Full-time
Study is the Key
(Extracted from Aikido-L)
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 18:18:11 -0000
From: Ruth Mc William
Subject: Re: Full time study is the key....
Justin McCarthy wrote:
>Occasionally I read a bio of one of the top aikido teachers, and I am often
>surprised to read how little time they actually spent studying before
>becoming senior instructors.
I've also been wondering about that. As a quick poll, how long did folks on the
list / their instructors train for before teaching a regular class? And was that
training full-time or part-time, or a mixture of both?
My current sensei had been training part-time (evenings etc) for 24 years before
she started her own class. This was mainly due to having children to look after!
I've only done 10 years training and have no intention of teaching a class for a
very long time :-)
>We may spend 5-10 years before getting shodan! How could these guys
>progress so fast compared to most of us? It must be the full time nature of
>their training, which makes my 4-6 hours a week look pretty pitiful, and
>woefully inadequate if I ever want to achieve some level of real skill.
Don't despair Justin! Being shodan or being a teacher does not indicate
someone's level of skill - I have seen plenty of examples of bad teaching and
shodans who were training at a fairly basic level. There is only one way to
judge a person's skill and that is to get on the mat with them. I think our
senior instructors in the UK ended up doing the job as they were a small handful
of people who had some training, and the demand for teachers was outstripping
the supply. It was possibly the same elsewhere, even in Japan, although the
supply of MA teachers in Japan was presumably more adequate for the demand!
As far as achieving a level of real skill goes, the fact that you have kept
training over the years, despite having a family and a full time job, indicates
that you have a huge commitment to your training which is quite a skill in
itself. I don't think you can really judge your skill against anyone - as long
as you keep on training and learning it's always going to be improving. There
will always be those "super-Aikidoka" out there who progress really fast and
seem to have a very high skill level, but if they've had better opportunities to
train for more hours than you then that just comes down to different choices on
their part. Some of us can do that, others of us have commitments to our
families and jobs. Foster Sensei always says "family first", and that he was
very lucky that his wife supported him in his training. He knew of others who
were not so fortunate and had to leave Aikido as a result of family pressure.
I also happen to think that you are a very skilled Aikidoka, but that's my
opinion! :-)
Ruth
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Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 16:40:40 -0500
From: "Drysdale, Alan E."
Subject: Re: Full time study is the key....
Ruth asked:
>As a quick poll, how long did folks on the list / their instructors train for
before teaching a regular class? And was that training full-time or part-time,
or a mixture of both?
I trained for about 6 years, part time, before I got asked to teach, when I
moved to a different city. I wasn't ready, made some mistakes (still do), but
it was teach or not train very often. Don't know about my teachers, but most of
them were not full time aikidoka. I do know at least one of them had to start
teaching before he got to shodan.
I have a bunch of guys in one dojo who are essentially bootstrapping
themselves. The highest rank is 5th kyu (but 5th dan in karate, so he knows a
lot of relevant stuff for running a class). I get down there when I can, but
that is only about once a month. They are progressing and having fun. Another
student of maybe 17 years runs his own dojo. Another one is starting teaching
classes, and he's been doing aikido about 10 years. Ideally, we would all have a
really good aikidoka as a teacher, but not all of us are willing to move to do
that. Most people do need to make a living.
I don't think that technical ability is all that matters for a teacher. I've had
classes from people who had no idea how to teach. They just demonstrated,
smashing their uke around, and while they were sometimes good technicans you
couldn't see what they were doing.
>Foster Sensei always says "family first", and that he was very lucky that his
wife supported him in his training. He knew of others who were not so fortunate
and had to leave Aikido as a result of family pressure.
Yup. When I was at the Hut there was a realy good technician called Roger -
don't remember his last name. He got married, he got an ultimatum from his new
wife and quit. Twenty years later, he was divorced and just coming back. Saw
the same thing over here. Guy got married and quit. Twenty years later he's
back. One of my students quit coming after he got married.
Alan
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Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 17:31:55 -0500
From: Blake Moorcroft
Subject: Re: Full time study is the key....
> Justin McCarthy wrote:
> >Occasionally I read a bio of one of the top aikido teachers, and I am
> >often surprised to read how little time they actually spent studying
> >before becoming senior instructors.
>
> I've also been wondering about that. As a quick poll, how long did
> folks on the list / their instructors train for before teaching a
> regular class? And was that training full-time or part-time, or a
> mixture of both?
I'm not sure how long Sensei Blok trained before he was teaching...I'll have to
ask him. As for myself, I was training about five, maybe six years before I was
teaching a class of my own. I was assisting in children's classes after four
years IIRC. As for whether it was full-time training, I'm not sure how you'd
define that. It wasn't that I was looking to be a professional MA instructor if
that's what you mean. But I'd been doing an average of about four classes a
week throughout that period, plus seminars and the like.
More later
Blake Moorcroft (Sei Bu)
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Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 09:57:14 +0000
From: Justin McCarthy
Subject: Re Full time study is the key.....
>I also happen to think that you are a very
> skilled Aikidoka, but that's my opinion! :-)
OK - so now I'm grinning at my screen, and going red!
Seriously though, you are right about making choices. Getting the balance right
is difficult, and sometimes I get it wrong, but all my choices have been my own,
and I can't complain about that (and wouldn't want to!).
I do look at the younger students in the club and think how lucky they are to be
starting so early. And sometimes wander how life would have turned
out different if I'd made different choices, but don't regret any of them.
As my grandmother said to me on her wedding day, when she was 83 yrs old, "I
don't mind dying regretting the things I did, I just don't want to die
regretting the things I didn't do".
Justin
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Last updated on 18 Sep 2002