How does your school structure the curriculum?

[MetalBoar]

Great stuff!

So at my current school, we learn 5 punch defenses at each belt, and we drill those to perfection. But there's little wiggle room for improvisation or different techniques, because we have to devote class time to these. At my old school, we had no "punch defense" in the curriculum, but we'd get a lot more ideas of how to deal with a punch.

Having gone to both schools, it's really tough. Because I look at the freedom we had in my old school and think "I'd like to be able to do more of that type of stuff" or "I wish we had more time to focus on details." And as I get closer to becoming a Master, I think about my Master's curriculum and what I'd do different. I keep trying to figure out what is the fat that I could trim from the curriculum...but every individual piece I look at and think "no, can't get rid of that!"

Pretty much all of my experience has been with schools like your old one and I think that's the style I prefer, but I don't have enough experience to compare. I kind of intend to try a place that's more like your current school at some point just to see how it suits me.

Training Methodologies - Just like we had 2 different curriculums at my Taekwondo schools, we also had two different teaching philosophies. The way I see it, there are two main styles of teaching.

1. The "Do it right from day 1" method. When you teach something in your curriculum, you eliminate all bad habits before you allow the person to move on. You teach every detail of the technique, stance, or pattern, and you expect those details to be followed. This way you don't have people with a bad habit they build up for years before they try to fix it.
2. The "Just do it" method. When you teach something in your curriculum, you have target habits as people progress. You expect people testing for yellow belt to have a yellow belt understanding of the material, but then you expect black belts to have a black belt understanding of the material.

I think there can be a spectrum here, but I definitely fall towards the "Do it right from day 1" end of that spectrum. I think that's especially true for the more "principals and body mechanics rather than lots of techniques" kind of places I've studied with and might be less so for a school with a more step by step curriculum.

Good feedback. I'm really trying to solidify my own thoughts on what I want out of my training as I'm just getting back into things and this has helped me refine some of my thoughts.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Do you have any concerns about injury from the repetitive stresses? I've had at least 2 instructors with permanent injuries, in one case probably leading to serious disability before he's 60, who blame their problems on too many high falls on improper surfaces.

I've done some break fall training on grass and carpet, and a lot on very firm mats. I think there's benefit to doing some of that. If you've never rolled and fallen on at least a hard-ish surface it takes a lot longer to really "get it", if you ever do. Still, I have some concerns about regular, long term training of that sort (specifically high falls), especially partner training where you have less control over your descent. I know that I had a "black belt" from our organization, but a different school, spear me head first into the mat rather than release me so that I could roll out of a high fall. I've got some probably permanent injury from that but I think it could have been very serious if it had been on unpadded carpet.

None of my nagging injuries or issues appear to be related to those falls. Doing the falls well reduces the impact on the body dramatically. Frankly, the highest falls I take are easier to take than some of the low ones.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Do you have any concerns about injury from the repetitive stresses? I've had at least 2 instructors with permanent injuries, in one case probably leading to serious disability before he's 60, who blame their problems on too many high falls on improper surfaces.

I've done some break fall training on grass and carpet, and a lot on very firm mats. I think there's benefit to doing some of that. If you've never rolled and fallen on at least a hard-ish surface it takes a lot longer to really "get it", if you ever do. Still, I have some concerns about regular, long term training of that sort (specifically high falls), especially partner training where you have less control over your descent. I know that I had a "black belt" from our organization, but a different school, spear me head first into the mat rather than release me so that I could roll out of a high fall. I've got some probably permanent injury from that but I think it could have been very serious if it had been on unpadded carpet.

I forgot to finish my previous reply. I rarely did high falls without mats. In regular training, I can keep most people from throwing me in dangerous ways. That kind of thing should be saved for competition, at worst.

 

[oftheherd1]

Do you have any concerns about injury from the repetitive stresses? I've had at least 2 instructors with permanent injuries, in one case probably leading to serious disability before he's 60, who blame their problems on too many high falls on improper surfaces.

I've done some break fall training on grass and carpet, and a lot on very firm mats. I think there's benefit to doing some of that. If you've never rolled and fallen on at least a hard-ish surface it takes a lot longer to really "get it", if you ever do. Still, I have some concerns about regular, long term training of that sort (specifically high falls), especially partner training where you have less control over your descent. I know that I had a "black belt" from our organization, but a different school, spear me head first into the mat rather than release me so that I could roll out of a high fall. I've got some probably permanent injury from that but I think it could have been very serious if it had been on unpadded carpet.

