Jeffrey

Some people's eyes tell you that they've seen things. His eyes tell you that people have seen him. Solid post!! Yes very solid!

Congrats!

At first I had fear. Now I have respect.

One thing that I do notice about Martial Arts that especially use the rank system is that the lack of rank can affect what you are taught, and the depth of the subject matter taught to you. You will likely continue to be grouped with the rank you retain, and may not be shown other things taught to higher ranks, simply because you choose not to test. Lucky for me I will not have this problem. If I feel I ready to learn something new than all I need is ask. I do understand that others may not be so lucky. Maybe remove ranking.. I know this has been discussed to death and will not happen.

I'm affraid that you might have to look them up by art. Each one has it's own rules. Even in Karate there are different rules by style. It would be one heck of a list.

Once again Sensei8 your wisdom speaks volumes. This is where I am today. And to honest I feel good about it. At one point I did struggle to achieve this all mighty black belt only to find it left me hollow inside once I received it. All that work and I didn’t feel any different then I did before I received it. But that a long time ago and I now have found a different art and a much different perspective. Perhaps age has humbled me just a little. But, and there is always that but. You did bring to light something I was not considering and that is the ability to influence others for the betterment of a group. Without that belt you will not have a say in the political circle(s) that can help the student body, My Sensei and Dojo (and that order works fine without exceptions) to grow, learn and prosper. That will make for some tough choices in the future. But you can never tell what the future might bring. So I will try to keep an open mind. I can understand your sensitivity towards organizational politics after what you have witnessed happen to your Hombu. For me I have that belief that all people can be good and it is the power that lets them lose their perspective. I will use one of your American Presidents quotes as an example "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." Abraham Lincoln. Thanks for the advice and opening the eyes just a bit to other possibilities.

I don't that has anything to do with it but the dark side looks good now doesn't it. It is mostly an internal thing. A lot of what our club suffers from are things that have happened in the past. We are not all that political motivated as a club either. Just a good group of people. As for the links I did get the lastest book from Sensei Roberto and his DVD set. Very enlightning.

After a lengthy chat on facebook with a couple of members there was a story I going to relate and thought it might make a good KF discussion. This is more of what would you do and not what you think I would do. I belong to a local Karate Club of all volunteers who come out 4 times a week and teach Karate to kids, adults and teens. It is a fairly large club with about 100 members. We also belong to a large organization the spans across Canada with over 3000 members in over 100 clubs. One of the great things belonging to a large organization is the ability to attend tournaments and compete as well being able to share knowledge and ideas. But what happens when you enter the political part? Nothing good, from what I have seen so far. Sure that is my own humble opinion but I have seen it first hand. Our club has always been sort of an outcast. In the past we there have been differences of opinions that have caused a rift between high ranking members from the governing part of this organization. There have been times when our club has thought about leaving but other reasons have kept us around. I ask a lot of questions. One of the largest problems we have had is the grading of our black belts. I have come to understand that to get graded you must also play this little political game. Sorry for the background before the question but I thought it was a little necessary. I was at the last big tournament with another member who is going to try for his black belt this year. One of the Sensei came up and asked if he was going for his black belt this year? I said yes. The Sensei than replied with “you should go train at this persons club to help with Kata.” What??? Is our club not good enough? (I thought this and didn’t ask it). I’m a loyal person and loyal to the person teaching me. I later found out this person is the head of the grading committee. WOW! So I guess the chances of getting graded down another few percent. So why would I try to go for a black belt in this organization? Then it hit me. Why do I need a black belt? It’s just a belt. Do I need a black belt to practice Karate? Does it make me stronger? To someone like me it is really nothing all that special. I work hard and I practice hard. I also help out 3 nights a week in the kid’s class. So why do I need a black belt. When I want to learn a new Kata because I feel I’m ready there has never been anything said. So now the question after that long winded rant. Why is it so important to have a black belt? Does it help?

