Instructor or Student, what's in a name.....

 Recently I had the honour to be awarded the Full Instructor certification, from my teachers and friends, James Ter Beek, and George Sirag, both 2nd generation certified instructors direct from Ted Wong.

(Ted Wong was Bruce Lee's close friend, private student and sparring partner and for a time practically lived with Bruce, and often on the receiving end of Bruce Lee's experiments and training sessions..) 

So does that mean I'm now done learning?  NO! The journey continues, and possibly my responsibility has just increased by some margin. As a trainer/teacher/coach/instructor you do have the task to transmit your knowledge/skill onto others and guide them in their personal learning process. Teaching in any capacity requires you to not only be able to transmit the material, but obviously thoroughly understand it too. To that end learning never ends, there are always new insights, new nuances to pick up and learning a martial art, particularly Jeet Kune Do, is all about continuous refinement and growth. 

Regarding that learning aspect it is always great to study with others and I participated in a learning/study session that was based on the new book 'who wrote the tao' which goes in depth into the source material that Bruce Lee used for his personal notes (and which became the 'Tao of Jeet Kune Do').   (you can order your copy direct at : www.whowrotethetao.com , and it will also become available at Amazon in due course). We can always find ways to learn more and share that process with others. 

I see my instructorship as having reached black belt level, I now know the basics, but the true journey begins now, so from that perspective I am an eternal student.  Flowing Water Never Grows Stale! 

Walk On!

The cost of living and Martial Arts classes

 You hear it everywhere currently, the cost of living is going up so people are having to budget their spending patterns. There is no doubt about that, and it applies to us too. 

I've heard others comment that their membership has dropped and I see the same. However truth be told, that actually happened due to the pandemic. For some reason or another, since the pandemic people seem to have evaluated their lives and moved to do different things, sometimes in different places.. 

This means that your audience has moved, and whilst your classes might previously have had 20-30 attendees, you're now closer to 10-15 perhaps, or worse.  

Its a bad thing if you previously earned a living from teaching, if you didn't then it's not too bad as long as you can pay for venue rent, insurances etc.. 

But what about from a student point of view. Well for them not much has changed. In my case I didn't increase my prices since 2017, and unless there is a huge increase in venue hire cost, I won't do so either. 

I don't teach to earn a living, I teach because I like to share my passion for the art and hope by teaching that the art is safe for the next generation. What people take from it themselves is something only they can judge.  But anyway as far as costs is concerned: taking inflation into account, my prices have actually dropped over the past 5 years.  

So my question to all of you out there that haven't started training yet but want to, there are some choices to make.  Do you want to spend the money on the latest and greatest phone? Do you want to buy it for extra beers in the pub, or that weekly (or more often) take away meal? Or do you want to train in martial arts, it's up to you, the choice is yours. I'd know which one I'd take!

Walk On!