Excerpt from the July article in the Member's section.
I made contact with the new coach prior to showing up at his class. I went down for my first night and was taken aside by the new coach to see what I knew. Fine, great. He thought my basics were fine and that I would be allowed to start working with the others in the class. Freestyle, in other words. That too was fine and I looked forward to it.
Along the way I was able to catch him for a few minutes here and there and ask him about his background and got some insights on his philosophy of instruction. Now it got interesting. By the way, on that first night I was not asked anything about my background in anything other than this discipline, not even my full name and contact information. These are two items that an instructor absolutely needs. For one, how do you retain students and grow a student body without contact info? Not to mention the legal aspects. And not finding out what other experience, if any, I had led to me being talked to like someone with zero knowledge of body mechanics, timing, range, posture, etc. I can deal with that but two things arise. One; that rubs some people the wrong way and that makes imparting information difficult. Two; it sure would accelerate learning if you knew your student had some combat experience. But I digress. At this point I may have known more about my coach than he did about me. And what I found was distressing.
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