Harvie, I hope you'll get totally addicted to MA soon
I have another point regarding MA instruction. The instructor qualities (as a human) are for me the first point. Second is his pedagogy :
*** I prefer instructors who teach concepts rather than techniques ***
Teaching a concept means to have understood a global principle and to teach it directly to your student, demonstrating it by several different techniques/cases, but always underlining it's the same concept behind those techniques.
I think it's more efficient for students.
As there are thousands of techniques, it's better to understand a concept which will enable you to quickly assimilate many techniques rather than seeing each techniques independently, one by one.
Example
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As we're in a balisong forum, let me find a knife defense concept.
For instance,
Concept : it's less dangerous to expose the top/outside of you arm to the blade than the bottom/inside (because of the veins which are near the skin in the inside of the arm).
Consequences : when you work on knife defense techniques, always try to block/deviate the attack with you arm in the correct position (so that you don't expose the weakest part of your arm).
This difference between concept & technique can be applied in many fields, like balisong flipping

:
Concept : the rotation of a single handle is fluid when the pressure you put on it is minimal (but sufficient not to drop the knife).
Techniques : the classical double flip, the helicopter, etc...
Guillaume
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