Dealing with fractured lineages

[Eric_H]

He is using the "tried and true" Leung Ting strategy of disowning me from the lineage, denying that I truly learned any Pin Sun because I was "just a seminar student" and discrediting anything I show. This is so he can distance himself from what I show, and tell people..."No, that's not really Pin Sun! That guy didn't really learn Pin Sun Wing Chun!" Yes, petty and small-minded! Too bad that is far too common in Wing Chun!

This post is inspired by the recent kerfuffle going on in KPM's Wing Chun Boxing thread.

Lineages often split over problems of ethics, money, power, personality conflicts... the list goes on.

I don't have a dog in that particular fight, but I will say we've had some people leave our lineage who were mostly "seminar students" who now claim to be "fully certified sifu" level. They legitimately can't do it/don't know our stuff well/make a bunch of stuff up. Is it being petty to say so when they try to represent their stuff as being the "correct" way?

 

[Flying Crane]

I think such folks ought to be honest about what they learned vs what they developed on their own and how much actual training time they spent with their teacher.

I don’t put stock in video/distance or seminar learning if that is the primary or only method of instructon. But people will do what they will do. If they are up front about it then I guess the honesty counts, as long as they really are honest and aren’t inflating anything.

 

[geezer]

This post is inspired by the recent kerfuffle going on in KPM's Wing Chun Boxing thread.

Lineages often split over problems of ethics, money, power, personality conflicts... the list goes on.

I don't have a dog in that particular fight, but I will say we've had some people leave our lineage who were mostly "seminar students" who now claim to be "fully certified sifu" level. They legitimately can't do it/don't know our stuff well/make a bunch of stuff up. Is it being petty to say so when they try to represent their stuff as being the "correct" way?

I have a problem with people pretending to have had more training and knowledge or higher credentials than they actually do. But if they are straight forward about what their actual training and experience is, then IMO they can do whatever they want and people can judge them accordingly.

KPM is working on his own particular synthesis of WC and boxing. I don't recall him making any inflated claims other than presenting some videos of what he has put together. Personally, I enjoy watching them.

 

[KPM]

The proof is in the performance. If they can't represent and clearly didn't learn the material, then obviously they shouldn't be making claims. But if that person does know the material and can perform, why should they be devalued simply because they learned in a "non-traditional" way? As I pointed out on that thread, a LOT of learning goes on when the person goes home and puts in the hours practicing and analyzing what they learned. But...if they are claiming something that is untrue, or clearly didn't actually learn the material, then that is different. What really ticks me off is when people attempt to devalue what someone CAN learn from watching videos or going to seminars or being a "distance student". Why in the world would anyone bother to make videos or offer seminars if they didn't expect people to be able to learn something from them??? And why would anyone agree to take on a "distance student" if they didn't think they could actually teach the system to them that way???

So I will continue to feature Pin Sun Wing Chun in future videos and you guys can be the judge as to whether it looks like I know what I'm doing or not!

 

[Flying Crane]

You raise some good questions, to which I do not have answers: why do people do this? Money comes to mind. Growing a following to stroke ones ego, regardless of quality or lack of quality, is another guess. Beyond that, you would need to ask the individual making the offer.

I don’t put stock in distance or video or seminar learning, if that is the only or the primary source of learning.

Of course people train outside of class, and that is where much development happens. However, especially in the earlier stages, consistent and repeated review and hands-on correction by a sifu are needed to make sure the development is happening correctly. If that correction isn’t happening then you don’t even know if you are doing it correctly. It is much more than just imitating the moves. Imitation does not mean you learned it, nor understand it.

You could work on it for a century, but if you are doing it wrong and without proper understanding then you haven’t grown in your skill. You have simply practiced poorly for a century.

Everyone thinks they are the exception, the gifted one who can do it. They are not.

 

[KPM]

You raise some good questions, to which I do not have answers: why do people do this? Money comes to mind. Growing a following to stroke ones ego, regardless of quality or lack of quality, is another guess. Beyond that, you would need to ask the individual making the offer.

---I doubt anyone has gotten rich off of selling Wing Chun DVDs or offering seminars. Except maybe Leung Ting. But its rare!


I don’t put stock in distance or video or seminar learning, if that is the only or the primary source of learning.

---I agree....if its the ONLY source of learning. But you tend to cast your net pretty wide with your criticisms.


Everyone thinks they are the exception, the gifted one who can do it. They are not.

---And you tend to think that everyone that has learned from video or a seminar is some talentless dweeb with no other experience or exposure. Usually they are not.

 

[Flying Crane]

Define “talentless dweeb”. Nevermind, I don’t care.

I stand by my position: if distance/video/seminar is the primary or only source of instruction, then i give it little to no stock.

And I will repeat: everyone wants to believe they are the exception, the gifted person who can learn it well in this fashion. They are not.

