Description
A Group Leader is someone who may train informally with friends or a small group of paying students to lead developing them using one of the most advanced self-defense systems available.
You can become Core JKD Group Leader-Certified, including testing via long distance with this option.
Group Leaders can be certified and test in Core JKD, Rebel Wing Chun, and CJKD Weapons.
Group Leader-Certified
Untested, non-certified, Group Leaders using the material presented on the CJKD Member site will be allowed to publicize their involvement in Core JKD as a Group Leader for personal and group teaching.
To be certified as a Group Leader you have to teach. To teach you have to let people know you are working toward Group Leader Certification so that you can get students.
I started training with Shaun (Ming) right after moving to the Tampa area in 2003. I had trained with many teachers previous to this and recognized Shaun’s martial art skills and ability to teach those skills to others. Unfortunately, my job required constant travel, and I was not able to keep up with my training in Core JKD without Shaun’s input and guidance. Now, years later, after finding and training with the CJKD member site, the spark has been re-ignited. The lessons are clear and precise (through years of fine-tuning by Shaun and his assistant instructors). Fundamentals, attributes, drills and even example classes are available on the site. This is definitely the best online distance training program I’ve come across. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn the best self defense in all ranges, weapons, and conditioning training in a progressive and entertaining way. —Brian G.
Free Access To Most Of Our Sales Videos
Group Leaders get free access to select sales videos and big discounts on any specific Instructor Series training videos.
Access To Hundreds Of Training Videos and Documents
Access to the hundreds of training and teaching videos, as well as to select teaching blog posts, instructor documents and behind the scenes videos.
Video Assessment
2 x per month assessment of your training/teaching/skill progress from your own video submissions to Ming.
Core JKD Online Recognition And Referrals
With time on the job, Ming may feature you on the Core JKD website. He will also send referrals to you, depending on requests for your area.
Affiliate School And Testing
Core JKD Group Leader is the process and path for testing to become an instructor in Core JKD as well as gain affiliate school participation.
A Note On Core JKD
Core JKD allows a distinction between Group Leader and Group Leader-Certified status as a mark of progress in the Core JKD Method.
The Core JKD Method is an umbrella term defining personal practice, immersion, involvement in our community, teaching, testing, and growth in any of the following or combination of the following curricula: Core JKD Full, Rebel Wing Chun, CJKD Weapons.
Core JKD is the general and all-encompassing set of techniques, teaching methods, and proprietary applications in all the ranges against resisting opponents that will include Rebel Wing Chun and CJKD Weapons at different levels in the curriculum.
Rebel Wing Chun and CJKD Weapons are pathways for proficiency in only those ranges and methods particular to them. Some people wish only expertise in these areas, and we offer them as pathways for testing and certification as well.
The Teaching Process
The teaching process is a valuable and necessary part of deeply understanding Core JKD, other individuals, and yourself in relation to you—and your students’—functioning as a unique, creating individual growing into expressing yourselves honestly.
In reference to Core JKD Self-Defense, it is about your creative in-the-moment expression responding to the sensory stimulus of your environment in the most efficient way to ensure your and your students’ survival in life-threatening hand-to-hand encounters.
On a deeper level, it is about your value and growth as a creating and positively expressing individual in the greater connected whole of your world.
The Group Leader Role
A group leaders task is to assemble friends or students in a location safe for them to train.
It’s important that you do check out the location for anything that might interfere with the training or the safety of the students during training.
Training can take place at a park, which sometimes offers the best training because of unstable ground, environmental obstacles or simply the sun being in the eyes, etc.
It could also be in a basement, out in someone’s yard, under a carport. Yes, you could train in a studio with air conditioning and matts. There is actually no limit to where we can train Core JKD.
Like Core JKD itself, we have to be able to adapt to any situation well. This also means that we may have to be creative in our approach and execution of teaching and the locations in which we find ourselves.
Teaching
In every teaching situation there is always someone with more knowledge or experience— at least that is the best-case scenario.
One of the main things that makes Core JKD students stand out from many others is their lack of egotism. We have high confidence derived from hard work and training against resisting opponents. But having great confidence in our abilities should not be mistaken for egotism.
In my years of teaching, I have seen egos dissolve when people train with others who can truly challenge them. This builds a sense of humility as well—especially when you understand that things can turn on a dime, if you are off your game by a fraction of an inch or late or early by 1/10 of a second.
