Beware of Incompetent Tai Chi Chuan Teachers

Beware of Incompetent Tai Chi Chuan Teachers!

Exercise Classes Such as T'ai-Chi Ch'uan Should be Taught by Competent Teachers.
By Harvey Kurland, MSc, MFS, CSCS, Certified T'ai Chi Ch'uan Chief Instructor CTCCA
T'ai-Chi Ch'uan Chief Instructor for University of California Riverside
Copyright H. Kurland 2004 More at www.myspace.com/hkurland

A Warning to T'ai Chi Ch'uan Students looking for an instructor. There are t'ai chi ch'uan instructors who misrepresent their training and competence. Improperly taught t'ai-chi ch'uan can result in injuries and will impede your progress. Because the art form looks easy to do, many people underestimate the amount of time it takes to learn it. New students should know they are looking at several months of formal study, just to scratch the surface. In a correctly taught class you will be getting the benefit of the exercise from the first day of training.

If you wanted to study karate or aikido, would you go to a school that had a yellow belt as the instructor? (Yellow belt in karate or aikido is a very low ranked student, a beginner) Probably not. So why would you do that when looking for a t'ai-chi ch'uan instructor?

Just like many people would like to be professors but are not willing to spend the time it takes to get a Ph.D., there are some t'ai chi students would like to be instant teachers. Often they also want to play guru as well. But to be a legitimate teacher they need to put the time studying in a formal class to be qualified. Unfortunately some students take a few months of training, study one short form, then go out and start teaching. They are really just beginners, yellow belts at best, who are playing black belt. Unfortunately some of these unqualified teachers can be found teaching in recreation centers, colleges and even medical clinics. Some may even have medical credentials, such as acupuncturists or physical therapists, but without enough training they are still beginning students. A degree in acupuncture does not make one an expert in t'ai-chi ch'uan, just as having an MD does not make one a legitimate tennis pro.

Many of my colleagues and I have received several advertisements recently that illustrate a disturbing trend in t'ai-chi ch'uan instruction, that is, selling certifications to those who are not legitimately trained teachers. If you are looking for a teacher how do you know who can be considered a legitimate t'ai-chi ch'uan teacher? However well intentioned a person is to want to teach t'ai-chi ch'uan, it does not mean that they are qualified to teach t'ai-chi ch'uan without the proper training.

Recently, we have received several ads for quick certification of t'ai-chi teachers which are patterned after weekend workshops geared for aerobic teachers or personal trainers which are offered by some questionable organizations. One day workshop certifications are not adequate unless exercise instructors have a significant amount of training before going to the workshop. The one day or weekend workshops are inappropriate for teaching t'ai-chi ch'uan instructors. T'ai-chi ch'uan is a complex exercise system that takes several years to learn properly. It would be like taking a one-day workshop on guitar and then start teaching the guitar the following week. Or a one-day workshop on tennis then calling oneself a tennis pro. Without a significant base of training a weekend is not enough.

A weekend workshop would be only equivalent to 4 or 5 regular class sessions. Any legitimate t'ai-chi ch'uan teacher can tell you that is not enough training to be competent. Just as a legitimate personal trainer would know that is not enough study to learn to train others. For example to be a competent beginning student, who can do the basic exercises and form, on their own, usually takes about 40 hours. At that level can exercise on their own but that does not make them a full instructor. They have the bare bones of the art. T'ai-chi ch'uan is a classical art form like ballet, not a quickie course in jumping jacks and crunches.

Even medical professionals have taken a few t'ai-chi classes, then teach what they studied to their patients. We have taught many MD's, EP's, RN's, OTR's, PTs, psychologists and acupuncturists in our classes and we have done workshops for Hospitals and medical groups. Our experience is that they, the medical professionals, don't learn any faster than other students and they don't learn enough in a few hours to be considered competent to teach t'ai-chi ch'uan to their patients.

T'ai-chi ch'uan was originally a martial art and a martial art analogy is the most accurate comparison. 40 hours of t'ai-chi study would be equivalent to a yellow belt in karate or aikido, which is not considered a teacher level.