Make your own decisions about yourself and what you believe. My position on it is clear. However I do not expect that to change what you do.

 

[anerlich]

The value of the opinions of random internet forum posters about what one does is probably about as high as that of the veracity of skills gained from exclusive video and distance learning.

 

[Martial D]

Let us keep in mind, there are a LOT of radically different WC lineages. Originally, there was only one.

Unless we are going to discard every offshoot as bogus, we kinda have to accept new emergent variations as well. Otherwise, it's all confusing he said she said crap.

My point? Even if kpms Pin Sun is a little different than what came before(not a student of that lineage so I don't know one way or the other) who cares?

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Of course people train outside of class, and that is where much development happens. However, especially in the earlier stages, consistent and repeated review and hands-on correction by a sifu are needed to make sure the development is happening correctly. If that correction isn’t happening then you don’t even know if you are doing it correctly.

I'd put it a little differently. I'd say that corrective feedback of some sort is essential for any kind of learning, including martial arts. Correction from an instructor is just one option for that feedback.

BJJ was developed by individuals who had only minimal instruction in the parent art (Judo). They used the feedback from many real fights and thousands of hours of sparring sessions to develop legitimate skills.

Everyone thinks they are the exception, the gifted one who can do it. They are not.

History shows that some individuals are the gifted exceptions. Just 99.9% of us are not.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I'd put it a little differently. I'd say that corrective feedback of some sort is essential for any kind of learning, including martial arts. Correction from an instructor is just one option for that feedback.

BJJ was developed by individuals who had only minimal instruction in the parent art (Judo). They used the feedback from many real fights and thousands of hours of sparring sessions to develop legitimate skills.



History shows that some individuals are the gifted exceptions. Just 99.9% of us are not.

And you and I have also discussed before that once there is a base of knowledge, it becomes more possible to add practical technical ability using videos and other sources. Is it as good as having a skilled, experienced instructor? No - it will likely take longer to learn, and significantly longer to get nuances down. But it's entirely practical after a point. The aforementioned BJJ developers present a good paradigm for this.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

And you and I have also discussed before that once there is a base of knowledge, it becomes more possible to add practical technical ability using videos and other sources. Is it as good as having a skilled, experienced instructor? No - it will likely take longer to learn, and significantly longer to get nuances down. But it's entirely practical after a point. The aforementioned BJJ developers present a good paradigm for this.

I think it's also helpful to have an entire community working on the development of the art. Carlos and Helio Gracie didn't create BJJ by themselves. They had a huge family and a large body of students acting as an R&D team.

My own gym still follows that paradigm. Our head instructor still teaches some classes, but he's not that active in supervising our development. We (the rest of the BJJ instructors) mostly learn from each other and our students and outside sources (seminars, YouTube, friends from other schools and other arts, etc). I tell students that we are a martial arts research laboratory and everybody has a part to play in running experiments - even the white belts.

 

[Xue Sheng]

You raise some good questions, to which I do not have answers: why do people do this? Money comes to mind. Growing a following to stroke ones ego, regardless of quality or lack of quality, is another guess. Beyond that, you would need to ask the individual making the offer.

I don’t put stock in distance or video or seminar learning, if that is the only or the primary source of learning.

Of course people train outside of class, and that is where much development happens. However, especially in the earlier stages, consistent and repeated review and hands-on correction by a sifu are needed to make sure the development is happening correctly. If that correction isn’t happening then you don’t even know if you are doing it correctly. It is much more than just imitating the moves. Imitation does not mean you learned it, nor understand it.

You could work on it for a century, but if you are doing it wrong and without proper understanding then you haven’t grown in your skill. You have simply practiced poorly for a century.

Everyone thinks they are the exception, the gifted one who can do it. They are not.

I agree with most of this, possibly all of this, but I do have a question about this; Please define what you are referring to when you say "distance" learning.

 

[Flying Crane]

I agree with most of this, possibly all of this, but I do have a question about this; Please define what you are referring to when you say "distance" learning.

I think it was a term he was using, not my term.

Personally, I would describe it as primarily video instruction and/or with rare or at best occasional visits for face-to-face instruction. It largely leaves the student unrealistically responsible for his own quality control during the practice and development stages of training. Opportunities to get direct and hands-on correction from the instructor are inadequately rare.

Exactly where the line lies, I don’t know.

 

[Flying Crane]

I'd put it a little differently. I'd say that corrective feedback of some sort is essential for any kind of learning, including martial arts. Correction from an instructor is just one option for that feedback.

BJJ was developed by individuals who had only minimal instruction in the parent art (Judo). They used the feedback from many real fights and thousands of hours of sparring sessions to develop legitimate skills.



History shows that some individuals are the gifted exceptions. Just 99.9% of us are not.

A reasonable post.

