BTG 124 - How I Teach a Class

[Music] hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the guard on today's episode I'm going to talk about how I would normally teach a class and this is going to be useful I think for people who are instructors of course and coaches as well as for students just to kind of understand where I'm coming from again last episode I was talking well I was making a critique of the ecological approach so I think it's only fair if I outline what I consider to be following the traditional model of teaching a class at least the way I would do it to start off you have warming up now back in the day I used to do lots of warm-ups 10 15 minutes of warming up because I grew up under wrestling and wrestling the warm is a big deal but my school F has changed since uh my early wrestling days and now I think warming up is not as important not something that we have to throw a lot of time into doing motions that are not relevant to the sport so I tend to make them warm-ups much shorter there's another thing I I I have to caveat that with is that whenever I'm going to train I warm up myself before I show up to train so I take it as my responsibility to do the warmup that I know works for me so if I come to the gym I don't need to rely on the coach doing a warm-up that works for me because for example in my particular case I need some Mobility work particularly with my spine if you guys probably heard me before like my spine's very rigid so I don't twist well I don't bend like I used to and I do like a yoga style warmup I've mentioned it several times in the past you can look it up on the website uh David mma.com if you look up bed yoga that's what I do before every training session takes anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes depending on how much time I I want to spend but before any training session I'm doing that and I usually do it at home I go in my garage I warm up and then I drive to the gym if they have their own warmup then I'll do it also but that's just icing on the cake at this point I feel if you're serious about your training you probably know what things your body needs and I find generally when you're an athlete you're younger you probably don't need those specific motions uh again I'm 43 I've accumulated a good amount of damage over the years so I have to try to counteract some of the consequences of that that and I can't rely on and I could be honest none of the warm-ups I've ever done would be useful for me in that regard uh most of the warm-ups I see being done in practices tend to be uh about actually physically warming you up right like okay we're going to do big jumps for shots you know when we're doing things that are you know are good for athletes to work on like explosiveness or a coordination type stuff like doing cartwheels or whatnot but that's not going to really mobilize you if you need to open up your body a bit more and I think that's going to be uh more specific on an individual basis I can't do a Mobility routine that's going to hit everybody the same or address all the needs that each individual person has because all of our bodies are very different so I feel now at this age I've come to understand like everybody's Mobility need is going to be different so their warmup and their mobilization is going to be different so I'm not going to waste a lot of time trying to do that so if we're doing warm-ups it's going to be just to get you literally warmed up right H and very basic things like you know you're running around and yeah the the shots the four rolls stuff that anybody can do that you don't have to be particularly loose for just to get you a little bit warmed up I wouldn't spend more than 5 minutes doing that to be honest just really quick uh just to to get you a little bit loose like I said hopefully you've done more of that on your own and there's nothing stopping you from showing up early at the gym to warm up or stretch or do what you have to do uh again that's just my take I've seen most of the gyms that I work at now that are higher level have the same attitude I know the new wave guys have zero warm-ups they just go right into drills because if you want to warm up you do it on your own right and people do show up early to stretch and to roll out uh whatever uh they have going on with them and that's what I was doing when I was there as well and I know my brother independently was doing that on his own where they kind of killed the warm-ups because I think one as a student if you're showing up to a class that's an hour long or maybe an hour 15 minutes long and the coach is spending 30 minutes warming you up it's kind of wasting your time in a way cuz like yeah I need the warm up but I I really need more the instruction right uh so I feel that you're going to give more value to your students if you're investing it more into technical instruction you know drilling sparring those sort of things which they need uh an instructor to lead versus just a warmup which could be done on their own again I don't see anything wrong with having a longer warmup if your goal is conditioning in mind right now there's also ways of warming people up with drills and that's I think a better way of warming people up because now you're warming them up and you're also doing uh something that's Sports specific it's also building skill so that's a great way to warm up however certain you know drills you're going to have to be warmed up beforehand right especially like I said in my case like I for me to move the right way I need to mobilize so uh that's why again I I think if if you fall under that case like me where like you're stiffer maybe you're a bit older and like you feel like the warmups really save you like in my case I do then you should probably be showing up early anyways just so you can get the right stretches the right exercises you know the right mobilizations so you feel 100% starting the training session and then whatever else coach throws at you is just icing on the cake that's my take anyway so the warm-up phase again for me if I'm structuring class about five minutes that's all I want there next part of the class it's again depends on the goal of the class if I want to get into some drilling that would be a good time for it right where if we covered material from a previous class let's let's get that uh and let's drill that and and this could be as simple as you know what people are now labeling as static drilling where your partner just stays there and one guy is is getting the work in and you can go back and forth or whatnot I'm going to do another podcast specifically on my drilling strategies so I'm not going to and that's a bigger topic so I don't