I find that unacceptable. One always needs to protect a practice partner if at all possible. Usually protection is not taking the technique to the point of injury. To non-grapplers that might sound like you won't learn the technique properly, but a slow motion movement of the technique, allowing the practice partner to move into the technique will allow one to feel all the technique without damaging a practice partner. I hope the senior person stopped the class long enough to publicly put him in his place and send him out of the class. I don't know what grade he was, but even colored belts should learn along the way how to practice techniques without causing injury. I hope you recover so there is no long term effect. If it still bothers you then you might be well off to visit a doctor, physical therapist, or chiropractor.

 

[KenpoMaster805]

My school curriculum is so different since its American Kenpo karate when we test we do the basics set and form then the yellow belt techniques then your belt technique after that u do your own form then knife disarm set then we sparr my Sifu said way back that if your testing for your belt like black belt
it will take you 4 to 5 hour to test because you have to do all your techniques in every kenpo tecnique there are 24 techniques from orange to black belt imagine doing 24 tech x8

 

[MetalBoar]

I brought Gerry's response from another thread over here so as not to hijack the other one, plus it fits...

I'm going to be the voice of dissent here. I don't find as much value in private lessons, until there's a strong foundation. I've both taken and taught private lessons at various levels. For beginners, it's too much attention and not enough time to just work on repetition and make mistakes. At mid-level (for most folks, after a couple of years), it starts to have some real value. For more advanced folks (for most folks, after at least 5 years, usually considerably longer), it allows tinkering and digging in areas open classes rarely get to.

The exception to this would be competition, where you need to focus on specific areas for your next match (and often on a specific competitor).

After giving this a lot of thought and doing a lot of reading on motor learning, I've started experimenting with how to get the most out of my training in terms of time investment. I work a lot, I have a lot of interests and I get the vast majority of my exercise in elsewhere so I want to learn as much as possible from my time spent on MA training. That's a big part of why I started this thread, I wanted to hear what has worked for people and see how different schools might train.

I agree that for most people the standard private lesson is sub-optimal for the beginner, but then so is the standard group lesson. Motor learning research is pretty clear that most beginners need short, frequent instruction to learn a new skill the fastest and I know I've found this to be true for me. Now, for most people this tends to reverse as they acquire more skill. So, in general, a really experienced person gets a lot more out of a long, information dense lesson and then benefits by going off to cement that learning for an extended time before another lesson is particularly necessary. I say "most" in each case because motor learning research is also pretty clear that not everyone learns the same way.

Most group classes I see, especially these days it seems, are 90 minutes, some are even 2 hours. Usually if they're not at a full time or near full time commercial school they only happen once or twice a week. This is pretty good for the experienced student assuming that the class covers material that's relevant to them, but it's way too long and once a week is far too infrequent for the average beginner. It will be more or less problematic for every skill level depending on how much new materials vs. review and practice happens each class.

From my research a class length of ~30 minutes for learning is pretty ideal for beginners. That's not counting warms ups and maybe a little time for practicing the new material at the end, 45 minutes to an hour in total is probably hard to beat. Three or more classes/week are better for beginners, and twice a week is vastly better than once.

From my experience, private lessons tend to be an hour or longer and obviously tend to be much more information dense. They also frequently skip the warm up and practice phase so it's a full hour of instruction and due to cost are usually infrequent. In this format, I completely agree that they're not the best choice for a complete beginner. I also think they benefit a great deal when combined with regular group classes so that the new material can be practiced on others. So again, if you only do private lessons and only practice solo, they are probably less ideal than a good group class.

At this point I've tried a number of different session lengths and found that 30 minute private lessons work really well when I'm new to an art even when I can't do a group class. The exception to that last bit is when the instructor can't or won't drill and spar with me, then a group class becomes more essential. The 30 minutes sessions work particularly well for me when the first 5-10 minutes are spent on review, corrections and Q&A about the material from the last lesson and the rest is spent working on new material. It is more effective still if I can attend a couple of group classes a week on top of the private lessons.

Right now I'm in between tech contracts and my finances don't afford me the luxury of private lessons. When I get the next long term job in the computer industry I'm thinking I want to try to find someone very near my home or office that is interested in experimenting with 15 or 20 minute private lessons three or more times a week to see how quickly I can achieve reasonable competency in a new art. Based on past experience I'm guessing I can shave a year or more off the usual group class rate of progression.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

My school curriculum is so different since its American Kenpo karate when we test we do the basics set and form then the yellow belt techniques then your belt technique after that u do your own form then knife disarm set then we sparr my Sifu said way back that if your testing for your belt like black belt
it will take you 4 to 5 hour to test because you have to do all your techniques in every kenpo tecnique there are 24 techniques from orange to black belt imagine doing 24 tech x8

Please use punctuation.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I brought Gerry's response from another thread over here so as not to hijack the other one, plus it fits...


