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Old 06-17-2011, 01:12 PM   #1
dapidmini
Dojo: Surabaya Aikido Dojo
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teachers can no longer study?

the instructor in my dojo is often absent and I'll have to take over the class. when I'm teaching I don't get to do many techniques because I have to run around the class correcting almost everybody (I'm perfectionist like my instructor).

I come to wonder when do instructors train?
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Old 06-17-2011, 01:25 PM   #2
Marie Noelle Fequiere
 
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Oh, you know, you can cheat. While running around the class, you can say: "No no, this is not quite right, let me show you one more time. You see, it's like this..."
Of course, you explain as you do, since you are teaching! And, of course, do not "steal" someone's partner too often or for too much time. Keep running, you are teaching!
And do not forget, explaining a technique in details is a mental form of training.
Of course, sometimes, when the number of students attending the class is uneven, you have the opportunity to grab a lonely soul and let them train with you. Of course again, practicing a technique means learning to give it, and also to receive it.
See? With a little creativity, you can teach and train.
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Old 06-17-2011, 01:48 PM   #3
dapidmini
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

yes I did perform the technique when correcting but I'm still not satisfied by the amount of physical practice that way.. lonely souls are always recruited into a group of 3-4 people. so I can't take them..

oh well, I guess I'll have to take what I can get. even if it's just the mental training. I just feel bad for my instructor..
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Old 06-17-2011, 02:01 PM   #4
jester
 
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Teaching is one of the best forms of study!!

-

-It seems to be all about semantics!
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Old 06-17-2011, 02:06 PM   #5
Gerardo Torres
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Quote:
David Santana wrote: View Post
I come to wonder when do instructors train?
At home? Other places?

Training doesn't have to be restricted to the scheduled class/keiko. Maybe the instructor is secretly training while somebody covers his class.
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Old 06-18-2011, 05:03 AM   #6
Hanna B
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

I think there are plenty of teachers who get to little practise themselves, and stop learning. If one is teaching the majority of one's training, one has to structure the training so one actually trains while teaching.

One way of teaching is letting all the students take ukemi for the teacher - possibly also the other way around, but if the class is big there is little time for this. The importance for students to feel and experience good techniques is often neglected, I think. I don't understand teachers who seldom lay their hand on a student in order to do technique - not primarily in order to "correct" something - other than a few favourite uke, and expect the class to truly understand what they are doing.

Physical training... well. If only throwing, not taking ukemi, you kind of remove what conditioning stuff there is in aikido. Someone who teaches this way must either do complementary fitness training or pretty soon be out of shape, IMHO.

Having that said, I think the OP will find more learning through teaching the more he teaches, even in just following his own teachers's way of teaching.
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Old 06-18-2011, 09:46 AM   #7
graham christian
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Quote:
David Santana wrote: View Post
the instructor in my dojo is often absent and I'll have to take over the class. when I'm teaching I don't get to do many techniques because I have to run around the class correcting almost everybody (I'm perfectionist like my instructor).

I come to wonder when do instructors train?
Interesting view.

First off David I would say that you could look at the teaching experience as an opportunity rather than a hassle. Remember it is also training, you are training in teaching.

Secondly you can review every time you do it and if you find you 'have to' run around correcting too much that could be an arrow pointing to something you need to learn, it's all part of studying.

If you want to do more for yourself (at the same time) then I'm sure you can find a way. You know, letting the students just get on with it without interference for say fifteen minutes or so is not a bad thing.

Regards.G.
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Old 06-18-2011, 07:03 PM   #8
Mary Eastland
 
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Ron and I train every class because we teach together.
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Old 06-19-2011, 09:44 AM   #9
Tibokio
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Can't you just pick out someone to practice with? If there's a a group of three people, you could just pick out one to train with? This way, you can study, while teaching your partner. It's a win-win situation!
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Old 06-19-2011, 10:02 AM   #10
Hanna B
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Quote:
David Santana wrote: View Post
lonely souls are always recruited into a group of 3-4 people. so I can't take them..
Oh yes you can. It means introducing the group to something they are not used to, but of course you can.
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Old 06-19-2011, 03:12 PM   #11
hughrbeyer
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

A senior aikidoka who used to teach occasionally at our dojo had a process for this. He'd demonstrate the technique, let people pair up, and then he'd circulate. If there were an even number of students, he'd practice with each member of the pair, doing the technique and receiving it. Then he'd move on to the next pair.

