How many hours does it take to become an expert?

[oftheherd1]

How many classes to a Bachelor's Degree? It depends upon is it 3 credit hour or 4 credit hour classes or 5 or even 1 or 2. It all depends. There is a requirement for the total number of classes and out of those classes there are requirements for the number in different areas. They all require that you have passed the class and also have a certain understanding level.

...

But does even a bachelor's degree qualify one as an expert? As to how man credit hours a course it, I don't think that is so important as uaually you must have a certain amount of hours to graduate, and a certain amount of those hours must be in core subjects. So then that raises the question of is MA education more like a college certificate course? In MA we aren't required to study the social graces. You really don't even need to know how to read and write.

And in MA, how many rememeber in the late 50s, and up to the 70s, we knew there were Karate and Judo 'experts.' But we didn't know what it took to be one unless we were studying an MA. We thought maybe a black belt had something to do with it. Then we started hearing about Kung Fu. I remember a guy in Vietnam, when I mentioned that I had studied briefly under Jhoon Goo Rhee, and that Mr. Rhee was a 6th degree BB, he was quite impressed. "Wow, he must be about ready to move up to Kung Fu then."

 

[Balrog]

[h=2]How many hours does it take to become an expert?[/h]
Interesting question!

The easy answer is: as many as it takes. But that doesn't really help much without a definition of expert. I like to think of someone as expert in martial arts who can read a potential situation / opponent, formulate an action to the situation and execute it without conscious thought. And that does not happen overnight. For someone to get to that level, I agree that many, many hours/years of training are required, but with the caveat: have you had X years of training, or have you had one year of training repeated X times? If one is not varying the training and and mixing up drills so that you approach the same technique from different points of view, have you really learned something well enough to be considered expert?

 

[Steve]

But does even a bachelor's degree qualify one as an expert? As to how man credit hours a course it, I don't think that is so important as uaually you must have a certain amount of hours to graduate, and a certain amount of those hours must be in core subjects. So then that raises the question of is MA education more like a college certificate course? In MA we aren't required to study the social graces. You really don't even need to know how to read and write.

And in MA, how many rememeber in the late 50s, and up to the 70s, we knew there were Karate and Judo 'experts.' But we didn't know what it took to be one unless we were studying an MA. We thought maybe a black belt had something to do with it. Then we started hearing about Kung Fu. I remember a guy in Vietnam, when I mentioned that I had studied briefly under Jhoon Goo Rhee, and that Mr. Rhee was a 6th degree BB, he was quite impressed. "Wow, he must be about ready to move up to Kung Fu then."

Based upon the standard proposed in the first post, a PhD doesn't even qualify as expert. Expert would be those within the field who have distinguished themselves from their peers in a significant way. So, the PhD to whom all of the other PhDs defer would be the expert.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Today I made an appearance downtown
I am an expert witness, because I say I am
And I said, 'Gentleman....and I use that word loosely....
I will testify for you
I'm a gun for hire, I'm a saint, I'm a liar
Because there are no facts, there is no truth
Just a data to be manipulated

The Garden Of Allah

 

[WC_lun]

You are an expert in martial arts when you are intimately famiilar with the phylosophies, concepts, and application of your system. There is no time studied criteria,but it does take time. The 10,000 hour thing is something told to students to make them realize it is a long process and the value of training.

Unfortunately, there are many out there that claim to be "expert" when they aren't. How many times have we seen beginners come here to the forums and claim to be an "expert"? How many times have many of us seen teachers who have no real knowledge of martial arts, yet they continue to teach others on how to be "expert." Egoes and bussiness concerns make this problem even worse.

In the end I think this is a false line drawn that many want to cross for reasons other than training reasons. Everybody wants to be respected for what they do, causing a lot of people to make claims that even they themselves do not know are false. Train hard and train smart, eventually others will see your skill by what you do. Even if others do not see it, it matters more that you know what you know.