Teaching Techniques.

R

R.Lewis

1
Hi, Wanted to start a thread for martial arts instructors and students to discuss teaching techniques and drills.

1. No Retreat Grappling

One of my Favs is to tie another belt around your belt and the students. The better the student is at this drill the closer you tie yourself till you are only a foot apart.

Then you grapple or push hands. Obviously the idea of this drill is to teach you to stay grappling and to not back down.

2. Focus pad and grappling mix.

I feel that when using pads my students loose the ability to grapple, and visa versa. So using 3 students. One has focus pads, one has fingerless gloves and one has nothing.

The student with the fingerless gloves stands in the middle and boxes the focus pads, every 10-20seconds the student swaps to grapple with the other guy. I feel this is giving the student a good mix between the two exercises.


3. Wrestling from the knees.

A basic wrestling drill with the object being to get both the opponents shoulders on the floor, but the students must stay on their knees.

This is really good for beginners as its less dangerous because there is not so far to fall (so less injuries).
 
We do 16 week sessions and when they get to my class, they've already been in the program for a few years. They spend two 16 week sessions with Karl and I before moving onto the next level. A lot of their stuff they learn before hand is kinda' static so they get a different taste in my class. Karl and I run this class and he's primarily BJJ and Judo influence whereas I'm primarily of a boxing and Hapkido influence and both of us play a bit in the MMA area.

We usually start off with combo striking/knees/elbows/kicks to the focus pads and introduce them to falling and rolling and progress to where they're doing breakfalls over chairs. A typical striking drill would be jab, jab, cross, hook, low roundhouse, close distance and single leg take down. Or jab, cross, grab head and knee, and elbow.

Typical beginning drills involve shrimping and sprawling.

I also like to use Bob (the punching dummy) to cover targeted palm strikes.

After a couple weeks of them getting used to falling, we start in on the sweeps and single and double leg take downs. We then progress into chokes and then arm bars and varations of each and traveling into one technique into another.

We do quite a bit more but that's kinda' a taste how things are structured. I'm not sure if that's what you were asking or not.
 
Cool. Its good to be able to have a structure. With an older class we get noobies every week so you cant really plan the lessons untill you got every one there.

For begginers breakfalls are really improtant. In a first lesson in my Karate class you can expect to do jab jab, hook, hook, cross cross, kicks and breakfalls.
 
What I have noticed since last november when being ranked sempi or 1st degree black belt is that teaching is a whole other element to karate. Our school we speak all techniques jappenese and count in jappanese all stances in jappenese for instane kiba dache is jappenese for horse stance, Seiken judon tuski middle front punch. We really don't go over what the terms instead we keep on saying each one every week and they say it after are instructor says it then go on to do the actual technique. We will teach you though like seiken means fist jodan means high, ect and we have them figure it out. To see how well they know it besides the pysical part of testing we give out a written test.
 
In shotokan, we call it Choku zuki, or front punch, of course you have jodan or chudan as a target.

Our students are required to know japanese technique names by their green belt. If I tell the green and purples to do a migi shuto uke from kokutsu dachi, they should do a right side knifehand block in a back stance.
 
One of the many strange differences between Shotokan and Wado is that the Shoto guys seem to break up the words.

In Wado we would write "Migishutouke" but the shoto guys break it up, Which makes sence to me, I wish we did this.
 
For those of you who train in more street oriented styles, experiment with environmental training. There are so many elements that most people dont think about in thier street style training that can give you an extreme advantage.

We used to have training sessions at the park on hilly terrain, or train outside in the snow where it is slippery or you have more than normal clothing, or CQB inside small areas like a walk in closet, etc. You would be amazed at the number of weapons or environmental advantages you have at your disposal if you train yourself to look for those types of things.

For those of you who train in more traditional styles where you wear a GI and no shoes, dont be afraid to see what it is like to train in street clothes. Kicking and grappling is a completely different story with shoes on than without. Also grappling is great on a mat, but also be aware of what it is like to grapple on gravel or pavement, it is a completely different story. For those of you who are grapplers and like to use chokes, you have already learned your basic lapel chokes, but also train your mind to use things like a tie or long hair to apply the same chokes with (a guy with a mullet is prime target for a lapel or cross choke LOL).

PS: R-Lewis....Is Wado big out there in England? I live in SLC (where the 2002 Olympics were) and Wado used to be huge out here. I did a lot of that in my youth but moved into other stuff after my Shodan. Its cool to hear about Wado because I dont hear a lot about it here anymore. SLC has become more of a MMA town now. Keep up the great stuff! I miss all that!
 
Its really big in the South East because of the Budokai, a school which opened up about 25years ago. The head of the school trains most of the Police in the south east and any other Wado schools are offsprings from the main school.
 
its not just the shoto guys who break it up, Most Okinawan styles write techniques like we do. Maybe Wado Ryu just wants to be different :D
 
Well as we know Wado was the 1st Karate but its really White Crane Gong Fu.
Wado came directly from China, then moved up to mainland Japan where it became Shotokan. 1 Reason it could have changed is because of the diffrent oponents. The un-armed Karate kais on the main land would have been fighting against guys with swords and armor. This is why Shotokan is slower but more powerful - because it adapted.
 
yea it really gives a good theory on the development of the okinawan styles of karate from white crane kung fu to what they are today...

Its a good read
 
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