After giving this a lot of thought and doing a lot of reading on motor learning, I've started experimenting with how to get the most out of my training in terms of time investment. I work a lot, I have a lot of interests and I get the vast majority of my exercise in elsewhere so I want to learn as much as possible from my time spent on MA training. That's a big part of why I started this thread, I wanted to hear what has worked for people and see how different schools might train.

I agree that for most people the standard private lesson is sub-optimal for the beginner, but then so is the standard group lesson. Motor learning research is pretty clear that most beginners need short, frequent instruction to learn a new skill the fastest and I know I've found this to be true for me. Now, for most people this tends to reverse as they acquire more skill. So, in general, a really experienced person gets a lot more out of a long, information dense lesson and then benefits by going off to cement that learning for an extended time before another lesson is particularly necessary. I say "most" in each case because motor learning research is also pretty clear that not everyone learns the same way.

Most group classes I see, especially these days it seems, are 90 minutes, some are even 2 hours. Usually if they're not at a full time or near full time commercial school they only happen once or twice a week. This is pretty good for the experienced student assuming that the class covers material that's relevant to them, but it's way too long and once a week is far too infrequent for the average beginner. It will be more or less problematic for every skill level depending on how much new materials vs. review and practice happens each class.

From my research a class length of ~30 minutes for learning is pretty ideal for beginners. That's not counting warms ups and maybe a little time for practicing the new material at the end, 45 minutes to an hour in total is probably hard to beat. Three or more classes/week are better for beginners, and twice a week is vastly better than once.

From my experience, private lessons tend to be an hour or longer and obviously tend to be much more information dense. They also frequently skip the warm up and practice phase so it's a full hour of instruction and due to cost are usually infrequent. In this format, I completely agree that they're not the best choice for a complete beginner. I also think they benefit a great deal when combined with regular group classes so that the new material can be practiced on others. So again, if you only do private lessons and only practice solo, they are probably less ideal than a good group class.

At this point I've tried a number of different session lengths and found that 30 minute private lessons work really well when I'm new to an art even when I can't do a group class. The exception to that last bit is when the instructor can't or won't drill and spar with me, then a group class becomes more essential. The 30 minutes sessions work particularly well for me when the first 5-10 minutes are spent on review, corrections and Q&A about the material from the last lesson and the rest is spent working on new material. It is more effective still if I can attend a couple of group classes a week on top of the private lessons.

Right now I'm in between tech contracts and my finances don't afford me the luxury of private lessons. When I get the next long term job in the computer industry I'm thinking I want to try to find someone very near my home or office that is interested in experimenting with 15 or 20 minute private lessons three or more times a week to see how quickly I can achieve reasonable competency in a new art. Based on past experience I'm guessing I can shave a year or more off the usual group class rate of progression.

I think you may be over-reading the results of those studies. My understanding is that most of that research investigates task learning. Those 30-minute sessions aren't developing the broad motor skills involved in martial arts. That's based on what I've seen (looking at studies to better understand adult task learning in business), so it's possible you're looking at something I'm not. If that's the case, probably just ignore what I'm about to write.

If I'm training someone to process checks at a bank, that learning (the physical task) is best developed in small batches. Physical development, however, appears to need more time when combined with skill development and understanding of principles. We can see the faster progress most people make when they attend more than 1-2 classes a week. The same goes for them attending more than one class in a day. See, a class rarely (in my experience) covers only one physical skill at a time. So, take the 30 minutes you came up with, and consider that an ideal time to spend on a new technique (which a class shouldn't be all new material in most cases).

Of course, the bigger issue is that most students won't attend more than twice a week. I've held my classes to 90 minutes (many instructors have shortened theirs) because I don't see people progressing well when they have those shorter classes only twice a week. So you have to balance the two variables (time in topic vs. frequency). I'd rather teach someone three times a week for an hour than twice a week for 90 minutes, but that's not my call to make with most students.

And then you have to factor in some of the hard-to-measure variables. Shorter classes usually (in my experience) leave less time for exploration. The instructor spends 30 minutes on his topic, you lose a bit to warm-up and topic introduction, and a 45 minute class is already done....with the students never getting to play with what they need to explore. This is easiest to see in grappling arts, where some amount of free time is needed for students to tinker with techniques and figure out why some part or principle isn't working right for them.

