…..Okay nothing really get’s my blood boiling more than when someone does not know what they are doing and yet they go out and teach anyways. This post comes about due to a private lesson I had recently with a new student. After interviewing the student I knew they had some martial arts training and that they were an instructor in another style. Great! I teach a lot of people who at some point want to branch out and learn a great deal more than what their particular style does. Usually these practitioner’s make up some of my best students in the long run and I really enjoy teaching them. Well this new student came in and we started talking some more and training. It became apparent early on that while he had solid striking skills his tool/weapon skills were pretty nonexistent. However, while talking to him he mentioned that he was now a weapons instructor in a certain martial system. I was amazed, no floored when he mentioned this. (his skills were simply not there) He went on to say that he attended a weekend training session and was graded to instructor level after it. I asked how much it cost and he said a $1000! (holy smokes batman) I thought to myself that this was money really not well spent and that he had been ripped off. As we were training he kept mentioning that he was surprised at how hard everything was and that he thought it would be easier based of his previous training. I took this as a point to mention to him that he did not have the fundamental movement skills that are needed and used with most tool/based systems and that is why it was hard. We then talked and he showed me quite a bit of what he had been taught during that weekend in the one system where he got his instructorship under them. The material was so basic and so below skill set levels needed as to be really unusable in my opinion. (it was really, really bad) Now I have seen quite a few weekend martial courses material and this was the worst ever. In other words he was ripped off! Now I am not naming names but this trend of attend a weekend of training and become an instructor is now quickly becoming the norm in the martial/combatives world. It is a method of empire growing and usually the skill sets taught are watered down and not the best. Sure they are better than nothing but what happens is that the practitioner/future instructor has no depth and no correlating skill sets to make the material work. (in general as there is always the exception) What is really going on is that the person or person’s issuing the instructorship are making huge money while creating a following or future revenue stream. In general they water down the Martial Science that they teach and it is watered down even more as the new weekend instructor goes out to teach. Now back to my new student. I do not know if he will continue training or not. That really is up to him but I do know and he now knows that he needs to refine his skills in order to teach weapons/tools. That at least is one very good thing that came out of our meeting.
…..To those that are teaching weekend courses where you pass out an instructorship to someone. Well you should really be ashamed!
See You On the Mats!
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Brian R. VanCise
Note: This Blog is opinion only and Instinctive Response Training LLC nor Brian R. VanCise is responsible for any third party actions taken.
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