want to put too much time in there but we can do like a static drill we could also do like a rehearsed drill where we're going to go back and forth during the drill for example I shoot in he sprawls I peek out he pulls guard I'm going to pass a guard you know he does a technical standup and then we start back on her feet right and then that would be like one rep and now the other guy would lead right so the A and B man have different roles in this drill but they're both working different skills so it's good that you can switch back and forth um and again this is another type of drill that you could do and you could have things about reacting like maybe you have somebody who's uh and again we're doing an MMA class both of of us are in Striking stances and I'm waiting for him to throw his first jab right and when I get the timing for the jab right once he throws it boom my slip go into a double egg right so now I'm building reaction time right and I'm I'm recognizing threats and my partner is giving me a queue all right so uh I feel that's another good drill and again works for both guys we can combine that with the rehearsed style where I throw the punch and again after he goes for the shot now I'm going into a sprawl right stuff like that so these are some example of drills and again the goal of drills for me refine technique build power which is a combination of both speed and strength and to build timing reactions right so in those few examples we could have done those three how much time would I spend in drilling again depending on the class length you know if you have a 90 minute class maybe 10 minutes of drilling if it's an hour maybe it's a shorter like five or you could still go 10 minutes uh so yeah at a minimum five just to get Again part of the warmup you could say right or uh like an extend the second part of the warmup e or you know you just really want to focus on people building those skills that you just taught them in a previous class so you can give them more time maybe 10 minutes to work right um and that's a good amount of time right any you could go longer but uh I feel then it's going to eat up what you could do with the rest of the class right especially if we're considering an hourong class so if feel like 5 minutes for just a you know pure warming up calisthenics jogging around that type of thing uh 5 to 10 minutes on drilling whether it's static whether it's rehearsed whether it's doing timing stuff the next part of the class instruction now I will sit down and I'm going to start teaching and I feel this is going to take a good chunk of the class right because this is the part that I'm leading and for the student probably the most valuable part because this is where I'm going to be dumping knowledge right and this is also where they're going to be able to ask questions and and get feedback from me so I feel in a class I probably want to spend somewhere between 20 to 30 minutes on instruction I don't want to show a lot of technique if I show too much they're going to forget a lot of it right I feel the sweet spot for me tends to be somewhere between 3 to 5 right I usually try to aim for four but somewhere between three techniques to five techniques and it's going to depend on the complexity of the technique of course and also how receptive the students are to learning it sometimes I might teach something and everybody is nailing it like very quickly especially if it's building upon previous uh content that I've taught so then I can speed up okay we don't need to do as many reps practicing this because everybody's got kind of got it so we can move on so I can cover more content but if I see people it's a New Concept and they're struggling with it okay we're going to show less now because we really need to focus on making sure we can build a good practical understanding of these techniques as far as how I would like to teach follow a very simple formula I want to be able to First give the importance of whatever I'm teaching right um so I'm going to talk about what it is I'm teaching why am I teaching it uh I'm trying to lead my audience to want to be very interested in paying attention right I know people have all sorts of things going on in their life uh sometimes people don't want to be lectured to uh they like learning Hands-On they might be thinking about what's going on at work or what they're going to do after this so I want to try to make a little sales pitch right before I teach a technique to get people's ears perked up and paying attention right so I might talk about how uh I use this technique to win a bronze medal or you know Israel you knock somebody out with this kick right or you know and people oh okay this is kind of cool right I should be paying attention so I want to have a good lead in for whatever I'm teaching teaching I'm then going to demonstrate it and uh this is important because rather than me trying to break the move down piece by piece which is going to take a long time typically well not a long time but longer amount of time if I show the move first now people know exactly what it's supposed to look like in full speed then I'm going to break it down after I demonstrate it and I I break this rule sometimes but usually if you see me teaching this is what I'm going to try to do I'm going to try to demonstrate first and then I'll break it down so I want a demonstration at you know normal speed so everybody can see okay this is what this is and then I'll start breaking it down piece by piece let's say I was talking about my favorite subject kimor and I was doing a Kimora from top side control so ID go okay here we're going to do this submission starting from top side control this is what it's going to look like and boom boom I'll do it all right now let's talk about the individual parts right and I'll say Okay first we're going to control the wrist have to pin it to the ground and I'm basically going to lay out each component of the move how am I getting to this position how am I controlling this position where are my pins where is my body weight being pressed and also why am I doing all these different Motions like what's the importance of this what's the most important component of this technique all so I'm trying to give people not only the idea to be able just to see it right because if they just see it they're just going to mimic without understanding I'm also explaining and breaking down each part of the move so everybody understands why this works right Kimora is a shoulder lock right and we're basically we're rotating the shoulder to overextension which is going to cause you know the the ligaments and tendons to start tearing and that's going to create the pressure that