Hello again, everyone. It's the start of another school year and with it comes the start of my second year of martial arts study. Unfortunately, the current situation isn't great. Our teacher is in danger of losing his job (the company has problems with government grant money or something) and if he can't find another one, he may have to leave us and possibly the country. In order to prepare for the worst, he's going to start up a special training session for the students who have been here for a year and begin teaching more advanced forms. The plan is to have only two people per group so that each person gets a specialty and he can give the club as a whole a lot of different things to learn. Then should he have to leave, we can teach the forms/styles to each other in order to continue learning new things. He said these special classes would include things like drunken boxing, mantis style, Hon fist, tiger claw, maybe weapons like straight sword and spear. As something outside of the normal class, he'd charge a per hour rate for these classes. He also talked about teaching us iron palm training techniques and said that if he wouldn't be able to stay he'd give us the recipe for dit da jow so that we could make it and continue the training. We'll still have our regular group practices and I think he said he'd teach us all one new form there, a sort of high intermediate level one to help bridge the gap from intermediate to advanced. I just don't know how often he'll be able to come and teach since he's going to need time to go job hunting. We'll also have to start teaching the new students who join the club. I think our teacher will try to help pull us up to a sort of teaching assistant level so that if he is forced to leave, we'll be able to teach new students better. Right now he can still come and make corrections and things, but if he leaves, we won't have that option anymore.
So, that's about the status update for the moment. I'm not sure I want to do the special training classes for various reasons though. One, it's at a rotten time for me, Sunday mornings at 8am. Two, it's an extra cost that I didn't expect, probably about $200 for the semester. Three, I'm not especially interested in any of the things he said he'd probably teach. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they're interesting and useful stuff, just I don't have any overwhelming desire to learn one of them like some people who are dying to learn say mantis style. Four, I really don't think I'm ready to learn forms that advanced. If you've been reading my previous story threads, you'll remember I've said repeatedly that we're moving very fast and that's because our teacher wants to give us as much as possible. But his teaching style isn't my ideal learning style, so it takes me longer to understand things he teaches. I have problems getting some moves and things in lower level forms and it took a lot of repetitions before I kind of got it. I imagine it will be much worse with an even more advanced form. If he hopes to finish the forms with the people learning them in like two months, I don't really want to be holding back someone else who learns faster. He's talking about doing things that traditionally you'd need four years of training to get to after only one year. And we haven't even learned all the forms yet because he split us in groups. He mentioned that when he learned spear, his master made him do the same move for 3 months until it was essentially perfect before he could move on and he's going to try to give us the entire form in like 2 months? I'm really concerned about the speed we're progressing at and doubt my ability to handle doing even faster than we already are.
Well, if you have some thoughts you'd like to share on the subject feel free. If the teacher specifically wants me to learn something, I may reconsider taking the special classes, but at the moment my preference is not to. Hopefully we won't fall into the worst case scenario here, but I'll let you know more as I get more information.
So, that's about the status update for the moment. I'm not sure I want to do the special training classes for various reasons though. One, it's at a rotten time for me, Sunday mornings at 8am. Two, it's an extra cost that I didn't expect, probably about $200 for the semester. Three, I'm not especially interested in any of the things he said he'd probably teach. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they're interesting and useful stuff, just I don't have any overwhelming desire to learn one of them like some people who are dying to learn say mantis style. Four, I really don't think I'm ready to learn forms that advanced. If you've been reading my previous story threads, you'll remember I've said repeatedly that we're moving very fast and that's because our teacher wants to give us as much as possible. But his teaching style isn't my ideal learning style, so it takes me longer to understand things he teaches. I have problems getting some moves and things in lower level forms and it took a lot of repetitions before I kind of got it. I imagine it will be much worse with an even more advanced form. If he hopes to finish the forms with the people learning them in like two months, I don't really want to be holding back someone else who learns faster. He's talking about doing things that traditionally you'd need four years of training to get to after only one year. And we haven't even learned all the forms yet because he split us in groups. He mentioned that when he learned spear, his master made him do the same move for 3 months until it was essentially perfect before he could move on and he's going to try to give us the entire form in like 2 months? I'm really concerned about the speed we're progressing at and doubt my ability to handle doing even faster than we already are.
Well, if you have some thoughts you'd like to share on the subject feel free. If the teacher specifically wants me to learn something, I may reconsider taking the special classes, but at the moment my preference is not to. Hopefully we won't fall into the worst case scenario here, but I'll let you know more as I get more information.