And that last part leads me back to the problem with private lessons. The instructor has nothing else to do, so he often gets too involved to really let students explore. This isn't an issue if you have a partner and are tinkering outside class, but for the most common students, it can be a problem and can lead to them not learning to think those things through. With the 30-minute private lesson you speak of, the sequence you provide sounds like it might be okay if you're also training with a class or practicing outside those lessons, but 5 minutes of review then 25 minutes of new material doesn't really build skill on its own. It's just not enough time spent on revisiting material. In one lesson, I could teach one or two new techniques (two if they are very related). 5 minutes to review that the next time doesn't give enough repetition to develop skill, and the technique would likely be mostly forgotten by the next class (not enough reinforcement).

Of course, level of experience matters a lot. Even if you're brand new to an art, you still have some skill and understanding from past experience if you've trained before. So when I speak of beginners, I'm talking less about beginners to a new art (although some of what I said applies to them) and more about people getting their first serious adult taste of martial arts.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Please use punctuation.

Who were you talking to, KD?

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Who were you talking to, KD?

Kenpomaster805.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Kenpomaster805.

Ah. I have them on ignore, so it looked like a complete non-sequitur.

 

[skribs]

Pretty much all of my experience has been with schools like your old one and I think that's the style I prefer, but I don't have enough experience to compare. I kind of intend to try a place that's more like your current school at some point just to see how it suits me.

Like I said, there's pros and cons to it. There's another thread on here asking about training the same technique, and only that technique, every day for the next 2 years. While that might be a bit too focused in scope, the things that we train at my school, we train until we get it good enough to test on. Whereas at my old school, we we got more things conceptually, but never drilled them enough to build up the muscle memory.

So would you rather learn 30 things and just have a general idea of how to do them, or learn 5 things and drill them to proficiency?

(That's not to say my old school didn't have things on the curriculum that we drilled over and over again. There was just more time devoted to off-book stuff and less in the curriculum).

Ironically, the opposite was also true. Because there was significantly less in the curriculum, we actually focused more time on each curriculum item. At my school, we spend 5-7 minutes on any one thing before moving on, and usually 75%+ of the class is testing material in the different categories. At my old school, we might spend more time on each individual thing, but then 50% of the class was tested material.

There's pros and cons. Like I said, I don't know exactly what I would do if I were writing my curriculum. At this point I don't have a choice, but I want to think about it now so that when I do have a choice, I have already thought it through. But I've often thought "I would like to have more time to work on other pieces" or "I wish we could focus more on stances or slow down and iron out the problems in certain techniques". But in order to do that, we'd need to cut from the curriculum to free up the class time, and I just couldn't pick anything to cut.

 

[skribs]

Ah. I have them on ignore, so it looked like a complete non-sequitur.

Happens to me every once in a while with a few people here.

 

[MetalBoar]

I think you may be over-reading the results of those studies. My understanding is that most of that research investigates task learning. Those 30-minute sessions aren't developing the broad motor skills involved in martial arts. That's based on what I've seen (looking at studies to better understand adult task learning in business), so it's possible you're looking at something I'm not. If that's the case, probably just ignore what I'm about to write.

If I'm training someone to process checks at a bank, that learning (the physical task) is best developed in small batches. Physical development, however, appears to need more time when combined with skill development and understanding of principles. We can see the faster progress most people make when they attend more than 1-2 classes a week. The same goes for them attending more than one class in a day. See, a class rarely (in my experience) covers only one physical skill at a time. So, take the 30 minutes you came up with, and consider that an ideal time to spend on a new technique (which a class shouldn't be all new material in most cases).

Of course, the bigger issue is that most students won't attend more than twice a week. I've held my classes to 90 minutes (many instructors have shortened theirs) because I don't see people progressing well when they have those shorter classes only twice a week. So you have to balance the two variables (time in topic vs. frequency). I'd rather teach someone three times a week for an hour than twice a week for 90 minutes, but that's not my call to make with most students.

And then you have to factor in some of the hard-to-measure variables. Shorter classes usually (in my experience) leave less time for exploration. The instructor spends 30 minutes on his topic, you lose a bit to warm-up and topic introduction, and a 45 minute class is already done....with the students never getting to play with what they need to explore. This is easiest to see in grappling arts, where some amount of free time is needed for students to tinker with techniques and figure out why some part or principle isn't working right for them.