makes someone tap right and then how are we're doing that well we're going to isolate pin the wrist we're going to pin the shoulder Elevate the elbow when we do those things that's going to cause the shoulder uh to get damaged okay now how do we pin the wrist how do we pin the shoulder then I'll explain okay we can use our hands to control this we can use our chest to pin here and we can use our figure four grip to elevate the elbow right and I can talk about the intricacies of the grip I go into a lot of effort to explain every part of the move again why I don't want to show a lot of moves at once because especially the more complicated moves they have a lot of moving parts and just doing one move is going to be difficult if I try to teach 20 moves in the class you're going to lose people right so teach the move break it down and the final part is go over common mistakes this is something I believe my brother had taught me and if you watched uh especially my earlier courses I made a big deal of teaching at least three other common mistakes um because they just are so common people are going to make them without realizing they're making them so it's a good area to if you know like the common problems people have with a technique highlight it right even if I showed everything perfectly we know that you don't receive things well the first time around anybody who's read a book knows that when you read it the second time you learn more about it right you you find things you didn't you see things you didn't see before right you're you're able to pay attention to other details that eluded you the first reading and learning techniques is the same and usually when uh a move is a little more complex there's going to be certain parts of the technique that everybody misses these are the common mistakes right so it's a good idea to highlight those to put special attention so that people will know oh okay this is where I might make a mistake and then finally the last part of the instruction is getting questions right I want to make sure that nobody in the class has questions I try to do as much as I can to eliminate questions obviously because if I have to answer 20 questions the class is going to take too long right and it probably means I didn't do a good job explaining the move or I made an environment that people are terrified of asking a question so nobody asks and it's also going to be you to walk around after I teach a technique and everybody's I've answered all the questions to walk around make sure that everybody's doing the technique properly because there's most people are shy and self-conscious about asking questions right I feel like for every one person that asked a question there were five more that wanted that same question asked but were too shy to ask ask right they felt oh I'm going to look stupid or oh that you know and that's usually what it is honestly people feel that they're going to look stupid asking the question and they'll just hope they figure it out on their own all right and again I try to do my best not to uh make anybody feel dumb or you know inferior because they have questions like no no ask please uh because sometimes these questions are really good and if you can ask a question that will stump me that's going to force me to become a better Coach because now I have to figure out the answer to that question the other thing as a coach that you have to figure out is also how to teach the same thing in many ways or how to and this might be in the demonstration itself this also might be in the explanation right because everybody has a different way of learning I notice sometimes when I'm walking around a class and somebody is doing a move wrong I will do the move to them and them feeling the move Done Right clicks light bulbs right like oh oh okay I feel that pressure and they understand it so these are people that need tactile pressure right like they learn by feel so just watching me wasn't enough they need to feel the move um and then some people just like I said are too timid to ask questions so when you walk around they'll ask you the question face to face they don't want to ask when the whole class is watching right so I try to make myself available as I'm walking around to make sure that everybody understands a move in most cases technical demonstration should be for one technique somewhere about 5 minutes or so maybe a little more maybe a little less again depending how complicated the move is and how many questions are being asked uh typically when I teach I'm usually only Fielding one maybe two questions right and I I feel that's a fair amount right I I wouldn't want to have too many more questions if that was the case I feel like maybe I taught something that was too complicated so I didn't know my audience or I did a poor job teaching it where there was so many unanswered questions right so I'm not going to say if if you're watching this and you go to one of my classes and someone's asked two questions don't be like oh okay I'm not going to be the guy that ask a third no ask it but it's going to be a signal to me okay I need to uh fine-tune this and your question will then become part of my uh frequently ask questions common mistakes right uh so because I know obviously there's people that train with me that watch this so I don't want to dissuade anybody for asking me questions and don't feel self-conscious like oh if somebody's already asked a question I don't want to level a counter up it's fine but uh it's for me like that means I need to improve right now again the technical demonstration itself should be about like again about five minutes and the actual repetition the move again it kind of depends on the class right if everybody picked it up really well it might only take another you know five minutes and everybody got to move down or maybe it might be even just 3 minutes and everybody's like I look around the room no one has questions everybody's doing really well okay we can speed up the class so we can get to more technique instruction right uh but if I see people struggling okay then uh we'll take some more time or if I see people really struggling I will stop and will go over the technique again addressing the specific issues I'm seeing around the on around the mat right so if I see like oh there's a real like problem here okay let me uh highlight this issue since I see more than one person having this and we can then break have the demonstration to go again I have lesson planned so I do have an idea of how long a class should take and how many techniques I expect to cover but it's not rigid right if I I if I find that the I didn't plan the class as well as I thought I'll teach less