If there were an odd number of students, he'd practice with the odd man out. Then he'd break up a pair, send the extra guy to practice with the odd man out, and practice with the other half of the pair, circulating until he got to everybody.
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Old 06-19-2011, 03:39 PM   #12
Hanna B
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Quote:
Hugh Beyer wrote: View Post
A senior aikidoka who used to teach occasionally at our dojo had a process for this. He'd demonstrate the technique, let people pair up, and then he'd circulate. If there were an even number of students, he'd practice with each member of the pair, doing the technique and receiving it. Then he'd move on to the next pair.

If there were an odd number of students, he'd practice with the odd man out. Then he'd break up a pair, send the extra guy to practice with the odd man out, and practice with the other half of the pair, circulating until he got to everybody.
I had a teacher who used to do this too - but only when the group was pretty small. But for some reason, the guy or gal who was the odd man out didn't join in someplace else but just waited for him to finish going through everyone and start showing the group next thing to work on. I think everybody felt working with him was compensation enough for having to wait and just watch a little while. He trained with you for roughly the same amount of time it took him to go through the rest of the students. And then of course in next technique someone else was the odd man out.

So this way he actually got himself more training than the rest of us, since he was training while showing the techniques to us and we were just sitting. OK, part of the "going through every student" may have been not training but actual instruction, so yeah, about the same amount of training as the rest of us.

The smaller the group, the easier for the teacher to train while teaching.
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Old 06-20-2011, 01:21 AM   #13
Tim Ruijs
 
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

To me a combination of the mentoined approaches seem to work well.
Sometimes I simply walk around and observe to identify problems and explain this for the entire group. At other times I help out couples with their specific problem and move to the next. And also I join in to feel their technique.
I guess it depends on what you are working on in class (in relation to the group) what works best. For the last few years I teach, but have no regular training with the exception when my teacher vists my country, or I visit him. But this only happens a few times each year. Yet I advance, both in understanding and ability.
Only the method of training has changed.
Like someone stated: it is easy being told what to do, much harder to find out yourself, but also more rewarding and I think better.

In a real fight:
* If you make a bad decision, you die.
* If you don't decide anything, you die.
Aikido teaches you how to decide.
www.aikido-makato.nl
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Old 06-20-2011, 04:49 AM   #14
Jauch
 
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Lately i've reading a lot about training.
.
One thing that I came up and I agree, or at least seems to be logical, is that the most important work one must do, in aikido (to be specific), is the "self training", or the "alone work". At least after you have been training for a while and have a good notion of the "movement" way (It's useless to build an engine and do not have a chassis to put it on).
.
The tatami work is inevitable, but must be the complement to the outside tatami work, as in the place where you try to apply what you have studied before.
.
The fact that some few people really get exceptional at aikido, and these folks usually get better and better with age, despite the fact that they do really almost none "tatami work" anymore, should be a clue to everyone.
.
I'm not saying that you do not need to do "hard work". On the contrary. The "alone work" seems to be far more difficult than the "tatami work".
.
Anyway, another clue should be that if aikido was merely a "physical" discipline, with age these exceptional folk would show a decay in their aikido, what is not the case, like I said (but this is very controversial, I know).
.
So, being a teacher or student shouldn't be any different, because the greater work must be done outside tatami (in my opinion).
.
But seems that most people train aikido only on tatami, even being possible to train almost any of the principles alone.

I'm in that group, of course. But I'm trying to change that
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Old 06-20-2011, 05:25 AM   #15
Carsten Möllering
 
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Quote:
Eduardo Jauch wrote: View Post
...the most important work one must do, in aikido (to be specific), is the "self training", or the "alone work".
What do you mean with "alone work" or "self training"?

Do you talk of solo movements like the people who train in IS/IP?
Or do you mean something else?
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Old 06-20-2011, 06:03 AM   #16
Jauch
 
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Quote:
Carsten Möllering wrote: View Post
What do you mean with "alone work" or "self training"?

Do you talk of solo movements like the people who train in IS/IP?
Or do you mean something else?
Hello Carsten

I'm not sure if I know what is "IS/IP"... IS I don't know what is for sure. IP would be "Internal Power"? I read this word in many threads here, but do not have a "clear" image of what this really is.

