good fighter/bad teacher, bad fighter/good teacher

i dont want to mess up the DATU thread, so i will start a new one.

i wanted to say about trainers like cus d'mato and angelo dundee and there fighters, yes, its true they made a few great champions, and they were not great boxers either. but they are a very small number compare to the number of self-taught trainers getting there boys KILLED in the ring! bruce lee was not a "certified" master, who mostly learned non-wing chun martial arts from books, yet he was a very respected martial artist (some say fighter, too, but whataver). but it doesnt mean that it was a good idea. look how many self taught guys out there dont know what they are doing, and now they are teaching. many trainers who luck out to have a champion under them even though they did not fight, do not have MANY good fighters. i believe mike tyson would been a great boxer no matter who taught him. and then, it takes a much longer time to learn by watching, than the trainer who learned by doing. his ideas an opinions are more valuable than the guy who never been in the ring.

how much teaching skill do you need to teach someone to strike, and to say "your hand is dropping when you enter, that's why you get hit". come on, guys, good fighters, bad teacher...its a bad cliche use by martial arts teachers to excuse why they cant fight ("but i can teach!" come on...) i have never met an arnis teacher in the philippines that would fit an american definition of "good communicator" or "good teachers". and their boys can rumble! many of the great fighters of the past were even taught by teachers who did not allow questions, and did not explain things until later. we are trying to use modern standard for an old art that works just fine.

maybe you need to have good teaching skills when you are teaching a seminar to guys you will not see for another 6 months or year. or teaching a bunch of "cross trainers" who will not spend much time practicing your art. or to a seminar goer who is only interested in learning the "deeper side" of the sinawali drills, not fighitng. or the average "thinking" martial artist who is more interested in CONCEPT and ATTRIBUTE, then FIGHT and DO. concept martial arts needs teaching. fighting martial arts needs application. if i cant even speak, i can still teach you how to fight. but with no "hands-on", of course i need to know how to talk, because that's all the martial arts my student will get, talk, and concept.

so who do you put your trust in, the guy who cant fight, but he tells you how to save your butt, or the guy who been there, and he can tell you about the mistakes and what works best. if thats true, the best football coaches around are in your local bar.

 

i'll stake my b_tt out for the guy who's been there, and can tell me about the mistakes and what works best :bang:

:woo:

 

Bruce Lee was self-taught? Huh?

 

linguo you miss my point. the teacher does not have to explain all about the technique when he first teaches it. even he could wait until much later to explain more detail. what is more imortant for the beginner is to develop physical skill with basics, not variations and too many what-ifs. the problem with so many modern martial artists is they concern themself too soon with too many concepts, yet they dont have true mastery (physical skill) of the basics. like, variations of the round kick, when they dont have explosive power, endurance and speed with just the simple round kick. like i said, too much book/seminar/web learning, not enough practice.

and yes, bruce lee was taught wing chun, but his fencing, wrestling and boxing knowledge was SELF TAUGHT.

and i am not against individualize instruction, i am against beginners who decide what is best for them, and then becoming inexperienced, unskilled "experts" who teach others these false ideas. this is how we have so many people who think KALI is the mother art, kinomutai is a real FILIPINO art, and the drill (instead of sparring) is the path to fighting skill.

i will be damn if a beginner in FMA will walk into my school and decide i cant teach him to fight because my ideas are different from what he read on the computer. and this happens to many REAL FMA teachers.

 

"And any seminar goer who thinks they can learn the "deeper side of the sinawali drills", is a bizarre creature. How could you possibly learn the deeper side of anything from one seminar?"

belive it or not, there is entire systems created by men who have only attended seminars and never travelled to learn from a teacher full time, and their whole foundations of the style is, sinawali. no sparring, no fighting strategies, just drills. it exists. some of these people are very famous.

 

Ray Arcel had over 20 champions. Angelo Dundee about 8 or so. Cus D'amato, 3 but also taught great trainers Teddy Atlas and Kevin Rooney who had a world champion or two under them. I don't think they lucked into having champions under them. A lot of fighters were probably lucky to have been taught by them.

