Five Drills for Variety in Training

Welcome Back
I hope that some of the hints that I’ve mentioned in the previous posts have come in handy and that you and your students are having an adventurous time in the dojo. This post will be an easy read.

I am going to make a list of drills (I call them games) you can put into different portions of the training. Try one or all of them and let me know how they work for you. Some of these drills were used when I was a kyu, in an adult class. I will mark those with an asterisk.


Shark and Eagle*
Description of Drill: Place one student in a ground fighting position and one in a fighting stance. Have the standing student try to tag the ground fighting student with a kick or a punch in the belly or the head. Have the ground fighting student use his guard position, movement on the ground, and kicking / grabbing to defend.
When to use it: This one works at the beginning, middle, and end of class. There is no end to the uses of this game.
Other details of interest: Everyone loves this game, even adults. This drill really improves the student’s ability to move in the ground fighting position and the attack from the ground.


Spin and Find the Knife*
Description of Drill: Get a rubber knife. (This also works with a wooden gun and even karate weapons.) Have all the kids stand in a circle and explain how to play: One child will go into the middle of the circle and start spinning around “helicopter” style. While he is spinning, you drop the knife somewhere in the circle. After he is sufficiently dizzy, have him stop and try to find the knife, pick it up by the handle, and take his guard position. Let everyone have a turn.
When to use it: Good at the end of the day, or after working knife techniques. It really opens the door for discussion on the danger of weapons.
Other details of interest: This is a popular game. As an adult kyu, we played this game to simulate what it feels like to have your ears boxed. That came in handy later when I did have my ears boxed. What a case of vertigo!!



Blocker
Description of Drill: The blocker is a staple when teaching blocking systems to anyone under the age of 8. After the repetition of the blocking system, use the blocker to hit the children. I hit them, first in the order that I worked the blocks and then randomly, strictly for the laughter. All ages like it, but under the age of 8 it is the ‘reward’ for staying focused.
When to use it: Obviously, this drill fits best after working repetition on blocking, whether at the beginning, middle, or end of class.
Other details of interest: Although the blocker wasn’t around when I was a kyu, it is a daily tool in my teaching bag. I try to bring it to every class and miss it when I forget. Even though this photo shows one student and teacher. More often, I am using a blocker on 10 or more kids at the same time. I am running up and down the rows and they are blocking and laughing. Everyone is getting stronger.

Blocker vs. Blocker
Description of Drill: Hand each child a blocker and let them strike at each other. Before you let them start, explain that the soft part of the blocker is the hitting part. If they hit with the handle it will hurt them both. (Inevitably, someone will catch their finger in the clashing handles, but at least you warned them.)
When to use it: This game fits in the middle and at the end of class. It is a great stress reliever if you have been focusing on technology for a long period. Or, it is a treat instead of sparring at the end of class.
Other details of interest: The kids call this playing “star wars”. Try it once and watch their excitement. Let me know if your kids love it as much as mine.

Double-Ended Blockers
Description of Drill: Each participant has a double ended blocker and they block and strike each other for an allotted period of time. I keep my matches under 45 seconds to keep the injuries down.
When to use it: It is an end of the day game. I use it about 4 times a year as a special event.
Other details of interest: In this picture, Cody and Kyle are having some fun, don't you think?This game requires 4 blockers and 2 couplers. This is about a $50 or $75 investment. (I have tried making my own out of PVC and padding, but they don’t hold up, they are too heavy, and they don’t work very well.

Jump rope
Description of Drill: The jump rope I am referring to is about 10 feet long. Hook one end to a chair and hold the other end. Have the participants earn their jump rope turn by answering a karate question or showing a karate skill. I give them three choices of how to pass through the rope:
1. Just run through the turning rope.
2. Just jump rope and run out when you have jumped 5 or more times. (That is up to the teacher. Make sure everyone is allowed to jump the same number of times).
3. Run in and jump rope (5 times). Run out when you are done.
When to use it: This game fits in all parts of training. I use it almost exclusively at the end of class. I use the game to review history and philosophy of karate by having the students answer questions in order to get their turn.
Other details of interest: This drill is as popular as any of the drills I use. It is, as all my drills are, a way to vary the repetition of training. It also builds timing, speed, and agility in movement. The first time I ever saw anyone using the jump rope was while teaching with Sensei Nick Brown over 20 years ago. I have tweaked it a little over the years, but have been using consistently throughout my teaching.

