In china, long time ago, it was very important to have a good lineage.
Most of the time you found or track down one precious teacher feeling good because you know about his legends.
You will not change teacher because most of them will kill you for it.
Some teacher encourage you to go see other teachers "see more " or in another way because he cannot teach you more!
If you had a teacher that could teach all, you stay with him!
And even in this time, you find stories of guys who just come from nowhere and are great.

Today, the lineage is some promoting merchandizing for some, to sell more and better, or some attach to the old tradition.
This is good, that's the way I was taught, but it does not mean anything anymore.

A real lineage can even be against you, because you will choose a teacher for his "pedigree" more than for his abilities. The bigger the family tree, the more you want to train with him...have you heard that in some family you had idiots???

What if, in the style you seek, the teacher with the best lineage got there because of family connections and politics, but not hard training and ability? You will train with a bad teacher!

I like the history of martial arts, that's for sure, but the arts can become too serious for somebody's life to take care about the package, not what is inside.

The arts are about health, I just saw this chi Kung teacher, with this great lineage, teach this weird chi kung...and dying from alcohol and rich food!
But chi kung can be abuse a lot.

In the combat arts, there are so many teachers with great lineage that you have to choose with a coin.
But when you start going there, looking for "combat" arts, there are no teacher anymore...well maybe half a dozen!
Because of the fact that they made a business of it, they have to compromise and please students...I’m not sure pleasing students is in the lineage teaching.

Continuing the tradition is great, but we can only do that with arts that are still complete.
Today way of using the arts for fighting is not the same it was 300 years ago...I know we still have the same body but that's not my point!

Long time ago, these arts were develop to kill and fight in a battlefield...not today!
If you kill somebody for insulting your wife, you will regret to have learn martial arts...but a good "pedagogic" slap will do, or a lock!

That’s why the "new" arts are so efficient for us; it's design to be used in our type of society.

But the lineage are a lot more difficult to be accurate: because of the opening of the teaching and the fact that you can "buy" the knowledge makes new problem arise.
First the quality of what you get stays most of the time superficial and in the lineage you have 20% of the students on paper.
And last, most of the style have these adept who stayed with the teacher and took care of him for long time and they have good rank in the style...some of the time it's more for nursing than training, but you do not advertise this!

All this bad English writing to tell you...train with a passionate teacher who train himself everyday. Make sure he is training with you, sweating with you and doing what he says.

Relax about all the stories; just find a real teacher and train, just train!

And if you have time, like me, to spend time arguing about stuff...it mean you could be training...I have to go train now!!!

serge

Unfortunately, too many people would rather talk about training than actually train. They'd rather take notes as to what people say or write about and come out a big fat out of shape virtual expert later on. You ask them to train hard and they say; "oh no I have an injury." Everytime you ask them to actually train their hypochondria kicks in. Whatever...

hi meynard,
great site you have, with the videos!
i agree and the sad thing is the more you have lineage or titles the less you train...because you are afraid of loosing face!
looking for a teacher is not looking for a curriculum but for a person.
a teacher is somebody with knowledge and practicing this knowledge...if not, problem!!!
serge