Themed classes vs. General all-bases class

[skribs]

From an instructor's perspective, this can be accomplished within the "general" classes, too. I often have a theme for the month. So, one month, we'll spend a portion of every class working on ground work. Another month, we might work with boxing-type drills for 30 minutes a class. Another we might spend 20 minutes of every class on freestyle grappling. The "theme" is given most of the organized chunk of time (where everyone is working the same thing), including whatever drills I use to lead into the activity or as a result of what I see in it. If I don't get carried away, then there's still time for folks to have some free time to work on whatever they need to focus on (most recent techniques, etc.).

I was thinking of asking my Master if I could try to do seminars on the weekends, maybe once a month or so. Our school tends to do a few minutes of this, then a few minutes of that (which is very useful for keeping the attention of the 4-5 year olds in some of our classes).

But I was thinking once a month I could take an hour or so on a Saturday afternoon and do a class specifically on:

• Forms and stances
• Punching (since we tend to focus on kicks)
• Kicking fundamentals
• Kicking Footwork
• Advanced Jumping Kicks

The time slot I'd use is currently in use, but will be open after next month.

 

[mrt2]

Interesting. I see positives and negatives to both approaches. In the old days (or at least the old days for me, which was the early 80s), classes were 2 hours, Monday through Friday from 7 to 9 pm. Every class had fitness/stretching (20 to 25 minutes taught by the highest level belt who was not the instructor), followed by basics and one steps (15 - 20 minutes), forms (10 to 20 minutes depending on the distribution of students), followed by a wild card (self defense, rudimentary grappling, tumbling, pad work) followed by sparring, and finally, some more fitness work and bow out.

Now, with most clubs having shorter classes, it is more difficult to get the entire curicullum in every class.

IMO, the upside was,that for intermediate students, a 1 to 2 hour general class, 3 times a week was perfect. The downside was,mostly for beginners and higher belts. For beginners, there was a lot of sitting and watching during forms, and bit on basics, and for higher belts (2nd gups, and higher), there was a lot of repetition on beginner level stuff, and not enough time to practice the higher level material, particularly if said students only had 2 to 3 times/week at most to train.

My biggest bone to pick with my former school was, given the number of hours I was devoting to training (4 to 6 hours a week of classes per week), I should have had at least 1 to 2 hours of that be devoted to the things I needed to learn for my black belt training, particularly after I made Cho Dan Bo. In fact, it was substantially less, and while it is all fine and well to say that advanced belts need to make their own time to train, But I was a high school kid with limited time to train, and I tried to do my part in training both in and out of class as much as I could.

So for my ealier self, it makes sense to have specialty classes, or at least classes for higher level belts only, so the limited amount of time allocated to training can be devoted to preparing upper level students for the stuff they need to work on, and leave them to practice the basic stuff on their own. But in fact, though I was, in theory training for my black belt, I was still devoting more than 90% of my time to basic and intermediate stuff, and even in things like sparring, not often getting challenged much there either, since more often than not, I was sparring against lower belts.

The other thing about classes being shortened to 60 minutes or less is, the stretching and physical fitness is greatly compressed, and sparring is not done in every class. If I were to change anything, I would say light sparring at least should be part of most classes. The problem is, with all the padding they make us wear, it takes a good 5 minutes just to get all padded up. In the old days, we fought with not pads, so you could always get a quick 5 to 10 minutes of sparring in at the end of every class.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

We’ve got a “themed” night of sorts on Tuesday nights, run by our second in line guy. It’s a 45 minute kata class for yellow belts (6th kyu) and up. We cover all the kata for our syllabus, and go over it with a fine toothed comb. There are a lot of subtleties in kata that don’t get emphasized on a day to day basis that get addressed and reinforced during that class. In a general class, there’s typically not enough time to go through too many kata; in that class we’re going through just about all of them.

