Question about internal schools

[blindsage]

I believe part of this may be do to what those teachers or instructors believe what they have to offer is rare to the general public and it commands a higher fee. But hopefully at this point they are teaching it properly as well, and your not just paying the extra money for alot of talk.
You mentioned retail, to me it's like buying a samurai style sword. You can get a sword that has been mass produced and looks of quality and elegance, but what type of steel is it, does it have real ray skin wrap, and so on.
Like the handmade, hand forged one that may look the same, but has so much more time and energy put in it to develope it. Just like the internal arts. It's not just about mimicing movements, it's also about how to combine the internal with external, make them one. The philosophy behind the principles vary from internal to external styles. In a nutshell there is alot of mental, and physical requirements. One of my students went to a Chi Kung seminar in Tai Chi yesterday, and he called me afterwards and made mention that one the the techniques they worked on was a technique that are system also works on, but he said for internal power generation within the form of Tai Chi they were attemping the technique while using proper Don Tien, took 30 steps(concepts) for proper technique, comparred to our 10 steps to apply the same technique. We are an internal style as well, but obviously the Tai Chi is more in depth with the flowing of internal energy. In english, same techniques. Ours quick and powerful. There's a little slower, but more powerful. So i guess, you get what you pay for when it comes to the internal arts. Hope this helped some.

That's food for thought. This is actually what I think is probably happening.

 

[CrushingFist]

What about the schools that only teach 1x per week ? 1hr 30mins of training .
Means you have to train at home everyday basically

 

[ChukaSifu2]

Isn't that what you should be doing anyway. At least in the beginning. We cover so much info during a class that there is a lot of things you can be working on solo through the week.

 

[Xue Sheng]

From my experience the majority of your training in an internal style is at home by yourself.

But that is also my experience with Sanda as well which is most certainly not one of the internal schools.

 

[blindsage]

We can talk a lot about how much we train on our own at home, and obviously this is necessary, but the amount of access to your instructor and the guidance and corrections they provide, in any style, strongly influences the quality and depth of your learning.

 

[Xue Sheng]

We can talk a lot about how much we train on our own at home, and obviously this is necessary, but the amount of access to your instructor and the guidance and corrections they provide, in any style, strongly influences the quality and depth of your learning.

Yup, It most certainly does.

This is why I am not a big fan of the once a year IMA seminar no matter HOW good the sifu is unless of course you have a base in it before you go to him or her. And you are not depending on them to be your one and only source.

 

[RRepster]

Basic economics: Prices are set by what the market will allow.

Please stop and re-read that sentence. If people (buyers) WILL PAY a certain amount, then teachers (sellers) WILL CHARGE a certain amount. It's not just a reflection of cost but of value.

IMA is seen as being more valuable in certain markets than other arts. Therefore people will pay more for them, therefore teachers will charge more for them.

You've obviously never been in business for yourself. If you had, you would understand.

Unfortunately as a school owner, I see that a lot of things in the MA business world just aren't going to be understood by some people. Business knowledge is unfortunately a rare commodity.

That law of economics is true when competition is fair. Unfortunately here in the US small business is almost extinct so people have become used to "set" prices across the board due to over-franchising. Yes Target and Wal-mart will vary by a few pennies or even a few bucks on some sale day but by and large the power of franchises is so enormous that prices have become flat. Case in point: the recording industry. There are many different record companies but they are all part of the RIAA organization and combined with that and again franchising the price of a music CD has pretty much become standard to be between $9 and $15. Because people want CD's AND there is no other option to get music at a different rate the price is stuck even though it isn't what the market would like to pay. The same applies in movie theatres. None of us want to pay the high price of movies now but they give us no choice therefore the market is NOT having an impact on the price. The same is true of Gasoline, electricity, and natural resources. It used to be that those last 3 were the only things which the market could not effect but franchising and borderline monopoly organizations have added to that list.

So as a result I think many people apply that mentality to everything and fail to realize that there are a few sectors where the old rules of economics (supply/demand and market will bear) still applies.

 

[prairiemantis]

"money doesn't talk, it swears"