right as far as less techniques right as long as the techniques I teach get learned well so that's more important to me than trying to cover a lot or stick to this rigid schedule that I I created the lesson plan is a guide it's not a a must right and uh I I guess I haven't mentioned it before but uh obviously now I have you should have a lesson plan if you're a coach right you should be able to outline how your class is going to be structured so when people show up you're prepared you don't want to be one of these guys that you're like looking at YouTube videos as you're driving to the gym to figure out oh get some inspiration for what to teach like be a professional you know uh and it doesn't take long especially you've been coaching for many years you probably have a repertoire of techniques and you should have a curriculum ideally if you have your own gym so that you can be able to teach off this curriculum and the curriculum usually going to rotate right cuz you I mean you could have a couple years worth of content and you can just repeat this over time and you could rotate it by week you can rotate it by month right at my gym we rotate by month so we give a lot of focus into one specific area of combat uh for all the three disciplines for the Striking for the wrestling for the grappling and that's plenty right in any case having a lesson plan is going to make you a better Coach because you'll be prepared and you'll know okay if I have to cut stuff out because I'm running uh running long that's fine or you know if I need more content because I underestimated how quick of the Learners my students are then I can just roll that into doing more drilling right or more uh situational uh rounds anyhow Let's uh since I mentioned that let's jump to the next step after technical instruction situational rounds are great followup and the reason being when well let me back up a little bit and I've mentioned this a few times but since it's going to be relevant I should mention it again to me the way I perceive the learning process there are four phases of learning observation practice drilling sparring observation is in the word I see coach teaching the move demonstrating it I watch it on a YouTube video I remember something that I saw I'm observing a technique right and all that observation does it allows me to see and create a vision and a concept of the move in my head when I practice I try to turn that Concept in my head into a physical reality this is a clumsier process requires some thinking going back and forth with your partner trying to figure out how to do the move it's not very smooth but you're practicing right and our goal is to again get the mental concept of a technique into a physical reality drilling is when we refine whatever concept that we have that we've made into a physical reality and now try to speed it up make it faster make it cleaner make it smoother it's not going to be perfect but each time we drill we're going to get better and better at it and again I'll outline Drilling in another podcast the next podcast actually I'll I'll focus on that but drilling is where you build speed is your uh your strength you build timing and you clean up the technique right so the Final Phase is sparring and sparring is the feedback loop and what happens when you Spar I'm going to try the move it's going to either succeed or it's going to fail and after the sparring I'm going to observe back to Step One In My Memory what happened what worked what didn't work step two we practice out the mistake right whatever mistakes we made we fix them step three we drill the new model that we have created in our head for this technique step four we Spar we retest and then we go on and on and this is a Eternal cycle so I believe each phase is very important and if you heard my post about the ecological approach that was my critique they've killed essentially two elements the observation well actually three the observation the practice and the drilling and they just do sparring right uh um well I guess technically do they do have some observation so it's just one and four right because they're sparring and then they're trying to think what they did wrong and then they're just going back to sparring again and I feel the middle two are critical anyhow this brings me up to we did our warm up five minutes we can do drilling if we want 5 10 minutes we do technical instruction you know 25 30 minutes maybe 20 30 minutes uh again depending on the length of the class now we go into situational rounds right so these could be situational drills these also could be uh situational live rounds right or situational sparring depends on what you're trying to do the difference between what I would call a drill and what I call sparring is that a drill is going to be rehearsed we know what we're going to do to each other sparring is chaotic we have free will we can do what we want right so with a situational drill that we might do after technique session I might just be putting you in a position where again let's say we're doing choras I'll say okay you're going to start from side control and your partner is going to give you you know some resistance your goals to pin the wrist hit the Kimora and we might just do those reps right there and that would be more of a semistatic drill your partner's giving you some light resistance just so you work on isolating the wrist and uh getting a a clean submission that could be useful there right or we might do what's more common in this phase would be uh a situational sparring round where now I'm going to say I'm going to start you from side mount and your goal is to try to find uh koros right I don't want you try to mount I don't want you trying to go to kak katame I want you trying to isolate the wrist and control it depending on how many uh constraints you want to put on it like the ecological gu guys would do I might say you're going to start with the wrist pin right so you have a leg up and if I'm doing that I'm basically giving you a lot more opportunity to get into that cimor because I'm giving you the first step right which was in this in my case when I teach it is pin the wrist so I'm already giving you advantage and I might even have to give you more Advantage maybe I going to start you you have the grip fully locked on and now you have to work for a finish you know and your partner is going to try to break the grip or move the grip to his waist all right and then force you to do a step over Kimora instead so you can use all the different constraints to make the the situational round more likely to succeed and it's a sparring round so again it's has an element of chaos to it but those uh constraints are allowing