Strangest new student questions you've been asked

[mixjourneyman]

I have a karate teacher who calls xingyi "shing eye", so its not that weird lol.

Not a question but...: This guy found out that I do bagua, so he called me and asked to be taught by me. At the time I didn't feel like I had enough experience, so I told him that I didn't feel good about teaching people. He kept asking and said that I could just coach him and not be his teacher (more like a friend in martial arts), so I told him that I could meet him and teach. I decided to charge him something like 15$ for each lesson (I'm a poor student, can ya blame me?). He didn't like paying me money and offered to trade massage and reiki or something, to which I politely declined (weird enough, since we all know that IMA makes you turn ghey, as massage from another man is one step worse). Anyways, the really funny thing was that I told him "hey man, your really making progress. I wasn't circle walking this well for at least a year after I started learning bagua (he had been learning for only a couple weeks). To which he replies "Oh! Good. I believe that me and my students have a kind of natural talent", to which I almost puked laughing. Was this guy teaching the bagua that I had been showing him for like two or three weeks? That would be truly lol worthy!

[cdobe]

Has anyone heard of the Hunger style? Must be the style of some Chinese begging friars...

[Doc Stier]

Has anyone heard of the Hunger style? Must be the style of some Chinese begging friars...

Yeah, I've heard of that style, but I think your spelling is off. I believe it's spelled Hung-Gar in English, don't ya know?



I can't say how hungry this guy is, but he definitely looks like a monk, if not a mendicant friar.

Doc

[baguaboy]

new student - "If you teach me all your bagua circle form will it sort out my chi imbalance?"
Reply - "no - only £5000.00 will do that!"

[GrahamB]

Not so much a question from a student, more of a flawed thinking approach.

One person wanted to learn from me because she wanted to learn "martial" Tai Chi. However, she didn't put any effort into practicing any actual 'martial' techniques. Didn't like it. Didn't want to learn to breakfall, etc.. I worked out in the end that what she wanted was martial intent in her form, without actually having to practice any martial arts techniques, ever.

That baffled me completely. Or maybe I'm just too low level

[mixjourneyman]

Not so much a question from a student, more of a flawed thinking approach.

One person wanted to learn from me because she wanted to learn "martial" Tai Chi. However, she didn't put any effort into practicing any actual 'martial' techniques. Didn't like it. Didn't want to learn to breakfall, etc.. I worked out in the end that what she wanted was martial intent in her form, without actually having to practice any martial arts techniques, ever.

That baffled me completely. Or maybe I'm just too low level

There is actually a teacher who lives near my city who teaches in exactly that way.
He teaches old ladies to focus their yi and feel like they can fuck someone up with their taiji, but the last time I checked, he didn't offer any specific applications of the forms.

[Chris Fleming]

Had an old lady call the school asking if we teach Tae Bo. I tried to be polite and explain that we only teach martial arts here in our martial arts school, not aerobics, and then she was like "what is tae bo anyway"?

This next story happened to another instructor with me: A very creepy but very frail guy comes up asking about lessons. His whole manner was just weird. One of his last questions was "do you have any cops training at this school? I don't like cops. They are evil and possessed by aliens". The instructor more or less was leading him at this point to see that this school may not be a good fit for his needs when all of a sudden, the guy pulls out this ball that had like some kind of face drawn on it and wanted to give it to him. The instructor was like "ok time to go". And the guy said something like "you'll always remember me". Later when closing the school, the instructor went down stairs to leave and there was the strange ball-with-a-face-drawn-on-it, as the guy left it there for him. The weird guy was right, the instructor did remember him as that's not something you forget.

[GrahamB]

ok, I just got this one on text.

"I really wnt 2 pik up lesons again bt i cnt aford 2, was wonderin if u cud do a deal? Say maybmeet 4 leson every couple of wks an half i cud learn an otha half i cud feed u wateva atacks u need 2 practice 3 urself?"

I told him not to worry - I'd teach him for free He's a nice guy, and I like training with him .

[Dmitri]

What's "3 urself"? Could it be sufficiently defined as "one less than '4 urself'", or is there more (or less?) to it?
You think maybe he was running low on battery towards the end of the message and typed 3 instead of 4 to save power?

[GrahamB]

Nah, he actually said "4", I just messed up in my typing ... or maybe it was a subliminal message from my subconcious.. . I need to 3 myself.... you know "free" myself.... I must be free!

[mixjourneyman]

Chris: we actually had something very similar happen at my teacher's school.
A guy thought he was going to fly into outer space and combat aliens. He said that this old Romanian guy had told him that first he needed to learn taiji and then he could find someone to teach him how to fly into space.
My teacher invited the Romanian guy up to talk to him and then tried to provoke a fight so that he could break his arm for leading the poor kid on. The Romanian guy was like "oh, no. I only practice taiji for health, thats why you have to teach him the fighting aspect. So that he can fight the aliens"

[Chris Fleming]

Crazy shit Mix.

Here's another one:

Every 6 months or so some crazy quasi-homeless guy would come to the school. He would just bust into the office or practice room and start talking all kinds of gibberish. Sometimes he would ask for lessons, other times he wanted to (i guess) challenge someone. We always talked him down and got him out of there. Well one time he runs up the stairs and busts right into the office again, says something like he wants to fight us, and we tell him to get out and he leaves. Then you know what? He calls the cops on US!!!

These dumb ass cops come up and start questioning us as to his claim that WE were harassing HIM! It didn't take long for the cops to see the situation, but they started to be rather diplomatic to the guy about the whole thing. It was really annoying.

[mixjourneyman]

What kind of neighbourhood is your school in dude?

Thats just crazy.

[Darthwing Teorist]

Chris: we actually had something very similar happen at my teacher's school.
A guy thought he was going to fly into outer space and combat aliens. He said that this old Romanian guy had told him that first he needed to learn taiji and then he could find someone to teach him how to fly into space.
My teacher invited the Romanian guy up to talk to him and then tried to provoke a fight so that he could break his arm for leading the poor kid on. The Romanian guy was like "oh, no. I only practice taiji for health, thats why you have to teach him the fighting aspect. So that he can fight the aliens"

Romanian guys are t3h awesome!!!

[mixjourneyman]

Chris: we actually had something very similar happen at my teacher's school.
A guy thought he was going to fly into outer space and combat aliens. He said that this old Romanian guy had told him that first he needed to learn taiji and then he could find someone to teach him how to fly into space.
My teacher invited the Romanian guy up to talk to him and then tried to provoke a fight so that he could break his arm for leading the poor kid on. The Romanian guy was like "oh, no. I only practice taiji for health, thats why you have to teach him the fighting aspect. So that he can fight the aliens"

Romanian guys are t3h awesome!!!

When he said "Romanian guy", I was totally thinking "damn, Teo is teaching people to fly to space and fight aliens? how do I get in on this?"