Instructors, what (if any) reading material do you give to begginers?

Hi there

Every organisation, group or style should have a training manual or syllabus. This is the first thing a student should be given.

When they advance in grades and years then i would recommend that they go out and source information published first by the founders of their chosen art. Hence getting the information in its purest form! Nearly all the arts have books etc written by the founders. All are vital reading.

With experience comes understand of your own weakness and interests. From there on its down to the studend to develop for themselves and seek out advice in the areas they need to improve or are interested in. Why is this so important? Because it allows them to think for themselves and not rely on being spoon fed everything! Technique stops when the student stops thinking for themselves!

Book wise i own hundreds of books, dvds and even some old densho that cover everthing from techniques to history, anatomy, religion and philosophy. All this information contributes to better training.

Edit: I do agree with pugs that getting students to write things down is great way for them to get their thought process working. The funny side is when you read your own notes back from 15 years ago and they make on sense! lol

I think i spend more time telling students what not to buy! :)

There are different schools of thought as to when and where things should be learned. I for example would much prefer students to use dojo time to learn the application and practice rather than waste time trying to memorise things they can study in their own time.

The greatest books reveal more information the more experience you have. Its amazing sometimes to read a book years on and see so much more than you did the first time round. :)

Best wishes

idai

I point beginners to the books and material provided on the internet by people like Mark MacYoung. If they can't get a browser and look it up, that's their loss. If they don't understand it yet, that just means they lack experience.

The kind of information is basically the rare kind. The material few if anyone else covers. That is the valuable kind.

Beginners understand stories the best. Thus people with real experience to offer, such as MacYoung, have an easier time communicating things than some martial artist talking about the perfect way to do a technique.

My original training told me to do color books concerning human anatomy though. As well as read and look up medical information and "other stuff" that they weren't ever going to focus on as much.

We do not give out reading material. If a new student stay a while we may give out a hand out of what are the requirements for yellow belt. This is the only rank we do this. We will recommend one book. No one is obligates to purchase it.

" The Essence of Okinawan Karate-Do"

Shoshin Nagamine

It is available in hard copy or soft copy.

I have the soft copy.

It contains a little of the history of the founder of Matsubashi Ryu in its origin. It has all 18 kata on the style and other 2 man self defense requirements.

I don't teach kids and any one who wants to learn has to demonstrate they are willing to put quality effort into the lesson and practice on their own the same way.

As far as books, I recommend anything that I personally feel comes from reliable sources .

A good way for beginners to learn ABOUT the arts are magazines like Classical Fighting Arts, Journal of Asian Martial Arts, Kung Fu and similar. Anything that is not commercialized, though CFA do, but not the endless unproductive kind.

I always recommend the Bubishi by Pat McCarthy. All his books are good. Okinawan Karate by Mark Bishop. I like some of Dr Yang's books.

These are books that I use as reference and have learned from.

The Poem of the 8 Fists in Bubishi has influenced my technique - just by applying the theories.

Being that I favor the Classical Arts, I tend to recommend books on them.But if there is anything modern that has useful information, I would use it myself.

When I had my large school I had a library of books for students to read when they were between classes or waiting for a class to start or there was a break between their classes sometimes. I also had a read binder that I would point out to every student that many made good use of.

In that binder I would put articles about different aspects as they pertained to their training and the type of martial arts that I taught as well as those other aspects that I also put emphasis on in their training as well for them to read. Them reading those articles would help them focus on certain things more fully and their importance and I would even require some articles for their reading if I thought they had real significance.

It was one more way for them to get that message from me and people tend to remember better what they both hear and read rather than just what they hear.

None. The reading materials that are of any worth would not mean anything to a beginner. After a few years and I see they have made the transition from training in the purely physical sense to something more, then I would.

Good question. First there was only one book ever written on the style i teach. It was written by Albert C. Church, Dai-Soke (deceased). The book was self published and only available to a instructors and black belts. i ma lucky to have a copy.

I used to give out a stack of handouts to new students. It included the history of the style from the 1300's to present. It outlined the past Soke of the style. There were also sheets of principles and concepts we use to define everything we do.

Now, I rarely give out handouts. A few student take them seriously and study them. most take them home and forget them. I find a better way is to require all students to have their own notebook. they are instructed to bring the notebook to classes. I tell them to write down anything they think is important to them. The results have been amazing. now most students write everything down. Several students have filled a notebook and started a second one. Those that ignore note taking are also the students that don;t take training as seriously anyway.

Having students write down things has several benefits.

Some of the are:

* They wrote things in their own words. So if they forget something years later they can read their own words and remember as well as understand them. If they read handouts I write, years later they may not get the full meaning of what I intended. When describing things we all will use different words to say the same thing. Years from now we are more likely to understand something we wrote than something some one else wrote.

* I don't waste time and money keeping copies for the students I used to have a file cabinet full of handouts. It was headache keeping up with them. Students would lose them and ask for new copies. It costs me a lost of money and time to make copies. That is no longer an issue.

A for books I will recommend a few books to those student that ask me.

...

I usually do not give beginners any reading material other than information to help them decide if they want to join or special announcements. I generally do not give out written information on techniques or patterns as students should learn by practicing them and rely on their memory. If I give a sheet on a pattern for example then students might try to rely on it rather than trying to remember for themselves.

I would only give out such information if the student was having a lot of trouble remembering outside of class or had a learning disability but I would tell them not to rely on the written information if they can and then I would try to help them a bit more in class.

I have some collections of books regarding Escrima / Kali Arnis, including Dan Inosanto and some known "Escrimador" abroad that decided to stay their for good due to opportunities on their part, but I rather choose not to share such at my students for now, because I am just teaching for almost three years and I don't have a Black Belt practitioner yet that under my responsibility.

As of now, I am distributing them a hand-outs regarding the curriculum given on the arts I am teaching with, a small history and explanations among it and even I am giving them the training place (dojo) rules and regulations, including the way you enter and go out of dojo, some important things to know during sparring and after sparring, because etiquette, attitude and proper behavior is one thing I promote most, for me to be proud of who they are and what will be the kind of student they may have due to said reasons.

. . . . . . . .

When teaching for self-defence, I direct them to

Strong On Defense - Sanford Strong

The Gift of Fear - Gavin DeBecker

Principles of Personal Defense - Jeff Cooper

is also good.

When people want to train for personal development and "for its own sake" (sport, recreation, wellness) or when I feel they need some perspective on the "why", I refer them to articles from Matt Thornton and SBG:

http://www.straightblastgym.com/aliveness101.html

http://www.straightblastgym.com/q_a.htm

There are plenty of good books on martial arts--I just don't push anyone to read any of them except the ones I've mentioned, because I believe these messages are so core to what we do.