ironsifu

i dont believe that "Master" is a level people get to, its a state of being in the martial arts. i agree with tall geese that people focus too much on trying to get the title, rather than simply mastering their art. but i do not agree that we should treat our martial arts casual as if it was no big deal. we should always strive for perfection in the art, unless someone is just doing martial arts for fitness. but there is a difference between martial arts students, and martial artists. the student is just that, a student--he is taking a class. but a martial artist is one who makes this art a way of life. all of my posts are directed at the martial artist, and my teaching is only for those who are on that path. anyone who joins without that understanding, this is how i teach them. the goal for me is, to make martial artists who will one day master the art.

i think there has to be a difference between mastery (skill) vs. mastery (understanding), otherwise we end up with confusion. for some people a master of an art is one who has great skill, and can use his art in almost all situations, and better than most people--even most experts. i do not see "master" as a level of the martial arts you test for, or that some "grandmaster" gives you. kind of like a mechanic who can do any mechanical repair with only a wrench and screw driver and none of those special tools. i dont know if you guys know what i'm talking about, but i once met an old man who worked like that, out of his garage, he did everything with very few tools, even made some of his own devices, and lots of work he did it very quickly... for 50 buck and a case of beer (lol). this is the master of skill, and in my opinion, i value this master most. the other kind of master is one whose been around a long time, and is more of a philosopher than a fighter, even philosophy of fighting, but he is known more for his knowledge than his skill. the kind of guy who comes up with great ideas and very neat demonstrations of techniques, but he is not known as a killer on the mat. this master is usually a master teachers, and most people assume he is a great fighter, without ever seeing him fight. i value this master as well, but because my teachers were fighters/sparrers, its not high on my list. here's my example of a master of skill: masutatsu oyama cung lee joe lewis emin botzepe bernard hopkins masters of knowledge: ed parker bruce lee william cheung gichin funakoshi floyd maywether, sr. a true master, in my opinion, is a combination of both.

careful not to confuse "knowledge" with "skill", or even to confuse "skill" with "good skill". there are people who think you can "well round" your martial arts skill just by learning to grapple. just knowing is not good enough, the idea is to be better at what you do, than he is at what he does. therefore, i can teach somebody my eskrima, who doesnt know my style, he still will not be able to whip me unless he is better at my own art than me. we become a master of a technique when our knowledge, skill and experience, catch up to each other. when skill deteriorates (from age or unuse), you are still a master, but i would call this a "political" master. the same way a teacher who sucks is treated as a master because he is old and has a lot of generations of students. the "knowledge is skill" philosophy is a very new idea, and is the idea of young, inexperienced martial artist. remember when ninjitsu came out? people thought, "if i learn this, no one can beat me!" they said the same thing about Jeet Kune Do, Muay Thai, BRAZILIAN Jujitsu, Aikido (blame Steven Segal movies), Muay Boran (blame Ong Bak), and every other fad. sounds like some kid who still believe "american greatest hero suits" can be found in the local dojo...

martial artists are not limited to poor skill just because they dont train 8 hours a day. a very high level of fighting skill can be developed training even 3 - 4 hours a week. i think whats more important is how much they train when they are in the gym. the fighter should always be in the "improving" mode, training to get stronger, faster, and more accurate. occasional learning is not enough, we learn until we turn blue in the face, but skill does not happen until you train and absorb (not just understand or able to demonstrate) what was learned.