And that last part leads me back to the problem with private lessons. The instructor has nothing else to do, so he often gets too involved to really let students explore. This isn't an issue if you have a partner and are tinkering outside class, but for the most common students, it can be a problem and can lead to them not learning to think those things through. With the 30-minute private lesson you speak of, the sequence you provide sounds like it might be okay if you're also training with a class or practicing outside those lessons, but 5 minutes of review then 25 minutes of new material doesn't really build skill on its own. It's just not enough time spent on revisiting material. In one lesson, I could teach one or two new techniques (two if they are very related). 5 minutes to review that the next time doesn't give enough repetition to develop skill, and the technique would likely be mostly forgotten by the next class (not enough reinforcement).

Of course, level of experience matters a lot. Even if you're brand new to an art, you still have some skill and understanding from past experience if you've trained before. So when I speak of beginners, I'm talking less about beginners to a new art (although some of what I said applies to them) and more about people getting their first serious adult taste of martial arts.

My reading was definitely in regards to athletic performance and motor skill acquisition in sports. I don't remember all the details because I did most of my research on the topic about 17 years ago and then held on to the parts I found applicable to working with my strength training clients and in my own training. I hope that we've learned some things in the intervening years and this conversation may be the spark that gets me to look at where research has gone.

When I was doing a lot of reading about motor skill acquisition it luckily coincided with my first effort to take a ballroom dance class. I was wondering why I was failing to learn the material when there is a lot of skill overlap between partner dancing and martial arts and I (at least believed) that I had some reasonable aptitude for martial arts. By happenstance at exactly that time I ran across an article by an expert on athletic training that perfectly described my experience (setting aside issues related to skill transfer between similar but non identical activities for the moment). The author cited a number of studies that indicated to me that my problems were likely because my classes were too long and too infrequent for beginners.

So, in my experience, ballroom dance classes run for 60-90 minutes, usually once (maybe twice) a week and are done as a progressive series. For example, you take Tango 1 before Tango 2 and each class runs for a set period of time (usually 4 weeks, sometimes longer) and progresses through a set curriculum much like a standard college course. If you miss a session you're going to need to "make it up" outside of class with someone or you'll be missing things for the next lesson. Most classes try to cover a lot of vocabulary each class, usually they teach you a new dance move, you practice it for a couple of songs with different partners and then you're on to the next one.

I found that in the first class I was really getting it at first but by the end of the class I was clinging to the material with my finger tips. As the class progressed and there was more and more material that I only sort of understood it got worse and worse. This was true even though I was practicing regularly between classes. After reading the article I mentioned, when I started another dance class I started checking my watch as soon as I started to feel overwhelmed and sure enough it was right about the 30 minute mark (as suggested by the research) that things would start to jumble together in my head.

This seems to hold true for me when I'm a beginner in martial arts classes as well, but it tends to be less pronounced. First, unlike partner dance, most MA classes are ongoing. I think this both masks and somewhat mitigates this issue because it's expected that students will miss classes and that there will be a mix of experience levels in each class. This means that the material is more likely to be presented as if to a new audience or at least to get some review and it's expected that you'll see it repeated in future classes. Second, unlike dance, martial arts classes tend to be more forgiving of imperfect technique and in general it's less obvious for a variety of reasons, both positive and negative. Third, most MA classes tend to throw fewer new techniques at you each class. Finally, having done MA of a lot of different types for ~ 30 years I've probably forgotten what it's like to be a complete beginner in an MA class.

And then you have to factor in some of the hard-to-measure variables. Shorter classes usually (in my experience) leave less time for exploration. The instructor spends 30 minutes on his topic, you lose a bit to warm-up and topic introduction, and a 45 minute class is already done....with the students never getting to play with what they need to explore. This is easiest to see in grappling arts, where some amount of free time is needed for students to tinker with techniques and figure out why some part or principle isn't working right for them.

For a general class I completely agree with all of this ^^^^. I absolutely agree that it's a non trivial task to create a class format that works for a variety of learning styles, availability, skill levels, etc. and I think it's completely realistic that the best practical results in many instances may be to run 90 minute classes, especially when you've got a wide mix of skill levels among the students and can only run or get people to attend 2 classes a week.

Based on my experience, I think that if I were running a class designed strictly for beginners that 45 minutes to an hour at least 2x/week (3-5 would be better) would be ideal. I'd structure it with a progressive curriculum and make it a set duration - probably ~4-8 weeks. I'd do something like 3 levels intended to be taken as a series with a goal of providing a solid foundation in the art so that they could join an ongoing class with confidence and safety in 3-6 months.

