Beginner class and advanced class

[watching]

The dojo I train at separates the beginners and the advanced students into separate classes. Typically, when you get to purple belt (4th belt) they will recommend that you move to the advanced class. I'm wondering how common this is and what everyone thinks about this? What are the pros and cons of this?

 

[marques]

Separated:
- Classes better adapted to the level
- Advanced ones feel a bit more special or gifted, they got access to advanced classes
- Viable when there are many in each group

Together:
- Beginners can learn and get inspiration from the advanced ones
- Easier schedule for instructor(s)

 

[Headhunter]

It's pretty common in most places depending on class size

 

[JR 137]

Separating the lower ranks from the upper ranks allows each group to work on their material more specifically during their class time.

We have black belts class and all ranks adults class (along with separate kids’ class). I’m not a black belt yet, so I can’t comment on specifics of that class, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out they’re working on their rank material pretty much exclusively. They’ll do lower rank stuff as a warmup and/or a quick review, but they’re focused on their material.

All ranks adults classes also have black belts attending, as black belts class is only one night a week. The black belts will do some rank specific stuff, but mainly kata/forms while we’re doing ours. They do some other rank specific stuff during the general class, but there’s not the depth to it like in their own class. Because of this, black belts at are school are required to attend black belt class as much as possible.

Once a month, we’ll have a “senior black belts class” which is for 3rd or 4th dan and up (depending on the month). This is to focus on their rank stuff even more than normal.

Pro for rank specific classes: they help people work on their rank specific stuff without getting slowed down by also doing lower rank stuff. If you’re a 4th dan, you’ve been doing white belt stuff for at least 20 years; if you’ve any rank getting ready to promote or newly promoted, you can work on your stuff pretty much exclusively. Another pro is upper ranks don’t get bored with working with lower rank students every class.

Cons: you might not have the numbers to justify having an advanced class. If you’ve only got 2 or 3 advanced students you’re better off having all ranks class and separating them during class.

Pros of all ranks class: lower ranks can work with upper ranks; lower ranks see more stuff during basics and have better sparring partners, and upper ranks still refine lower ranked material and skills. Upper ranks can also help teach formally and informally during partner drills.

My former dojo had all ranks classes and rank specific classes, ie yellow belts and up, green belts and up, brown belts and up, etc. He had the numbers to make that work. My current CI would like to do that, but he doesn’t have the numbers to make it work; there’s more black belt adults than all colored belt adults combined.

I think the biggest driver in scheduling is going to unfortunately be numbers of students in different ranks.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

The dojo I train at separates the beginners and the advanced students into separate classes. Typically, when you get to purple belt (4th belt) they will recommend that you move to the advanced class. I'm wondering how common this is and what everyone thinks about this? What are the pros and cons of this?

I like having advanced classes, but I don't like removing the more advanced students from standard classes. I like beginners' classes, but don't like them being isolated for long.

If I had my preferences (which means having enough students, space, and class slots to do this), I'd start new students in a separate group, training in a different area, because I have a short "foundation" curriculum I start them in before they get to the main body of what we do. I wouldn't want this in a separate class, because I don't want them to get stuck there out of scheduling needs (most folks should only take 2-4 months to complete the foundation work).

Then everyone would train together - all ranks in "regular" class. That's the arrangement I trained in my entire experience, and I like the mix. Upper belts get to revisit early material more often, and newer students aren't always working with someone just as bad as they are.

And I'd offer and "advanced" class. This would probably be by rank - somewhere around green belt (third colored belt out of 5). This would be a separate class time, and it's a chance for an instructor to teach without having to start any of the material from scratch. So the material to be worked on would only be things related to material through the ranks already achieved. There would probably be more freedom in sparring/randori in this class - I could expect everyone by that point to understand their own limitations, and to call their own level. If someone uses a throw their partner doesn't know, I'd expect them to be able to handle that unexpected fall by this point.

Eventually, I'd also probably add a black belt class. In my curriculum, there's nothing new (from a curriculum perspective) beyond black. That's the last rank (no dan rankings), so this would be a space for exploration. I'd let them bring in and share outside training freely, maybe taking turns leading the class through ideas they picked up in seminars, something they learned in another school/art, or whatever. This would also be a place for instructors and would-be instructors to talk about and work on pedagogical concepts.

 

[wab25]

So far, folks have mentioned the benefit for the lower ranked students who get to work with the upper rank students. But the reverse is true as well. There is a benefit for the upper rank to work with the lower rank... many actually.

Can you make your technique work against someone who has not yet learned the expected response? If you have really learned your technique, you should be able to make it work with control, when the other guy does not know the dance yet.

Can you adapt? When the other guy does not react how he "should" are you able to adapt?