you to minimize the probability of something going off the rails right like obviously if I said the only submission you do is Kimora nobody should be doing an arm bar or you know and then a condo choke or anything like that right like it's strictly choral so we know that and as far as the bottom guy it can also put constraints on him like I'm saying you you can't do any submissions you're just trying to escape the submission right that's it as long as you can get your grip free you break so this type of situational sparring is safer because there's not a lot of Randomness right whereas when we're doing open sparing you have every possibility available to you so it's a lot more chaotic right and plus if I want you to get to that chimora from top side control that implies that you're going to take the guy down pass their guard get into top side control and then pin the wrist so I'm asking you to do a lot how many times are you going to be able to do that in a real sparing match maybe once or twice if you're really good right that you're going to be able to take the guy down and within in a five minute round and be able to pass our guard score side control right but that's the benefit of the situational round is that we're going to put you there so you're going to get lots of exposure very quickly to this position and you already know the ideal shape and form and pattern that can produce Victory so to me that situational round is very useful for building skills Quick especially when people are learning because of course uh it's one thing to practice a technique and to drill a technique but if you never actually tested it in the live environment it's a different animal so uh very important right so again that's not my critique about the ological approach that is useful my issue is that you're going into it without full understanding of what you really should be trying to accomplish right uh you should have a good winning pattern when you go into the live so you know what to reproduce right versus trying to figure out what to reproduce in Vivo right they're a lot scarier that way and my opinion a little bit more dangerous too anyhow for situational rounds whether it's drilling or sparring I would say again you could dedicate depending how long the class is I think at least 10 minutes there right if it's a longer class maybe 15 maybe 20 right sometimes you can just conly do all situational sparring but I I like having at least one open sparring you know round uh so if we're looking at an hour class let's see the time counter I've done five minutes of warm up I did let's say another five minutes of drilling so that gave me 10 I do let's say 25 minutes of technique instruction now that puts me at 35 I do 10 minutes of situational rounds that's 45 that's good and I could even push that to 15 if I wanted to the final session of a class to me is going to be the sparring right and now again depending on how much time I have left in this case if I have 10 minutes I can do two 5 minute rounds I could do one 10-minute round you know just depending on how I break up my rounds um and we could finish the round out sparring and ideally my students are not completely exhausted doing a sparring round if I wore them out thoroughly earlier in my opinion the sparring around becom comes a bit more dangerous now when do people get hurt when they've tired right why because your coordination is weaker your Technique starts to drop off because you're not all up there in your brain and you just don't have the enough energy to move the way you want to so you you tend to make Compass andary movements which are not great it's rare when you see people get hurt at the beginning of practice right like that's not to say it never happens but it's very rare I know personally the times I got hurt is usually like the last round right it's almost always the case with me like why because you're especially when you're training really hard you're building up a lot of fatigue in some cases I developed cramps towards the end because I'm starting to get dehydrated you know all sorts of things that happen you know if you're being worked really hard so it's important as a coach that you can also recognize uh signs of fatigue that people are having if you feel people are getting really beat up in my mind uh especially if you're not working with a pro team or whatnot there's times where you're trying to build toughness right so you are going to want to push them close to that breaking point right to to test their metal but if you do that every day you're going to end up breaking people all right I feel toughness challenges should be done infrequently right you don't want to test people's toughness every day that's in my opinion stupid right uh but it's good to test it once in a while uh and usually when we do testy things we want to try to make it so that it's in situations where it's not very chaotic right like doing uh a toughness challenge off situational rounds is a lot safer because I already know the potential outcomes right so there's not a lot of ways this guy could get hurt but that we're doing a MMA fight from the feet and the guy's exhausted there's a lot of ways that can go wrong right uh again that's personal preference but in my opinion I don't want broken toys right I don't want to hurt my soldiers in training that's the worst thing that can happen right we're training them to not get hurt so if I can recognize that I've created too much fatigue quickly then I might not go as many rounds of sparring or I can change out this powering so there's a lot more rest and how you can do that rather than pardoning everybody in groups of two I can make groups of four and we could do a shark bait round right where one guy is working and then uh well two guys will be working but then two guys will be resting so it's a little bit more intense in the beginning but then there's a good amount of rest interval um in consequent rounds and you could you could find ways of making it creative there right lots of different ways of doing sparring there that's one of them right and that's a common one that lots of people do in Jiu-Jitsu the shark bait rounds it's good psychologically because as the guy in the middle you feel the most uh pressure because you're facing fresh opponents on every interval and at the same time the guys on the outside get to take advantage of somebody who's a little bit more fatigued and they generally try to overwhelm the guy with explosiveness so it can work uh both ways there but you can find different ways of doing that and if all else fails if you feel like they're really pushed beyond the limit you could then do you know simple games you can go back