Group size is the least advertised and most important property of any school. This piece explains why.
A simple calculation
An hour has sixty minutes. About fifteen go to a shared warm-up and ten to winding down, leaving thirty-five minutes of work during which a correction is possible at all.
In a group of ten that comes to roughly three and a half minutes per person. Realistically: three or four corrections an hour.
In a group of twenty it comes to under two minutes. Realistically: one correction an hour, often none.
The difference is not how much you learn. The difference is how many errors you groove before anyone notices.
Why a grooved error is expensive
A movement pattern settles into the body in three to four weeks of regular repetition. If in that time nobody notices your knee rolling inward through a transition, you will spend the next six months training that knee inward.
Undoing a grooved error takes considerably longer than preventing it would have. It often also means going backwards for a few weeks, which for many people is psychologically harder than starting.
What else changes
- The teacher knows your body. They know which shoulder is stiff and which injury you are returning from. With twenty people that cannot be held in one head.
- You can ask. In a large group a question interrupts twenty people. In a small one it is part of the hour.
- Partner work is safer. The teacher can watch every pair at once. For Sanshou drills that is a requirement, not a comfort.
- People get to know each other. After two months you know who is who. That sounds incidental until you notice it is the only reason you turned up in month three.
- The pace adapts. If half the group struggles with something, we stop. In a large group that is impossible, because somebody is always getting it.
It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.
What it costs
Honestly: small groups are more expensive for a school. The same hour, the same space, the same teacher - fewer people.
Which is why schools with large groups often have lower prices, and that is a legitimate choice. The only question is what you are buying: a price per hour or a price per correction.
Divide a monthly fee by the number of corrections you actually receive and the picture frequently reverses.
When a large group is not a problem
Let us be honest in the other direction too.
At festival workshops a hundred people is entirely fine - the aim is a first contact, not a correction.
In Qi Gong a group can be somewhat larger than in Kung Fu, because the movements are slower and the teacher sees more.
For experienced students size matters less, because they have their own measure and can correct themselves.
For a beginner, though, group size is the single most important factor - and a beginner is the least able to judge it.
How to check
Come to one class and count how many times the teacher corrects you personally - not the group, you.
If the answer is zero, you know everything you need to know. Including if you come to us.