To make this work well students would need to be on time and ready to start. Optimally the students would need to be getting the bulk of their exercise in outside of class. It would probably work best for many students if I were to run a 3 month "strength training and conditioning for MA" class prior to the start of the beginners class.

Assuming an hour, I'd do about 5-15 minutes of warm up, depending on the material I had planned for the given class. I'd follow that with 15-30 minutes of instruction covering 1 or maybe 2 related techniques, and then allow the students to practice what was covered, experiment and ask questions for the remainder of the class. I'd strongly encourage students to do at least one open mat type session to practice with a partner in between each class. I'd probably end up experimenting with repeating each class so that an 8 week class with 2 classes/week would have 4 unique classes and each week would be the same class 2x. This would allow students got more chance to absorb the techniques and prevent someone who has to miss a session or two from getting completely left behind. Some things, like rolls and break falls, might make up the majority of an entire short course.

I'm not trying to suggest that this is practical in the real world, but look at it as an exercise to figure out what I'd like to do so that I can see what parts of that I can do. I like to optimize because I think it's fun and interesting and probably because I don't particularly like being a beginner though I really do like to learn new things. I think that if you can make it easy to start a new MA that more students will stick with it and they'll get better faster than if they're thrown in the deep end from day 1.

And that last part leads me back to the problem with private lessons. The instructor has nothing else to do, so he often gets too involved to really let students explore. This isn't an issue if you have a partner and are tinkering outside class, but for the most common students, it can be a problem and can lead to them not learning to think those things through. With the 30-minute private lesson you speak of, the sequence you provide sounds like it might be okay if you're also training with a class or practicing outside those lessons, but 5 minutes of review then 25 minutes of new material doesn't really build skill on its own. It's just not enough time spent on revisiting material. In one lesson, I could teach one or two new techniques (two if they are very related). 5 minutes to review that the next time doesn't give enough repetition to develop skill, and the technique would likely be mostly forgotten by the next class (not enough reinforcement).

Yes, I agree that 30 minutes probably isn't enough for most people if they're completely new to martial arts and are unable to go to group lessons. It's probably often too short if you aren't able to get some sort of real practice with a partner in outside of the private lessons even if you've got some experience with the art in question. It's definitely too short if you go into it without the desire and ability to focus all of your attention on the class for the entire time you're there. The key part for me with 30 minutes is that it's the absolute longest time that I think should be spent teaching new material to a beginner in a single session. An hour is probably fantastic if you spend 30+ minutes of it just practicing the material you've learned and getting feedback.

I also think that being a proactive partner in one's training rather than a passive receptacle for the instructors knowledge is tremendously valuable. Obviously, this is really hard to do if you are completely new to martial arts as you don't even know what you should really be trying to get from your classes. On the other hand, I feel confident based on your posts and my past experience that if I were in North Carolina and you were available to give me private lessons that we could work together to create a training program that would allow me to pick up NGA very quickly. I believe that we could collaborate to combine your knowledge of the art and teaching with my understanding of what I want to learn and how I best learn to arrive at a very effective format. Not all instructors are open to that sort of experimentation, but I don't need to train with everyone.

When I talk about doing lessons as short as 15 or 20 minutes, my thought is strictly to experiment with how to optimize things for me. My idea is to take as many short classes as I can attend and afford, practice the material from the lesson on my own and in a group class and repeat the material in subsequent private lessons until I've got a good handle on it. If I can find a training partner to try this with me, expanding it to 30 minute lessons for the two of us and then doing a lot of partner training would probably be even better. I'll probably post here and see if anyone is interested when I get to that point.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Like I said, there's pros and cons to it. There's another thread on here asking about training the same technique, and only that technique, every day for the next 2 years. While that might be a bit too focused in scope, the things that we train at my school, we train until we get it good enough to test on. Whereas at my old school, we we got more things conceptually, but never drilled them enough to build up the muscle memory.

So would you rather learn 30 things and just have a general idea of how to do them, or learn 5 things and drill them to proficiency?

(That's not to say my old school didn't have things on the curriculum that we drilled over and over again. There was just more time devoted to off-book stuff and less in the curriculum).

Ironically, the opposite was also true. Because there was significantly less in the curriculum, we actually focused more time on each curriculum item. At my school, we spend 5-7 minutes on any one thing before moving on, and usually 75%+ of the class is testing material in the different categories. At my old school, we might spend more time on each individual thing, but then 50% of the class was tested material.

