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Old 01-10-2009, 01:49 PM   #119
gregg block
 
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Location: bethlehem PA
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Re: Got pwned by boxer =-(

Quote:
Don Magee wrote: View Post
But how does one know if their teacher can only paint stick figures? I was in TKD for most of my childhood and teenage years. I never once saw my instructor use TKD. He only demonstrated it against compliant partners. This is the case in many martial arts. And these arts tell the student that you never need to see it in action to know it works. They tell the student that the founders and their students were masters and won all sorts of conflicts and thus, by proxy, their teacher is also a bad ass.

This is why aliveness is so important in training. Rather then trying to guess if what you are learning is real you can gauge if what you are learning works or not. And if your teacher is good, he will jump right in and do it with you and not be afraid of failing in front of his students.

Doh! I said I wasn't going to go on about aliveness in this thread...sorry!

Back to the artists and not the art comment. I think the artist only matters in two situations.
1) They have to have the desire to do the training method. - If you are training, but don't have the desire to show up multiple times a week and don't do every drill, don't have the desire to increase your level of physical fitness, then simply put you will NEVER be good at anything physical.
2) On the highest levels of performance. - There are people who are built to succeed in athletic performance. Given the same amount of training they will simply be better then the rest of us. We call these people professional athletes. I don't think this matters in this debate as 95% of us are not and will never be pros. Most of our instructors are not and will never be pros.

Up to a very high level of skill you are only limited by your desire to show up and training and the quality of your training method. Most people who stay in martial arts more then a year or two have the heart to show up and train, but their training method frankly sucks.

I think I would say its 65% the desire to show up and train, 40% the training method, and 5% the persons natural ability. Then once you get above that 'normal' level and into the professional level (like a anderson silva type person) it switches to 75% mental ability and desire of the person, 20% training methods, and 5% physical ability of the person.
A teacher that sucks may be able to lead new students a stray for a while, but not forever. Eventually the true student of the martial arts will test thier training in some way and either it will pan out or it will crash and burn. If it crashes and burns then a true student of the martial arts will seek knowledge elsewhere. The alternative is to live in denial. Some may choose to live in this capacity, but that is their choice.

It really doesnt take a genius to discover if what one has been taught is not effective. It does however require courage to admit it, get past it and more on.
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