When I first came, they had me break a wood board, I later found out it was the softest wood on the…read moreplanet and a sneeze could break it.
Beginners I was learning for the first 3 belts. Then it was just repeating over and over again. But I thought that beginners are for the basics so if I keep going then I really would learn stuff in advance.
Advance came and It became much of the same where everything is repeating and also instead of doing the full 1-18 punching combos we were doing 1-12 sometimes which I didn't like. I felt stagnant.
Then there was the Legacy class. It was pitched to me as a class where we can learn to teach and learn the black belt material. So we spent even more money on that and I joined legacy.
In legacy it too became stagnant, but was in some ways worse than advance. These were said to be the best of the school, however the middle stances, front, back, and x stances were lacking. Some of the younger black belts and higher ranks weren't even making a fist properly. Some of the black belts weren't really trying when I was paired with them. When we did a form everyone was off count unless we did it out loud. And even then some still didn't keep up. And even here we were doing 1-12 instead of 1-18 and we weren't learning the black belt material. I still don't know how to do the combos 13-16 properly.
As for teaching, I was helping out when I was still a beginner. I was coming 4 days a week for all of the classes, and when Master Singer was here he was beginning to teach me how to teach and was insinuating that I would get a job here. I had gotten my black pants faster than anyone and understood the material very well. Then he left and Mr. Kyle came. It felt like I got booted to the sidelines. Which I did. Miss Commroge was getting the teaching opportunities and the criteria for teaching changed. At that point I started to feel like a glorified helper, which I was. I still wanted to teach though and asked Mr. Kyle if I could and he said "I'll see what I can do." I then got an opportunity to teach a half a year later. And that was just choosing a warmup. Anyways, after I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and helping, and spending so much time here, I began to feel as if I was ramming my head into a brick wall, in the vain hopes that it would move and let me through. Overall, I was not learning anything new, I was not improving my techniques, and I was wasting my time. So I stopped helping as much. And a while later, we were learning a bowstaff form, which was new to me. I learned in time for the belt promotion and did it fairly well. As I was sitting after I went, and watching the other legacy members, I was ashamed at how poor we were. You had front stances where the legs were straight and it was basically just taking a step forward, or the front leg is bent as it should be but the back foot is facing the wrong direction, or both. Some of the middle stances had the feet facing to either side instead of forward, and the vast majority of them weren't even trying to bend their knees. It was black belts that were doing this as well. The bow staff, when they went to strike, were all at different heights: to the chest, head, waist, above the head. The hands were also in varying positions. Furthermore when we do our pushups, I still see some with a knee on the ground when we first start, going down half way and back up, or they just have bad posture. I still see a lot of legacy members with their thumb in their fist. They are supposed to be either black belts or advanced. Either way, that belt promotion was so bad, I did not want to come back to Victory. While you can argue that it is up to the student to try to improve, and if it was just one or two students that were not good then it would be the student's problem. However when the majority of the school looks like this, it is the instructor's fault for not maintaining the structure, techniques, and integrity of the school. We are not teaching or drilling the stances in beginners, so when they come to advanced, they still aren't good at it because they were never taught. This was driving me up the wall for so long and ultimately that belt promotion was so bad that I did not want to come back. That is why I was gone for a month. The reason I came back is because my mom paid for it. So I might as well get my black belt. When I came back, none of you asked why I was gone. But you did jab at me for being gone and made comments about it. About two or three weeks after I came back, some things had changed. I wasnt told about any of this. So I was trying to be helpful and collect notes before class started and while we were lining up. And when I got all the way over to the cabbinates, Master Catlin scolded me and told me to hand them back. So I did. Then she had Miss Commroge say "Every one set!" and she collected them. This was the first and only time we ever collected notes after saying "Every one set!" In fact the very next class I atte