Found it interesting how many people list their 'instructors' including people from whom they have taken a seminar or briefly attended training with.
From my point of view, my 'instructors' are those people who, if asked, know my name and would say that yes, I was or am a student of theirs.
As such, I can only list one martial arts instructor, along with perhaps the two senior sensei who teach for him. I would not list the sensei whom I trained with for a month whilst on vacation in another state, nor the sensei with whom I took a seminar last summer, even though they did contribute to my understanding of my art and helped me very much. I would not, for example, list Angi Uezo Sensei, even though I worked with him in Okinawa when I was in the Marines; he was a security guard and I was an MP on the same base; we knew each other, but I never set foot in his dojo, nor was I his student in any sense.
Is it then legitimate to list everyone with whom you've received any kind of martial arts training as your 'instructor', or is this just puffery?
From my point of view, my 'instructors' are those people who, if asked, know my name and would say that yes, I was or am a student of theirs.
As such, I can only list one martial arts instructor, along with perhaps the two senior sensei who teach for him. I would not list the sensei whom I trained with for a month whilst on vacation in another state, nor the sensei with whom I took a seminar last summer, even though they did contribute to my understanding of my art and helped me very much. I would not, for example, list Angi Uezo Sensei, even though I worked with him in Okinawa when I was in the Marines; he was a security guard and I was an MP on the same base; we knew each other, but I never set foot in his dojo, nor was I his student in any sense.
Is it then legitimate to list everyone with whom you've received any kind of martial arts training as your 'instructor', or is this just puffery?