Naperville wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 9:40 pm
I cannot say what I think about the schools I've been in. Most of the instructors are still alive and it would be inappropriate. This is a tricky subject to discuss. Bashing these men and their schools is not what I am about.
Some of the arts that I studied had world class instructors, nowhere else to be found in the US, maybe not in the world. Group camaraderie is not what I speak of, but of instructors wanting to control all aspects of a students life far beyond the classroom. I had a very famous instructor give me a tongue lashing for not selling, or merging my (then defunct) web hosting business with another business run by another student that he had. What he did not know was that the other student did many illegal things to me and my business to drive us out of the market. His ignorance was profound regarding the subject, but I just let him talk.
That is all that I really can say on that subject.
I learned a truckload from these men, so, all in all, I had excellent experiences.
When I said to "steal," what I meant was, you go there to learn an art and something martial, so do it, and make it yours. That was the point of going to class. My training in 10+ arts did not have to be deep, although, sure, I would have stayed and it would have been beneficial to stay far longer at a few of them but the opportunity did not present itself.
Now that I am 60, I could start my own school, but I have no motivation and I am not ranked highly in any art. There is no direct lineage, but I do in some ways have the chops. If I did it - it would be more of a combatives school, than any martial arts school. But NO, that isn't going to happen.
I fully respect your experiences, Naperville. I suppose I’ve been lucky in my martial arts life, in that none of my teachers ever tried to control their students’ lives. At least not in my experience.
We all have our own experiences and viewpoints, and we all take from our training and experiences those things that serve us best as individuals.
Many years ago, I taught Choy Lee Fut to my own group for 4 years. And although I know how to teach and my core group (which also included a couple of Goju-ryu Karate black belts) were becoming pretty good, I realized I wasn’t comfortable in the role of a martial arts teacher. People liked my teaching style, but I much prefer being an independent practitioner. So I recommended my students to other quality instructors I knew and quit teaching. Every now and then, people who knew me back in the day ask me if I’d be interested in teaching again, and I always have to say no.
I’ve always considered myself a “mixed” martial artist (not sport MMA, but combining a mixture of all my experiences). I’m not ‘trapped’ in a system or “style.” But I do understand and respect my Choy Lee Fut (CLF) teacher’s viewpoint as well. I’ve seen some people take only one or a couple superficial aspects of CLF, and adapt them into whatever method(s) they were doing, and those aspects were ‘off’ in application, because they weren’t being used in the right context, nor did they understand how to set them up, and the variations that make it work. And then, when it inevitably fails them, they label the entire art “ineffective” because they couldn’t make that superficial little piece work.
I am
NOT saying that’s what you’re doing; I AM saying that there are instances (involving my own core art) where I’ve seen that happen with certain people.
Jim