Andrea 
Those who want to learn to defend themselves are looking for a specialist!
Who is the personal defense instructor or combat sports.
These days I was talking about it with some friends instructors and fans of combat sports, martial arts and personal defense.
We are a nice group with different experiences in combat sports, self-defense and security operators, some of them with gyms for decades and it is always interesting to tell and listen to stories and personal experiences because everyone has started for a reason the practice of their own or their disciplines but everyone when they start hoping to find a real professional, An instructor who is master in his specialty, a real point of reference.
This applies to everything but above all in personal defense and combat sports especially for those who are interested in practicing competition.
But keeping the focus not on sport but on personal defense, l and people who want to learn to defend themselves look for an expert who knows his industry perfectly and if possible knowsa variety of arts and knowledge in order to teach by modeling him on the person for 4 important factors such as:
- his psychology
- his physicality
- his personal need
- his learning ability which is linked to additional factors (age, physicality, intelligence, preparation, his personal history)
because each has its own different characteristics that need to be managed.
They don’t just want someone who’s very good at beating but who has limits to transferring knowledge/skills into how to build those characteristics and ability to do that, it’s him who wants to learn and learn a knowledge do not watch a good one, for that there is Television and YouTube where it is full of super champions in different disciplines such as boxing, grappling, BJJ, Judo, Fencing, Karate, etc..
Those who want to learn to defend themselves look for a specialist
Just like a patient, look for a specialist doctor and not the GP or worse a charlatan when he feels he has a problem to solve.
He wants someone to teach him to know and become something he’s not today.
- No to instructors or 1/2 unprepared masters who barely know what they do.
- No to instructors who took the qualification in two weekends
- No to instructors who want to talk hours to prove what they know without doing.
- No to instructors who want to explain only one solution to a problem, that’s never the case.
Put another way, to be a good instructor you need to know 1000 but show 1 thing at a time and only when needed, that is, contextualized to the topic.
Why?
Because every time you go to the gym and come home you have to feel and know that you have learned something new.
Learning to defend oneself is a process, a path, it is not the result of a single or random event but a constant and programmed work.
Words in martial arts matter little, they are good when they demonstrate competence and desire to deepen a topic.
Bruce Lee said that:
“It is proven that dedicating an hour of lessons to only one or two simple techniques is more effective and interesting than filling that same hour with many unrelated and disorganized techniques. The simple techniques that are taught should be progressively related to the previous ones and the instructor should clearly define the technique, applying it in different situations, varying pace, speed and/or distance, or combining it with other simple techniques.”
It is not good “all” sometimes “rivers” of words and questions in a braless way to the students.
- Show technique or exercise
- Show from different angles
- Divide the technique, unpack it to help learning
- Always balance the skills of the class in front of you to understand the level.
- Etc…
How can learners understand that you are the expert they are looking for and that you will be able to equip them with the skills they are looking for?
Remember that it is they who want to learn, the fact that you are good at menare is not related to the fact that you can transmit skills to him, the only objective advantage is that if he makes sparring with a strong one his level has to rise to resist and this is very very very important.
You have to put content, exercises and/or even if you want some private lessons and paid internships between you and your students in some cases to make targeted lessons but that allow those who learn to perceive your qualities, your student must know that you are really giving him useful information and exercises, working, expendable, a teaching that makes him grow.
That you have a lot more information to give than they see in class, because the difference between a private lesson is a public lesson is that when you have a large class you are forced to do the balancing of competencesand with the result that you often have to adapt to the middle class this at the expense of some issues and people who are usually very good ones.
Consider that if the topic is precisely personal defense, the variety and complexity of the theme really requires a wide knowledge that goes beyond the techniques of bare-hand and armed combat, but a deep knowledge of human behavior, psychology, verbal and non-verbal language, context, etc. topics already much covered on the blog because personal defense or self-defense is not just combat.
Whatever martial art you teach, remember that you need content to stand between you and your students to make them feel that you have a lot to pass on to them, that they have to be patient to receive that vast amount of information, but I have to have and feel one of the primary needs that is to progress.
The feeling that they do not learn and progress is one of the reasons why some students abandon.
Of course it’s not always your fault but you have to take full responsibility for the teaching and what you teach.
If you don’t have a teaching, a defined program, you will soon be abandoned because your students will feel lost.
If you want to quickly learn how to become the expert your students and future students are looking for, I recommend signing up for this blog to periodically receive VALUABLE TIPS that will help you achieve better performance with your students
- better information
- more immediate
- more effective
but no shortcuts or magic wands, if you look for that you are not in the right place!
Teaching has a dual function, perhaps more useful to you than it consequently also goes to the people you teach.
Stay Tuned!
Street Fight Mentality & Fight Sport
Andrea
