Kung Fu Question

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Devildog - I tend to agree with the former poster. It’s like saying that just cause a guy trained under Manny Steward, he’s a good boxer, understands his craft, and can teach it effectively.

Unfortunately with TMA’s it can be tough to tell who is legit and who is just hustling. Your gut is probably the best thing to follow. But it’s very cool that you’re giving another style a shot, let us know how it goes.[/quote]

You guys have a misunderstanding of the relevance of lineage. It works this way. If a fighter was student of Manny Steward we know he at least had a legit teacher to teach him how to fight. Plus we can trace back Stewards lineage a couple of generations and know Steward came from legit trainers.

Whether or not a fighter trained by Steward is competent at passing on that knowledge is the issue. Teaching is a skill and an art in itself that has to be learned and cultivated. If someone was a trainer under Steward we probably could expect them to have some competency to teach. This is why on The Ultimate Fighter series some of the guys who are great fighters aren’t necessarily good coaches.

The way it worked in the schools I trained in, was a traditional system where the green belts were primarily responsible for teaching the white belts, brown belts taught green belts, first to second degree black belts got the brown belts ready to test for black belt.

So by the time a black belt tested for third degree black belt which is the sensei or teacher of black belt rank, they had multiple years of teaching experience. Under that system even a sensei who wasn’t a great teacher still had a minimum level of competency because they had been tested on their knowledge and even more importantly they had been observed for years teaching.

So lineage can have some usefulness in determining if someone is going to be a good teacher.