I'll open by saying that i have never instructed anyone in martial arts, beyond helping someone with the odd technique in the gym, but i was wondering, what time frame qualifies someone as an instructor? This isn't to say you stop being a student at all, but how long do you have to spend training in an art, before you can legitimately expect to charge people for instruction? Is it the same for every person? Is it the same for every art?
A lot of people dont have 5 years experience, they have 5 x 1 years experience. I think teaching is a skill in itself, but you do need a minimum skill level to do it, as a minimum Id say 5 years on average, but I know people who are amazing coaches with less mat time then that, but they were already coaching sports before they started combat sports.
Until the person can perform all required moves competently and instruct students safely. "Required" is defined by the learning needs of the student(s).
True, teaching has several components. You need a level of patience and maturity to cope with students and their foibles, you can't just treat them as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. You need to have the ability to teach, to learn how other people learn and not just have your own experience as a guide. The way you learn may not be the way your students learn. This is where the VAK (visual/auditory/kinaesthetic) stuff comes in, an auditory learner may say the steps of a kata in their head in order to perform it whereas a kinaesthetic learner may need to just keep bashing on at it badly, correcting a little bit each time. Finally you need the subject knowledge to be able to teach it in the first place. Each of these components takes a certain amount of time to achieve and is dependent on the availability of training opportunity. For some I would guess that three-four years would be adequate, for others maybe five or six years and for a few, never in a million years.
If someone is competent at what they are teaching then time is really just a number. The amount of time it can take to become a competent teacher is affected by so many different factors, the art, personality, ability, knowledge, experience & legislation being just a few examples, that saying someone shouldn't teach until 'X' amount of years minimum is a fruitless exercise. You just cannot impose a hard limit on something that changes so radically across the board.
Perhaps, but i still think that there is an inherent limit to how much time has been invested in the techniques before anyone can take a teacher seriously, if someone has gained a black belt level of technical prowess in only a year or two, most people would probably question the legitimacy of the instruction, regardless of how sound it was. In narrowing the question though, how long would you expect an instructor of a martial art you train in to have practiced before you'd consider them as an instructor?
I think an answer in hours training is more useful then years trained. I'd say a 1000 hours is a decent start.
It does seem a much better measure, but i figured it would be easier to ask in years, but it does sound like a solid bare minimum, but granted, i get the idea that a 17 year old with 1000 hours would probably have much greater trouble finding students than a 30 year old with 1000 hours, so i can't help but feel there has to be a correlation between time and age, because by the time i was 16, i easily had at least 1000 boxing training under my belt, but i doubt anyone would have taken me seriously.
They say 10,000 hours of comitted practise is a good sign of mastery, so trainee coach at 1000, but not running your own place. I'd say, off hand anyone under 21 would have a hard time been taken seriously as a head coach.
Sorry if i seem like i'm harping a bit, but what would be a reasonable expectation of time training for someone to open there own dojo, to your mind?
It depends on why really, if theirs a lack of dojo in your area, as long as your honest and the training is valid it doesn't matter what level you are. But if it's purely for money, or your not honest, or theirs no real technical demand, then you shouldn't do it.
Exactly this. There's some outstanding instructors out there at a professional level whom I could only hope to aspire to be anywhere near as good as them, yet every single student who trains under me knows of my roots and my experience and are all more than happy to be taught by me.
I get the overall feeling that the judgement of how long an instructor has trained to be a viable teacher falls at the feet of the student, but that seems a flawed premise to apply to someone who is a beginner student, unless the hit and miss nature of how good or bad the training is that seems to come with pursuing martial arts, is par for the course.
At my dojo, every student can function as a sempai for lower ranked students. Only ranked instructors can administer belt tests, of course. The system seems to work well because grading standards are high. It's frowned upon generally to try to teach someone a technique "just because", but it's common for a sensei or senior instructor to ask one student to teach x kata/technique to someone else. I've done it myself a few times when asked to. Pretty fun, really. A nice variation on "regular" training.
I've been in pretty much the same position quite a few times, if i had a nickle for every time I've had to explain how to properly infight, i'd have at least 5 bucks.
