On a forum I visit, a member posted his story of visiting another martial arts school. He speaks of asking the teacher a question only to get attacked as an answer. He didn’t understand the teacher’s reaction and asked if other members had experienced this type of thing. Personally, I’ve been there a number of times, both with instructors as well as students of the schools I visited. So here’s my response:
Sometimes the teacher has the ego problem but other times students are the reason why it degenerates to blows. The last time I trained regularly in a muay Thai gym, the teacher was great. He saw I’d trained before and was real neat in showing lots of details. But the students only saw me as a new heavyweight to pound on to see how I would react. Then they were surprised when I started hitting back and complained I was heavier and stronger than them… It’s not like they didn’t know that upfront.
Another time, a friend and I organized an open mat for shuai jiao and tui shou. We acted as referees and made sure everybody had fun training. The problem was a well known instructor who showed up with his two Chinese teachers He was arrogant from the get go and ended up telling my friend there was obviously nobody of any real skill present and he and his teachers should take over. My friend kindly told him no. So his shuai jiao teacher joined the session and tried to show off only to get tossed around for his trouble. They calmed down a bit. When my friend’s Chinese teacher arrived, they left in a hurry…
To balance things out, a positive experience: I was invited to a semi-private class by a student of a big name FMA teacher. I showed up and sat down on a chair. Waited until the teacher came over and introduced myself while thanking him to allow me to watch his class. After a while he invited me to share a technique if I felt like it. I did and he was very gracious about it. He asked if I wanted to join in a bit so I did. Everybody was very respectful and I tried to reciprocate as best as possible. We went for drinks after class and had a great time.
So I guess it is possible but takes some careful navigating to step into another school.”
These are just a couple of the things I’ve encountered while visiting other schools, there are more stories but let’s not go there today. Suffice it to say that my experiences are not unique, not by a long shot. Pretty much everybody who’s been training for a while has similar tales to tell. But there’s another side to that coin, not every teacher reacts this way to visitors because he’s a bully. Here’s another reply of mine: [Read more…]
