Taijutsu classes

[Stryla]

i was just wondering what the compositon of your classes are, i am lucky enought to have two instructors 10th dan and 6th dan, but there are also two 5th dan senior students. I think this gives me a great advantage due to the high level training i can partake in, what about you other guys, i do bujinkan by the way.

p.s. what is your opinion on training with one partner. what i mean is that although we rotate parters often, do you have one person you particularly train with, the guy i usually train with started at the same time as me, and we also sometimes train outside of lessons together.

[Ice Queen]

P.S. first......training with someone you feel more comfortable with is ok at first. But it's so much better when you train woith others in the class. Two reasons. 1- you get to know everyone a little bit better. (Most people seem to think bujinkans are stuck up)
And 2 - What happens when you're both doing the move wrong? I love training with the dans in my classes. They either show me something or learn somethig. And you can't keep doing that when you train with the same person.;)

And I'm not sure what the original question is asking. Are you trying to figure out if we do alot of one thing(like throws)? I know we have specific classes for specific things. Each class is very informative, dunno how your's are set up, you should really try some form of an advance class. Those are always fun when you're just starting out.

[Brad Ellin]

I think I know what you are asking. Core group that shows up every night, instructor Judan, asst is Godan or above and everyone else is a black belt. We're not to concerned about what dan someone is because everyone trains with everyone else at the same level. We have some 4th to 1st kyu that show up, but the core is made up of what I described. We don't have a beginners or advanced class. Although one of the senior students started a basics class on Sundays, but again it's for everyone to participate in.

[Kinjiro Tsukasa]

Instructor in my class is 6th dan; two students have dan grade, all the rest are kyu (all different levels) or white belt. Everyone trains together -- no special beginners' class, although we will very occasionally divide up that way depending on what we're practicing. Usually, we all train together though.

Sometimes I will have the same training partner for the whole class, sometimes 3 or 4 different ones per class. In some classes, we have to keep changing until every student has trained with every other student.

My favorite training partners are the black belts and higher-ranked greens, for following reasons:

1) They're knowledgeable enough to tell me what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it (if I train with another inexperienced person, sometimes neither one of us knows what we should be doing -- then we constantly have to call Sensei over).
2) They have good enough control not to "kill" me if I don't react fast enough.
3) They're fast enough to be able to avoid being tagged by me if I do something clumsily.
4) They're not afraid to hit me.

The training partners I like least are the ones who are afraid to hit me at all, or the ones who keep moving back every time I try to close ranks (thus, I can never get proper distance with them, and we end up "dancing" across the dojo).

Favorites or not, I can honestly say that I have learned things from training partners of all levels, including white belts (I'm 9th kyu, BTW). Our general policy is that it's a good idea to get used to training with all sorts of partners.

I do have a particular favorite training partner; I wrote a poem about him. It's either here on the MAP poetry page, or on my web site; I don't remember which).

ETA: Just checked; poem isn't here, it's only on my web page.