilled, while his students at the time had a long way to go.
Students w/ prior martial arts experience, or experience in any organized sports were different. However, I'd guess a good 95% were people who weren't used to putting in the amount of effort and dedication required. His training was in a live in school, and I don't think he was prepared for the type of students he'd be getting, or the type of teaching methods required for the "average" student. There were numerous occasions when he was ready to pull up stakes and move to a larger area.
IIRC, when I started w/ him I was about 35 and he was almost 10 years younger. Although he was very skilled, he was still learning how to teach. He also had to learn how to deal w/ a different culture. Most americans were more laid back, and I believe those individuals w/ a more obsessive personality tend to learn faster. Whereas, at the school he attended, you really had to want to be there or you were culled. Here, students just have to have the money.
Some time after leaving his school, I inadvertently started teaching in the backyard. It started w/ a guy who was my daughters first boyfriend. He was paranoid about getting picked on at school and was having a rough period emotionally, and wanted to learn how to defend himself. I offered to teach him for free, since I knew he really didn't have the money to go to a real school. Plus, I felt that he really didn't need to know how to fight, he just needed to talk and get some emotional stability. His father had recently died, and he didn't feel he could talk to his family. It got out of hand much faster than I expected. At one point there were over 30 people "training" in my backyard. I tried to put some of my personal opinions into effect. I was giving them as much and as fast as they could memorize it, working on the idea that they would pick up at least a few things faster. Didn't work worth beans. I then picked one intermediate form, the Hung Gar tiger/crane form, and focused on that. I also focused on using a modified version of Wing Chun sticky hands (chi sao) for close range sensitivity training.
During that period, I had exactly one student that met, and exceeded my expectations. Primarily because he already had 10 years of Yoshukai experience under his belt. I was really disappointed to see him leave, but the understanding was that he was only going to be there for the summer. He picked up chi sao so quickly that I added foot guiding, chi gerk and torso joining to his training and turned the chi sao into genuine close range sparring sessions. The extra bits turned out to be a little too much for a 3 month period, but he was at least able to see the effectiveness. After he left it was downhill from there. I just couldn't come up w/ effective methods of bringing the noobes along at an acceptable speed. Tried adding a little pain to the mix working under the assumption that it would provide some incentive to practice more. Just made the students too cautious. I saw very little evidence that anyone was practicing at home, other than just empty forms. It became obvious that I didn't have an effective method of teaching the average person, and didn't have a clue how to solve the problem. The point being, I developed a better understanding of the problems Safakhoo was having w/ developing effective teaching methods.