While you may have learned this move years ago... you did not ask all the questions or fix all the problems. When working with lower rank folks, they will ask questions you never thought to ask, forcing you to look at a part you glossed over in the past. They will have trouble in different places than you did, and helping them work through that will help your technique as well. (I have had quite a few doors opened for me this way... they were probably pretty obvious to other people... )

As the upper rank, you get to work on your teaching skills a bit. How well do you demonstrate, explain and or correct?

All that said, I do like separating the ranks for work in their various rank requirements. But, I believe all students should work with everyone for a significant portion of training.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

All that said, I do like separating the ranks for work in their various rank requirements. But, I believe all students should work with everyone for a significant portion of training.

This is something I can't quite wrap my head around, though several have mentioned it. I can see where an upper rank will have things to work on that they can't work with lower ranks on, but don't they still need to work on the material the lower ranks are covering?

In NGA (in all the groups and schools I'm aware of), the early work (what you're tested for to get your first belt) is re-tested at every rank, so a brown belt is still actively working on the first set material.Is that different in other systems?

 

[hoshin1600]

i find the answers so far interesting.
the general opinion seems to be that separation based on experience (ie rank) is normal. what i think is being missed is that separation is linked to training methodology. the norm for methodology is to have a curriculum of information which is dispersed in regulated segments. this is the same method as schools dividing everyone into a grade based roughly on age. addition and subtraction is for 1st and 2nd grade, multiplication and division is for 3rd and 4th grade ect.
how accepting we are for the status quo.
while this is a methodical way to disperse information it is one major factor on why martial arts has a reputation for taking a life time to learn while MMA and boxing can produce a decent fighter in a much shorter time. basically separation methodology is using an effective way to learn declarative knowledge and applying it to procedural memory.
interesting........

 

[wab25]

This is something I can't quite wrap my head around, though several have mentioned it. I can see where an upper rank will have things to work on that they can't work with lower ranks on, but don't they still need to work on the material the lower ranks are covering?

I have to be honest, I don't quite understand your question here. I reread what I posted to make sure I didn't type the opposite of what I meant... and so far, I think I said what I thought I said

When I said:

All that said, I do like separating the ranks for work in their various rank requirements. But, I believe all students should work with everyone for a significant portion of training.

In my brain, I stressed the second sentence there. This is where they work on the material the lower ranks are covering.

I believe that there is much to be gained by having the opposite ends of the spectrum training together. Further, I feel the most important stuff an art teaches, is taught at the beginning. The basics are the basics, as the rest of the art is built on top of the basics. The better your basics, the better the rest of your art will be. So, again, I agree with you that they still do need to work on the material the lower ranks are covering.

I hope that clears it up... (I think we are saying the same thing)

 

[Gerry Seymour]

i find the answers so far interesting.
the general opinion seems to be that separation based on experience (ie rank) is normal. what i think is being missed is that separation is linked to training methodology. the norm for methodology is to have a curriculum of information which is dispersed in regulated segments. this is the same method as schools dividing everyone into a grade based roughly on age. addition and subtraction is for 1st and 2nd grade, multiplication and division is for 3rd and 4th grade ect.
how accepting we are for the status quo.
while this is a methodical way to disperse information it is one major factor on why martial arts has a reputation for taking a life time to learn while MMA and boxing can produce a decent fighter in a much shorter time. basically separation methodology is using an effective way to learn declarative knowledge and applying it to procedural memory.
interesting........

I'm not sure it's just precisely that, Hoshin.

An advanced boxer will benefit most (skill-wise) from training with advanced boxers, rather than novices. Same for an advanced MMA fighter, Judoka, Karateka, etc. There's a real benefit to the novice in working with someone who's not a novice, and we tend to see that in most training systems.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I have to be honest, I don't quite understand your question here. I reread what I posted to make sure I didn't type the opposite of what I meant... and so far, I think I said what I thought I said

When I said:
In my brain, I stressed the second sentence there. This is where they work on the material the lower ranks are covering.

I believe that there is much to be gained by having the opposite ends of the spectrum training together. Further, I feel the most important stuff an art teaches, is taught at the beginning. The basics are the basics, as the rest of the art is built on top of the basics. The better your basics, the better the rest of your art will be. So, again, I agree with you that they still do need to work on the material the lower ranks are covering.

I hope that clears it up... (I think we are saying the same thing)

We might be saying the same thing. Maybe I'm mis-reading when you and others refer to rank-specific classes to work on rank-specific material. Unless a school is huge, I have trouble seeing the value of multiple rank divisions (someone mentioned "X-belt and above" classes for each rank).

The concept - especially with your clarification - seems the same as what I said. Maybe I just need more coffee (running on about 4.5 hours of sleep).

