Lrtucker

I have a question that has been sitting heavy with me lately and I am hoping I can ask it here without being flamed like I might be on other sites. What do you do when you do not agree with your system? What do you do when you recognize fluff? As an underbelt I trained in three styles, earning my blackbelt in one. I have a ton of love for the style I earned my first Shodan in and when I decided to start teaching, I was proud to teach this style. As I started teaching under the banner of this system I saw holes between the curriculum and the philosophy of the Grand Master. As a black belt I have continued my education in my style as well as studying BJJ and Judo (not for rank, but for the love of the art). The grappling arts I have studied helped me in filling the holes I found in our curriculum. I am trying to stay true to the set curriculum of our system, but I am starting to see many techniques I feel are fluff. I am looking at them from the stand point of practical application and redunancy to other techniques. Oddly, many of these techniques that I see as fluff, my sensei did not teach to me either. Until becoming an instructor I did not even know they existed Now looking at it as an instructor, I have a strong desire to cut them. However, many of these techniques fall into the same group and I feel if I cut them it removes a namesake element of the style. At the same time I can not teach techniques that I believe work. I am not sure how to proceed with the curriculum I teach. The absence of these techniques plus the addition of the techniques I have added to fill other gaps leads to almost a new style, or at least pushes it in a different direction. I want to teach techniques that I believe are not fluff, but I do not want to be one of those guys who decree themself Soke, Grand Master, or something of that nature. What would you do?

Continuing with many of the questions I have been pondering... You are about to open your own school. YOURS to do what you want with. How to you set up the space? Bonsai with scrolls, bright colors with a kids play place, Mats with hanging heavy bags, or a mixture?

Thanks everyone. I just was curious to see how instructor's opinion of essential may vary. I love karate from a business aspect because you really can teach without any expenses so long as you have open space. Since I teach at multiple locations I am limited to what can fit in the back of the car. I do not need anything (tonight we didn't use any tools for class), but in the car I keep a few shields, two small shields, two sets of focus mitts, a paddle, sparring gear, boxing gloves, grappling gloves, a few blockers, a few cones, and a kettlebell. (not to mention a few gi tops for where I am teaching or training on a given day).

I have a a bunch of questions running through my mind about Dojo design and set up right now. I am hoping to post them one at a time for discussion, First one: Setting up a location of your own for the first time, what equipment would you consider essential. Assuming you have a reasonable budget for it. I know styles will vary, but curious to see other's thoughts.

WasteLander, that is different from what I was referring too, but I REALY LOVE that idea! I have seen a lot of school lately that take a group of students in similiar level, like white through orange, and for a three month phase (for instance) teaches a predetermined list of techniques, katas etc. If you were there for the entire period and grasp the techniques you test up to your next belt. In this method everyone in this class level tests on the same material each phase. Using the belts in my system as an example, the beginner class would have three phases of material and once a student had been through all rotations they would be promoted to the intermediate class, as where students who have only one or two sets of the material would stay in the beginner class. According to what I have seen this for ease of instruction and cohesiveness in the class. Instead of leading warm ups and moving into breakout sessions so white belts can do basics, yellow belts work on Kata X, Orange on kata Y, and Blue on kata Z; the students in each level of class work on the same material together during each phase. I have found several places online that you can pay for direction on setting one up, but I am more interested in hearing testimony from anyone who does.

I have been researching this for a while and looking for more information. There is a locked thread ont he topic so I couldn't bring it back to life. Anyone teach with a rotating curriculum? I don't mean one where you reotate through your focus for each class; I am referring to a curriculum where all student at one general level learn the same thing every class and are test on the same material regardless of kyu. Interested to see the responses and have more questions on the topic.

Totally agree, if as you get better you can use the speed bag for kicking too!!! Long intervals with the speed bag build great muscular endurance. Kicking it; that's just hardcore!

Patrick, I think that comparing teh price after converting it is kind of unfair. A better comparison would be the price in pounds per lesson compared to the average income in the UK versus US class pricing compared to US average income. Please allow me to digress from martial arts to explain my thought: I studied in London twice in college and saw similiar logic being applied by cohorts regarding exchange rate. It is unfair to think about the pound to dollar conversion if your income is in pounds. My fellow students would always claim that England was very expenseive because a bottle of water cost $2 (1 pound- with a 2:1 exchange in 2004) at a conviences store in the UK versus $1 at home in North Carolina. I would always bring up the point that if you make $100 in the US and buy a $1 water it is the exact same price if you were buying making $100 pounds and buying a 1 pound water. If Dobersky (assuming his income is in pounds that have been exchanged at a 1:1.56 rate) comes to the US to visit and pays $5 US for my class he is actually paying 3 pounds 20. Clearly, that would be cheaper for him than a US based student.

