If you teach, how do you teach application - as a specific "answer", the "way" (or ways) to use a particular technique, or do you teach theory, that particular techniques are intended for categories of application. As a student, how do you like to learn?
As an instructor, I try to follow a middle path - if I am too specific, I limit my students' ability to apply techniques to a wide range of situations, but if I don't give them some idea of what to use a technique for, at least in the form of examples, they have trouble coming up with it themselves, especially at the white, yellow, and green belt ranks; they tend to get more creative and innovative as they learn their own strengths and weaknesses as they progress through the ranks. But I have real trouble finding the right path through this maze. What do others do?
Well, I agree that the middle path idea is the right one; the way I think of it is, if you're trying to teach people something, how do you give them an idea of how to proceed to use their technical knowledge when a novel problem arises? The kind of approach I've been guided by is actually exhibited very nicely in science textbooks. If you're studying any hard physical science, one with a mathematical foundation, you typically find that every chapter in the textbook has three main sections: one where certain concepts are introduced and their general relationship formally worked out in terms of equations and other kinds of mathematical relationships; one where there are 'worked examples'—usually four or five, where the route to the solution is made clear in great detail—and then a collection of problems that students are supposed to work out on their own. The trick for the student is to use the worked examples as a way of 'grounding' the abstract relationships discussed in the first section of the chapter, so that you learn, by studying the examples given and solved, what kind of things you need to do to get all the knowns on one side of an equation and the one unknown that the problem asks you for on the other side. You need both: the general development of the formal relationships, systematically and comprehensively;
and the worked problem, to see how to use those concepts and their mathematical relationships in practice, to solve problems. And then, of course, you need some
unsolved problems to work on so that your own problem-solving ability is tested. At the end of that problem set, you understand the physics of the situation, or whatever the subject is, way more intuitively and concretely than you do if you never solved any real problems; but you also need some models as guidance, to get you going.
So for me, showing a number of concrete applications is the trick. I teach all blocks as attacks, primarily, delivered to vulnerable points on an attacker's body—a down block primarily as a hammer fist to an attacker's forcibly lowered head, or to his carotid sinus, or collarbone; a rising block as, most likely, a forearm strike to this throat; retractions as controlling moves, setting up locks and pins by pulling the attacker's limbs into a position into which you can apply destructive leverage, forcing his body down and setting up a finishing strike or finishing series of strikes; and so on. I provide a few scenarios—the assailant grabs your wrist or arm; your clothing; your shoulder—and show how you can use hikite and muchimi techs to convert your striking hand to a controlling hand setting up the next tech; how to view pivots as instructions on when and how to throw, and so on. In other words, give a few 'worked examples'. I try to explain to students that there are general principles involved, involving getting outside the attack vs.s staying inside, and the different options and possibilities that fundamental choice creates; how to exploit these different options to close the distance and damage the attacker at close range while preventing him from being able to deliver a strike to your own body, and so on.
But these are things that take a lot of time and individual initiative for a student to work out for him- or herself in a novel situation. So I feel, myself, that providing a rich basis of examples, 'worked problems', is a crucial part of any teaching methodology where you're trying to give people the basics, and show them how to use those basics, but also expect them to be able to extrapolate creatively on the basis of what you've given them. It just takes a long, long time for people to learn to do it...
I'm still doing that myself, so I try to be patient...
