Coaching / self coaching

It's very common in martial arts that you "learn" either by standing by yourself(could be kata) or with a partner doing techniques. Most of the feedback is from a teacher looking you, maybe all the time or just when he is passing.

It's so common that you see it in movies portraying the student/teacher relationship in a dojo. But you see it many places - the teacher showing and the students doing it, and getting evaluated by the teacher. The sole reference for learning. Some schools have different levels of of reference  "a sempai" or just a higher grade. But it's still the same reference structure.

Its a structure that works, and ensures that what the teacher teaches is the main reference point. The back side of this is just the same. All reference are just the teacher.

Working with scenarios I've used group feedback as a part of learning; for all the students, no matter what role they played. And what I've seen that is the learning has been more thorough, making more sense for the students all the different aspects. A part of this success is to point out for the students the key areas that are to look for - even giving certain groups of students key areas to look at. It is there only focus, that one area. Making the feedback even more precise.

Taking this structure back to normal daily training and instead of having students train 2 and 2, I've let them work in groups of three, where the function of the third person is to "spot" different key areas. One at a time.

This has given a whole new team feeling, and enhanced the students understanding of the techniques taught. They have also become better at given structural feedback. They have gone from being coached to also being self coaching and ingraining their knowledge in their daily workouts.

So the next time you have to work in a group of 3 ( because the groups numbers isn't even), use it to get better at "spotting" and given feedback, and get better at self coaching!

Training "principles"

Doing techniques ”in principle” is the new black. You’ll hear teachers say “you do this but think of it as a principle”, “it’s the principle that is important” or “Understanding the principle will take into consideration the variation of the situation.” I heard it, seen it and done it in class. There’s nothing worng with it, but looking at Blooms taxonomy a certain buildup to understanding “principles” is needed.

The different level of Blooms are:

·         Knowledge

·         Comprehension

·         Application

·         Analysis

·         Synthesis

·         Evaluation

There is a logical build up of the first three levels ; Knowledge, comprehension and application.

Knowledge being the fundamentals like names, fundamental movements, facts about self-defense. Since this blog is about self-defense it could be fundamental understanding of attackers or you reaction patterns/flinches .

Comprehension being - understanding the knowledge - being able to describe and show the main ideas of the learned knowledge. This could be showing the technique you’ve learned, and being able to explain the key points of the technique. But the key points are learned points and not something the person has analyzed themselves to.

Application being able to show that the knowledge and comprehension is put to use, in a new situation. This could be taking the technique and applying it to a defense that hasn’t been seen, taught or used before.

Many teachers stop teaching here, and let their students stay at these levels, since the next levels have the risk of the students doing “new stuff”. But it’s the next levels that really show the principles. The three next levels show that that the student moves from thinking “technique” to think in principles. But more on this in another blog.

My point for today is that you can’t think principles without having the fundamentals in place, and that is  :certain techniques, certain keypoints and a certain level of understanding(application).

Since people have different levels of understanding and technical fundaments, it’s very important that the teacher teaching “principles” understands that the foundation of the student is really going to be the springboard for their “principles”, and if the teacher isn’t sure that alinge with the teaching , they might be experiencing  a whoæe new set of “principles” or misunderstanding each other, and in worse case the student  thinks he’s doing the correct “principles” but is doing something that won’t work in a self-defense situation.

Which brings us back to another point – you can’t do principles training without having a foundation to build it upon, which is not “principle”.