If your instructor moved would you....

[IcemanSK]

train at a competitor's school in your town? I've always thought that the competitive nature of "our school is better than your's" was odd. Years ago, my instructor moved & I changed to another school in town. While my experience wasn't as good as the 2nd school as the 1st, it had it's good points.

Do the other schools in your town have a good reputation or bad? Would you go to the other schools if you "had to?"

 

[terryl965]

Iceman it would depend on what the reputation was, if it was just basically politics thenYes I probaly would if it was he abuses his students than defferently not.

 

[PeaceWarrior]

I dont think my instructor would move, but if he did, I would seriously consider moving with him (that is, moving to the same place).

 

[Flying Crane]

I would definitely look for another school, if I was unable to train with my current instructor.

I live in San Francisco where choices are endless, so that makes it easier for me...

 

[bushidomartialarts]

if my instructor moved, i'd find another local instructor. i'm too deeply entrenched in my community to move even for that. luckily portland has solid instruction available.

to the other question, some of the local schools have good reps, some bad. in truth, i don't think i'd train at any of the storefront dojos in my area. this isn't because they all have poor reps, but mostly because i'm not interested in the courses they offer. i'd probably go into town and train in silat or capoeira...

heck, i may do that in a few months, now i think about it.

 

[exile]

With TKD, it's tricky. There are so many McDojangs out there... and since I train with an instructor whose conception of the art is rooted in the early Kwan-era apporach, heavily influenced by Shotokan karate and very combat-oriented (as vs. sport-oriented), I'm not sure how easy it would be to find another school with the same kind of curriculum. Besides, I have a very hard time imagining myself training (on a regular, permanent basis) with anyone else. He's my sabumnim, right? So I'm gonna go wherever he's teaching, unless he moves out of the state, which would make it physically impossible to stay with him...

... it's not just a matter of simple loyalty, though some of that is probably involved. It's more the case that my whole view of the MAs took shape through my contact with him, so we sort of speak the same language there. I had no perspective on TKD till I started training with him. Now that I have one, it would be much harder to start again with someone else whose point of view would, inevitably, be different from mine. It's like learning a first language---no matter how many languages you learn as second languages, there's no way you `know' them the way you know your first language....

 

[Miles]

Hey, my instructor did just move across the country!

But, at this stage in my journey, I am not training under him so much as learning how to be a better instructor.

I have changed instructors when I moved. If you are into the MA and you need an instructor at that part of your journey, then you search for another school which fits your personality-may not even be the same art.

Miles

 

[Adept]

train at a competitor's school in your town?

I have done, and found the experience lacking. Due to work, I had to stop training at my regular school. When I finally found time to train again, I decided to check out some of the other schools to see what they could offer.

I found the other TKD school to be too TKD focused. Which sounds strange, but the TKD school I was initially at included a wide range of very experienced people, from bouncers to prison security officers to police officers and people with high level black belts in other arts. So what we learned included take-downs, a small amount of ground-work, realistic low-level kicks, plenty of hand work, and training in all ranges of combat from the clinch outwards.

The newer TKD school focused almost entirely on flashy high kicks, and the instructor constantly talked about effectiveness in the ring. He looked at me on my first night there (I'm 5'10", 210lbs, and we had discussed my previous training) and told me "You might be able to hit me hard, but I can dance around the ring all night until you're tired, and then get you!". I pretty much made up my mind then that I wasn't going to get much useful out of his classes.

The second school I went to was a traditional Shotokan Karate school, where the instructor (who insisted on being called sensei) made everyone speak in japanese, bow up and down on our knees at the start and end of each class, and say "ooss" a lot. There were some good people, and some good fighters there, but the effort required to sift the useful techniques through the heavy layers of dusty tradition was too much, and the instructors arrogance was practically intolerable.

His second in command was a great guy. They both knew of my training background (I don't like to surprise people) and while the instructor took every opportunity to tell me that his schools way of doing it was superior, his second in command looked at how I did some things, showed me how they did them, and let me choose for myself which worked for me. It's a shame he wasn't running the show.

 

[Kacey]

This is incredibly situational - however, in my case, if it were in any way possible I would stay with my instructor, even if I had to travel to work out with him. I live in the Denver area, and so does my sahbumnim - his sahbumnim lives in Albuquerque, and he goes to see him several times a year (monthly whenever possible); unless my sahbumnim moved somewhere I couldn't get to, that's what I would do. Of course, my 20 year anniversary as his student is in February 2007, so that puts me in somewhat of a different category than many people.