Tyson wasn't so great a fighter after the left the D'amato camp and Kevin Rooney.

If I'm a prospective fighter, I would listen much more to any instruction I got from Angelo Dundee than I would Mike Tyson.

Ouch!

I know a lot of arnis teachers here who are "great communicators" and "great teachers" by any definition, American or any for that matter.

I trust myself and my intuitive ability to avoid life threatening situations.

 

In an ideal world we would seek out the person who has both the fighting skills and teaching ability but we have to be honest that they are few and far between.

As much as we may not like it, there are those who would be better off just sticking to fighting and there are those who would fair much better by sticking to teaching, that is life I am affraid and not everyone has the same qualities, what a boring world it would be if we had.

But I honestly beleive that you need to seek out both types and if you are lucky you can find one person who has both qualities.

No instructor in their right mind wuld let any begiiner come into the class and let them dictate how they should be taught, no matter if the person was of the fighter or the teacher category they would show the begginer the door, if they did not then more fool them.

We have to accept that both types of FMAers exsist and both have their good and bad points, but both can benafit the art in differnt ways.

The fighter can give you his/her expeariance of having been their and done it, but that will still be no substitute for gaining your own expeariance and learning from that.
The teacher can show you the best approach and best technical way to do something, but again that is no substitute for being their and doing it for yourself.

It is great that you can fight, but if you cannot communicate your skills then how can you pas them on? You cant just keep saying, just move this and just move that without explaining why you are doing it, everything has a purpose and reason and the student can learn faster if this is explained to them at an early stage. But a communicator can explain to you that when you do this you will need to move your hand in this way because? and when you do that you will need to move your body that way because?
As I said before, if you are lucky you will find an instructor who can do both and when you find a fighter with good communication skills ask them to tell you of their expeariances and the cahnces are they will tell you about the time they talked to a guy that wanted to challenge them and when they explained the folly of their ways the guy agreed to just walk away.
You amy also find that a lot of the fighters who had no communications skills have eventually ended up dead due to the fact they only understood one thing, to fight.

Spme people do better with fighters and some do better with communicators, we need both types in the FMA and we would be lost if we lost even one of them.

Best regards

Pat

 

there are all sorts of fma'ers out there.

there are fighters.

there are teachers.

there are great fighters that cannot teach.

there are great teachers who cannot fight.

and then there are the rare breed. great fighters who are actually greater teachers.

i have met some of them.

 

the number of self taught trainers who can teach fighting against the number of them who cannot is very, very small. and of course, after many many years in the sport, you will learn along with your fighters after taking them to fights, but how many eskrima teachers with little fighting experience are going to matches and tournaments? very little. so the "experience" that many people are talking about is, experience teaching and taking lessons. this is not fighting experience.

i still dont agree that a man with poor fighting skills/experience will make a good trainer, unless, like diego_vega said, the few men who make the fighting art there life. and i am referring to FIGHTING in the fighting art, not collecting techniques. in my town, we have a boxing trainer who never fought, steve hernandez, who have some pretty decent fighters, and yeah one day he will have great fighters but right now he has kids who would do much better with a trainer with better experience. now he can, teach guys how to box. my old coach, ham johnson does it better, and he teaches small things steve probably knows nothing about. and ham speaks from experience, while if steve teaches, its something he HEARD or SAW. in my opinion, it is not fair for a man to tell students what will save his life in a fight, when he really doesnt know.

now if you read what tony diego and others from bakbakan have said about antonio ilustrisimo, he was a fighter, not a teacher. but do you think those students did not learn to fight? he taught by fighting with his students, and they figure a lot of things out, which is actually a great way to teach fighting. you know, make them figure it out so they belive in it more.

now what we see in the US is men with little fighting experience teaching students and promoting them even while they have little fighting experienc, now those students are teaching a generation, and before you know it, we have new generations of "eskrimador" who turn over every 3 years with less experience than the next. and today in 2005, arnis is up there with tae kwon do as the easy to learn, commercialize art. except there are lots of tae kwon do who spar, and lots of arnis people who put sparring down.

the filipino martial arts of today (not everyone, but most) cannot carry the jock strap of the men of yesterday because of bad fighters, "good" teachers.