There's pros and cons. Like I said, I don't know exactly what I would do if I were writing my curriculum. At this point I don't have a choice, but I want to think about it now so that when I do have a choice, I have already thought it through. But I've often thought "I would like to have more time to work on other pieces" or "I wish we could focus more on stances or slow down and iron out the problems in certain techniques". But in order to do that, we'd need to cut from the curriculum to free up the class time, and I just couldn't pick anything to cut.

You're starting to think, as others have before you, about the trade-offs. Given most folks I teach will only train twice a week, I had to choose between an even level of mediocrity across the entire curriculum, or them getting good at parts I considered most important and only having passing familiarity with others for a while (until they simply put in enough years to really start to get them).

 

[skribs]

You're starting to think, as others have before you, about the trade-offs. Given most folks I teach will only train twice a week, I had to choose between an even level of mediocrity across the entire curriculum, or them getting good at parts I considered most important and only having passing familiarity with others for a while (until they simply put in enough years to really start to get them).

Which choice did you make?

 

[Gerry Seymour]

My reading was definitely in regards to athletic performance and motor skill acquisition in sports. I don't remember all the details because I did most of my research on the topic about 17 years ago and then held on to the parts I found applicable to working with my strength training clients and in my own training. I hope that we've learned some things in the intervening years and this conversation may be the spark that gets me to look at where research has gone.

When I was doing a lot of reading about motor skill acquisition it luckily coincided with my first effort to take a ballroom dance class. I was wondering why I was failing to learn the material when there is a lot of skill overlap between partner dancing and martial arts and I (at least believed) that I had some reasonable aptitude for martial arts. By happenstance at exactly that time I ran across an article by an expert on athletic training that perfectly described my experience (setting aside issues related to skill transfer between similar but non identical activities for the moment). The author cited a number of studies that indicated to me that my problems were likely because my classes were too long and too infrequent for beginners.

So, in my experience, ballroom dance classes run for 60-90 minutes, usually once (maybe twice) a week and are done as a progressive series. For example, you take Tango 1 before Tango 2 and each class runs for a set period of time (usually 4 weeks, sometimes longer) and progresses through a set curriculum much like a standard college course. If you miss a session you're going to need to "make it up" outside of class with someone or you'll be missing things for the next lesson. Most classes try to cover a lot of vocabulary each class, usually they teach you a new dance move, you practice it for a couple of songs with different partners and then you're on to the next one.

I found that in the first class I was really getting it at first but by the end of the class I was clinging to the material with my finger tips. As the class progressed and there was more and more material that I only sort of understood it got worse and worse. This was true even though I was practicing regularly between classes. After reading the article I mentioned, when I started another dance class I started checking my watch as soon as I started to feel overwhelmed and sure enough it was right about the 30 minute mark (as suggested by the research) that things would start to jumble together in my head.

This seems to hold true for me when I'm a beginner in martial arts classes as well, but it tends to be less pronounced. First, unlike partner dance, most MA classes are ongoing. I think this both masks and somewhat mitigates this issue because it's expected that students will miss classes and that there will be a mix of experience levels in each class. This means that the material is more likely to be presented as if to a new audience or at least to get some review and it's expected that you'll see it repeated in future classes. Second, unlike dance, martial arts classes tend to be more forgiving of imperfect technique and in general it's less obvious for a variety of reasons, both positive and negative. Third, most MA classes tend to throw fewer new techniques at you each class. Finally, having done MA of a lot of different types for ~ 30 years I've probably forgotten what it's like to be a complete beginner in an MA class.


For a general class I completely agree with all of this ^^^^. I absolutely agree that it's a non trivial task to create a class format that works for a variety of learning styles, availability, skill levels, etc. and I think it's completely realistic that the best practical results in many instances may be to run 90 minute classes, especially when you've got a wide mix of skill levels among the students and can only run or get people to attend 2 classes a week.

Based on my experience, I think that if I were running a class designed strictly for beginners that 45 minutes to an hour at least 2x/week (3-5 would be better) would be ideal. I'd structure it with a progressive curriculum and make it a set duration - probably ~4-8 weeks. I'd do something like 3 levels intended to be taken as a series with a goal of providing a solid foundation in the art so that they could join an ongoing class with confidence and safety in 3-6 months.

To make this work well students would need to be on time and ready to start. Optimally the students would need to be getting the bulk of their exercise in outside of class. It would probably work best for many students if I were to run a 3 month "strength training and conditioning for MA" class prior to the start of the beginners class.

