In the old days, some sifu try to differentiate students into the inside circle vs the general public. I detest that kind of mentality. As a teacher, it is your duty to try your best in helping your student improve or simply don’t accept the student. The act of consciously exposing your students to techniques or training methods that YOU KNOW DOES NOT WORK is fraud, immoral and an act of deceit. This is equivalent to knowingly sell a parachute that is made from inferior material – your student’s life may be dependent on it!
In the old days, withholding information is indeed used as a strategic advantage so that the element of surprise is on your side. So if you are a professional fighter, you don’t want to disclose too much about your favourite technique, your strategies or status of your health because others will use the information against you. However, if you are a trainer/teacher, it is your duty to train your students to the best they can be within the environmental constraints.
I treat all my students with the same committment. I do adapt explanations depending on an individual’s background and age. Ultimately, what is the most important is NOT HOW it was taught 2000 years ago but what is the best way to get the student to learn and achieve the end goal.
We do have a lot of unique skills, biomechanics and non-traditional training methods but those are shared during class with all my students. So how do you ‘get ahead’? The secret is to do all the extra little things that will eventually pay off:
- Experiment with some homemade devices as training aid
- Partner up with friends to train an extra few hours a week
- Attend every class even when you are not feeling 100%
- Willingness to work with different partners and doing the partner drills with 100% commitment
- Take advantage of the extra non-official class time (7-7:30pm) to train/get answers
- Train outside class with a plan
- Read old blogs and trying to understand and apply them
Exercise
Assess your own training and see if you are doing all that you can do to optimize your training and learning.
(This exercise is not really that much about the specifics and so please don’t come up with excuses on why you did not do something. It is more about going through the thinking process so that valuable opportunities can be identified and become a reality).