 

I don't think there is anything wrong with a student having honest questions about certain techniques and how they apply in different situations. I don't think a student should try to hijack the class or act completely obnoxious towards the teacher, but a student has a right to ask questions about a technique. After all, the student is there to learn. How can you learn if you do not have questions?

I guess Gene LaBell was one of Bruce's imaginary friends.

I can understand and agree with the problem of beginners teaching others, but I don't see how that relates to beginners choosing what works best for themselves. We all have favorite techniques, and decide what ones work best for us in a situation.

What teachers are these? Who lets their students dictate their classes? And if there are students who decide you can't teach them, then they would simply leave. Sounds like an agreeable compromise if you ask me.

 

Hello Everyone,

Very very interesting thread (this and the "DATU" one as well)... all great points!

being a teacher by profession (i've taught grades K-8th Grades and working my way up to college level when i recieve my ph.d.), and a student of FMA, i dearly love both worlds... my true passions!... i understand the pros and cons of good fighter/bad teacher and vice versa...

here is one thing i do for MYSELF-- i like to learn from all different people.... whatever style, whatever system, whatever that is good... whatever that can help me win in this combat art... learning and understanding other people's experiences and perspectives is key...

i beleive it shouldn't matter who you are learning from... all that matters really is the student... the student must grow... the student should continue his/her studies wherever they see fit--as long as they keep an open mind...

as for the teachers of the FMAs, they should also keep an open mind and allow their students to seek other teachers to help improve their "studies"... the teachers must encourage their students to find other paths... we teachers are just guides...

i liken this to the school structure of moving up from one grade to another year after year... this year its Mr. A, next year it'll be Mrs. B. and so on...

once the student realizes that self improvement is the ultimate goal, then they can find what they are looking for (like the U2 song)--fighter, teacher, student, hobbyist... as long as they get good basics and learn the ESSENCE, the SOUL of whatever they are trying to learn.. and in our case-Eskrima...

i'm not saying this is the "perfect plan," but its a good start...

"a mind is like a parachute, it only works when its open."

Peace.

 

in the magazine i read, in gene lebells own words, that he only had a few meetings with bruce lee, where they "exchanged ideas". this is not study. bruce lee even said in some of his writings, like some of his students and his own wife said, that bruce lee took most of his learning from books.

i know, as a boxer myself, that bruce lee never learned to box by even looking at his movement that he did not learn the basics from a real boxer. again, it is well known that bruce lee studied film of boxing matches to form his ideas on boxing. he did not walk into a boxing gym, or the ring especially, and it shows in his theories and his movement. as a result the boxing skill of many jeet kune do people today is very weak because like i said, the way they teach, it weakens with every generation. the same for there arnis, the same for their muay thai. one main reason is the way it is taught, "drink from a water hose" instead of "cultivate" with lots of sparring. too many drills, too much theory, not enough application. bruce lee is still my favorite martial arts hero, but i strongly dont agree with his martial arts thoeires.

now, son of eskrima, i agee with everything you said about you have to find your own path (you too diego), but NOT for the beginner who has no experience. like with children, when he grows up he will decide what to do with himself, he is not mature enough to make all his decisions, he needs guidance. sure he has things he likes and he is good at, but the parent guides him. for the beginner, who decides after looking at inside kung fu magazine, then he says, aikido is the best art, shotokan will lost every time, but you are his shotokan teacher. was this a good decision? thats why you need teachers to guide. how about the student who says, i dont want to do form, they are no good i only want kickboxing. or, i dont need weapons, i only want empty hands. they can leave your school, but while they are there you have to guide them you are the teacher. making your own path is okay after you have seen the world. you pick the beginning, the teacher guides the training, and when you are advanced you adjust your art to fit yourself and what direction you will take next. it is not helpful for a beginner to take 3 months of tkd, 3 months of muay thai, 5 months of arnis, and so on. get a foundation first and build on that so you dont become "familiar with everything, good at nothing".