of techniques (ran out of space. in shoriKid's post on "intensity" thread he talked about teaching one skill in one class, another skill in another class, etc. remember i am old fashioned, so my philosophy will be different from most of your guys. but here goes: there is a "level of learning", i call it that, that many people including teachers do not follow. when a student first learns a technique, they will be able to do it, monkey see, monkey do. i consider this first level "learning level", which most people get at a seminar or in the first 6 months of training. even a kid who cross over from dance or gymnastics (and a lot of the XMA people-- no offense) will have with martial arts technique. this level you can get in one day. or one class. or one seminar, even watch somebody do it and memorize it. videos, youtubes, etc. in the second level, the student will understand all about the technique, fine points, how to counter it, how to use it against this guy and that guy. you can explain it beautifully, and demonstrate it with a partner who is not trying to hurt or stop you. for many people, this is considered "advanced learning". for me, it is where the beginner level is accomplished. the third level, application, you put on the gloves and another guy is going to put you on your butt, and you use this technique, and its variations, and against any opponent. most martial artists consider this technique to be their "specialty" because its usually one of a few techniques he does really well, and works against his opponents and he likes to throw or use it. i consider this the advanced level of learning. last, i call it the mastery of the technique, this is what a good friend of mine called, "the hedgehog". the one thing you do better than 99% of the people around you. you train this technique so much, you can use it against anyone any style any time. with great success. many good competitiors and masters have at least one or two hedgehogs, its what we remember them for. does it mean you are unbeatable? of course not, but it is one of those tricks you have up your sleeve that you know if i pull it out some body is going to get hurt. when you have a mastery of a technique people remember you for years, because very few people achieve it. we remember masters and fighters for years, because they are nice, or well known, write books, make movies, etc. but there is always those few guys that people will say "he is one of the greats" or "no one around could beat him"... seems like. a master would seems like he only loses to another master. the hedgehog story: a hedgehog is not known to be a great fighter, he is not big, or fierce, or good looking or rememberable. but he has this one thing he can do, ball himself into a ball, stick out his needles and even the wolf will leave him alone. as long as he can do this, he will throw off any wolf. he is still vulnerable, but he is so good at this, no other animal can do it, and as long as he does it no one will eat him.. and most of all, no wolf will try him... twice. so anyway my theory, and its just a thery so dont beat me up: 1. learning = beginner 2. understanding = adv beginner/intermediate 3. applying/fighitng = advanced 4. mastery / perfection = expert / teachers / black belter as teachers, we should try to achieve #4 for ourselves, and #4 for our students, and train them until they are equal or better than us.

exactly. that is what i am talking about. we are developing our students, one skill at a time. will we train with others? yes, but for a month at a time, there is one focus. for my intermediate/advance guys, its three months, but at that time they are already fighting black belters. i did see something i would like to start another topic, and it was something shorikid spoke about, one skill in one class, another skill in another class, and so on... but everything about one technique (in his example, the jab).

i agree with most of what you said (tallgeese). but in the long run, skill stays sharp once you have it built, and even though it takes a lot of time and training to build it, once you have it, it doesnt take too much to keep it. what you do for competition seasons is the same thing we do, and we look at it as training for this season, and that season, and overall training. the end result of everything is just plain old good fighting skill in the end, which is what we all want. earlier a few people talked about overtraining or doing too much. i dont believe you can plateau and stop improving. there is always improvement that can happen. using boxing again, take floyd maywether at 21 years old ad then floyd at 29. at 21 it looked like this guy cant get no faster and better, and at 29 he is a light year better than when he was younger. there is a saying that there is always somebody going to be bigger, faster and stronger than you out there, just make sure that guy is you. we should never be satisfied with our presence skill.

oh, and thats adult school without tae bo (thank God that trend went away)...

i believe good training, good fighting skill, and excellent physical conditioning should go hand in hand. fighitng skill comes from good training, and one of the reasons you will be a good fighters is because of the hard training and strong body. i just looked up 300, and wow, thats a great program. a good martial arts program should be a good alternative for personal training. about one quarter of my students are one on one students, but they train the same way the ones in my classes study. everyone will do martial arts for a different reason, but as long as we dont lean too much in one direction, a solid martial arts program have something for everybody. if we train them right, they can get cuts and "thunder & lightning" in each hand too (lol). i always joke with my guys we do push ups for thunder and lightning, and to look cute in t-shirts too. but hopefully there not out there looking to get in fights, its a bad way to meet women (most of them are married men anyway). has anybody looked at the old kyokushinkai schools of the 60s and 70s? those guys were very traiditonal, and excellent shape. i think, a good example of how the school should be run. when you look at the black belters of those days, and compare to todays' you see that we actually went backwards. i am hoping that the new trend will return back to the old way. in my town (sacramento california) when i first moved here i was the only mostly adult school, but now, there is at least 5, and that's a good sign.

