Quality of Instruction

[indydave]

I am new here and I am seeing a lot of posts about hapkido "belt factories". I agree this is a problem. So my question is this... Of all the Hapkido groups, federations, associations etc... which one(s), if any, do people feel hold their schools accountable for high quality training. I have no experience outside of Master Myung's WHF which am currently apart of (and enjoy). Thanks!

 

[oftheherd1]

I can't really answer your question with any current knowledge. I think a lot of your answer has to come from individual schools and teachers. I haven't been active in learning or teaching for a long time. Therefor, I really don't know what is going on with Hapkido, or other MA except what I read here. Back then, I accepted my GM's teaching and didn't really care what anyone else did or said. Now that my GM is deceased and his son is too far away, it is all a moot point to me.

If you find a good school/instructor, stay with them and learn well.

 

[Kong Soo Do]

The one that doesn't charge a great deal of money, has high standards (read no nine year old 3rd Dans running around), has first hand knowledge of the person being tested, hasn't been used as a good-ole-boy club to provide rank-shopping, doesn't promote to BB after one weekend's worth of training and provides instruction that would actually work in a real fight (read doesn't have the 'attacker' punch one foot to the side of the 'masters' head and leave the arm hanging there so it can be grabbed). And one that the GM had more than 16 years of training before becoming a GM in their mid-20's.

Good luck on the search...

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

I am new here and I am seeing a lot of posts about hapkido "belt factories". I agree this is a problem. So my question is this... Of all the Hapkido groups, federations, associations etc... which one(s), if any, do people feel hold their schools accountable for high quality training. I have no experience outside of Master Myung's WHF which am currently apart of (and enjoy). Thanks!

Hapkido is organizationally much more fractured that taekwondo, which has its own issues in this area. I'd say that the biggest issue with hapkido schools being belt factories is that frequently, they aren't actual hapkido schools, but TKD schools teaching hapkido as a means of beefing up their SD image.

There are a ton of schools around here that advertise hapkido. But bery few actual hapkido schools.

As far as organizations go, I'm not personally familiar with the WHF, though you guys do have great doboks! There is Ji Han Jae's Korean Hapkikdo Association, Myung Jae Nam's International Hapkido Federation, and there's Jin Pal Hapkido. I'm a member of the WHA. I've known people from each organization who are very good and I've known a few who were not so good.

It all comes down to the school and the instructor. Organizations can really only police but so much. Even the good ones will have some lousy schools. In fact, the bigger and more international an organization is, the more likely they are to have member schools that have quality issues.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

The one that doesn't charge a great deal of money, has high standards (read no nine year old 3rd Dans running around), has first hand knowledge of the person being tested, hasn't been used as a good-ole-boy club to provide rank-shopping, doesn't promote to BB after one weekend's worth of training and provides instruction that would actually work in a real fight (read doesn't have the 'attacker' punch one foot to the side of the 'masters' head and leave the arm hanging there so it can be grabbed). And one that the GM had more than 16 years of training before becoming a GM in their mid-20's.

Good luck on the search...

All good things to look at.

The hard part is that even meeting all of those criteria, there's no guarantee that you still won't end up with a lousy school. I trained briefly with a group that was IHF and met all of the criteria you mentioned. But the instructor was burned out and had personal issues that tended to make their way into the dojang. The school being closed during business hours because the owner would have a tizzie fit and decide to go home was the last straw, as I was driving more than an hour.

There are a lot of things that go into making a healthy hapkido school. Good curriculum, skilled instructors and integrity in grading are important, but good teacher/student relations, professionalism, and most importantly, skill in teaching, are all an important part of the mix as well.

 

[Kong Soo Do]

The school being closed during business hours because the owner would have a tizzie fit and decide to go home was the last straw, as I was driving more than an hour.

Sorry to hear that happened to you, agreed that it would mean it's time for a change.

There are a lot of things that go into making a healthy hapkido school. Good curriculum, skilled instructors and integrity in grading are important, but good teacher/student relations, professionalism, and most importantly, skill in teaching, are all an important part of the mix as well.

+1

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

Of all the bad MA experiences I've had, this is the one that I am the most forgiving of. The kwanjang is a good person; honest, no monkey business, no grades for pay, and no impropriety, but was just burned out and wasn't teaching the material in a beneficial way. The school was literally dying a slow death. Separate issues conspired to exacerbate and perpetuate the other issues. I actually liked the kwanjang personally, but due to the environment, it wasn't a good school.

 

[oftheherd1]

The one that doesn't charge a great deal of money, has high standards (read no nine year old 3rd Dans running around), has first hand knowledge of the person being tested, hasn't been used as a good-ole-boy club to provide rank-shopping, doesn't promote to BB after one weekend's worth of training and provides instruction that would actually work in a real fight (read doesn't have the 'attacker' punch one foot to the side of the 'masters' head and leave the arm hanging there so it can be grabbed). And one that the GM had more than 16 years of training before becoming a GM in their mid-20's.

Good luck on the search...

Quite true. But not only of Hapkido; it would be what one should look for in any MA school. It's kind of crazy that so many schools think so much of Hapkido that they want to offer it in their school, but not put in the time to properly learn it. Makes one wonder how they got their ranking in the primary art they teach.

Hapkido is organizationally much more fractured that taekwondo, which has its own issues in this area. I'd say that the biggest issue with hapkido schools being belt factories is that frequently, they aren't actual hapkido schools, but TKD schools teaching hapkido as a means of beefing up their SD image.