That class is immediately followed by a 45 minute class simply labeled as “adult green belts (4th kyu) and up.” It’s all sparring drills and sparring. We’ve got a lot of standardized sparring stuff - 1 steps, solo drills, and partnered prearranged sparring drills. We’ll typically heavily focus on one set of those, then go into free sparring for a good 20 minutes or so.

The second class occasionally changes during certain time periods - after a few people promoted and we’re learning new material for rank, preparing for a test, preparing for our organization’s annual tournament; stuff like that.

I find that somehow the amount of feedback and the quality of feedback is better during these types of classes than the general classes. It’s not a teacher vs teacher thing, because I’ve noticed this whenever my CI fills in during that class, and when the other gentleman fills in during general classes.

The other class I attend is Saturday morning general class. We follow a pretty good and consistent formula - basics, kata, sparring drills as above, and sparring. The difference is we’re not doing a lot of any of it nor going too deeply into anything. That’s not a knock on it, as we certainly go deep enough and mistake/issues are addressed; but nothing specific is being zeroed in on. We’ll typically rotate emphasizing one part of the stuff more than the others, but it’s not like the themed classes. Sometimes what’s emphasized is a decent amount below my rank, but it gets me better at stuff I thought I had down.

As others have said, some people can fall into a trap of too many themed classes of one type and not make classes for the other types, intentionally and unintentionally. If all you’re doing is sparring class, the other stuff is going to suffer. When the basics suffer, your improvement in sparring is going to hit a glass ceiling pretty quickly. If all you do is kata class, your sparring is going to suffer.

I think some of the difference in feedback is that there's a limited focus. If the class doesn't invite brand new students (as neither of those you mentioned does), then instructors have more time to give to more experienced students. New students are time sinks. If a themed class does include new students, at least the instructor has a single focus. In a general class, a new student often is on "new student stuff" that's somewhat different from everyone else. In a focused class, they are often given a simplified exercise (if necessary) that's still closely related to what everyone else is doing. This helps the instructor a lot, and usually nets more class-wide feedback (where people of different levels all get value from the same feedback).

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I was thinking of asking my Master if I could try to do seminars on the weekends, maybe once a month or so. Our school tends to do a few minutes of this, then a few minutes of that (which is very useful for keeping the attention of the 4-5 year olds in some of our classes).

But I was thinking once a month I could take an hour or so on a Saturday afternoon and do a class specifically on:

• Forms and stances
• Punching (since we tend to focus on kicks)
• Kicking fundamentals
• Kicking Footwork
• Advanced Jumping Kicks

The time slot I'd use is currently in use, but will be open after next month.

I like the idea of something like that. I proposed a similar idea to my instructor shortly after I got my BB, with a class to focus on the first 10 techniques and related principles. Using some sort of rotation would be cool, so folks can make whichever part they want. Know that attendance will probably be spotty (it usually is for any class not taught by CI in a more traditional school, and more so for a focused class like that), but that's to the advantage of those who show up. It might help to get some partners in crime involved early to make sure when folks show up they don't feel like nobody goes to that class.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Interesting. I see positives and negatives to both approaches. In the old days (or at least the old days for me, which was the early 80s), classes were 2 hours, Monday through Friday from 7 to 9 pm. Every class had fitness/stretching (20 to 25 minutes taught by the highest level belt who was not the instructor), followed by basics and one steps (15 - 20 minutes), forms (10 to 20 minutes depending on the distribution of students), followed by a wild card (self defense, rudimentary grappling, tumbling, pad work) followed by sparring, and finally, some more fitness work and bow out.

Now, with most clubs having shorter classes, it is more difficult to get the entire curicullum in every class.

IMO, the upside was,that for intermediate students, a 1 to 2 hour general class, 3 times a week was perfect. The downside was,mostly for beginners and higher belts. For beginners, there was a lot of sitting and watching during forms, and bit on basics, and for higher belts (2nd gups, and higher), there was a lot of repetition on beginner level stuff, and not enough time to practice the higher level material, particularly if said students only had 2 to 3 times/week at most to train.