 

[Xue Sheng]

I think it was a term he was using, not my term.

Personally, I would describe it as primarily video instruction and/or with rare or at best occasional visits for face-to-face instruction. It largely leaves the student unrealistically responsible for his own quality control during the practice and development stages of training. Opportunities to get direct and hands-on correction from the instructor are inadequately rare.

Exactly where the line lies, I don’t know.

Agreed

The reason I asked was that old China is loaded with people meeting their Shifu once or twice a year, but then they were only shown 1 thing and told to practice it until the next time they saw their Shifu. I seriously doubt that anyone today has that kind of patience or dedication and would continue with a shifu who was only showing them 1 thing (ex. Santi Shi) and being told see you in 6 months to a year, and if you have that right, I'll show you something else.

The other is I trained Xingyiquan locally with 2 different teachers before I decided I needed to find one who was more skilled. And the best training I got was the 3rd who I drove to see in Boston (4 hours away), but we spent a few hours together training and there were no videos involved. And if I didn't injure myself again, and if he didn't move way south of the Masson Dixon line, without checking with me first , I'd probably have gone back to train more.

In my definition of "distance learning" I also include driving to see your shifu, on a fairly regular basis; ex. once a month or once every two months. My stance on video training is still; that it is at best a supplement for training with your actual shifu

Those are the reasons for my question.

 

[Flying Crane]

Agreed

The reason I asked was that old China is loaded with people meeting their Shifu once or twice a year, but then they were only shown 1 thing and told to practice it until the next time they saw their Shifu. I seriously doubt that anyone today has that kind of patience or dedication and would continue with a shifu who was only showing them 1 thing (ex. Santi Shi) and being told see you in 6 months to a year, and if you have that right, I'll show you something else.

The other is I trained Xingyiquan locally with 2 different teachers before I decided I needed to find one who was more skilled. And the best training I got was the 3rd who I drove to see in Boston (4 hours away), but we spent a few hours together training and there were no videos involved. And if I didn't injure myself again, and if he didn't move way south of the Masson Dixon line, without checking with me first , I'd probably have gone back to train more.

In my definition of "distance learning" I also include driving to see your shifu, on a fairly regular basis; ex. once a month or once every two months. My stance on video training is still; that it is at best a supplement for training with your actual shifu

Those are the reasons for my question.

Sure, and after the few hours training you spent with the sifu in Boston, you did not begin teaching that material.

People are welcome to learn however and wherever they can. Even seminars and distance learning can have some value but I call foul when people think they can start teaching this stuff after such an inadequate body of instruction.

Keep practicing, sure. But don’t think you have any business teaching it.

I personally would feel like a fraud if I did that. Apparently that is a problem not everyone shares.

But I feel that is indicative of shallow understanding. People think that if they can mimick the moves well enough then that’s it, that’s Kung Fu and they “know” it and then they want to teach it and get resentful of anyone who might dare to suggest they shouldn’t do it. That’s delusional or simply naive on an enormous level. There is so much more that goes into understanding this stuff than copying the movement.

I see discussions where people point to physical differences between lineages, a slightly different hand placement or stance positioning, and they point to that as what makes the lineages different. But they need to understand why the difference is important, for example the stance difference allows for a subtle but important difference in how power is generated. If they don’t understand the deeper reasons for those differences, then it is all just cosmetic and they don’t be understand what is REALLY different about the lineages. It is also possible that those cosmetic differences have no real meat to them, they are just cosmetic. In that case the difference is meaningless and does nothing to give legitimate identity to a separate lineage.

Some of the discussions here lead me to believe a lot of people are unaware of these things, but they are what really matter and make it meaningful.

 

[KPM]

I think it was a term he was using, not my term.

Personally, I would describe it as primarily video instruction and/or with rare or at best occasional visits for face-to-face instruction. It largely leaves the student unrealistically responsible for his own quality control during the practice and development stages of training. Opportunities to get direct and hands-on correction from the instructor are inadequately rare.

.

And personally, you would be wrong. That may be the case at times. But that certainly does NOT describe the majority of "distance learning" programs I am familiar with. I don't think such an arrangement would be acceptable for either the instructor or the student.

 

[KPM]

The reason I asked was that old China is loaded with people meeting their Shifu once or twice a year, but then they were only shown 1 thing and told to practice it until the next time they saw their Shifu. I seriously doubt that anyone today has that kind of patience or dedication and would continue with a shifu who was only showing them 1 thing (ex. Santi Shi) and being told see you in 6 months to a year, and if you have that right, I'll show you something else.
.

How about 4 things in-depth, and then going off to practice for a year?

 

[KPM]

I personally would feel like a fraud if I did that. Apparently that is a problem not everyone shares.

.

If you have a problem with me Michael, then just come right out and say it. I assure you that points you have been beating over and over do not apply to me.