Aside
Last night I was assisting Sensei with a couple classes when he asked, facetiously, for a volunteer. Of course, I volunteer – since I was there to assist, it’s apparent that he’d be use me as Uke (the person who is providing an attack or energy for the other person, the Tori, to practice a technique upon) – and he went off on a small aside about the benefits of being Uke for the instructor, of how you learn more as Uke than anyone else, how Uke is actually teaching the person the other person, other such points related to the benefits of not just performing a technique, but being on the receiving end as well.
This segued into a short conversation about how I was volunteering my time, and how it’s beneficial for me to see, as a – hopefully – future instructor the evolution of classes over a single topic, as well as various on-the-fly modifications and variations have cropped up due to working with different individuals.
Hold on, did he say “hopefully”? Damn, I think he did. He hopes I do follow through to become an instructor of this art? Or was it that he knows I’m hoping to pass my instructor’s certification? Either way, frickin’ sweet. That’s pretty the extent of a compliment you’ll get out of Sensei. He probably doesn’t even remember saying it, as it was so incidental to the topic.
But I’ll remember.
Now I just have to keep training balls-out for the next few weeks.
Instructor’s certification testing ends in mid-Feb this month.