How long are the classes you teach?

[Montana]

My instructor and I always taught a 2 hour classs, 2-3 days per week. I've seen classes that were as short as 45 minutes, and IMO, that's barely enough time to get warmed up!

EVERY class starts with basic warmup exercises and basics drills. This takes around 20 minutes IF everybody knows what they are doing (beginners take longer).

This is usually followed by self-defense drills (tuitte, blocks/counters, various techniques, etc.

This is followed by kata practice, then finish up the class with sparring.

Sometimes I wish the class was 3 hours long, but not many want to practice that long.

What do you do?

[Wado Heretic]

Officially I am meant to teach for two hours, but it is not unusual for us to wonder into the 2 1/2-3 hour mark because we are the last people at the venue, and unless someone comes to kick us out I generally keep going.

The first hour is very much 3 K karate, and focuses on grading material. I try to give each an equal share of 20 minutes.

However, on Wednesdays it's usually 10 minutes for kihon waza and 25 minutes each for kata and kumite, because the second hour is a for purpose Hojo Undo/Kihon conditioning hour. Same on Fridays, but with less time spent on Kumite in the first hour because on Fridays the second hour is kumite focused.

The extra time usually evolves from me asking if there is any questions, coming up with answers, and then just going off on a tangent.

[JR 137]

At my dojo (I'm not an instructor), it depends on the class and who's there. We have 2 classes per night. The first is usually kids, and the second adults.

On Tuesday nights, we have a kata class that's supposed to be 30 minutes, followed by an upper ranks adults class (4th kyu and up). The kata portion typically goes 45 minutes or so, with no formal warmup (beginner kata are the warmups). At the end, the instructor usually says "whoever is staying, you've got 5 minutes until we begin." The second class typically goes about an hour - hour and a half. It ends when he's gotten through, and when we've gone over what we wanted to. That night is taught by my CI's right hand man.

Wednesday night is all ranks adults followed by black belts. The all ranks class starts and ends on time (1 hour). Th black belt class ends when my CI is done (I've heard about 1.5-2 hours), but is scheduled for 1 hour. I'm not a black belt, so I'm not sure.

The other weeknight adult classes typically go an hour and a half, scheduled for 1 hour. If there's more beginners and/or kids (the ones who are under the adults curriculum, but 14ish), then he'll finish on time, as there's only so much lower rank material to drag out.

He runs right on time Saturday mornings, as he has some family obligations.

To make a long story short, everything is scheduled for an hour. When appropriate, he sticks to the hour. When appropriate, he ends when we're done.

We also have needs based classes, such as tournament prep classes. Those are once every 2-3 weeks before our annual benefit tournament, typically going 2 hours. We have a few testing for a few different dan ranks in a few months. He has a Sunday class that'll go 2 hours or so.

[Nidan Melbourne]

Our classes are one hour long and cover whatever we need to that particular class.

We break down into groups that will work for the number of instructors and space available.

Many of our adults train for 2 hours which are two classes long

[Lupin1]

We're a very small, limited program.

Tuesdays and Thursdays we have the kids' class for an hour. It almost always starts and finishes on time, though we've been known to end 5-10 minutes early on days we don't have many kids (we had three last week and ended 5 minutes early). It was an hour and a half when the program first started, but that was just too much for kids.

The adult class at the moment is Tuesdays only. It used to be Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings, but then our head instructor got sick and he can't do all that any more. That combined with people's work/family schedules means we cut it to only Tuesdays. I started going to the kids' class as a green belt just to get more floor time in, then I started helping with the teaching, so now I'm there for both kids' classes and the adult class every week.

Most adults come at some point during the kids' class and either jump in and help out with the teaching, or warm up and then work on things on their own or with another adult to the side of the room (though nothing too distracting to the kids).

After the kids leave, we have adult class for anywhere from half an hour to an hour, depending on how the head instructor is feeling/who's there. If it's all instructors who were there for the entire kids class and did a lot of running around for that, we might cut it shorter. If we have a big group or our (one) beginner is there, we tend to go longer and do more kihon stuff. We've been known to stay a little longer if we get into good history/theory discussions while people are changing, but the place closes pretty much right after our class ends, so we can't stay too long.

We actually had a discussion just last night about how different it was at our head instructor's dojo when he was first learning in the 70s. Then 2+ hour classes were the norm. The dojo would just be open for several hours and people would drop in/drop out, but most would train for several hours.

Granted, it was geared much more towards adults back then and things weren't split into levels or age groups or anything. Everything was less structured and planned out. People just trained.

[Spartacus Maximus]

The average session in most dojo is probably around an hour to an hour and a half. This is sufficient for youth and children, but a worthwhile session ought to be at least 2 hours.

[The Pred]

45 Mins for some kid classes, an hour for some others. Hour for adult classes.

[JR 137]

The average session in most dojo is probably around an hour to an hour and a half. This is sufficient for youth and children, but a worthwhile session ought to be at least 2 hours.

Depends on many factors. If the teacher can get done what needs to be done in an hour or so, then so be it.

Different teachers teach differently. Teachers who like to go into every part of the syllabus every class will require more time. Teachers who like to talk will require more time.

Our dojo has the reputation as being one of the toughest dojos in Seido, according to several high ranking students from other dojos who've dropped in to take class. We do the 3 Ks of karate just about every class, and there's no stopping. It's one thing to the next, to the next, like clockwork. No water breaks, sitting or waiting around (except brief meditation before we start and after we're done). Nothing's cut short, and the pace will slow down when necessary, but in adults' class with students who've been at it a little while, there's very little of the instructor talking to the entire class; he'll correct individuals during drills. We get a workout while training. When our students go to honbu to test, we're consistently better prepared and in better "fighting shape" than most others.

When class does go over an hour, we don't really cover much more or do much more; it's because he took more time explaining and going further in depth.

How long it takes depends on the teacher's teaching style and the students. In the weeks before testing, things slow down a little to fine tune things, and afterward to teach new material, but it's back at it again once the appropriate students have their new material pretty much memorized. We came from Kyokushin (as did my CI), so I guess that's to be expected.

[tallgeese]

We run between the hour and two hour mark. It's largely due to the rolls at the end of class.

We kick off with some sort of warm up, usually basic movements. Then move to technique. This is where we talk about the moments, how it ties in to the rest of jiu jitsu. It's uses, etc. Then we drill the movements. We'll usually cover 2-3 techniques per night. This and the warm up will take about 50 min. Then we have 40 min of roll time. Sometimes there will be specific assigned goals to the rolls, often it's just free form application against resistance. That clocks us in right at 1.5 hours.

That sends up to PTK which due to time limits is usually 1 hour in length.

When we expand mat space we;ll probably end up at closer to 2 hours of jits per night and 1.5 hours of PTK.

[sensei8]

Classes, for the most part, vary depending on age and rank and discipline, anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours.