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Old 11-13-2006, 09:25 AM   #19
Jorge Garcia
Dojo: Shudokan School of Aikido
Location: Houston
Join Date: Jun 2001
Posts: 608
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Re: Poll: Do you think private "one on one" lessons in aikido benefit the student mor

Quote:
Christopher Li wrote:
Takeda, of course, also trained groups, but never seriously - and he seemed to do OK. In any case, individual instruction was much more common than group instruction in many ryuha for hundreds of years, and they seemed to do OK as well, which would seem to obviate any requirement for group lessons in order to progress.

There's no question that training with a variety of people is going to be of benefit. Whether or not that training is best conducted in the context of a group lesson is much more problematic. Takeda promoted some 30 or so people to kyoju dairi, so he obviously trained with a variety of students - but he trained with them, for the most part, one at a time.

Now, even if you accept that Yamada (for example) was still a "student" for those years of leading practice, the question should really be which would have benefitted him more - 40 years of leading group practices, or 40 years of one-on-one instruction with Morihei Ueshiba (since the original question was which method was of greater benefit).

Best,

Chris

Chris
I'm not sure about that since my teacher believes that you don't learn from being taught but by yourself. Some people that trained with O Sensei aren't very good and others are great. That may not have been because of him but because of their own efforts. As I said before though, I always learned more when I trained one on one with my Sensei.

Best,

"It is the philosophy that gives meaning to the method of training."
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