My biggest bone to pick with my former school was, given the number of hours I was devoting to training (4 to 6 hours a week of classes per week), I should have had at least 1 to 2 hours of that be devoted to the things I needed to learn for my black belt training, particularly after I made Cho Dan Bo. In fact, it was substantially less, and while it is all fine and well to say that advanced belts need to make their own time to train, But I was a high school kid with limited time to train, and I tried to do my part in training both in and out of class as much as I could.

So for my ealier self, it makes sense to have specialty classes, or at least classes for higher level belts only, so the limited amount of time allocated to training can be devoted to preparing upper level students for the stuff they need to work on, and leave them to practice the basic stuff on their own. But in fact, though I was, in theory training for my black belt, I was still devoting more than 90% of my time to basic and intermediate stuff, and even in things like sparring, not often getting challenged much there either, since more often than not, I was sparring against lower belts.

The other thing about classes being shortened to 60 minutes or less is, the stretching and physical fitness is greatly compressed, and sparring is not done in every class. If I were to change anything, I would say light sparring at least should be part of most classes. The problem is, with all the padding they make us wear, it takes a good 5 minutes just to get all padded up. In the old days, we fought with not pads, so you could always get a quick 5 to 10 minutes of sparring in at the end of every class.

I've never experienced the issue of advanced belts not getting what they need. I suspect it's a different approach. In the typical NGA school, there's a substantial portion of class (the majority of it, most times) when not everyone is doing the same thing. So, if I had 15 students of various ranks, I might pull the brown and black belts into one group and have them work on one set of stuff, put the purple and greens (and maybe blues) together to work on other stuff, and put the whites and yellows (and maybe blues) together to work on a third set of stuff. Or, I might just pair folks up with someone and let them pick what they need to work on (or give each pair their own assignment).

 

[mrt2]

I've never experienced the issue of advanced belts not getting what they need. I suspect it's a different approach. In the typical NGA school, there's a substantial portion of class (the majority of it, most times) when not everyone is doing the same thing. So, if I had 15 students of various ranks, I might pull the brown and black belts into one group and have them work on one set of stuff, put the purple and greens (and maybe blues) together to work on other stuff, and put the whites and yellows (and maybe blues) together to work on a third set of stuff. Or, I might just pair folks up with someone and let them pick what they need to work on (or give each pair their own assignment).

Maybe I am not remembering correctly, but I don't think so. My recollection was, every class was pretty much the same. True, advanced students got more time to do advanced forms, for example, but that was about it.

I do remember hearing about these black belt only classes, but my recollection is, this was more a myth than anything I actually experienced. Now, it is possible that more advanced training took place at the head instructor's other school, but that was almost an hour away, and I was just a high school kid, and for most of my training, I either didn't have a drivers license, or didn't have access to a car.

The other thing I remember was having to spend training hours doing demos at the mall across the street from our school, and being expected to compete in tournaments, which is fine and well if it was once or twice a year, but when it started to become a regular thing, took up limited time and money that as a high school kid focused on getting into college, I didn't have.

It is all irrelevant now, of course. Can't change things, and I am sure some of this was just earlier me losing interest or burning out after 3 years of training.

 

[marques]

I was thinking of asking my Master if I could try to do seminars on the weekends, maybe once a month or so. Our school tends to do a few minutes of this, then a few minutes of that (which is very useful for keeping the attention of the 4-5 year olds in some of our classes).

But I was thinking once a month I could take an hour or so on a Saturday afternoon and do a class specifically on:...

I did this way for years and it worked well. Everyone would get the essential from the weekdays generic classes. But on Saturdays, with extra time, we could learn and practice some extra things.

It also helped me understanding the discipline as an integrated solution. Weekdays made me feel like the discipline was a sum of techniques and the light sparring at the end of every training could quite well integrate some elements but not others. 4-hours training had another taste...