i think every teacher should have this as a goal. not to turn everyone into a professional fighter, exactly, but to make sure that every student has the skills of one. hardened black belt? yes, i believe that all black belts are supposed to be "hardened", if not, they should not be wearing a black belt. but this, i understand, is a cultural thing. last saturday i was at a tournament and i met a very nice teacher of the kajukenbo style. he watched a couple of my girls sparring, and asked "black belt?", i said no, white belt. we ended up having a good conversation about how the black belt no longer means what it use to. for business, that might be good. but for the respect of the art, the teachers, and the school and styles, it is very bad. BLACK BELT use to mean, the best of the best, the end of a very long, difficult road to skill and achievement. today, many teachers consider it "only the beginning". that is ridiculous. but if the belt is earned in only three years, and even a 10 year can past the test, then maybe it is the beginning (of the "master's club membership" lol). but seriously, the black belt is called "dalubhasa"--expert level in my art, and many other styles too. it should never be just somebody who learned the curriculum, but should also be the ones who completely changed his body and his relationship with himself and theones around him, and how he possess his art, and how he views self defense and fighting. in other words, he should be the kind of guy a bad guy would be committing suicide if he mess with him. but these days it is the end of a contract term, and another patch on the uniform. btw, the guys students and mine smashed that day. one last thought, when the black belt is given easily, skill is no longer the goal, the goals become the next step... degrees. so we end up with 1st degree by 11 years old, 2nd degree at 14, 3rd at 17, 4th by 20 years old, 5th degree at 23.... all the way to 30 year old grandmasters!

you cannot possibly train all of your techniques that you know in every workout. when people train, they usually are only training a few skills at a time, and there can be months that go past that you will not work on something, but you still have skill at it. three months and focusing on one skill will not hurt your other skills especially if you come back to it. if you have time, you can always do one workout a week on one skill and one or two workouts on other things. but my point was to focus on one skill at a time, and once you have achieve that skill, you carry it with you always, and all you have to do is keep it up with just a little bit of training. there is a level of skill you can only get with fierce training, and if somebody is serious about his martial arts training (oppose to "casual training/learning/just some self defense skill) it has to be done, and i recommend having this kind of training all the time for different skills. with my own students there is always a theme, one skill or technique, that we are focused on at all times. sometimes, we will not train legs for a month, some times we will not train hands for a month. but because they are always training with high intensity, they never missed a beat. if somebody has mediocre skill, or poor skill, than i agree, missing three months of training will really hurt. but when you are always bringing up all your skills with good training, high reps and a lot of focused sparring, your body stays at a peak condition. right now it is point fighting season around here, and every year most of my training is focused on skills they can use in competition. does there form suffer? how about boxing skills? or power punching and power kicking? the answer is no, no, and no. like i said earlier my brothers, get in 10,000 reps of a technique, you will have a skill most othere people can only imaging, and if you do this with each of the major skills in your art, in a few years you can double your strength and skill... this is why a professional fighter (any style) will always be superior to the average fighter, no matter how "natural" and "gifted" the average guy is. great skill is never born with, only developed.

wow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmRgeg9GgjU

i consider any student who trains every week, to be a full time student. most of my guys only train one day a week, and only a few can make it two or three days a week. my beginners usually train one day, and the more advance ones come more than that. the kids seem like they never get tired or sore, and they come two days a week, and do my sparring training on sundays. guess what, even though they do one day a week, they develop high skill level just with one class.

technique can beat superior physcial advantages, but only if you use the right technique against the opponent with the right amount of physical skill. if would be wrong to say, even without strength or speed you can defend yourself. of course that is not true, but you can train a fighter to overwhelm a superior physical opponent by learning his weakness and take advantage of them using the right counters. here is an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmPx2ixbhlA douglas was able to use his reach, by keeping a long distance, even though mike was stronger, faster, and douglas was exhausted. even though he got his behind mopped up the next fight, using the right strategy a weaker opponent was able to beat a stronger one....

