Private Lesson Students' Pace

[parkerlineage]

Our sensei took someone completely new and worked with him every day for six months on three techniques:

Block/Reverse Thrust

Front Kick

Thrust

He then entered him in a local tournament at the black belt level. The guy took first place.

That's so awesome.

[scottnshelly]

Parkerlineage:

You make some great points. Their weakest area right now is sparring. I blame that on two major factors – we are starting the sparring slowly to avoid mishaps and they can only spar with me or each other so they’re not getting much diversity in training there. I’d like to try to set up a friendly night of sparring with a local school, however, I don’t think anyone in town will be open to the invitation.

Sensei Rick:

My base is Tae Kwon Do. I studied Moo Duk Kwon TKD from age 6 to 16 and Tae Kwon Do (not with any association) from age 8 to present. I have a 2nd Dan in MDK TKD and a 1st Dan in TKD. Kenpo is my newest passion, only a brown belt so far through private lessons only. I still have a lot to learn in that area.

bushido_man96:

We haven’t done any tests yet. They are at about orange belt level right now. Since it is just the three of us, I told them we wouldn’t put any emphasis on belts and ranks unless they want to. I think it’s important to celebrate the important milestones though, so we will celebrate/test for green, blue, brown and black. These are the belts that I feel are a milestone rather than way to get more testing fees out of the students. This way if something happens to our situation they can go to another class at green, blue, brown or black belt, but we’re not trying to win a race to black belt or anything.

Jiffy:

That’s a great point. We finish each lesson with about half an hour of discussion of the “softer side” of the fighting arts. We talk about philosophies, theories and other important aspects that they wouldn’t get with a purely physical class.

lordtariel:

That is awesome. I’ve wondered about experiments like that; I’m glad someone carried one out.

Thanks to everyone for the replies so far. At the moment these two are my only students and I’m kind of competition for the other instructors in town, so for the time being this will probably be their only exposure. They don’t fully understand the life-long commitment, dedication, path, etc. so they’re just enjoying learning to kick and punch. I can see at least one of them making it to black belt if neither of us moves away or anything.

[bushido_man96]

Sounds like you are doing well by them. I was not sure how your ranking methods worked, so I was curious about learning more than one form. If I lived close to you, I would come work with them and you for something different with no problems.

I have a question for you. What is the difference between the MDW TKD that you did, and the TKD you do now?

[parkerlineage]

Ialways thought that you were a kenpo person, I had no idea you were TKD.

Is that 'cause of his avatar? I always thought that, too...that's a symbol of American Kenpo, unless I'm mistaken.

[scottnshelly]

I have a question for you. What is the difference between the MDW TKD that you did, and the TKD you do now?

The Moo Duk Kwan was more traditional. Everyone wore all white until Black Belt, then you could have a black strip down the side. We did pal-gyes and tae-guks. In the line of self-defense all we did were one-steps. There was more of an emphasis on kicks, especially higher kicks. We learned Korean terminology, history and philosophy.

The Tae Kwon Do that I moved to is more open-minded. This is mostly because the Instructor had previous experience/rank in other styles (Kenpo, Jiu-Jitsu, Kung Fu, Judo, and more). We learned Chang Hon patterns. The self-defenses were much more realistic. There was more of an ephasis on what works now rather than what was taught a long time ago.

These two were similar enough that I could keep up with both, but different enough that I had to keep them seperated when practicing.

Thanks again for your feedback and all.

[bushido_man96]

I have a question for you. What is the difference between the MDW TKD that you did, and the TKD you do now?

The Moo Duk Kwan was more traditional. Everyone wore all white until Black Belt, then you could have a black strip down the side. We did pal-gyes and tae-guks. In the line of self-defense all we did were one-steps. There was more of an emphasis on kicks, especially higher kicks. We learned Korean terminology, history and philosophy.

The Tae Kwon Do that I moved to is more open-minded. This is mostly because the Instructor had previous experience/rank in other styles (Kenpo, Jiu-Jitsu, Kung Fu, Judo, and more). We learned Chang Hon patterns. The self-defenses were much more realistic. There was more of an ephasis on what works now rather than what was taught a long time ago.

These two were similar enough that I could keep up with both, but different enough that I had to keep them seperated when practicing.

Thanks again for your feedback and all.

When my dad did TKD years ago, he learned the old pal-gyes. The system I am in now does the Chang Hon system.