It was also extra money for instructors/organisation. Remember this when suggesting saturdays seminars to your Master.

 

[dvcochran]

From a student perspective...

We have some themed classes, but not the same night every week, or even every week.

Once a month we have sparring night which is the only (mostly) regularly scheduled thing - but then that's not the only sparring time either.

Personally, I'd like some more 'theming' so that I know there's going to be dedicated time for certain things, but judging by how many people don't turn up for sparring I'm sure there'd be absentees from any other announced theme too.

A big reason I think classes should be an amalgamation. We spar nearly every class. Not always full on pad sparring but there is no way for a timid student to avoid sparring.
We have senior belt classes two Friday's per month. That is the closest thing to themed we have but they are in no way focused on a given area.

 

[dvcochran]

I definitely wouldn't be interested in NOT having general classes. No matter how many themes you add (unless the "themes" are actually separate arts, which is an entirely different thing), you need normal classes that tie them together. Students who aren't interested in tying them together wouldn't have to attend (say, someone only really wants to study weapons), but it should be part of the curriculum.

I think of a "general" class as a regular class where part of the class is spent with everyone doing the same thing(s) and part of the class is broken up specific to rank so I think we are saying the same thing.

 

[dvcochran]

I was thinking of asking my Master if I could try to do seminars on the weekends, maybe once a month or so. Our school tends to do a few minutes of this, then a few minutes of that (which is very useful for keeping the attention of the 4-5 year olds in some of our classes).

But I was thinking once a month I could take an hour or so on a Saturday afternoon and do a class specifically on:

• Forms and stances
• Punching (since we tend to focus on kicks)
• Kicking fundamentals
• Kicking Footwork
• Advanced Jumping Kicks

The time slot I'd use is currently in use, but will be open after next month.

Are not all of these things highlighted in your forms practice?

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

I think I'm a fan of the more general classes so far...

Curious as to your thoughts!

I like the "principle" base class. For example, a "kick low, punch high" principle can be mapped into many different combos:

- front kick, straight punch.
- foot sweep. hay-maker.
- roundhouse kick, hook punch.
- side kick, spin back fist.
- side kick, neck chop.
- ...

The teacher can map the principle into 2 or 3 concrete combos. The students then forced to figure out the rest by themselves.

The beauty of this approach is it can apply to all MA styles and principle base teaching always "has no style boundary".

 

[skribs]

Are not all of these things highlighted in your forms practice?

Forms and stances obviously are. But that's usually about 5-10 minutes of class time.

Punching in forms is a bit different than punching outside of forms. For example, in forms we typically use a static front stance, or shift from back stance to front stance. We also do punches that are not covered in the forms. And when we do punches...it's usually for about 3-5 minutes.

Kicks are barely a part of the Taekwondo forms. The type of footwork you would use in TKD (such as sliding kicks, skipping kicks, drag kicks, and lateral movement) aren't really part of the forms, either.

We don't teach any forms that include 540 kicks, kip ups, and butterfly jumps.

I like the idea of something like that. I proposed a similar idea to my instructor shortly after I got my BB, with a class to focus on the first 10 techniques and related principles. Using some sort of rotation would be cool, so folks can make whichever part they want. Know that attendance will probably be spotty (it usually is for any class not taught by CI in a more traditional school, and more so for a focused class like that), but that's to the advantage of those who show up. It might help to get some partners in crime involved early to make sure when folks show up they don't feel like nobody goes to that class.

At my school we have the Master, his wife, and me as instructors. Everyone else who helps out (even the couple that are higher rank than me) are assistant instructors. I'm not the CI, but as far as instructors go, I'm pretty high up on the list. Now, I'm not going to pretend to be anywhere near as good a martial artist or instructor as my Master and I still have a ton to learn on both fronts. But I have a good rapport with the students and their parents, and I'd probably get enough students to show up that it would be worth my time.

And the less that show up, the better for those that do!