One quick note: If your class is oversized (30 kids) it might take 25 or 30 minutes to do some of these drills. Therefore, I recommend that you divide the children into groups of 10. One group can work stretch, exercise, basics etc. One group can work technology. One group can “play” with one of these drills. If you try to do 30 children in the jump rope game or the spin and find the knife game or the blocker vs. blocker game, the kids have too much down time and it isn’t good use of the time.

Use the drills and let me know if you have questions, failures, or successes.
Oos,
Md

Using Assistant Karate Teachers

Tip: Watch the eyes of your students. You can tell right away when students are saturated with technology, when they don’t understand the words you are using, when they are glued to your energy and ready for more.

Keep An Eye On The Eyes.

Here you can see Yoli keeping an eye on Stephanie’s eyes.

Oos to all who are still reading, and those who are here for the first time. I recommend reading past posts, just to get an idea of things we have been discussing.

Here is an example:
You have 20 kids. The ranks are 5 beginners, 3 are 7th kyu, 5 are 6th kyu, 2 at 5th kyu, 2 at 4th, and 3 are 3rd through 1st kyu. Set the workout to run all the way to the end of class. Have your assistant take out the small groups quietly. He / she should drop kids back in and remove new ones without interrupting the flow of the class. (The first time you are going to do this, tell the children what you are doing so that they are ready to walk away from the group quietly and THEN turn and do the courtesy bow to you. This will allow you to keep the flow going.) The helper should start by figuring out how much time to spend with each group. If they begin 5 minutes after class starts, and go to 10 minutes before class ends, they will have 45 minutes for 6 groups. That will give them a little more than 5 minutes per group. They have to hustle. I suggest the individual instructor start with the ‘brown’ belts (3 – 1 kyu). You and your helper need to decide in advance what technology each rank should be working on. It flows well. He or she will keep trading one group for the next. The time will fly.

In this shot Sensei Jackie is helping one student, while the others work in the background.




Meanwhile, you have an hour long class set up in your head. Of course, you can start with a few minutes of meditation. Then do 15 minutes of stretch and exercise and another 10 minutes on stances, blocking, striking and history. Then you can go to bag work, or self defense or kata basics for another 10 – 15 minutes. Now it is time to spar, with just enough time to do meditation and announcements before bowing out.

This class structure works really well. If your helper comes on time, you can have him / her run the class while YOU look at individual growth and technology.

Now that I have given you a structure to try in your dojo (Let me know how it works.), I would like to talk a little about how to get more people to show up as helpers. Here are some ideas that have worked for me:

Take a minute in adult class to:
Talk about the benefits of coming in early and helping. Remind them that they will master ONLY through teaching. Publicly recognize the people who showed up and helped. (“Thanks to John and Sally for showing up and helping”)
Spend a minute at the beginning of adult class talking about what worked and what didn’t work when they were working with the kids. That will make the other students care. In this shot I am going over a chasing game with some instructors:



Take a minute at the end of kid’s class to:
Have the kids thank the assistant teachers that aren’t black belts. Give them their props.

Finally and most importantly actually USE the helpers that do show up. That means that occasionally you won’t get to run the show. They get to warm up class (see below), be in charge of the end of the day event / sparring / whatever it is, and teach something other than blocking and Tekkie 1. It took me a few years before I became even slightly comfortable managing helpers instead of running class. It was a big change for me, but a huge plus for the children to have small work groups with a teacher instead of being lost in a sea of kids who already know the material.

Let me know if any of these pointers help out.

In my dojo, these days, it is unusual for me to have only one helper and even more rare for me to be alone. I make it a point to give the helpers teaching jobs that will let them grow. I take on the hard to teach students myself. I use my peripheral vision to watch the other groups and give my helpers pointers on how to keep the kids attention or use words that the kids will understand when I notice they had a problem. I always thank my helpers for showing up.

Here is a photo. Look closely and you will see 4 different groups; in the front you can see Randy and Isaiah, behind him are Andrea and Andrew, I am in the far right with a new student and the bo kids are on the far left.

