I’ve recently talked to a student that had long ago left my school. He was an awesome student and went on to continue his progression in the martial arts.
When he came to me he had trained with a person that had advanced him too quickly and he did not know nearly what I wanted at the rank he had been given. I soon knew that they were going to stay with us because the parents came to me and said, I can see that he is ranked too highly and if you want to lower his rand we don’t mind because we want him to train here. I said yes, he should drop 2 ranks. They didn’t bat an eyelash. From there he progressed to 2nd degree black belt before he left my tutalege. He went to Penn State and joined their karate club which was aligned with a famous Japanese master and they told him that he would have to drop down to Brown Belt. He did that without even thinking about it. He trained with that program till he graduated and when he left there he was the head of the program and was ready to again test for his 2nd degree.
He took a hyatus from karate and recently visited me (I was really thinking about whatever happened to him). He told me that he had gotten back into karate and had found another Japanese master that he started training with. When he first went to that school he didn’t ask, he just put on a white belt. He said that after training a short while that the master came up to him and said 2nd degree? He said, yes sir. He was told wear your black belt from now on.
At an early age his parents taught him to value excellence. It was not the belt around your waist that’s important but the knowledge contained within that belt.
He told me, that the sparring techniques and combinations, I taught him, he still used. He said that at his other schools he would fight very effectively using thing I had taught him partly because most of their students aren’t allowed to spar until they are brown belts. He took silver at the USA Nationals as a brown in the advanced division which he was the only brown in a division of 15 other black belts. That day he beat the reigning champion in the first round and went on to be the leader in a double elimination tournament. The former Champ had to come up through the losers bracket and then beat my guy 2 times which he did. It was a real war. My student had an awesome day. He couldn’t hang onto the gold against a much more experienced fighter but he sure made him earn it.
It’s great to have students come back to you and tell them how you influenced them but his parents also showed him that starting over is not necessarily such a bad thing. Every school has their curriculum and requirements and their political structure. My student had learned how to be a willing student and learned how to learn!
He is destined to be great! I will visit his school someday!
Shihan Perry Culver