this is cross over from the "credible teachers" thread. i think we have a good topic to debate, so instead of mess up that thread i decided to start a new one. here's the question. i suggested that teachers should take about 3 months of very intense training on one technique, say 1,000 reps per workout plus sparring with the technique, in order to strengthen skill. another member suggested that less intense workout can give the same skill because eventually, you will do the same number of strikes. my side: i disagree. in order for you to reach your peak in speed, power, and accuracy, you have to train a technique when your body is fatigue. you must also be capable of doing a high numbers of those techniques, so that you will have the maximum power speed and accuracy behind even just one attack using this technique. one push up a day for 100 days will not develop the strength like doing 100 pushups in one day (or 10 pushups in 10 days, etc.). this theory can easily be tested and proven or unproved, but since this is a message board, let's discuss it! lol i'm not saying killer workout all the time, but we have to have these workouts very often or skill will never get beyond average. i was raised with this kind of training so i never tried the other way... even in my kids class we use high reps.

yes, most teachers are not teaching their students how to train. and its generational. if a teacher gives a black belt in 3 years, and the black belt teaches his student in 3 years, and that student teaches another one in 3 years, you end up 10 years later with water down martial arts. period. the black belt is not respected because its not being respected by the teachers. if students are not trained right, they will not be ready to defend themself.

i dont want to pull away from the original topic, which is who is credible to teach, but i would like to answer a few points. training on a technique for three months will not hurt the rest of your skill. as i said earlier, we have to stop treating martial arts training as if its a race, you have your whole life to learn. at the same time, students/fighters (another point, i consider them the same thing) must develop there skill to the highest level and the best way to do this is to have a patient tempering of skill. some people never get the ability to throw 500 punches in one time, there will be a limit to what level his skill with achieve. 3 months is not a long time, and if you look at it like this, three months on this three months on that, in the end you will have a high skill level in most of your techniques, while the next guy is only average at all of his techniques. which brings me to the next point. a master of a school ("owner") is a professional martial artist. this means he does this for a living and been doing it full time. you can be a business owner with a school, and be part time, or neglect your training and development, but they should not call himself "master" such and such, starting his own techniques and things like that. people have confused the black belter with a teacher, the business owner/intructor with the master, who is qualified and who is not. so, for someone who asked me earlier about training full time, that not everyone can do it. well i agree not everyone can, so not everyone should lead people as if he does. this is serious stuff, because it creates the culture that anyone with an SBA loan can open a school, be a master, add degrees to his belt, create his own style, etc. today i just got back from the first BASKA tournament of the year in vallejo CA. i was talking with a teacher, who came from a TKD school with about 10 students, and all of them did poorly. i felt bad for him as a "master", and worse for his students. he trained his students honestly, but the poor guy just did not have the knowledge to coach his people to even survive the fights they were doing! it was so bad one of my beginning students offered the other student some advice. the point here is, that this man i met, was a 5th degree black belt in tae kwon do, and been studying about 10 years. he never did tournaments himself, but he sees a value in them. they come week after week, and most of the time they leave empty handed. he and i will be sharing information in a few, but imagine you have to face students knowing you cannot teach them to protect themself even from a 15 year old boy. most people will disagree but i say that even though anyone can open a school, most people should not. but the discussion here is who is qualified. i know that at least you should be experienced, and a professional martial artist... not just a franchisee.

youre right. its no crime for a teacher to charge what is fair. i mean, he has to feed his family too! at the same time, if a teacher looks at his area, if he charged a lot, he is going to be lucky to have 10 students. why not charge wat people can afford and have 50 students! if somebody is a new teacher its not a good idea to try to be the expensive guy, until you have a reputation built up. get people talking about the class and the teaching, and supply/demand will take care of the rest!

