When you are coaching within your class do you...?

Question

a) Suggest that your way is the best way and try to get your students to move, strike and perform techniques as you perform them?

b) Try to help them develop their own style or way of performing the techniques, strikes, to how their body is built?

c) Show them the techniques etc, and let your students do the coaching?

or

d) Something else?

And why you choose that option?

Answer 1

B well im only 13 years old but when im older i want too teach people and children martial arts and i would demonstate it and then wen helping them change it too suit there body shape/ abilities too make t easier and more effective.

Answer 2

It all depends on the level of the person for application. I am not going to show a yellow belt the same application as I would a Black Belt, simply because they havn't been their enough to grasp it.

As for teaching a technique, from say kata, everyone, regardless of rank, learns it the way it is supposed to be taught. The higher belts will then take it and modify it for themselves, to fiut their body and fighting style. As the lower rank practices it, they will begin to start understanding what it will take to get it to work for them.

So the actual movement itself, say from a kata, is taught exactly the same every time, and performed the same in the kata, every time, but when put into use the technique is modified for the person performing it.

I tend to teach theories of why we do stuff and how to do it, rather then saying this particular move has to be this.

Answer 3

There is right way and a wrong way to do a move. There is always a physical differences in students. Some moves just won't work the best for some because of their individual make up. Billions of different people have a full range of different characteristics. If students would be left to do their own thing there would be no use for having a coach, or instructor. There is a right way to throw a football. There are those who excel at passing the ball and those who because of their individual make up will never be grate passers.

So this is the dilemma of a good coach. Try to teach the best technique, and at the same time understand that for some the technique we are teaching right now may not be the best for that individual. Not everyone can deliver the roundhouse kick with the speed and accuracy the Chuck Norris used to. To try to make a student that can not achieve that level of roundhouse kick doesn't mean the technique is bad just that this student will need to rely on another technique.

There are certain body mechanics that are universal to all. These perform in the individual to a greater or lesser degree base on their individual make up. The mechanics remain the same.

A student should not be pushed to do what they cannot do. There are plenty of techniques that will work for them.

Edit: As Katana mentions theory needs to be taught. I prefer to refer to it for my students as first principal. As soon as the pupil can understand the theory they should be taught it. That way as they develop they may adapt a particular "traditional move” to suit themselves, to modify it for their individual physiology. The pupil must realize that to get too far away from the first principal will render the technique useless or even detrimental.

Answer 4

When I'm coaching someone, I normally choose option b.

I try and break the technique down to whomever I'm showing it to. I teach concepts, the theory, and the reasons why a technique works. Then I work with whomever I'm coaching and find a way for them to perform the technique 'their' way.

Bruce Lee said, "When, in a split second, your life is threatened, do you say, "Let me make sure my hand is on my hip, and my style is 'the' style?" When your life is in danger, do you argue about the method you will adhere to while saving yourself? Why the duality"

I coach so that what I show my friends, and training partners, will be useful in actual application. I don't pick on them with form and positioning, "Oh your hand should be here, your foot should be doing this," what's important is the end result. The proper final execution of the technique.

Everyone learns differently, everyone has different physical gifts or hindrances, those things shouldn't be ignored. Not everyone will learn the same way, and not everyone will execute a technique the same way.

Part of the reason for my leaving the traditional arts was the ridiculous, petty focus on the smallest of details, that in combat meant next to nothing.

Answer 5

show them the proper technique. wat they do may not always be correct. if u want to defend urself u must know the correct way so u dont cause any harm to urself. always respect ur students so they do not get upset wen u correct them. and wen correcting them let them also know wat they are doing well.