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Old 06-25-2009, 12:37 PM   #25
DonMagee
Location: Indiana
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,311
United_States
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Re: Not coping with the new sensei

Quote:
Russ Qureshi wrote: View Post
I think the anonymous poster should walk...,from what they have said, this much seems obvious. I would like to address Mr. S's point:

[b][Quote:
Don Magee wrote:
I am no one's servant or whipping boy. I am a paying student and customer. I deserve the respect that comes with that..

..and you are buying a product called 'aikido'? Is it coming with 5 years of warranty?

Service-customer relation in aikido dojo - is it right spirit for practice?? How can you develop spiritual dimention of aikido practice in such conditions?/B]

When you start talking about going to the dojo I think you can pretty much throw out the idea of commerce ie. I paid my money now I want my product/service. This is an extreme example to make a point...but....while the original poster seems to be in a genuinely tough situation, one must remember there can be quite of bit of gray area when it comes to relationships, especially instructor/student relationships. What I'm trying to say is that one should not expect absolute respect simply because one has paid their training fees for that month.....

Cheers all,

Russ
If they want a unquestioning slave they should teach for free. I am friends with all my instructors and I pay them for their services. If those services are not being provided, I will not be paying them. I teach at a college. My students expect that I will be polite, present to them the subject matter, and give constructive criticism to help them better learn and understand the subject matter. If I called one of them a moron I would be fired. I expect no less from anyone teaching anything.

As I've said, a instructor can be gruff, he can yell at you, he can do things to motivate you. You should be willing to do anything he asks within reason, even if you don't want to. After all if you didn't do what he asked then you are taking from him the chance to provide you the service you payed for.

If anyone calls me stupid, or a moron, or degrades me then we are going to have issues. The most important issue is going to be if I will still be requiring their services. Like it or not the instructor has to answer for their actions to their students. They are not above students in any way. There is a difference between constructive criticism and verbal assault. Any instructor who doesn't see that if a horrible instructor and not worthy of any students.

I've had coaches push me harder. They have told me to shut up and train, to keep pushing, to stop slacking off, they have told me to try again and again and again even when I wanted to give up. That is all constructive. I've only had one instructor tell me I was stupid. I warned him and he didn't stop. That was the last time I ever trained with him.

Life is too short to spend it around people like that. I want my coaches to have more then just technical mastery. I want a coach who understand the human body and the human mind and knows how to shape and push you without making you feel like garbage to boost his ego.

- Don
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough" - Albert Einstein
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