I've never experienced the issue of advanced belts not getting what they need. I suspect it's a different approach. In the typical NGA school, there's a substantial portion of class (the majority of it, most times) when not everyone is doing the same thing. So, if I had 15 students of various ranks, I might pull the brown and black belts into one group and have them work on one set of stuff, put the purple and greens (and maybe blues) together to work on other stuff, and put the whites and yellows (and maybe blues) together to work on a third set of stuff. Or, I might just pair folks up with someone and let them pick what they need to work on (or give each pair their own assignment).

Definitely not the case at my school. There is a TON to learn for each belt test, which means the majority of class time ends up spent on the curriculum. As a result, there isn't a whole lot of time to focus on any one thing. It also can cause issues trying to learn some things when we don't go over them much in class. When I first joined, we mostly had 1st degree black belts (probably 90% of our black belts) and the 2nd degree black belts felt frustrated that we spent 95% of the class time on 1st degree stuff.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Definitely not the case at my school. There is a TON to learn for each belt test, which means the majority of class time ends up spent on the curriculum. As a result, there isn't a whole lot of time to focus on any one thing. It also can cause issues trying to learn some things when we don't go over them much in class. When I first joined, we mostly had 1st degree black belts (probably 90% of our black belts) and the 2nd degree black belts felt frustrated that we spent 95% of the class time on 1st degree stuff.

That’s the difference in approach I was talking about. I’m not used to the entire class time being synchronized- everyone working on the same thing.

 

[JR 137]

I think some of the difference in feedback is that there's a limited focus. If the class doesn't invite brand new students (as neither of those you mentioned does), then instructors have more time to give to more experienced students. New students are time sinks. If a themed class does include new students, at least the instructor has a single focus. In a general class, a new student often is on "new student stuff" that's somewhat different from everyone else. In a focused class, they are often given a simplified exercise (if necessary) that's still closely related to what everyone else is doing. This helps the instructor a lot, and usually nets more class-wide feedback (where people of different levels all get value from the same feedback).

What you say makes sense on paper, but isn’t true in our school. We don’t have very many new students, as we’re a pretty small club (about 30 adults, maybe 10 kyu adults).

We don’t have rank-specific classes, other than black belts only 1 night a week. Partially because of this, our teachers are pretty used to having people do different things. During kihon/basics, it’s very common to hear “white and blue belts do x; yellow and green belts do x and y, brown belts and up do x, y, and z.” Kata is easy as well. Most have 20 counts to them, so different ranks are doing different kata to the same count. We have 10 each “self defenses” (pretty much 1 steps), beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Even people who only know 4 (white belts) can do them while everyone else is cycling through, at our instructor’s count or at their own pace. It’ll be “white-yellow belts basic self defense, green-brown intermediate, black belts advanced. Number 1, go. Number 2, go.” Stuff like that. We do a good mix of our rank stuff and stuff from previous ranks. It does get a bit annoying when I want to work on my current rank-specific partnered stuff and I’m the highest rank there, but that doesn’t happen that often. And it’s a time to sharpen up on older material.

During sparring, we all spar together. We’ll form two lines and rotate through; ie “everyone rotate to your left” so you’ll have a new partner every time.

But yeah, on that rare occasion where we have a new white belt, things move pretty slow and there’s not much feedback on the others. And class runs a bit differently for the first 2-3 weeks after a bunch of people promote too, as we typically break up into groups and have higher ranks teaching lower ranks new material. Both of those scenarios don’t happen very often. They’re definitely a change from the norm.