joesteph, in the first statement, i do not believe in training to lose, or training to have less than a successful chance. the standards for real training in the martial arts is to be very high above average martial arts and physical skill. many teachers have average advanced students, i do not. but yes, i do agree that the truth of training is that you may lose, may win, or may lose while the opponent loses too. the only difference is that the fighter himself determines which one he will be. an example of this is how many philippine martial artists believe that in order to fight with weapons, you will get injured. i dont believe that. there was only two fights i have been in my whole life that involved weapons. once with a knife, the fight was over in one punch (i was lucky), the other was a group, and one guy had a stick or something (it was night) and i won that one, even though i had to run away too many of the guys in the group dropped. you fight how you train, and 90% of the fighters even in martial arts schools do not know how to train, and this is why the level of black belters today is so poor. for your second question, yes, we use this technique all the time. for the last 6 months i have a class two days a week, where we kick for 1 hour. they spar with only kicks, and no blocking. do you know how hard that is? but i did it myself when i was young. for the first three months we worked on the round kick (front and back leg, close range only) and since october, we been doing the side kick. earlier in the year we did another 3 months of jab and front hand hook because in 2007 i did the jab for 30 days, 1,000 punches a class. i will invite some of my students to this board so you can meet them yourself. also if anyone is from sacramento california, please stop by and visit you will see that our school is not like any school many people have ever seen, this is a very friendly invitation. i'll give you the "grand tour". oh, i just saw another question about forms. i have never done this kind of practice with a whole form. first my school only has one style with forms, jow ga. and jow ga forms are too long to do 1,000 times. but we do take a technique here and there and execute them for 100. 200. even 500 times in a class. last saturday i made the students spar with a technique from the form against an opponent who can do watever he liked. this is the best way to learn to use our techniques. at the same time, we are very slow in teaching forms, so for the first year you dont learn a form at all, only techniques and a stance training "form", which is just a routine of footworks. when they begin small tiger, it takes about 9 months to a year to learn and develop it. in this way, the guys get much more skill and use of what i am teaching them. i hope this doesnt sound like advertising, but please see my website, you can see a little about our teaching philosophy there. i'm recording video for a channel too for youtube.

oh i woudl like to add one thought too. in bruce lee's book a jab is a jab, a kick is a kick. this is the philosophy of somebody who is still learning, because a jab is only a jab, and the level of skill,understanding and use of the jab is very low. but when you have mastered the jab, or the kick, you will see and understand, and be able to do things no one else can. i cannot explain it any more than that. if you would like to learn what i am talking about do this: give youself 3 months. you will have practice sessions at least one time a week, and do only a left jab or right jab, 1000 - 1500 a session. you will spend at least half your time training with your jab. you will spar against people who can do anything, but you can only use that one jab (not even the other hand). no matter how boring, stick to this for the whole time. i promise you know one will be able to tell you anything about this punch, and they wont be able to even match your punch after 3 months. even if you had no teacher to guide you, your jab will be superior to anyone inyour school, because i can guarantee that no one in your school has done this with any of their techniques. at this point, a jab is no longer just a jab, but it will be a weapon.

there is a huge difference between knowing how to jab, and perfecting a jab. in a fight/self defense/etc. this makes the difference between might get out alive vs. your opponent doesnt have a chance. in talking about an expert in the art or average student, the expert is supposed to be the guarantee in a fight. this is what is meant by "jack of all trades". the guy who knows how to ball his fist and maybe even knows how to use it is the "jack". this can be any 10 year old green belt (or 35 year old green belt) in any karate school (or MMA school) in this country. but the guy who can kill you with his jab, is the expert. the expert can be a mike tyson, a julio cesar chavez, a manny pacquiao, take your pick. now a 10 years old green belt who grows up can open a school and teach, but the question original, is "who is qualified". i am from the school, that only a expert should teach, not just some guy who knows how to ball his fist. i know that in medical school you dont get to be a teacher if you are not a doctor first. about my example of which is the best way to learn, for the expert, picking something up in a seminar is not means that you are qualified to teach it. but my point in the posting was that teachers should spend more time developing the art they teach, instead of all their life adding to it. for example, i teach three system of fighting, kuntaw, eskrima, and jow ga kung fu. i do regular point fighitng, olympic tkd sparring, and a few other styles of competition which i done for years. but my classroom learning ended in 1992, but my art has been changing a little over the years from my experiences and my students experiences. the last change? was what they call "continuous point fighting" it aint kickboxing, and it aint point fighting. we use to call it semi pro, but even today this kind of sparring which is very new to me (i never did it myself) is very different from what i know. my students learn it alongisde me, while my students fight in this kind of tournament (only the last three years). a few seminars could never be equal to what we got in the last three years. too many teachers, imo, will learn something in a seminar and then teach it. i believe this is bad. as teachers we should teach what we know but make sure we know what we teach very well.