Remember boxing is a sport and its about points received from tactics not about violence. The way to keep the decision is out of the judges hands is to have a KO or TKO which SHOULD rely more on power and placement then on violence. That said, I agree with Wastelander. What is taught sometimes is instructor specific. Kempo employs striking, kicking, felling, and grappling. However as an underbelt I had an instructor who did not have a lot of grappling experience so we did not do it much. On the other hand, I also have training in BJJ and Muy Thai so my students learn our style's standard requirements for Kempo and I require supplements from BJJ. Additionally, as a LEO I also teach many of the tech's that we use in our training. I teach them because they are very practical and easy to learn. Our training employs nerve strikes because they are simple and effective. Since I had to learn the names of the nerves for report writing purposes my students learn them. Our groundwork uses thinks like grabbing, pinching and twisting sking to create pain and back out of someone's guard. We do not teach technical guard passes to side control because for us getting away is more important than side control and twisting nipples would be frowned upon at a NAGA tournament but works great on the street. If you want to find a "practical" martial art that has an equal blend of grappling and striking without being violent consider looking for a self defense seminar, series, or class.

Agree that being slow and mindful is very effective. I was taught a few drills as a white belt that I still do as part of my warm up before I teach class. How to operationalize what I am looking for- Great question! Pardon me as I use this thread as a springboard to realize exactly what it is I want out of them. This way I can use, my peers, to make sure I am pointed in the right direction. What I mean by more coordinated is a few things rolled in one. First is less clumsy, and more efficent in the movement. For me this came from repetition. Next is mushin. Lastly, is more fluidity- which is really a combination of the two prior. I have hit a mental roadblock for the solution. I have taught in several venues for 10 years and never had students that struggled this much. I am thinking about this as I type and think part of this is the fact that martial arts came easy to me so I am trying to fuse how to break it down even more for them. Repetition a few times in horse stance pretty much got me to where I needed to be and could move on to working them into more advanced concepts. Again as I type I am getting a clearer picture in my mind of what the real purpose of my questions was. Here is a little background on these students to help clarify the problem: one is a young teen who has previous martial arts experience and a dad who holds three black belts and despite her working him she forgets blocks and strikes from one class to the next (but not kicks, she's great with those). Another is of similiar age and has grasped things very well, her parents have gotten private lessons for her, but she is also a very busy young person with tutoring, chorus, and other activities and although she will get concepts very quickly she will be absent and forget many of them by the time she is back in class. One is an adult who is uncoordinated and very self aware of it and therefore turns negative very quickly. One late teen who is academically and artisiticly gifted, but has a history of struggling at sports- his parents thought this would be better for him. Lastly, is a 24 year old who has a type of autism that is 1 in 100 million- somedays are great, while others he has the abilities of the average six year old. I think more of the reason I posed the original question is because the amount of time it is taking this group of students to understand basic concepts. I have spent three weeks covering less material than I learned in my first lesson as a white belt. At every class I seemed to take two steps back. My typical class is structure is Warm up/workout, skill level appropriate basics, then self defense. This cohort is learning so slowly that I have to lower the warm up time and as of this week eliminated the self defense time to work on basics. In fact, today we did a 10 minute warm up and then worked on blocking for some time. We started and I quickly saw I needed to re-explain how to do each block. I then did a drill with a rebreakable board makng sure they are blocking with force. It was like working from scratch. Then we went to moving in front stance and blocking. For the last few minutes of class we reviewed high, low, and middle punch. For a typical class with me, we did not cover a lot. So I think I have realized what I am meaning by drills is really some **activities** to camoflouge the repition. I know with this cohort that I need to keep it exciting or I will lose their interest. I will not be able to move on until they have the very basics, but I drill nothing but basics for two months I won't have this group anymore. That may not bother some, but I have some knowledge of current educational evidence based practices and try to make sure I keep things developmentally appropriate. Thoughts?

Thanks DWx! My first warning would be to watch who you do business with. I thought pairing with the dance school would be great, except in retrospect I don't think the owner is all that great at her business and that hurts me. Pairing with the more promintent dance studio would have been better. The major benefit of the pairing is at least I have a physical location that can be associated with my name. I would also require a registration fee in retrospect. Had I done this I would have either had less people sign up and not get my hopes up OR more people stick with it. Worst case scenario if they had paid and not shown up, i'd have a little more money. The thing I would warn against is waiting for the stars to align. In my mind I wanted to wait until I had a large savings or invester, arsenal of mats, bags etc, and the perfect locations. If you feel it is what yo would love to do then go for it. If I had a garage I would have taught out of it with a sign in front of my house and opened the garage door for visual marketting. TO be good martial artists we had to learn to be fluid. To change as needed. This is no different. I have had to move times, change pitches, and offered discounts. What you have in mind may not work- keep working until you find what does. sounds to me a lot like looking for a submission. I originally planned for two classes, twice a week. One adult and one kids. Two kids came and one special needs adult who fits somewhere between kid and adult. After a few weeks one kid quit (not a loss because he was a pain, and his mom was too), the other kid took several private lessons and then got injured at school and had to take time off. This left me working one on one with my special needs adult and getting him to his first belt test. A week or so later I picked up a few more adults. My injured kid came back, but now with no other kids I decided that due to her private lesson she would fit into the adult class despite being a few years too young per my standard. I am hoping to pick up some kids over the holiday season and go back to having two seperate classes. Although I have a niche, I have been going after EVERYONE! I want to focus on adults, but as my Sensei told me when I started considering opening, thier is income in kids. Once I am bringing in a little more income I will try to target. If I had my own location I would have some weights and offer personal training and strength workout in order to attact more fitness nuts. I will limit my kids programs once I reach my quota for adults. If no one turned up I would keep pushing. Try to offer free lessons, or even teach friends. I offered November for free to students at a certian school because it would at least make the classes look full, not to mention creating work of mouth, and trying to get the kids hooked.