This can happen to anyone. The educated, wiser person trains for highest probability of success for a threat-to-life encounter. Having a particular brand of egotism that starts fights does not factor into that equation.
People who maintain an egotism, generally do not ever work against people who can put them on their head or bury them under the pile in front of everybody else. These people tend to harm other students to maintain a sense of social standing or they leave the challenging environment for one that ensures their ego will not be challenged.
Don’t be afraid to announce to anyone who wants to train with you that you do not train people with an ego. There are many other schools willing to cater to that kind of foolishness. Ego training equals injury training. Injuries equals time off from training. Time off from training equals a lessening of skills and readiness for when you need it.
Our job is to first and foremost train to high levels of mastery over ourselves, so that we may have mastery over situations we encounter.
In my early years of teaching, I wasted my time beating down egos. I say it is a waste only because the end result was always the same: the student (or instructor from another school) who challenged me and was “put on their head in front of everyone” thanked me for the experience, but then never showed up again for training.
Yes, I got to go against different body types, but in the end, it was a fruitless exercise. Time was wasted in a challenge instead of using that time to train my students in building their skills for life-threatening encounters.
This does not mean that all challenges from students are a bad thing. If they are done with respect, and, after an appropriate time on the job where the students won’t hurt themselves in the attempt, then the exercise can be useful. It becomes a learning experience for all parties involved, not a posturing for dominance in the social fabric.
The Student
I developed Core JKD to be minimalist, dynamic, responsive, powerful, flexible and tuned to the individual.
In Core JKD, the student body is a group of individuals, unique in their expressive natures, coming together to enhance their ability to express themselves in a way that allows them to survive life-threatening encounters.
As a teacher, this means you have to understand an individual’s mental and physical approach to learning in order to best guide them.
And everyone is different, though there are some baseline similarities:
- Everyone operates within the exact same physics of our world. Everyone.
- Everyone has sensory system that allows them to take in information from the outside world to process it in our brains, and then to express it or not.
- We are all moved internally by something inspiring.
Everything else beyond those 3 is for you to navigate, interact with, and guide to the best possible outcome.
You might be thinking that everyone moves away from pain and toward pleasure. This is only true insofar as you understand that what one person thinks is pain another person might actually believe is pleasurable. Or a challenge.
During training you may have to repeat yourself in different ways, demonstrate something at a different pace, move someone tactically through the movements they expect to perform.
Relax
You will most likely find yourself repeating the directing word, “relax.” This is something I still use even with advanced students. Tension consumes resources, limits penetration into the target, and slows and stiffens performance.
Oftentimes, being aware of someone’s tension and helping them relax will help solve an issue.
Informal
Core JKD is extensive in its reach and capability for the individual.
The main tenant that allows everyone to perform at their best is that we respect the people with whom we train.
It is also important that we are someone whom others can respect.
Our informality is only external. We may bow at the end of class as a sign of respect to those around us. We may even occasionally wear the same style of shirt with logo.
Internally, we have to deeply respect the unique individual or people with whom we train. They have not walked our path in life to get where we are. We have not walked theirs.
We understand when we listen more than we talk. We grow stronger with patience, and when we understand that failing is only a temporary thing each time it happens.
Guiding
You can be as rigid was flexible as you want when trying to teach a single person or a group of people.
Being rigid and demanding might work for some people, but being rigid tends to mean inflexibility. Core JKD is all about adapting and flexibility.
In the past, I have been called the gentle bulldozer. I kind of like that. It says a lot.
I have also been called Ming the Merciless, though I think that has to do more with my tenacity and some of the things I’ve demonstrated in my past. It may also have to do with my particular mentality.
One of my favorite quotes I came up with while teaching is:
- “I will not be compassionate when it makes you weak.”
If I let you get away with something in training because you might be tired, emotional, or just not feeling enthusiastic that day, then I potentially reduce your opportunities for surviving a life-threatening scenario.
I wouldn’t do that.
My current and past students would agree that I practice what I preach.
I also don’t have others do something I haven’t done myself— preferably at a higher level than those I’m teaching. This is where inspiration comes out for your students.
Be the gentle bulldozer and slowly guide your students on the path that will leave them stronger, more flexible, and more capable than they were before they met you.
—Ming