So here is the bottom line:
To get helpers you are going to need to encourage them, motivate them, thank them and give them jobs that challenge them (not like in the old days when we sat and waited for Sensei to give us a job, remember that?) Everyone wins when adults show up for the kid’s class. The adults are pumped for their class, already warmed up, the kids get the attention they need and attach themselves to people other than you. (That is awesome the first few times you see it, by the way.) Last, and very importantly, you are free to see the big picture and figure out where to go from here.

Please let me know how this works out for you. Next post I am torn between talking about how to use more than one helper (do a lot of you have more than one?) and talking about ways to vary the repetition in the dojo.

Keep on teaching the punch and keep in touch,
Oos,

Grouping Karate Classes

Try These Changes to Start Your Class:

1. Playing Sensei Says

2. Taking numbers up and numbers down (ex: 10 jumping jacks, 20 pushups, 30 mountain climbers…then when you get to a certain number start going down; ex: 40 front kicks, 30 toe touches, 20 front punches.)

3. Turn a certain word into a “key” word: ex: Karate would mean 5, jumping jacks, 5 pushups, and 5 mountain climbers, and Rules would mean 5 sit ups, 5 leg lifts and 5 calf raises. Do basics and stretches. Every few minutes yell out one or both of the word to get the exercises in.

4. Use a medicine ball game in between each exercise.
Try one or all four and let me know how it works out.

Welcome.
I highly recommend that you read my first blog post before picking up here. That way you will have an idea of where I am coming from and going to…..

I need to digress into the word osu for a moment. I love the word, and I love it’s meaning of “I understand, let’s push on.” Here is my dilemma: although I know the proper spelling of the word is “osu”, I love the word spelled oos. I came to karate spelling the word oos, and for sentimental, nostalgic reasons, will continue to spell it that way when I use it in future posts. I hope this isn’t a deal breaker for you, and that my quirkiness will not turn you off to this blog.

Now let’s get down to the business of separating the children into classifications for future discussions (refer to my first post 6-13-09):
When I teach children age 3-5± I call it “pre-karate”. You can see a few in this photo.

This group does not get rank, is non-competitive, does not have to bow at the dojo door, learn Japanese, and does not do push-ups for punishment. I’d like to mention why I don’t have my ‘babies’ do push-ups for punishment: My goal with these youngsters is to make them LOVE exercise. Therefore, using push-ups as punishment is contrary to my goal. It seems pretty logical to me. What do you think? You can get a clear understanding of my view on these little guys from my book, Kicks with Kids, Martial Arts for the Very Young.

Age 6-12± - Begins the pathway to serious training. I call these children mainstream because they are easily capable of understanding the rules and etiquette in the dojo and they are completely capable of being competitive and reaching goals, both personal and rank oriented. Here is a photo with a few kids who have just begun this journey:

Age 10 - 13± with the rank of 3rd Kyu or higher is a tough group to teach. These children have been training for anywhere from 4 to 8 years. They are not qualified to test for black belts yet and are no longer interested in the same training games the little children experience. At some point they will join the adult class and begin rigorously preparing for their black belt test. However, for a few years between reaching brown belt (in my Japanese system) and being mature enough to want to be in the adult class, they require some interesting teaching tactics. I won’t spoil them. Yet, it is important that I treat them like young adults and keep them knowledgeable of everything that karate has to offer them. I have found this to be challenging. I will detail more on this in a future post. Write me if you have any specific ideas you would like to see in that post. In this action shot (hence the blur), one of my 10 year old brown belts spars with an adult student.

I have had a significant number of special needs children travel through my dojo. (I bet you have too!) I keep them with the mainstream group and we find very little adjustments need to be made for everyone to be comfortable. Have you had the same experience?

So, that is how I see the different levels of children I teach. (I also teach adults, and black belts. But, that is another blogspot altogether, don’t you think?) My next few posts will focus on mainstream kids: how to manage assistant instructors, how to change up the routine repetition of basics, kata, and even sparring, how to work the discipline necessary in a dojo while keeping their spirit strong and viable.