To me, the "alone work" (or self training) is, in fact, "solo" work.
Definitely includes training of movements, like tenkan and other base changes, posture, "live" relaxing, etc. While I don't believe that body mechanics are the central point in doing aiki, if you can't even control your body you will never be able to do aiki, because the physical expression of aiki is done with our body (even if we barely touch the other).

But the "solo work" must include other important aspects like the mind/spirit training, or, the way I like to call it, our "state of spirit".
It's the ability to truly clear our mind of the "bad feelings", like the need to impose a defeat to the other, that will open the gates of our sensitivity and the possibility to do aiki.

In my life, only ONCE, in a practicing, I was in this "state of spirit" (I don't know how I achieved it, by the way). The only way I could explain what was like is that I "feel it" like if all my partners, for about 1:30h, were moving in slow motion, and that they came to me with a BIG RED X saying: "put your hand here"...
I really feel what was going on. Was an amazing experience. I never felt so good in my live as in that day.

I'm trying to discover how to put myself in that way since them. I don't find the way, but I'm getting closer. And to train outside tatami is where I'm failing, by not doing it.

I know, for sure, that this "state of spirit" is something that you can't achieve only by "tatami training". It's necessary a "life effort" and must start out of the tatami, training the body and the mind/spirit.

So, I'm talking of solo movements and something else, that I really don't know if I could explain...
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Old 06-20-2011, 06:22 AM   #17
Jauch
 
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19831

This is an interesting article about "self training", in my opinion.
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Old 06-20-2011, 01:32 PM   #18
ninjaqutie
 
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

My sensei will often practice with the "odd man out" of a group of three. He will either do the technique he just showed, or mess around and see where he wants to take the class for the next few techniques. Other times he just throws you around for fun. Either way, I have to say... I like being the odd man out. It has perks!

~Look into the eyes of your opponent & steal his spirit.
~To be a good martial artist is to be good thief; if you want my knowledge, you must take it from me.
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Old 06-21-2011, 05:30 PM   #19
Dave de Vos
 
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

On average, two or three teachers (teaching their own classes, some in their own dojo) train as students in the classes given by my teacher.

So perhaps some teachers train with other teachers?

But I don't know how my teacher trains (other that demonstrating techniques in a class and going to Japan every now and then, probably to train with his teacher)

Last edited by Dave de Vos : 06-21-2011 at 05:34 PM.
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Old 10-23-2011, 09:23 PM   #20
edshockley
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Henry Smith Shihan has has three major surgeries in four years and this last has me teaching 10 or 11 classes per week. While I teach for the sake of the dojo, I am there for my own journey. My solutions have been
1) Split multiple class days with another senior student so we can take one class and teach one class
2) stop being a perfectionist and trust that students will learn by both doing aikido and taking ukemi for me. (i was told that Yamada Shihan trained with students regularly in the early years.)
3) Attend seminars and visit other dojos.
4) Watch videos and work with an advanced partner before or after class
5) practice alone in the mirror with an invisible partner at Tai chi speed.
6) review bokken and jo katas and suburi daily

Combining this with the mental exercise of composing classes for the students has allowed me to continue slow growth until sensei returns to again guide my matriculation.
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Old 10-24-2011, 07:47 PM   #21
Just Jamey
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Do a couple of line drills and join in the fun...
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Old 10-24-2011, 08:16 PM   #22
Keith Larman
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

Just for myself I'll demonstrate techniques but then I find it even more important to take ukemi from the students to make sure they're doing it right. Push them a bit, find their limits and make them bang against them. Then it's my turn to do it a few times too. And I want them to challenge me as well. Learning never stops.

I also make a point of taking other classes whenever possible. And I've been known to show up for general practices and just practice.

And lately I've spent a lot of time at home practicing on my own. One benefit of being an IS/IP convert is that there's lots of work to do on your own -- no one else required. So I count it all as training.

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Old 10-25-2011, 12:06 AM   #23
kewms
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Re: teachers can no longer study?

If it's your class, you can do what you want...

If I'm teaching beginners, I make sure to take ukemi for as many people as possible: one of the things that makes being a beginner so hard, IMO, is working with other beginners all the time.

If I'm teaching a more advanced class, I feel more comfortable leaving them to their own devices while I train, and so I'll be sure to work with as many of the senior people there as I can.

It is challenging, though. This is one reason why I am very happy to *not* have my own dojo: I teach regular classes, but there are lots of other people teaching as well.

Katherine
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