I just think when there’s a definite theme to the class, kata, kumite, whatever, the students and teachers are more focused on zeroing in on it and the feedback is more. Teachers get far more specific, and students ask more in-depth questions. When you’re only doing 3-4 kata and moving on to the next thing, you’re not going to get too crazy with it; when you know you’re only doing kata for the next 45 minutes, you pay far more attention to the minute details. When you’re only sparring for 5 rounds, the feedback is more general and geared towards the entire group. When you’re sparring for a half hour, there’s more time to address everyone individually and have them try out what’s suggested. Just what I’ve observed. There’s definitely individual feedback in general classes, but not as much, and typically not as in-depth.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

What you say makes sense on paper, but isn’t true in our school. We don’t have very many new students, as we’re a pretty small club (about 30 adults, maybe 10 kyu adults).

We don’t have rank-specific classes, other than black belts only 1 night a week. Partially because of this, our teachers are pretty used to having people do different things. During kihon/basics, it’s very common to hear “white and blue belts do x; yellow and green belts do x and y, brown belts and up do x, y, and z.” Kata is easy as well. Most have 20 counts to them, so different ranks are doing different kata to the same count. We have 10 each “self defenses” (pretty much 1 steps), beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Even people who only know 4 (white belts) can do them while everyone else is cycling through, at our instructor’s count or at their own pace. It’ll be “white-yellow belts basic self defense, green-brown intermediate, black belts advanced. Number 1, go. Number 2, go.” Stuff like that. We do a good mix of our rank stuff and stuff from previous ranks. It does get a bit annoying when I want to work on my current rank-specific partnered stuff and I’m the highest rank there, but that doesn’t happen that often. And it’s a time to sharpen up on older material.

During sparring, we all spar together. We’ll form two lines and rotate through; ie “everyone rotate to your left” so you’ll have a new partner every time.

But yeah, on that rare occasion where we have a new white belt, things move pretty slow and there’s not much feedback on the others. And class runs a bit differently for the first 2-3 weeks after a bunch of people promote too, as we typically break up into groups and have higher ranks teaching lower ranks new material. Both of those scenarios don’t happen very often. They’re definitely a change from the norm.

Yeah, definitely a different dynamic in a relatively stable group.

I just think when there’s a definite theme to the class, kata, kumite, whatever, the students and teachers are more focused on zeroing in on it and the feedback is more. Teachers get far more specific, and students ask more in-depth questions. When you’re only doing 3-4 kata and moving on to the next thing, you’re not going to get too crazy with it; when you know you’re only doing kata for the next 45 minutes, you pay far more attention to the minute details. When you’re only sparring for 5 rounds, the feedback is more general and geared towards the entire group. When you’re sparring for a half hour, there’s more time to address everyone individually and have them try out what’s suggested. Just what I’ve observed. There’s definitely individual feedback in general classes, but not as much, and typically not as in-depth.

That's part of what I was trying to get at with my (second? - too lazy to go back and reread my own post) point. With everyone doing the same theme for most of the class, the instructor's focus is clearer. He's looking for the same kind of stuff the whole time, rather than shifting focus from group to group. I can get this same effect (in smaller portion) in a class of 12 students by changing the directions. If I tell them "work on your last two techniques", then there will be 6 pairs probably mostly never working on the same technique. So as I look through the groups, I'm going to be looking for big errors first, then paying close attention to one group (so one technique) to provide some depth of feedback - during which time, I'm not giving much to the other groups. If I change the instruction to "work on the Leg Sweep, classical form and from a grab-and-punch", it all changes. Each group still has two things to work on, but I'm seeing the same two things everywhere. Now, I still start with the quick scan for major errors. But then I can scan all the groups looking for deeper feedback to give everyone. I start by looking for common areas where they could improve - something I couldn't do as effectively with the mixed techniques. So, the temporary "theme" already improves what I can do there. A themed class amplifies that, I think. And that's just the effect on the instructor - the students also often benefit from seeing something interesting out of the corner of their eye and stopping to see what that next group is doing that is different.

 

[pdg]

A few posts both ways...

One thing that I think - with having sparring in general class time it's alright, the timid ones can't avoid it (although technically they do avoid it, because they do non contact...) and everyone gets 10-40 minutes of sparring.