to drills right that's not a bad way to end a class also and just drilling again I I would say if you felt like they were really broken down towards the end of class I don't want to break people right I want them close to the breaking point but if I break them that means in my mind when when I say break I mean they got hurt right um so you you want to push the envelope of what they think they can do but without breaking them right I want them to feel that that wall they were able to push the wall right or you know and get beyond what they thought was possible without destroying it because obviously if they get hurt then the wall was there for a reason right uh so you know it depends how hard you run your classes right you just got to just something to look out for right if you if you find that you're racking up a lot of injuries that might be the reason why you might be overtraining them right you're you're putting too much fatigue not giving enough rest right you have to find ways of giving recovery time right there's times where we're trying to push conditioning and I feel those are safer in drills when we're doing sparring particularly open sparring session being very fatigued is a dangerous state to beat in just think about in the fight because that's what we're simulating if you're in a fight and you're very tired you're at your most vulnerable right that's not the ideal condition that you would want to enter in a fight so just something something to keep in mind so we go through everything warm up drills technique instruction situ ational drilling or situational sparring sparring if I need to sub the sparring I can also add drilling at the end right just as a way to close out or if you really wanted to work on more stamina I can do conditioning at the end also maybe I put them on uh on the bag and have them do volume on the heavy bag or you know maybe I have them do Sprints or some other Calen thing if I really want to focus on conditioning I can close out the class that way and again the more controlled that activity is the safer it's going to be right now if you're running like a big inner class 60 Minutes chances are you're probably not going to be running into the issues I'm talking about but I'm thinking more when I run fight classes they're 90 minutes long right there's a lot going on there you can definitely fatigue people a lot more so there is the possibility of getting people hurt especially in the fight Camp as they get towards the end you have to be a little bit more cautious right so that's when I like to throw more Drilling in than sparring right the sparring is the dangerous part the drilling is very safe I've can't recall once where I've hurt myself drilling or I've seen someone get hurt drilling sparring that's pretty much the only way I've been hurting in training so when you're in a fight Camp you got to have that in mind as the coach right and protect your your athletes and you have to remember your athletes can be tough and you want them tough but they won't tell you when they're hurt especially if it's not Ser that's it's not to the point where it's like a bone sticking out or they blew out their knee but they're starting to wear out a little bit you have to kind of be able to recognize on your from your Fighters uh when something's going on like I was just talking to my neighbor and he has a son that plays uh baseball and apparently he didn't know but his son's shoulder had been really sore because he's a catcher so they take a lot of shoulder damage because they're also throwing the ball a lot uh because pretty much they throw the ball more than anyone else since they have to catch any strike and be able to throw it to first base or whatnot so uh but the coach asked him hey how long's his shoulder been balling him he's like what shoulder he's like oh yeah he's kind of shoulder issue right now so they end up having to bench him for the next few games and now the sun's upset but like and I told him it's it's a good thing that shows that your son's tough and he's like he's game right he he wants to be a winner but you also have to recognize that that comes with a price right you have to be able to protect them from himself in a way right like I don't want my fighter to have the tendency that they want to quit on themselves right like I'll be the one that quits for them right I'll throw in the towel versus my Fighter the tap out right that's that would be preferable right he doesn't have it in him to quit so I know he's 100% locked in so that's going to happen in training too though so you have to be able to recognize that and I know I've had plenty of times where I have to throw in the towel for people in training where they sometimes get caught into submission and they just don't want to tap and I'm I'm tapping for you right or I see someone that's overly fatigued I'm like you're going to sit out this round right um so I feel the the coaching responsibility is is serious you're not just casual or lazy right I'm not going to be like oh I teach the moves and now let me get on my phone and start looking up the next move I'm going to teach right like that to me is a very poor instructor right a good instructor he's Vigilant and my opinion teaching is a bit taxing because I'm putting a lot of attention right not only to what I'm teaching but also around making sure that all the students are replicating the movements right I'm able to identify problem points when they're executing a technique and also recognize safety issues making sure that nobody you know people don't fall on top of each other or go out of bounds or someone's not being put in a potentially dangerous position so you're on guard you know and I feel especially when you have bigger classes you probably should have more people uh watching I going to have an assistant instructor uh be able to also watch that class because obviously you have a class of 30 people you can't watch all 30 of them at the same time right so you know typically if I look one way I could see maybe half the class and then someone else ideally monitoring the other half of the class so together we can uh watch over everybody and I feel that it's going to keep not only technically you're going to have more eyes so that you can catch more uh issues with technique performance but also for safety you're able to monitor more and make sure that uh nobody gets hurt right that's uh oh last thing I forgot I almost forgot at the very end of all this it's always good to talk to the class at the end right what my brother calls a Matt chat which you could sum up everything that happened during the class you could also talk about things that are not related to the class but they give