i encourage my students to cross train. but we cross train by "cross-spar". this will develop them better than sending them to every teacher and seminars in town. i do answer questions too (i never said students shouldnt asked questions), but not too many. what is more important to the beginner who is learning the punch, how to develop power and balance and speed, or all the variation and drills to get coordination? seminar industry has you giving too much info too soon. we have guys who do 20 or more drills who do not have the skill to land a basic #1 hit. its good if the students have questions, but as a teacher you have to tell them, stop asking questions and train,,,i will tell you later.

on another thread i read somebody said the average FMA class there is lot of standing around talking and round robin. i disagree. this is average seminar FMA class, with no direction, because the teacher has no real background in the FMA, he does a little of this a little of that (from seminar) and he cant focus his class or thinking long enough to train.

if there is any problem with western/modern FMA, its not enough training. there is so much overconcern with learning everything under the sun, and not enough time making your art superior to another style. this is why we have weak FMA teachers. instead of, try to beat them, we want to join them. so nobody makes their art strong enough to beat the newcomer, they just want to learn what the newcomer has to teach them, as if this makes you a better martial artist.

 

Thekuntawman,

I think that we already agree that you don't have to be a fighter to teach fighting. The examples of good trainers/teachers who have never fought prove this point. In fact, we have established that you don't even have to be able to do a physical skill to teach it. (Bela Karoli does not have to get up on the uneven bars to show Mary Lou Retton how to execute her routine.) Now the second part of your premise seems to be that any good fighter should be a good teacher, based purely on his experience of "being there"as a fighter. Also, that sparring should be the best teacher of skill, instead of something like drills. I think that the best results occur when training contains both drills and sparring, done at the appropriate time and with the appropriate goal in mind. Again, going back to boxing, focus mitt drills are drills. It's not sparring. Sometimes, it is best to cut down on sparring to focus on particular skill set development by way of particular drills. The boxers here in the Philippines do far too much sparring. What we've produced is a set of tough brawlers who are great at mixing it up but get picked apart when they go international against more skilled opponents. All of our best fighters get sent abroad for fine-tuning. What happens when they learn from foreign trainers? Well the sparring time goes down and the drilling time goes up. They're forced to focus on brining their jab back and straightening their crosses in drills that specifically look at these elements, instead of beating up an overmatched sparring partner in the gym against whom their technical inadequacies don?t have consequence. For all the hype you hear when Filipinos talk about our boxers, the fact is we only have one world champion. One of the reasons for this is because we've never produced a truly great trainer. The resurgence of Mexican boxing can be attributed to the teaching skills of Nacho Berestain and Jesus Rivero who together have brought back the art of defense, as well as strategy, to Mexican boxers. What kind of pro record did either have? The problem with using solely sparring as a learning tool is that it does not teach you what works. It teaches you what will work for you at that particular time. Our fighters here don't throw too many jabs. Is it because the jab doesn't work? No. It's because they can't make it work for them. So what happens? Will they tell the next generation that they teach not to waste their time on learning to throw a jab, focus on hooks instead? Maybe this dilutes skills from generation to generation as well. In mixed martial arts, how many times have I heard that the spinning back kick only looks great in the movies and would never work against a great fighter. I believed it too until I saw Kazushi Sakuraba land one against Carlson Gracie fighter Vitor Belfort. Any technique will work, just as long as you can make it work for you. Sparring should be about learning, not about winning. The only times I ever yell at my students during sparring is 1) when they keep getting hit with the same techniques, and 2) when they keep using the same technique over and over again. I want them to go outside their comfort zone and truly learn what will and won't work. And if something doesn't work, I want them to know that it doesn't work because they either don't have the skill level or the physical ability to make it work for them. Its not the art, it's the man. (uhm... I mean person.)