Having sparring night though, that means the warmup is normally a little bit of normal warmup exercises followed by a couple of rounds of very light hands or feet only.

Apart from that 10 minutes, the rest of the 2 hour session is sparring.

Some people don't turn up, some only do the first or second half - but for those who like it we get an amount of time that wouldn't be logistically possible in a general class.

I'd like some more focused classes myself - not on a weekly schedule deal, but some.

 

[_Simon_]

I was thinking of asking my Master if I could try to do seminars on the weekends, maybe once a month or so. Our school tends to do a few minutes of this, then a few minutes of that (which is very useful for keeping the attention of the 4-5 year olds in some of our classes).

But I was thinking once a month I could take an hour or so on a Saturday afternoon and do a class specifically on:

• Forms and stances
• Punching (since we tend to focus on kicks)
• Kicking fundamentals
• Kicking Footwork
• Advanced Jumping Kicks

The time slot I'd use is currently in use, but will be open after next month.

Yeah it's a great idea, and I reckon alot of students would be all for it.

In Kyokushin we had day seminars every 3 or 4 months or so, from 10am to about 4pm we'd train within our own grade groups and focus in on specific material, and rotate round. There were enough instructors there to help, and we got alot of good training in. We'd have little sections of everyone training together, usually at the start we'd warm up and do basics, and we'd do some sections all together with padwork, conditioning, or sparring. But mostly within our grade groups we'd do focused work on what we needed.

There's been some great contributions from everyone, thanks heaps for that. And it seems that both themed and general classes have their merits. I guess it'll come down to how it suits the style, the participants, and generally how students progress. Which are all things I'll have to find out wherever I end up. Cheers all

 

[Gerry Seymour]

A few posts both ways...

One thing that I think - with having sparring in general class time it's alright, the timid ones can't avoid it (although technically they do avoid it, because they do non contact...) and everyone gets 10-40 minutes of sparring.

Having sparring night though, that means the warmup is normally a little bit of normal warmup exercises followed by a couple of rounds of very light hands or feet only.

Apart from that 10 minutes, the rest of the 2 hour session is sparring.

Some people don't turn up, some only do the first or second half - but for those who like it we get an amount of time that wouldn't be logistically possible in a general class.

I'd like some more focused classes myself - not on a weekly schedule deal, but some.

I actually like the idea that people can choose what to go too in theme classes. Those who really want to dig into sparring can do so, with other folks who feel the same. And I like that folks can choose to join or not a given week, maybe even based on the theme.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Yeah it's a great idea, and I reckon alot of students would be all for it.

In Kyokushin we had day seminars every 3 or 4 months or so, from 10am to about 4pm we'd train within our own grade groups and focus in on specific material, and rotate round. There were enough instructors there to help, and we got alot of good training in. We'd have little sections of everyone training together, usually at the start we'd warm up and do basics, and we'd do some sections all together with padwork, conditioning, or sparring. But mostly within our grade groups we'd do focused work on what we needed.

There's been some great contributions from everyone, thanks heaps for that. And it seems that both themed and general classes have their merits. I guess it'll come down to how it suits the style, the participants, and generally how students progress. Which are all things I'll have to find out wherever I end up. Cheers all

I personally prefer seminars to be extra-curricular, so folks who can’t make it (have other obligations on Saturday) aren’t left behind.

 

[WaterGal]

Is anyone here a fan of one over the other? On the one hand, specific themed classes (eg, kata class Tuesdays, basics Thursdays, sparring Fridays etc) is much more focused, and you can really devote alot of practice to very specific aspects. But it may mean you miss out on training important aspects of the art, as they may be on nights you just can't make.

We do themed classes, and had exactly this problem. So what we decided to do was to cycle through the themes during the month. So one week, Mondays and Tuesdays might be forms, and the next week, those classes will be sparring. We do have one class a week that's always sparring, because some people like to get extra sparring in, but the other classes change theme each week. That way, no matter which classes you come to, you'll still see everything.