value to the students you know whether it be about how this might apply in a self-defense situation or you might talk about something that you saw happen during the class that was uh motivating or useful that you saw someone Escape something and you could make a parable out of it right to to give some extra value again people are tired at this point so they're probably fine with getting the little breather and again not long maybe a couple minutes at most but just something else to impart knowledge that you have if you um again as an instructor you are a leader to these people so hopefully besides leading them through martial arts practices you could also lead them to the what I consider are like the the ethics the morals that I feel the martial arts comes with right you know whether that's being disciplined or being a Good Samaritan protecting you know the people around you and your family and your friends things like of this nature right um these are things and you know they might help you in teaching class like if you see a lot of people coming late you could explain something about the importance of showing up on time and why uh you know not just besides coming to the gym but for everything in life when you when you show up late what you're really saying is this activity is not that important right that's the truth of it by the way which is why like when on Friday I think it was at Jasmine roach was saying that you shouldn't penalize people for being late I disagree with that right um to me showing up late is a lack of respect for the activity that you're showing up late to and uh a little Sidra but I bought it up so I might as well go into it if I told you if you show up to class on time you're going to win $100 million are you going to show up to the gym one second before or are you going to come like an hour early maybe two hours early and maybe you even sleep over at the gym so you're sure you're there in time because if it's me I'm going to sleep over I'll be like a homeless in front of the gym I'm like I'm not missing this thing for the world right like I want to make sure I'm late I don't want any traffic getting in the way I don't want car to break down like I got to be here to collect that $100 million right why because it's very important right that would be life-changing for most people but when you show up late it's because you felt like whatever you were doing previous to this was more important than what you're doing going to be doing there now that might be true especially in the case of an emergency right obviously like if you're your child is in danger and you have to show up later obviously very understandable right but that's not what usually people show up late for right like oh they you know they woke up late or you know they took a detour or something happened with work and they they show a blade to class right so to me it's important and you can explain those things because if you're somebody who's continuously late it's not uh it's one thing you have a one-off time that you show a blade you know happens but if you're late to everything you do that's a not an acccident that's a trend in your behavior right and in my opinion you need to address that so if you're someone who's chronically tardy you should figure out what's going on how you can prioritize your activities so you show up on time personally I always like showing up early right um people know like I usually come very early because I either warm up there or I warm up hope and then I have to drive to the gym early so I always want to be showing up whether I'm teaching or I'm a student early uh anyhow that's like an example of something you could talk about with a Matt chat right and lots of topics you can talk about not a requirement but it's a good time to to you know feed people some extra knowledge that is not strictly martial arts related if you have that type of knowledge on you if you don't then you can just use that as a time to announce things right if you have any events coming up if there's a if there's a tournament coming up you want people to get through maybe you have some new gear coming into the gym that you want to sell right uh or there a bell test or whatever the case is that's a good time to promote it since you are the end the class before you sign off so that's a good time for you to give value to your students whether it's about you know teaching them something new a concept some new philosophy maybe a book to read or a movie to watch Maybe there's something you taught in the class that you would like for them to watch like you like I said the other day oh like knocked someone out with this beautiful kick guys homework go watch this fight you know you can see it here whatever and and you know come back with it because we we'll talk more about this in the next class right find ways to give value to people besides just on the mat give them homework right uh if you can not everybody has to do it it's not a requirement but it's a bonus right so I feel like it's a good use now let's talk about everything right quick warm up some drilling technical instruction situational rounds sparring or more drilling or conditioning or combination and then our Matt chat to close off the class that would be an ideal way of me structuring a class and uh teaching it I I that would be the ideal do I always do that I'll be honest not always but I'm usually close to it that's usually what I'm trying to get at right uh we're not all perfect we make mistakes and but me just talking about all this for my next few classes I'll make sure to do it again I'm going to be in Miami next week I already have the lesson plan for the classes I'm teaching so this stuff is already in there right I already have everything planned in how the drills I'm going to do the techniques I'm going to show and what I'm going to talk about so I'm already prepared for those classes and I feel like everybody should do the same even in the most cases nowadays here I'm a substitute you know teacher for the most part and I just you know train and do prior lessons and stuff like that and I still come in with L lesson plans and for me I have taught now for 20 plus years and I save all the lesson plans on my computer so I have hundreds of lesson plans so it's very easy for me to come up with them at this point right cuz I could just literally pull up an old one or I can come up with a new one I take notes when I attend classes as well which is another matter just like as the instructor I'm prepared right I come into the class with a plan as a student in my opinion you should be taking notes this could be on pen and paper which was the old school way that I used to do it and I