 

[watching]

Separating the lower ranks from the upper ranks allows each group to work on their material more specifically during their class time.

We have black belts class and all ranks adults class (along with separate kids’ class). I’m not a black belt yet, so I can’t comment on specifics of that class, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out they’re working on their rank material pretty much exclusively. They’ll do lower rank stuff as a warmup and/or a quick review, but they’re focused on their material.

All ranks adults classes also have black belts attending, as black belts class is only one night a week. The black belts will do some rank specific stuff, but mainly kata/forms while we’re doing ours. They do some other rank specific stuff during the general class, but there’s not the depth to it like in their own class. Because of this, black belts at are school are required to attend black belt class as much as possible.

Once a month, we’ll have a “senior black belts class” which is for 3rd or 4th dan and up (depending on the month). This is to focus on their rank stuff even more than normal.

Pro for rank specific classes: they help people work on their rank specific stuff without getting slowed down by also doing lower rank stuff. If you’re a 4th dan, you’ve been doing white belt stuff for at least 20 years; if you’ve any rank getting ready to promote or newly promoted, you can work on your stuff pretty much exclusively. Another pro is upper ranks don’t get bored with working with lower rank students every class.

Cons: you might not have the numbers to justify having an advanced class. If you’ve only got 2 or 3 advanced students you’re better off having all ranks class and separating them during class.

Pros of all ranks class: lower ranks can work with upper ranks; lower ranks see more stuff during basics and have better sparring partners, and upper ranks still refine lower ranked material and skills. Upper ranks can also help teach formally and informally during partner drills.

My former dojo had all ranks classes and rank specific classes, ie yellow belts and up, green belts and up, brown belts and up, etc. He had the numbers to make that work. My current CI would like to do that, but he doesn’t have the numbers to make it work; there’s more black belt adults than all colored belt adults combined.

I think the biggest driver in scheduling is going to unfortunately be numbers of students in different ranks.

This makes a lot of sense because we are a large school.

 

[watching]

This is something I can't quite wrap my head around, though several have mentioned it. I can see where an upper rank will have things to work on that they can't work with lower ranks on, but don't they still need to work on the material the lower ranks are covering?

In NGA (in all the groups and schools I'm aware of), the early work (what you're tested for to get your first belt) is re-tested at every rank, so a brown belt is still actively working on the first set material.Is that different in other systems?

That's how my school does it. I trained at a different kenpo school in the past and it was the same way, you would expect to do most of your older material as well as your current during every test.

 

[Dirty Dog]

We have beginner, intermediate and advanced classes. Sort of. By a loose definition of those terms.

 

[skribs]

At our Taekwondo school we have about 150-200 students. (It's hard to get an accurate count because there's some students who don't show up to every class, some go on vacation for a month or so at a time, etc). For kids, we have 2 separate white/yellow belt classes (one for 4-7 year olds and one for 8-12 year olds), a purple/orange belt class, a green belt class (which is still 2 belts as it is Green and Green 1-stripe), a blue belt class (Blue, Blue 1, Blue 2) a red belt class (Red, Red 1, Red 2). We also have a couple all-kids classes on the weekend which are used as a makeup day or an extra class.

For teens+adults, it's truncated a bit. There's Beginner (white-orange), Advanced (Green-Red 2), and Black Belt.

Another aspect of my school is the amount of stuff in the curriculum. Required testing material includes memorized punch combinations, kick combinations, jump kick combinations, forms, and one-step defense drills, which are different at every level.

These two aspects (large school, large amount of tested material on the curriculum) basically necessitate that we break up the classes by belt. If we didn't, and we just had 5 classes a day, then instead of being fairly well distributed, we might have 5 students show up to one class and 50 to the next. This is an easy way for us to keep class sizes manageable. There's also so much that's required for each belt test - in addition to other material, like work on fundamentals, sparring drills, games and obstacle courses, etc. - that we can't even cover everything in a single class. If we combined belts then it would be even more difficult.

So this leads me to another con of the separated system: While it does allow you to focus more on the specific skills expected at a certain belt level, it can also lead to a focus exclusively on those skills.

When I was a kid, I was at a much smaller school (although still fairly large, I think). There were a few classes at the main dojang, but my family and I took classes at the YMCA. This class was for all belts. The school also had a vastly different curriculum. There wasn't so much rote memorization of combinations and defense drills. We did more forms (we did both the Palgwe and Taegeuk forms, in addition to Exercises, which were like mini-forms) and we did more sparring.

We did less self-defense, but as it was off curriculum, we could do a wider variety of things. I learned things at this school as a yellow belt that I didn't learn at my current school until red or black belt. But, when I was a red or black belt, we did them every week and built up a proficiency with the technique that we didn't at my old school.