Welcome to KF The only advice I can give from the 40 and over crowd is take it slow. Enjoy the ride and remember your not 20 anymore. Did I say your not 20 anymore. Sorry but this was my big mistake and the first week was more than painful.

Welcome

I think in the end it might strenghten our own arts and to make sure that they are kept to a high standand of training. But those who teach poorly will contuine to exist. It is a sad truth. I know not anyone who would have the answers either. But I do know who has the answers to everything we do and that is us. Each one of us has to have a personal drive to make what we do each day in life and in the martial arts our personal best. To pass on those values we hold true to our students in hopes they will pass them on to theirs. It's a simple dream.

As anyone could fear. This could end up being a polictal nightmare. In a perfect world it would be nice to have but the end result could just make things worse.

If you are looking for exercise video for home use I'm going to suggest the Insanity video by Beachbody. Shaun T does these and they will kick your butt. When they say insane they are not kidding.

Well said!

Congrats

Congrats on the coloured belt

After reading Sensei8's post about teaching I thought I throw together a few thoughts of my own not wanting to hijack his thread. Teaching is an art. Teaching Adults vs Children is also an art. I really liked PS1’s idea about sending or providing scholarships in education but for some this will not work. Our clubs are run by volunteers who come to class every night and teach. Most sports have this in place weather it be Karate, hockey, soccer or any other sport. Only a select few offer any sort of training to teach/coach. Most of this is left to us to find courses that will help us grow as an instructor. There a different methodology to teaching separated by age groups. You can be good at teaching kids and horrible at teaching Adults depending on your mind set and what you have been taught over the years. I believe some sort of leadership course should be taken or provided by the organization to help its instructors learn how to teach. And that being said not everyone can teach. It’s an art and not everyone can do it. For myself I teach the younger kids because that’s were I have had the most training. I enjoy teaching the younger students and it has taken a long while to be effective in doing so. I can provide a little insight into teaching children. It is my hope this small piece of writing will generate some discussion of ideas as well. There is a lot of experience out there to draw on. Most of us have had some experience either as an instructor, assistant instructor or a young student; and at some point in time in our Martial Arts journey we will be called upon to teach children, as most Schools have some sort of kids programs. Little Ninjas/Dragons being the most common. Teaching a young age group can be the most challenging tasks you have ever done; forget about how hard it was to get that new belt or compete in the last tournament. Now you must teach a 6 year old how to perform a proper turn followed by a low block/punch. I don’t want to focus on gross and fine motor skills as you could write pages on this subject and children, but more on teaching and class structure needed to fill your students with enthusiasm for the Martial Arts. Teaching children, more specifically the 6-8 year groups the structure of Martial Arts is not only challenging as an instructor, but rewarding in its constant changing atmosphere to each individual taught. First, I’ll give you a little background on myself and the experiences I draw on that helped me become a more effective instructor. I first started teaching children swimming at the YMCA. My age group was the 4-8 year olds; I was a horrible teacher. No matter how well conceived my lesson plan was it never turned out the way I wanted it to. Was I knowledgeable about the subject? Yes. Did I understand kids? No. Somewhere along the line I forgot what it was like to be a child, to be able to laugh at silly things most of us adults don’t understand anymore without getting labeled with A.D.D. Now I have over 20 years of coaching/instructor experience and I still think I have another 20 years to go before I’m any good. Over the years I discovered that too many places offer skills in a variety of sports but never do they offer skills to pass this knowledge on. It took a few leadership courses on teaching/coaching children and opportunity to learn by teaching for many years. My greatest teacher was the kids themselves. I could ask a thousand questions of other instructors but the kids are what motivate me to learn and grow. Ask the kids what they like and what works and they will tell you. Surprising it was those answers that helped the most. To this day I learn something new every time I get in front of the class. We can all learn to become skilled practitioners in what ever art we choose; but how do we pass this on? Martial Arts have a ridged structure based on tradition filled with complex techniques that require both strength and agility. When