Assuming an hour, I'd do about 5-15 minutes of warm up, depending on the material I had planned for the given class. I'd follow that with 15-30 minutes of instruction covering 1 or maybe 2 related techniques, and then allow the students to practice what was covered, experiment and ask questions for the remainder of the class. I'd strongly encourage students to do at least one open mat type session to practice with a partner in between each class. I'd probably end up experimenting with repeating each class so that an 8 week class with 2 classes/week would have 4 unique classes and each week would be the same class 2x. This would allow students got more chance to absorb the techniques and prevent someone who has to miss a session or two from getting completely left behind. Some things, like rolls and break falls, might make up the majority of an entire short course.

I'm not trying to suggest that this is practical in the real world, but look at it as an exercise to figure out what I'd like to do so that I can see what parts of that I can do. I like to optimize because I think it's fun and interesting and probably because I don't particularly like being a beginner though I really do like to learn new things. I think that if you can make it easy to start a new MA that more students will stick with it and they'll get better faster than if they're thrown in the deep end from day 1.

Yes, I agree that 30 minutes probably isn't enough for most people if they're completely new to martial arts and are unable to go to group lessons. It's probably often too short if you aren't able to get some sort of real practice with a partner in outside of the private lessons even if you've got some experience with the art in question. It's definitely too short if you go into it without the desire and ability to focus all of your attention on the class for the entire time you're there. The key part for me with 30 minutes is that it's the absolute longest time that I think should be spent teaching new material to a beginner in a single session. An hour is probably fantastic if you spend 30+ minutes of it just practicing the material you've learned and getting feedback.

I also think that being a proactive partner in one's training rather than a passive receptacle for the instructors knowledge is tremendously valuable. Obviously, this is really hard to do if you are completely new to martial arts as you don't even know what you should really be trying to get from your classes. On the other hand, I feel confident based on your posts and my past experience that if I were in North Carolina and you were available to give me private lessons that we could work together to create a training program that would allow me to pick up NGA very quickly. I believe that we could collaborate to combine your knowledge of the art and teaching with my understanding of what I want to learn and how I best learn to arrive at a very effective format. Not all instructors are open to that sort of experimentation, but I don't need to train with everyone.

When I talk about doing lessons as short as 15 or 20 minutes, my thought is strictly to experiment with how to optimize things for me. My idea is to take as many short classes as I can attend and afford, practice the material from the lesson on my own and in a group class and repeat the material in subsequent private lessons until I've got a good handle on it. If I can find a training partner to try this with me, expanding it to 30 minute lessons for the two of us and then doing a lot of partner training would probably be even better. I'll probably post here and see if anyone is interested when I get to that point.

I have a short attention span at the moment, so I admittedly didn't read the last part fully. I might need to come back and post more later after I read that when I'm at my PC. But in general, I think you have the right idea about beginners. 90 minutes of new material (and it's all new at first) is way too much. They also often don't have the stamina or toughness for some drills yet, so can't stay on them as long as might be best.

What you describe (a progressive, limited curriculum for beginners) is what I started doing. And I try to work in some extended periods of activities that support development but require little actual learning - think stance walks and the like - to give them some benefit without overwhelming their ability to absorb.

We also have to add in the built-in difference in learning pace. In general, introverts prefer to absorb slowly and stay on a task (and learn best that way), while extroverts thrive on more frequent changes and shorter exposure requiring more revisits to a topic.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Which choice did you make?

I determined that some material was interesting but not vital. I kept it for tinkering and tuning, but shifted time from it to more important information. I also made a conscious adjustment to some techniques to support learning higher principles through practice, without needing to teach them so early.

 

[MetalBoar]

I have a short attention span at the moment, so I admittedly didn't read the last part fully. I might need to come back and post more later after I read that when I'm at my PC. But in general, I think you have the right idea about beginners. 90 minutes of new material (and it's all new at first) is way too much. They also often don't have the stamina or toughness for some drills yet, so can't stay on them as long as might be best.

What you describe (a progressive, limited curriculum for beginners) is what I started doing. And I try to work in some extended periods of activities that support development but require little actual learning - think stance walks and the like - to give them some benefit without overwhelming their ability to absorb.

We also have to add in the built-in difference in learning pace. In general, introverts prefer to absorb slowly and stay on a task (and learn best that way), while extroverts thrive on more frequent changes and shorter exposure requiring more revisits to a topic.

Well, I did go on a bit...

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Well, I did go on a bit...

Stick around long enough, and you'll see me ramble significantly longer than that. I have a much better attention span for my own voice than others'.