"Bushidokan" Category

Well, that’s it. The ’09 Black Belt Grading is over and all seven students passed.

Congrats to Marnie and Miranda (not shown), Gretta, Jeff, Simon, Andrew, and Jane. They ended the day sporting brand new stiff black belts, a huge grin and I’m sure a sense of relief that it’s all over.
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The guys have passed their second hurdle; the technical grading. It ran for 4 1/2 hours last night finishing at about 12:30 this morning. It was also nice to see a grading where there was a good mix of gruelling, almost dying, intensity and focus on the technical.

There were times when the guys were about to pass out from exhaustion and times when all could enjoy a joke. I don’t think anyone missed the jumping-spinning kicks. Perhaps they, and the complexes, will appear on Sunday at the graduation.
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Congrats to Andrew, Gretta, Jane, Jeff and Simon on passing through the first part of their Black Belt grading; the sparring. As usual it was a fairly intense night with some shadow sparring, a few rounds of sparring drills, a round (or two) of light sparring, five (I think) rounds of full-on jui kumite, and one round of sparring cum grappling (standing to ground).
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It’s the end of week 20 of my Black Belt preparation. The weeks are ramping up as we come off the summer timetable. Last week included assisting a class on Monday night, a technical class on Tuesday night, Lean’n'fit on Thursday night and 2 1/2 hours of various training on Saturday morning.
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I’ve always been interested in how people learn things and how I teach to that. I spent many years in the Army and much of that time was devoted to teaching and learning. From early years on the parade ground teaching drill to later years with officer training and teaching classes of cadets tactics and other skills.

The army approach to instruction is very formulaic; there was a set way to teach a class, lesson, skill etc. and you don’t dare change the approach until you really understand why it’s done that way and what the benefits are. You learned very early on the impact of specific phrases or approaches to presenting material that would be the most effective vehicle for students to consume. There were always exceptions and you had to know the signs that indicated students weren’t learning the material and have some other approaches ready to go.
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