ah... i opened my school when i was 22. yes i was too young (i think a good age is 30 at least, after 20 years of training), but i learned a lot. my teachers both died when i was young, so by age 22 i did not take another class in my life after this point. but at age 25 your teacher will learn more by getting on the circuit, and not to bring students (bringing students, unless you are winning all the time, is a distraction and keeps you from learning in tournament) but to build her reputation and test her skill, and most of all, to learn by "exchanging". a lot of the learning you will do as a young teacher is going to come when you teach others, but even this is inferior to what you can teach yourself from a match with an opponent. the best learning you can do after 15 years of training, if you were trained right, is those things you learn on your own by sparring and training.

i agree with this statement. there is a point in your martial arts development, that the time for learning new things is not as important as it is to develop what you already know to a hire level. this is what they call "jack of all trades, master of none", vs. "master what you know". which one speaks about having high level of skill, and which one speaks about knowing a little of everything? after a teachers spent at least 15, 20 years studying, he needs to put an equal amount of time developing and testing his learning, not attending seminars picking up new tricks and forms. this is something i say to many of my friends who teach kung fu, as kung fu people like to add so many forms to their list. this is not advanced knowledge it is collection of things to show off (without mastery there is no use of these forms all you can do is show them off). good mastery of a style is that you can take the techniques of any style you know--or even one form of one style--and use them (ahem, fighting) against any other skill level or style. if a teacher is not confident enough to play hands with any fighter, any style, any time, he should not be standing in front of a classroom. this skill level you cannot achieve by attending class after class after class, only by testing, thinking, training and then testing again... over and over for many years.

also, the art you give a 10 year should be different than what you give to a grown man. when a boy gets a black belt, his black belt should not be equal to the adult one. i think too many teachers do not tell the difference.

I agreed with a great deal of your posting, Ironsifu, especially since you were able to give names of individuals as examples. However, I don't follow this last reference. I may be misunderstanding you... i didnt mean to offend the ones who teach those classes. but what i was trying to say, is that many teachers who do not have enough knowledge to run a strong adult program, end up running a kids program because they cannot keep serious adults. the thing about a kids program is that most kids class does not have a serious art, its more of a choice over soccer. kids running around in uniforms, testing every three months even if they are not ready, stuff like that. in many of those classes, if you take off the belts of all the students, you cant tell who is advance, who is beginner. but it is true, that there's not many people who can teach a young kid. this is a special skill that is hard to teach even experience teachers. in my school, the youngest students i have is my own kids, who are 8 and 9, but after that my kids class is for teenagers. some teachers do not have the skill to teach a small kid, some (like me) do not like to teach small kids. with my own children, i can demand the kind of attention needed for practice, that i cannot do with somebody else's kids. and i believe there are two kinds of teachers in business, 1. money first skill second, and 2. skill first money second. in the first kind of teacher you will find 200 students, $50 for testing, black belt in 3 years, and a lot of black belts who are not qualified, but they say this is for "retention" and "self esteem". in the second kind of teacher, you will find 6 years to black belt, blood and bruises on tests, mostly adults, high skill level, and the teacher (lots of times, not always) this guys got a second job. back to the original question, one of my teachers told me about the path to mastership in the martial arts: - 10 years of study - 10 years of teaching while you compete - 10 years of teaching what you learned while you competed, and during this time, you are considered a "young" master. you cannot skip part 2. without the competing (any kind, even if its sparring with a group of fighters from different schools), you will not have your own experience to say, that you have "mastered" the art. in the second 10 years, is where you change what you learned because of the sparring. there is too many teachers who skip part 2, and start to make the own style while looking at panther DVDs and watching youtube or attending seminar. this is how we end up with untested, weak style and art, and guys who are brave enough to hang up a sign when he is unqualified.... he never had to prove his skill. in other arts and skills, they have a "final exam" or "bar exam". in a mechanic school, you fix a car for your test (i am guessing, so dont beat me up). in medical school you do an operation while your master watches. in law school you compete in a moat court against another law student. and so on. but in the martial arts, you should have a match or a couple matches. in my school we have 3 days of matches. when i was in the philippines, one of my teachers was very patient with the black belt, so you had to ask him. when i asked him, he put me against other black belts to prove if i am ready. i pretty much got my BUTT SORRY kicked, but guess what he gave it to me. this is the one i am proud of the most (i have 5 black belts). i was reading a book online called "ultimate black belt test", and i agree, it is a great way to test the black belt student on his skill and his heart. BUT i still dont believe this should say who is qualified to teach.