Martial Arts Student & Martial Arts Instructor whats the difference?

Hello All,

Today a student of mine Kent Nelson (www.tkentnelson.com) and I were talking about a conversation that he was having with one of his students. This student is an experienced Martial Artist and started training with Kent about 2 weeks ago. The student was saying how the lead hook that they did worked for them and they felt very uncomfortable with the lead hook that Kent was teaching.

Kent replied “The way that you are doing the hook works for you but it would not work for everyone. You want to become an Instructor and that is the difference between a student and an Instructor. As an Instructor you need to find material that works for a large percentage of the population.”

I thought that this was a very good point. Over the years I have met Martial Artists that are teaching that have not gone through an Instructor program. They have trained for a couple of years and have gotten comfortable with the techniques and start to teach them to people without the thought if the way that they perform the techniques/training methods will work for a large percentage of the population.

This is very common with people who are Martial Athletes meaning they either participate in Tournaments or Ring/Octagon Sports. They find a series of techniques that work well for them and start to teach it, some of their students (most likely the students that are very athletic) get it and a large percentage don’t. They blame it on the student and don’t want to accept the fact that very often it’s not the student’s fault it is their own.

All 3 of my Instructors Guro Dan Inosanto (www.inosanto.com) Sifu Dave Hatch (www.attributivemartialarts.com) and Sifu Paul Vunak (www.fighting.net) have arranged their curriculums to meet the needs of a large percentage of the population. All of their curriculums are very different but they still have the desire to teach the average person.

At Synergy Martial Arts we have the philosophy that we want to help the student that is on the bottom end of the food chain be the best Martial Artist they can be. The reason for this is that if the person who is an “average” Martial Artist has solid fundamentals they will be able to challenge the above average Martial Artist and make them better.

It is a cycle that I have found to be true as an Instructor as my students get better I improve not only as an Instructor but as a Martial Artist as well. Our new students push me as much if not more sometimes than our advanced students. The reason for this is because if a new student is not comprehending the material the way that I am attempting to communicate it then it makes me reevaluate the how I am communicating it. I then attempt to explain it in a manner that reaches the student. Often allowing me to see the material from a new perspective.

I hope that this brief explanation will help you to evaluate how your Instructor is teaching you and if you do teach are you really teaching your students or are you merely instructing them on your own personal learning style and athletic abilities.

Shawn