 

[Marginal]

train at a competitor's school in your town? I've always thought that the competitive nature of "our school is better than your's" was odd. Years ago, my instructor moved & I changed to another school in town. While my experience wasn't as good as the 2nd school as the 1st, it had it's good points.

Do the other schools in your town have a good reputation or bad? Would you go to the other schools if you "had to?"

Probably not. Too much netwarriorism in the closest competitor's school for my tastes.

 

[MJS]

train at a competitor's school in your town? I've always thought that the competitive nature of "our school is better than your's" was odd. Years ago, my instructor moved & I changed to another school in town. While my experience wasn't as good as the 2nd school as the 1st, it had it's good points.

Do the other schools in your town have a good reputation or bad? Would you go to the other schools if you "had to?"

If he moved to another town, and it was within a reasonable travel distance, I'd follow him. If it was out of state, I most likely wouldnt follow. I love to train, so I'm sure I'd find something.

Mike

 

[FuriousGeorge]

My gym would probably stay running even if my instructor left, so I'd probaby just stay where I am.

 

[Ybot]

When I moved to Sacramento I checked out all the BJJ places in town. I had a place picked out to train, and then I found a club at school that taught for free. The guy teaching was a student of my current instructor (who was in Brazil at that time). Anyway, through that connection I met and started training with Cassio (my current instructor) when he moved up from Brazil. If Cassio left for some reason my first choice would be to follow him. I have nothing tieing me here really. If I couldn't move, I would find a way to train with the senior students who were also left behind first (half of the great thing about where I train now are my training partners). Then if for some reason that didn't work out, I'd go and train at the school I had originally picked to train at when I moved here. The guys there were cool, just not at the same level IMO as where I train now.

 

[Cirdan]

If I had to, I guess I`d check out another dojo possibly even a new art as there are a lot of different schools here in town. Most of them, but not all, have good reputations.
I considered trying a Judo school a year and a half ago and luckily they were having a demonstration together with some other arts. The instructor turned out to be a somewhat arrogant green belt claiming to be a black belt in ukemi (huh?). The demonstration was ok featuring the usual stuff, but not too impressive and the ukemi was frankly a bit disappointing. After, he gave a short speech about the art in wich he claimed strength meant absolutely NOTHING in Judo. :bs1: Lets just say I decided to check out some other clubs.

 

[searcher]

I would like to think I could put pety little crap aside and get humble then go find a good school. If we allow our ego to get in the way of gaining knowledge and skill we need to rethink why we are doing what we are doing.

 

[Grenadier]

An interesting question indeed. Thankfully, I don't have to worry about this (for a long while), and can simply answer this from a theorhetical point.

If this were to happen, I would keep the school going. I know that the other branch of our system would be run by some very capable people, and we would keep in continual contact with each other, continuing to run it as a single organization. I'd need some help, though, since I don't have all of the business knowledge needed to run one at this time.

If that weren't an option, though, I wouldn't train in any other of the Karate dojos currently in this area, simply because I didn't like what I saw (no names mentioned), or because they weren't the right cup of coffee for me (such as the Kyokushin-kai, who I do respect very much).

There were a couple of CMA and Aikido schools in the area, that I would certainly have considered, since I did like what I saw.

 

[IRO-Bot]

I would use Mr. Whittaker's departure as an out to leave United Studios. Since he's the only reason for why I'm still with them.

 

[IcemanSK]

I had another experience in which my kickboxing trainer died. Our biggest rival on the kickboxing circuit was a school actually closer to me. While I respected them as fighters, I didn't respect them as people. So, I never trained with them. Character goes a long way with me.

 

[airdawg]

train at a competitor's school in your town? I've always thought that the competitive nature of "our school is better than your's" was odd. Years ago, my instructor moved & I changed to another school in town. While my experience wasn't as good as the 2nd school as the 1st, it had it's good points.

Do the other schools in your town have a good reputation or bad? Would you go to the other schools if you "had to?"

nope. loyal to the end. I live over two hundred miles from my instructor.

 

[Xue Sheng]

This is of course assuming there is a competitor's school in my town, and there isn't, but if there was and it was a good school I would go.

I was very loyal to my Sifu for many years and sadly it turned out to not be a good thing, but that's another story