One thing that is really important on your martial journey is to surround yourself with good instructors and practitioner’s. Throughout my training over the years I have benefited from having good instructors and been incredibly fortunate to have trained with many other good martial practitioner’s. No one can become a proficient martial practitioner unless they benefit from instruction and from having partner’s to train with who help them to improve. You simply cannot do it alone. No, instead you need other people to show you the way and also to push you to improve and get better! Throughout almost forty years in the Martial Sciences I have been blessed with both. My training partners have helped me improve and my teacher’s have shown me the way! You need to surround yourself with both and if you do you are on path during this martial journey!
See You On The Mats!!!
Brian R. VanCise
Note: This blog is opinion only and neither Instinctive Response Training LLC or Brian R. VanCise are responsible for any third party action
The Instinctive Edge™ 
Fully agree, but in my, way to darn close to 50 years of training I have not been so lucky and always had good teachers and good practitioners to train me or to train with, but you definitely need them. But one thing, the longer you train in martial arts the easier it becomes to spot those folks you really do not want to train with and those that you do. With one major exception, especially in the arts I train. Chinese marital arts it is not so obvious who is the best person to train with if you are training with older, old school, teachers. They tend to play things close to the vest, until they get to know you. And even in some of the cases of a ‘not so good teacher’ I have learned a thing or two, even if all I learned was how to ID a person I do not want to train with, I learned something.
And training with these types of old school teachers has taught me another thing one needs when training martial arts patience. Sometimes, without patience, you may jump ship to soon and lose out on some really great training.