Training Your Black Belts

[Rateh]

There's only a few of us black belts in our dojo and all of us train 100% in all our classes. We do every exercise that we make our students do, and we must do them well! We never instruct our students to perform an exercise we cannot do ourselves. Every warmup, every strength exercise, every kata, kihon, kumite, etc, we black belts do everything along side our students.

That makes sense up to a point. But I'm not going to limit my students abilities based on what I can personally do. Some students are going to be faster than me, some have stronger arms, some be able to do more sit-ups, some have greater stamina, etc. That's why I believe in pushing students to do there personal best, not my personal best.

[Nidan Melbourne]

There's only a few of us black belts in our dojo and all of us train 100% in all our classes. We do every exercise that we make our students do, and we must do them well! We never instruct our students to perform an exercise we cannot do ourselves. Every warmup, every strength exercise, every kata, kihon, kumite, etc, we black belts do everything along side our students.

That makes sense up to a point. But I'm not going to limit my students abilities based on what I can personally do. Some students are going to be faster than me, some have stronger arms, some be able to do more sit-ups, some have greater stamina, etc. That's why I believe in pushing students to do there personal best, not my personal best.

I agree with you as I teach juniors 3 days a week and i can't do kicks properly due to having bad knees and hips. But i still am able to teach the kids to kick well. And I have students all the time asking me to teach them more advanced syllabus and they are more than ready to learn it.

[CredoTe]

There's only a few of us black belts in our dojo and all of us train 100% in all our classes. We do every exercise that we make our students do, and we must do them well! We never instruct our students to perform an exercise we cannot do ourselves. Every warmup, every strength exercise, every kata, kihon, kumite, etc, we black belts do everything along side our students.

That makes sense up to a point. But I'm not going to limit my students abilities based on what I can personally do. Some students are going to be faster than me, some have stronger arms, some be able to do more sit-ups, some have greater stamina, etc. That's why I believe in pushing students to do there personal best, not my personal best.

I agree with you as I teach juniors 3 days a week and i can't do kicks properly due to having bad knees and hips. But i still am able to teach the kids to kick well. And I have students all the time asking me to teach them more advanced syllabus and they are more than ready to learn it.

I'm not saying that we try to make our students do our personal best or only what we can do. We do want them to do their personal best. Rather, whatever we train our students in, we, as instructors / black belts, must be able to do it alongside the students. If you are unable for any medical reason, that's different. Those of our students, black belts included, that have medical / physical limitations, we still push them as far as we possibly can (within reason) to make sure they don't use said medical / physical limitations as excuses to not improve.

When students have recoverable medical / physical limitations, i.e. an injury that heals over time, we push them bit by bit until they're fully recovered. Then, when they are fully recovered, they have no excuse to not be pushed towards improvement.

Until I'm so old and feeble that I can't move and need a walker (God willing I live that long), I refuse to be the type of instructor that walks around grasping the front of my belt with both hands commanding students to "do as I say not as I do". If I can't perform an exercise, technique, movement, etc, then I have no business teaching it / commanding students to do it.

For instance, ideally, instructors should be able to do more sit-ups; but, at the very least, if they can't do more, instructors should be able to do sit-ups correctly with the students while the students are being commanded to do them. I realize there are exceptions, but...