There are a ton of schools around here that advertise hapkido. But bery few actual hapkido schools.

As far as organizations go, I'm not personally familiar with the WHF, though you guys do have great doboks! There is Ji Han Jae's Korean Hapkikdo Association, Myung Jae Nam's International Hapkido Federation, and there's Jin Pal Hapkido. I'm a member of the WHA. I've known people from each organization who are very good and I've known a few who were not so good.

It all comes down to the school and the instructor. Organizations can really only police but so much. Even the good ones will have some lousy schools. In fact, the bigger and more international an organization is, the more likely they are to have member schools that have quality issues.

There used to be a school in Maryland, and he for a while had a school in Annandale, VA. I don't know if he still has a school or not. It may even have been the one you studied at. When I got to the Northern VA area about 1987, that was the only school I could find, but that school never answered its phone, and was anyway too far for me to travel to.

There are indeed many places in this area that advertise to teach Hapkido. I only questioned at one place. When they found I had legitimate rank in Hapkido, they were surprised, and suddenly had other things to do but invited me to come back in a few hours. Sure.

That school is not open, or has moved. I don't know which.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

There used to be a school in Maryland, and he for a while had a school in Annandale, VA. I don't know if he still has a school or not. It may even have been the one you studied at.

Not the same. I have studied at two different places. That was the second. Both schools were in Maryland, and the one that had more than one had no schools in Virginia. And neither was around in 1987. Back then, I studied at Kims' Karate, which also had two MD locations, and which was actually taekwondo.

The first HKD school where I studied was a TKD with hapkido grafted on school which eventually spun hapkido off as a seperate class. The kwanjang is 6th (I think) dan IHF and had been an HKD instructor in the ROK special army. He is legit, but he broke off to be an independent (there is a very long story behind that and the decision was really driven by other people, not by the kwanjang himself).

I really enjoyed the classes, both the fusion class and the straight HKD class, though I found the straight HKD class had a lot more depth to it than the fusion class did.

 

[Kong Soo Do]

Quite true. But not only of Hapkido; it would be what one should look for in any MA school. It's kind of crazy that so many schools think so much of Hapkido that they want to offer it in their school, but not put in the time to properly learn it. Makes one wonder how they got their ranking in the primary art they teach.

Agree with you 100%. People have various opinions and expectations on different arts. When I think of Hapkido I think of self-defense first and foremost. I see it as an art that does a good job of covering that spectrum. Not that some haven't taught it inefficiently, but on the whole that has always been be general opinion. That's why I hit that TKD school so hard last year that had the Hapkido GM come in for a single weekends worth of teaching and then promoting TKD people to Dan status. I could see a Hapkido person coming in and administering a test to TKD people that had already been training in Hapkido in addition to the TKD training. But these were TKD people exclusively with the only requirement for a Hapkido Dan was attending the weekend seminar, having a TKD BB and the check clearing. And it may not have necessarily been a first Dan either, it was based on the level of your TKD Dan. So in essence you may have been promoted to second or third or maybe even higher...after a single weekend. Then you have people with very little actual understanding in Hapkido going out and teaching it to their own TKD people who in turn will have very little understanding of Hapkido and so forth. I can (and has) created an entire line of 'Hapkido' that carries the label but isn't actually Hapkido.

I'd rather see a TKD person getting some Hapkido training and then seeing where it could be applicable within the context of the TKD training itself. As long as they have enough of an understanding of the principles involved I would consider this 'continuing education'. But that is different from a weekend-Dan trying to make a buck because the school now teaches TKD & HKD.

 

[oftheherd1]

Kong Soo Do - Absolutely so. It bothers me no end that many teachers will be diluting Hapkido by really knowing nothing of substance about it. They may then make students feel they are Hapkido practitioners when they aren't even close. That is a fault of the teacher, not the student. And the person who was selling Hapkido Dan certificates just for attending a weekend seminar should be banned publicly by all schools and organizations.

Those schools that teach some Hapkido techniques, telling their students how they can use those in conjuction with their primary art, but not try to imply they are Hapkido experts, those I applaud. In fact TKD has some techniques in some of the katas, but they have usually been changed and called art, since they seem to have no value.

Daniel Sullivan - I wasn't aware of the other schools, only the two that I mentioned. Actually, there is another in Dale City, at the Hylton Boys and Girls Club. It is taught by a lady who is 3rd Dan, and was once on a Korean military Hapkido demonstration team. She teaches a children's class and an adult class. I think she has taught there for over twenty years.

 

[Kong Soo Do]

Kong Soo Do - Absolutely so. It bothers me no end that many teachers will be diluting Hapkido by really knowing nothing of substance about it. They may then make students feel they are Hapkido practitioners when they aren't even close. That is a fault of the teacher, not the student. And the person who was selling Hapkido Dan certificates just for attending a weekend seminar should be banned publicly by all schools and organizations.

It wouldn't be tolerated in a school with integrity. Unfortunately the martial arts abounds with schools that sacrifice integrity for $. And I'm sure they bring in a lot of money, both from people that don't know any better and those that just want wall candy to pad the resume...so they can then charge more $.

Those schools that teach some Hapkido techniques, telling their students how they can use those in conjuction with their primary art, but not try to imply they are Hapkido experts, those I applaud.

Agreed.

 

[Instructor]

I just try to keep my own house clean and not look too closely at the neighbors..