had journals of just notes nowadays I just type it into my phone and it doesn't have to be while the class is going on your teacher might think you're looking on Tik Tok or something like that he might not appreciate that uh but if you explain it to him or otherwise I usually do it after class once the class is over I whip out the phone and I start typing in my phone my notes and I have a on a Google sheet or a Google doc I just write everything down so I have like an ongoing Journal of all the notes and the things I've learned so I can also use that as a resource as well well anyhow that's all I got for you guys this week that's how I was structured a class that's my concept of what I consider the traditional model of teaching if you think that is not the traditional model let me know because I think that's most of the well I think all the coaches that I attended from you know going into wrestling and uh my uh mixed martial arts I felt that was very close to the model I have not all those elements but most of those elements and uh my brother you know he put a lot of uh thought into making better coaching programs and uh there's a lot more detail that can go into it uh so if you're interested to that send me an email because he has particular coaching programs that go into very explicit detail on the the fine points of technical instruction and whatnot and it's not necess not the techniques itself of that you're teaching but how you teach right it's an art in itself but at least as a general game plan I think this gives you a better idea of how a class that I feel is the a proven model that works really well could be run and whether like I said it's an hour long or a 90-minute class I was struck the same way and by the way uh I wouldn't run a class longer than 90 minutes personally I feel it's not that productive at that point you're either overtraining your athlete or you're training at such a low rate uh that they could train indefinitely and either way and that means I'm not pushing envelopes I feel 90 minutes is kind of like the peak of I can make a class very intense but not make it a marathon either and uh this is similar if I'm training pro athletes or if I'm training you know a casual student I believe technical instruction should always be there if you're not introducing your professional athletes to new technique in my opinion you're doing a disservice to them and there's quite a few gyms that do that right and I've I've been around the block quite a bit and I sometimes see that like Pro practices are just lots of drilling uh and a lot of sparring which is fine there's sometimes where you have sparring classes and we we do that as well where we're just focusing on sparring but if every class is that way then there's a problem right because then there's no room for growth right you're you're you're just getting better at what you know which has an incremental value but again diminishing returns like if I'm a guillotine master and all I do every day is Guillotines yeah am I getting a little better sure but is that the quickest path to growth in all areas of my game probably not right there's probably going to be a lot of holes in my game if I just became a pure specialist at one thing and never veered outside the box and as a coach I'm trying to expand my athletes awareness of all the different techniques and I should be sharing my experiences with them that's why I don't like the ecological approach I feel like it uh removes the responsibility of sharing your experience which is one of our inherent advantages right I can easily share experience with people other animals don't really have the means of doing that right I don't believe they have the vocalizations or whatnot to go into very deep Theory you know sure birds and you know certain mammals can make Grunts and sounds that communicate danger or food or basic things but I don't think they're breaking down like explicit strategies or what not maybe they are maybe I'm wrong but I I don't think that's what's really happening right we have that Advantage where we can communicate very complex ideas to each other fairly easily just by voice so it seems like a waste of if you have somebody who's been the game for decades and you're not going to capitalize on all that experience so I feel as a coach that's why tech technical instruction has a place in every athletes Journey whether you're beginning your student or your you know UFC world champion should be learning your skills cuz guess what if you're not learning new skills people are going to study you and over time they're going to break you down right and since you haven't adapted you're easier to break because you're a fixed Target now that's why to me certain athletes excuse me certain athletes once they reached the top they got toppled and then never really recovered and then there's other athletes that manag to stay on top forever and they few that coming to my head George St Pierre guy is training he's not even fighting anymore and he's still training he's growing and he's learned new skills in gymnastics and whatnot and you know but he's always training I I've seen him go to New Wave a bunch of times I've seen him go and train all over the world he's a real martial artist in my opinion probably one of the best role models that we have uh Mighty Mouse another example guy that's still training right I think he retired from fighting but now he's pursuing grappling he's still learning right uh like love him or hate him Jon Jones the guy that still building skills you know he's even though I don't think he's a great role model you know as a as an athlete guy's phenomenal right and dangerous everywhere so these are people that are not just resting on The Laurels and like okay I reached the top that means I don't have to learn anymore no no now you got to learn more because now you're the top guy everybody's studying you they're going to try to figure out how to break that puzzle that is you and over time if you're not evolving they're going to figure it out it's just a matter of time but if you're constantly evolving you're a moving Target now it's hard to get a fix on you because you're like okay the guy I was starting to beat you know he's now here and I was aiming here right this is a trickier uh fight now because I have to make this adjustment to fight this guy and then if you move again after your next fight like damn this guy is growing and I'm trying to catch up to him but he's still moving up right so in my opinion if you're uh a top fighter you need to be you need to continue Rising right and my point being there's always room for technical instruction thank you guys for tuning in I'll see you all next week