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Student
Testimonials
First posted March 22, 2007
"Thorough, thoughtful teacher, committed to his art and effective in communicating his knowledge."
- D. Tucker, Berkeley
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Guru
Jeff has the unique ability to be incredibly detail-oriented and yet synthesize
his knowledge and skill into a spontaneous, organic teaching style.
- J. Winter, Lafayette
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Guro
Jeff is a master-instructor who has helped me "fine tune" my practice
of Serrada Escrima. I had the good fortune to train with his San Francisco
group for almost two years and I really felt like my understanding of the
Serrada method of escrima came into clarity. As a martial artist of over
40 years experience, I appreciate a teacher who can show me the details
of how and why a technique works when the stress is on. Anyone who has a
chance to train with Guro Jeff and his students should do it. You will
appreciate the experience.
-
Professor Michael Belzer
7th Dan Danzan Ryu Jujutsu
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Guro
Jeff was my first formal instructor in the martial arts. His teaching
methods in Escrima are simple and effective; often sharing his vast
knowledge in other arts to supplement training. Having an atrophied right
arm, he showed me how to utilize the rest of my body to compensate for my
weakness. He played a large role in boosting my confidence and showing me
what I am capable of. Thanks Guro Jeff!
- A. San Diego, Pinole
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Jeff
Finder is a painstaking teacher and coach. You should expect a teacher to have
a thorough understanding of a subject. Jeff has more, though: he knows how to
teach, and he constantly offers ways to break down each movement into its
fundamentals and "groove" each one, so that eventually they become
instinctive and flow together without pause or thought. I can't count the times
he has shown me some tiny detail -- repositioning my foot just an inch or two,
for example -- that has made a dramatic improvement in my ability to move
smoothly and comfortably.
- J. Newman, Pleasant Hill
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I
trained with Jeff for only a short time but wish I was still training. He
was always patient, knowledgeable and flexible as far as curriculum. At times,
he would modify the training to address particular questions I had. I
found his martial arts skills to be excellent but his teaching skills to be
even better! He was never really concerned about time but more with the
quality of the training and how much knowledge he was able to impart on
his student. I learned quite a lot from him in the short time he trained
me. When my schedule loosens up a bit I have no doubt I will return for
more training!
- H. Metzler, Pleasanton
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Jeff
is a wise and skillful teacher. At the
elder phase of his career, he is no longer competing in competitions; rather,
he brings to his teaching decades of training with the great masters of FMA
(especially Angel Cabales). It takes a lifetime to learn what Guro Jeff
has garnered from his studies, so it is very efficient for the aspiring student of FMA to
learn with him. Jeff has done the heavy
lifting required to refine his art with the best proponents of the FMA lineages, thus he offers
to his students a refined perspective and big picture understanding. Best of all, he takes great pleasure in
teaching and has very clear pedagogic skills.
- M. Ziegler, Berkeley
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I’ve
only been training with Jeff for a few months now but in that time my skills
have risen dramatically. I bounce for a living and already I feel much more
confident against weapons or just dragging out a drunk. I’ve studied many different martial arts and
am very glad to have the opportunity to learn from Jeff. The personality of your instructor is very
important, not just for learning but you're going to have to spend a lot of
time with this person. Jeff makes the
class fun. He jokes around and then
back to business. I find myself not so
much physically tired after two hours but mentally, just from absorbing all the
information and focusing on technique.
He constantly pushes us for perfection.
His vast knowledge of other martial arts and having trained with
other escrima styles gives him a great perspective on fighting and violence in
general. Every week he teaches us just
enough so that if we didn't train at home we wouldn't keep up, and somehow he
always keeps us craving for more. For
me, after I had a good foundation in boxing and grappling, the big gaping hole
in my fighting repertoire was weapons.
Now Jeff is helping me become a more well rounded fighter.
-
Trevor,
president East Bay Rats M.C.
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The paper in the mouth
reads:
“Men had made those masks and other objects for a
sacred purpose, a magic purpose, as a kind of mediation between themselves and
the unknown hostile forces that surrounded them, in order to overcome their
fear and horror by giving it a form and an image.
At that moment I realized that this was what
painting was all about. Painting isn’t
an aesthetic operation, it’s a form of magic designed as mediation between this
strange hostile world and us, a way of seizing power by giving form to our
terrors as well as our desires.
When I came to that realization, I knew I had found
my way.”
Pablo Picasso, upon discovering African art for the
first time at the Trocadero Museum, Paris, Spring, 1907