Evaluate Your Training and What to Look For to Find A Quality Instructor

When we talk about someone that is new to martial art and 'shopping around' for a quality instructor or simply looking to avoid an inexperienced one we are talking about someone who has little to no idea of what they are really looking for and often not even conscious of what to avoid.  We can make the analogy of a carpenter who is first trying his hand at musical composition with no concept of rhythm, harmony, tune or time.

What do you look for in an instructor?  Is it size?  Is it ability?  Is it personality?  Do you wonder if they really are knowledgeable?  Are their techniques sporadic or is there a certain degree of control?  Are you actually learning something useful from your instructor? ...CAN you learn from your instructor?

One should remember that even as an eager student attending a martial arts center one must remain a diligent consumer of self-thought and critical thinking.  One must verily be an active participant in his training FROM DAY ONE.  While submission to an instructor is a necessary step in order to create the "teacher <> student / student <> teacher" relationship it is not necessary to remain submissive or blindly faithful should the training bring about a grave disagreement, or culminate into either direct or indirect permanent bodily harm.

Should this occur we are now talking about either an inexperienced instructor or a new student not caring about what they do to another human being.  So be aware, and remember there are always more schools and more instructors out there.

For example, here at Calasanz Physical Arts we have always taught training without brutality.  There is, however, a long history of military and police personnel training here.  Some of them have been kind and dedicated enough to help at our school.  As officers, of course, they rise to the occasion.  They are trained to be like that.  To be a force.  They have to be like that.  They have to have courage.  Two officers, each about 250 / 260 pounds were working out together in the ring one day and tried to perform a suplex without any instruction, training, or practice one of these giant men tried to lift the other above his head and fall backwards.  Calasanz says, "When I captured that from the office I just could not believe it."





They tried it once.








Still to this day we are told by other officers that still they suffer.  Probably that day the officer completely lost his life of fitness.  This sort of technique experimentation and training that was brutally done without thinking took his entire life of fitness away from him.  Probably he was never physical again, but to this day the guy does not complain.

And we have more stories like that.  Another example was with a Kyokushinkai instructor.  Not that he did anything wrong, its just that he trained Kyokushinkai.  Kyokushinkai guys are different.  An instructor would have no qualms about tossing a student down 5 feet onto his head on hard concrete and the student would practically be expected to get up and say "Thank you.  Thanks for that."

But the people, especially new people, are not ready for that.  This instructor lined up several students.  If you don't know, the Kyokushinkai guys during class would yell, "HOLD THE BREATH!"  and then as the students are standing there would deliver hard punches to them just standing there.  So our instructor did that with a line of students.  Two of the students ended up on the floor.  Two wonderful private students, gone...  Never came back.

Let this be a reminder to those just getting in-to martial art or looking to get started.  Keep your head on your shoulders and be sure to really agree with the training that you are signing up for.  And for those already in the mix, be sure you agree with the training that you are currently doing.

 

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