TallGeese's training seems very similiar to what I have been through. In a month certifcation course we were given 24 hours of training- not including baton or retraints. It starts very simple and then progressed to some resistance. You don't want to hurt officers before they ever graduate. You also have to realize that LEO's are not clones and have different strengths and weaknesses- not all have enough coordination to learn more complicated moves we use in martial arts. We use mostly nerve strikes, some take down- most emphasis on bent wrist with an arm bar. Almost no groundwork. We are required to do 8 hours per year as inservice- this is In a second certification I received we did 44 hours across 6 weeks. The first 24 hours were the same as the prior course. The second portion of the course was much more intense. Weapon defense, better tech's, more resistance. The group i trained with made it even better training because we were already assigned to high risk duties so we went hard. At least one person in our group had to have their uniform replaced a day after having sleeves ripped off, pants torn, etc. Now I work in swat and we do not typically train new tech's. We are expected to already know the basics. We train self defense once per year and we go full contact during this training. Sometimes even with the redman suit. To make it better out of the total 60 members of the team half are state instructors, and about another quarter are mma, bjj instructors, blackbelts, etc. If we train anything new, its not fundamentals, its picking a bad place to be- beign chokes, back control, on the ground and surrounded, and then having to use problem solving to get out of it. We may even discuss and come up with a best case scenario response and train it as a group.

Love this question. About 10 years ago I decided that one day I wanted to open up my own school. I drew out floow plans, class offerings, etc. I knew exactly what the mission of my school would be. Two years ago I got married and moved to the small town my wife is from. After working in my field for a year, I decided there is no time like the present to follow my dream. Starting from scratch is exactly what I did- no student no assistant. My ideal location would have been something in the historic downtown area of my town (very high traffic and lots of events like open houses and parades held in the event, second to that (and a terminal plan) is a large industrial space like a warehouse, and lastly a strip mall. I found a few places downtown with reasonable rent, even if not ideal space I could make them work. Without a history with my business I was unable to land the properties. So I decided I need to start smaller and be creative. The first thing I decided I should do, after some reading about general marketting (see gary Vanerchuck or Seth Godin) and martial arts specific marketting, was carve out a nitch for my school to stand out from the semi-traditional shotokan school, the mma gyms, and the sport TKD school in the area. Since I work in law enforcement I decided to focus on practical self defense. Secondly, as a competitive triathlete and crossfitter i wanted to focus on conditioning. These would be the points i would use for my marketting campaigns that would begin BEFORE I opened my doors. I also have another focus but can not do it yet because I do not have the space. In the mean time I searched for a space that already has customers. I looked at schools, rec centers, dance studios, and gymnastics gyms. The same TKD teach is teaching at all of the rec centers in the area so that was a no-go. The schools here are horrible for getting in touch with and getting things approved. I connected with a dance studio. This seemed perfect because it should have soem built in clients- girls dance and their brothers need something to doo too. Now all in one place. Even better I got some of the girls in class on the days they are not dancing. 30 days before opening I reached out to the newspaper for an article, they ran it but honestly it sucked. Next, I put together flyer and put them on cars in parking lots and apartment complexes, I attended the open house for the dance studio, I paid $35 to be a vender at a charity event and did a raffle for free lessons. I also got flyers into one of the non-public schools. At 30 days before opening I would also be looking at insurance. In order to attract more students, I did not charge a registration fee. This back fired and with 15 students signed up, three showed for the first day of class. Now my focus is on creating feeder programs. I am setting up one, two, and six weeks women's only self defense seminars at the local rec centers. This does not conflict with the TKD program. I also set up a 6 week bullybuster program at a local non-public school. Both of these will let the student develop a relationship with me and upon completion i will offer them a coupon for a discounted month with me. Now that it is christmas I am offering retail and membership sales. That is how I spent the last 4 months working from scratch. I have not yet broken a profit. The tutition I make covers my rent and then I spend about $100 on marketting and supplies.

The style in Shaolin Kempo. I am lookingg for drills/activities that will work on hand coordination. At risk of sounding mean, I have four white belts and two yellow belts who are the leasrt coordinate student I have ever had. Before I can ever move to hand mitt, speed striking or other drills, I need a way to build the hand coordination and link it to memory.