A legitimate t'ai-chi ch'uan Instructor would be equivalent to a black belt in aikido and should require 500+ hours of study plus practice teaching. T'ai-chi ch'uan Master Teachers, also called Chief Instructors, are equivalent to 4th degree black belt instructors or higher in karate or aikido in terms of training and study. They should have had upwards of 1000+ hours of formal class training and at least 3 times that amount of practice outside of class, in addition they would have several hundred practice teaching hours.

In my opinion, anyone who claims to be certified after only a "One day" Workshop to teach t'ai-chi ch'uan is a fraud. They just can not learn enough in one day to be competent. Anyone teaching a weekend or one day workshop to teach people to teach t'ai chi ch'uan is either misguided or a scam artist. Either way they are perpetrating a fraud on the public.

Unfortunately either through ignorance or greed many weekend t'ai-chi teaching certification workshops have been popping up. In many cases those teaching the workshops themselves are not qualified to teach correct t'ai-chi ch'uan and many are not themselves certified themselves by any legitimate authority.

Just as an elementary school teacher takes 5 years to be credentialed to teach children how to read, it take at least 5 years to be competent to teach t'ai-chi ch'uan. A couple of weekend workshops just don't do that.

Skills in other martial arts like karate, or aerobics or yoga also do not carry over to teaching t'ai-chi ch'uan either. We have several black belts from other martial arts in our classes right now and have had many go through the class over the years. They take several years to learn t'ai-chi ch'uan properly, many have to unlearn what they studied in their other forms in order to do t'ai-chi ch'uan correctly. One Okinawan Style Karate black belt told me it took him seven years to unlearn the old karate habits which interfered with his mastery of t'ai-chi ch'uan. Being a black belt in Karate or other martial arts does not automatically make them a legitimate teacher of t'ai-chi ch'uan. Karate black belts might take a weekend workshop on t'ai-chi then call themselves a t'ai-chi master, but they are just beginning t'ai-chi ch'uan students just like the other students. T'ai-chi ch'uan is NOT karate done slowly.

Also do not be mislead by fancy Chinese outfits or quotes on the wall. While impressive to the uninitiated, Chinese writings, Chinese costumes and quotes from Lao Tze do not indicate t'ai-chi ch'uan mastery; as U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said, "The presence of a black cat does not prove there is a witch." In fact the majority of legitimate t'ai-chi teachers do not wear any special outfits when teaching. I studied with several grandmasters and none wore anything other than street clothes when teaching. During demonstrations or competitions they might wear silk outfits, but not in the classroom.

Be careful when reviewing the credentials of possible t'ai-chi ch'uan instructors. Who did they study with? How long did they study? Did their teacher have legitimate authority to certify teachers? Did the teacher actually certify the person in question? Or did they study for a few months then go off to teach on their own?

It may be that an individual emotionally craves to promote himself or herself as a t'ai-chi ch'uan master or teacher and displays all the seeming outward rituals and trappings of one, but that does not make he or she a t'ai-chi ch'uan teacher or has the knowledge or skill. It simply makes them misguided. Perhaps they have just created their own form of exercise?

The CTCCA and NWTCCA have a certification program that ranks assistant instructors and instructors. That way the public will know exactly what the qualifications are of that instructor. If they are not listed on the CTCCA official teacher page then they are not certified and not considered CTCCA certified to teach t'ai-chi ch'uan. At this time certified instructors of varying levels are listed at www.dotaichi.com

For example the Official instructors certified by Grandmaster Tchoung Ta-tchen are pictured in his text book, Annotated and Theoretical Tai Chi Chuan.

The Author, Harvey Kurland, MSc, MFS, CSCS, is certified as a T'ai-chi ch'uan Chief Instructor, i.e. Sifu, by the Chinese T'ai Chi Ch'uan Association and directly certified by Grandmaster Tchoung to teach his system. Kurland has over 35 years of experience in t'ai-chi ch'uan with several well known grandmasters, Including TT Tchoung, TT Liang, and LY Kuo. Kurland is also certified by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) and the International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA). He is a Clinical Exercise Physiologist and was the Director of Exercise Physiology for the National Athletic Health Institute for many years. He currently teaches for the University of California Riverside, Redlands Aikikai, and Loma Linda University Drayson Center. More information at http://www.dotaichi.com on the NWTCCA and http://www.myspace.com/hkurland

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