That does, however, mentally segue me to one of the axioms I teach my assistant instructors:
In a children’s class, children come first, and technology is second. In an adult class you reverse that. A brief explanation: My goal with the kids is to make them feel stronger, more capable, and more empowered when they leave class than when they arrived. If, in order to achieve that, I have to let a stance correction slide till another lesson, no problem. In reverse, the adult training is all about the technology. We work and improve from the beginning to the end of every lesson. “Feeling better” about yourself (I smile when I type that, it is so silly), is the responsibility of the adult practitioner – not the responsibility of me, the instructor.
On that note, I will say “oos” to all until the next post.
(Don't forget to write me at kickswithkids@aol.com until I figure out how to get comments on this blog.)

Welcome to the first post at Kicks with Kids. My intention here is to create some thought and even a little debate about how we teach karate to our kids today. If you have trouble posting a comment, write me at kickswithkids@aol.com.

In this first posting I want to start, as I do when I teach a seminar, by posing this question:
What are you trying to accomplish with the time you spend teaching students ranging in age
3 – 13±?

Having posed the question: here is my answer:
I want to create the opportunity for a practitioner to become strong, smart and capable enough to stand up for him (or her) self, while being simultaneously courteous, patient, and self-disciplined enough not to abuse his (or her) skills.

This is a lofty goal by any measure. To accomplish this, I need to know my students for many years. Changes and growth of that proportion won’t happen in 6 months or a year. Even though most children don’t make it all the way to black belt (For those of you who do not know it, I teach in a Japanese system where a student must be 17± to test for a black belt.). If I can allow karate to influence their lives for 4 – 6 years, they have a chance of attaining strength of body, strength of technique, and strength of character.

Years ago, when I realized that my goal was to keep, influence, and affect this person (people really) for years, I began thinking how the boring redundancy of old fashioned repetition can cause children to walk away before they have learned the many things that karate has to offer them. (You have probably changed up your teaching routine, just because you got tired of the sameness… Do you know what I mean?)

Future postings will detail changes you can try -- changes that can be made without losing the integrity of the dojo. I will also detail how teaching kids 3 – 5 years old is significantly different from the students that are 6 – 10 years old. Last, but most difficult, I’ll brainstorm ideas on holding the attention of the elusive 11 -15 with the attention span of a gnat (unless they’re playing video, right?)

Today’s thoughts are about general class structure and management:
Each one of us has to find our own voice. I like to teach with laughter:(without letting the students start talking and joking among themselves and without making jokes at the expense of the students. What works best for you? Try different approaches for example:

• Sometimes let the students copy you and sometimes let them work independent of you.


• Yell to elicit a strong spirit but not to humiliate. Then go immediately to a quiet voice and watch the kids strain to listen and stay with you.


• Be consistent in your discipline. An inconsistent example I see often is a boy and a girl do the same crime but don’t get the same punishment. Fit the punishment to the crime. Remember that pleasing the karate teacher is tantamount to most of these kids. Some of you could be having the opposite problem (animals running the farm). I can go to that on another post, ok?


• Make breaches in courtesy as important (or more important) than movement mistakes. That will begin the character development of the student.


• When you are in a stand off with a student over some sort of dojo etiquette, try to find a way where you can both win. Try to stay away from the “if / then” type of solution. Instead, try to come up with an idea where the person can choose which destiny he (or she) wants. Here is an example: In our dojo, you have to call the sensei “Sensei”. A student loses his temper and turns on me and says “yeah”. A few assistant instructors correct him by saying “Yes Sensei” and the child stares at me, unyielding. I can say “If you don’t say “Yes Sensei you have to do 50 pushups.” Or I can say “Johnny, you choose: say yes Sensei in any voice you need to and let’s all move on, or don’t say yes Sensei, do pushups, and then spend the rest of your night mad and bored – it is up to you.” The out I gave him was that he could stay in his hostile voice and that the decision was his. I’ve never had anyone choose not to say the correct words in the incorrect voice. I immediately do something that makes us all do some pushups. Johnny has a chance to get rid of some of his anger with the exercise and we all try again. I will tell you, this one is a little difficult, but it is worth it.

My teacher taught me to teach with benevolent dictatorship.

That ought to be enough to start some interesting conversations. I welcome questions and comments. Instead of just keeping on punching, let’s keep on letting our kids punch!