To try and summarize before I go on too long, if you can take the tested material and spend 90 minutes on it, and your classes are 60 minutes long, it's hard to do extra-curricular training in class. But if the tested material can be covered in 30 minutes (at least, what is new material for the belt level), then it's very easy to do other stuff. And if your class is designed around separating by belt level, it may also be designed with more tested material to help distinguish between classes.

On the other hand, doing the same thing over and over again is how you build proficiency, so it can also be seen as a pro.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

We have beginner, intermediate and advanced classes. Sort of. By a loose definition of those terms.

I take it you guys are as good as I am at drawing hard and fast, inviolate borders between things.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

o try and summarize before I go on too long, if you can take the tested material and spend 90 minutes on it, and your classes are 60 minutes long, it's hard to do extra-curricular training in class. But if the tested material can be covered in 30 minutes (at least, what is new material for the belt level), then it's very easy to do other stuff. And if your class is designed around separating by belt level, it may also be designed with more tested material to help distinguish between classes.

I'm not sure I read this correctly, so I'm going to give the situation we have, and see if your response helps me understand. I'm not sure how the amount of material for belt testing relates to the idea of separating classes. The new material at any belt level in my curriculum (just the stuff being tested) cannot possibly be covered in a single 90-minute class. I've never tried to test it all (for any rank) in a single session, but I suspect it would take a 90 minutes to simply run through it all for the lower belt ranks (longer beyond that), without stopping to work on anything. To actually work on the material at even a superficial level, it takes much longer. For instance, each colored belt has 10 new Classical techniques. Most students will take about an hour to "run through" their latest set, doing them a few times on each side and making some corrections, maybe trying some variations. That's not including what's required in strikes testing, specific defenses, sparring requirements, forms, etc.

 

[skribs]

I'm not sure I read this correctly, so I'm going to give the situation we have, and see if your response helps me understand. I'm not sure how the amount of material for belt testing relates to the idea of separating classes. The new material at any belt level in my curriculum (just the stuff being tested) cannot possibly be covered in a single 90-minute class. I've never tried to test it all (for any rank) in a single session, but I suspect it would take a 90 minutes to simply run through it all for the lower belt ranks (longer beyond that), without stopping to work on anything. To actually work on the material at even a superficial level, it takes much longer. For instance, each colored belt has 10 new Classical techniques. Most students will take about an hour to "run through" their latest set, doing them a few times on each side and making some corrections, maybe trying some variations. That's not including what's required in strikes testing, specific defenses, sparring requirements, forms, etc.

It's a very loose correlation. If you had every student together I think it would be harder to have a curriculum with this wide of a scope.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

It's a very loose correlation. If you had every student together I think it would be harder to have a curriculum with this wide of a scope.

My curriculum is a bit wider than what I came up through, but not by much. And we always just had "regular" classes. "Advanced" classes came later, and were just an add-on - nobody only came to those, and they were more about fiddling with stuff and working on concepts. All the testing material was normally covered in the regular classes.

The difference might be how long we spend between belts. It's not unusual for a student to spend more than a year in each color in my curriculum. That leaves a lot of time for review and circling back to material.

 

[hoshin1600]

I'm not sure it's just precisely that, Hoshin.

An advanced boxer will benefit most (skill-wise) from training with advanced boxers, rather than novices. Same for an advanced MMA fighter, Judoka, Karateka, etc. There's a real benefit to the novice in working with someone who's not a novice, and we tend to see that in most training systems.

im not sure if we actually disagree or not. let me restate what i am thinking.

The new material at any belt level in my curriculum (just the stuff being tested) cannot possibly be covered in a single 90-minute class. I've never tried to test it all (for any rank) in a single session, but I suspect it would take a 90 minutes to simply run through it all for the lower belt ranks (longer beyond that), without stopping to work on anything. To actually work on the material at even a superficial level, it takes much longer.

this post is pointing at what i am saying. segregation works because the "curriculum" is large and has a fixed progression. you learn A then you learn B. the methodology uses segregation and the natural human brain trait to divide large amount of data into smaller chunks. this is why we remember phone numbers as 1-508-867-5309 rather than 15088675309. this works well when it is declarative knowledge of factual memorization. but when we are trying to address skill building which is procedural memory the method of segregation slows the process.
i feel to skill build, the fastest method would be to learn as we do in nature ...organically. you learn the things that come easy to you first then work on the harder tasks latter. this will be different for each individual. its better in my view point then trying to force A before B before C.
it was mentioned about the benefit of training with more experienced people. yes exactly ...because you are learning more organically. i feel the segregation method holds many people back as they wait to be proficient at something before moving on. not to mention the darker side of the coin where the teacher or organization can withhold information in order to prolong a students time and keep them paying.