teaching children in this modern age I found that breaking from traditional class structure helps. I’m not saying that we forget our lineage and traditions but to create an environment that makes learning enjoyable so the kids will not be dreading the next class. What you don’t want is for your new student to go home fearful of attending the next class; kids need constant stimulation so throwing punches for 10 minutes you’ll lose your audience. Standing there explaining the traditions of the art for any length of time and you will start to see the yawning of young faces. Many instructors are constantly telling their students to focus, but we must bare in mind child psychology tells us that the average 6 year old has the attention span of about 2-5 minutes. Doing the same old drills week after week will do little to motivate those growing minds. Now how do we accomplish this task? Stop teaching children like we would teens or adults should be on the top of your list. Consider your energy level; every Student will feed off of what you bring. If you come to class with low energy your students will also have low energy. Focus on the basic fundamentals of learning to pay attention, courtesy and respect for each other and the Instructors. Lastly limit the amount of time you spend on task. Switch it up. Little tasks like a bowing before you enter/exit the Dojo can be hard to enforce to this age group. I start with walking the class to the door and having them all line up and bow and exit. Once out we all line up and bow again and enter. I like to repeat this for the first few classes. It's does not matter what rank they are. This needs to become a habit. Teaching Techniques can be the worse tasks because most students despise the repetitiveness of performing the same task over and over. What I came up with is having a student in the group come up and help teach the technique with me for a couple of minutes. I noticed that children like the idea of being a helper and also the other students tend to listen when one of their peers are helping. I rotate the helper about every 2 minutes till everyone has had a chance. This can allow you to spend more time on certain techniques. It also lets the students take on a larger role and build a little self confidence being at the head of the class. A suggestion when doing techniques is to mix them up a bit with other skill sets. For example, take a stance and add a punch then do a block change the stance and repeat. Mixes thing up a bit and lacks the repetitive nature of the drill. Another challenges I had to face like so many others before was Kata. I can still remember getting ready to go teach the Tuesday Kids class knowing it was Kata night and getting this feeling of dread; “Ok from the beginning count by count” I would say only to see a yawn on one of the faces before we had even started! You can’t get upset over a young student for this knowing what was to come, so I put on my “outside of the box” hat one night and broke it down into a game. Stances was the focus of the night; I would count out the Kata and stop and check stances, anyone caught not in a proper stance had to do a pushup, simple and effective. Now Kata was a game. Next I asked everyone to put their hands in the back of their belts, do the Kata with just legs only, then just hands, and added the pushup game into it as well. After a week they were asking me to play the Kata Pushup game! No tight fist, do a push up; No one wanted to be caught so they all excelled at an otherwise boring (to them anyway) teaching and I had the best Kata group ever! Sorry for the length but once I got going it was hard to stop. Please feel free to share any ideas or drills that have worked for you as I am always on the look out for fresh thoughts on teaching.

My thought is the field of teaching said karateka to be an instructor be a joint collaboration between the Sensei AND the Hombu. Come to think of it I will make a new thread and hopefully generate some ideas of how we teach.

Welcome KarateKaj

Welcome Thomas

Kids class work out with a super bootcamp girl who needed a little work out and said this should be easy. 1 min jogging on the spot 1 min jumping jacks 1 min power jumps 1 min throw as many punches as you can in horse stance getting as low as you can. 1 min plank-pushup-stand up-repeat as do as many as you can. Kids doing great, bootcamp girl hoping it is over. What 5min is nothing? Repeat above set only faster. Kids ready to go and pumped, bootcamp girl not so good and thinks it is done. Repeat same drill only as fast as you can. Adding on the end leg raises for 1 min and crunches for 1 min. Followed by a 3 min stretch and cool down. 90% of kids completed but were finished. Bootcamp girl never made it passed the powerjumps in the last set. After she came up did that what the heck thing. I looked at her and said kids are fine. LOL!! Want to try the adult work out tomorrow? “whatever!!” I signed up for her bootcamp the next day ….. in case I needed a little work out.

Awesome Job! Well done and good luck to you as grow and learn.

Welcome Harry

Welcome hext

Welcome Wolfman08