You also mentioned, that you'd never met an arnis teacher here in the Philippines who was a good communicator or teacher by American standards. When was the last time you were home? I think you do our teachers a disservice by casting them in this light. FMA is practiced here by a broad spectrum that covers ever socio-economic strata, from stevedores and jeepney drivers, to office workers, to executives to professional martial artists. Some groups are made up of tanods (community guards) in Tondo, while other groups are made up of and led by graduate students at the University of the Philippines, or Ateneo or University of Santo Tomas. Amongst all of those groups, I can tell you that I know of some who would give Mario Cuomo a run for his money when it came to eloquence.

 

**applause** now that is one eloquent filipino fma teacher!

 

This has to be one of the best answers I have heard on MAP so far, to make this point even more relative, one of my instructors in Cebu has but a reasonable command of the English launguage but he gets his point across with actions which makes him an excellent teacher without using to many words or verbal descriptions, for years he worked for the San Miguel Brewery and he is now a Barangay Captain, Another is one of the top Barristers who has a great command of launguage including English as a matter of fact he has a better command of English than I do and he too is a great instructor both using verbal discriptions and actions. I have met other instructors who although have a great command of luangue and claim their teaching come from actual combat expeariance and they too are good Eskrimadors, but as instructors they fall well short as they never realy seem to be able to show you what they mean.

Regards

Pat

 

I'm not exactly sure where I heard it but I find it to be true:

"The only secret in Martial Arts is how to teach"

In regards to fighting and teaching, what is considered fighting? Would a person who has had a few NHB fights be good at teaching boxing? Would a Muay Thai fighter be good at teaching ground work? I feel it is all relative when it comes to asking a question of that nature. Some of my best teachers have been those who don't have many fights under their belts.

"If a person can teach me one thing, they are of value to me."

Gruhn

 

Very well said, Diego! One reason why a pretty good escrimador fighter should only be termed a fighter if, even if he wins every match, he/she wins with only a few techniques. It does not help the art.

I personally know of a very good escrimador who is a Physical Education Teacher in the University of the Philippines (his name is Mr. Ilanan, for those who want to check him out). Very good fighter with scars on his arms, and he has a very good defensive technique which we (who witnessed or heard about it) call the "exploding stick technique", involving catching or meeting the antagonists stick then with some simple and single movement make it fly away. It doesn't matter what kind of strike, tap, or full swing with our full weight behind the stick we give. He always is able to make it jump from our hands.

Usually, he's a good teacher; that is, when he is teaching tennis, badminton or pingpong. But for some reason he cannot explain how he does his technique, and no matter how many times we watch or "try to do" none of us, even he, can understand how the technique works. "Basta ganun, 'eto" (I'ts just like that, look here) is all he says in the end.

In this instance, his communications skills as a teacher fails him, and we will all probably just remember that the technique exists but will not be able to duplicate it. He was a P.E. teacher, and he was taught how to teach sports; but he only had his experience and (at that time) inadequate government-sponsored Arnis textbooks to refer to know how to teach us. He was definitely a guro (improving my brother's skills with just a semester of training), while being a terrific fighter; but no grandmaster.

My point is that even if he wasn't able to teach us that technique, he was still an escrimador with exceptional skills. His rating as an FMA teacher may not be the highest but his rating as a fighter definitely is.

Yes, self-study IS dangerous, but only when one doesn't know how to self-study. There are different threads about learning martial arts from a book on this forum, of course, so I won't bring up the discussion at length here. But I believe that a commited person with the proper level of know-how can learn new techniques. Or, if that person is more commited with even a higher level of skills and lots of experience, that person may even be able to develp new techniques that work for that person.

 

hi sir, am just new to the art & been practicing w/ my GM for lamost 3 mos. Ma just curious to what have you said re Mr. Ilanan, I have been taught many techniques on how to disarm, however, I don't know if or I can do it if my opponent strikes in "full swing", maybe am just new or I don't know. Am just curious & interested, you think he can show somebody or me in particular maybe borrow a little of his time to demo? or teach that disarming technique?

tnx :Angel:

 

The biggest secret in martial arts is "There are no secrets" and those who say otherwise are just trying to get more training fees from you or they have no idea of what they are teaching

regards

Pat

 

Disagree,
I'll stand by my statement.

Gruhn