Karate Instructors - Five Simple Tips for Making Each Lesson Different

[Pauline Winters]

Have you ever felt like you are teaching the same thing repeatedly?
Have you been frustrated by using the same old practice drills every
week? Do you sometimes sense that your students are getting bored or
are losing interest? Often one of the biggest challenges for a martial
arts instructor is coming up with different ways to present the same
material and create varied lessons each week. Finding a balance
between teaching the required content and making classes fun and
different is not always easy.
Rest assured that you are not alone. All instructors at some point in
their development feel the need to take their classes to the next
level and change things up a little bit. Therefore, if you are at this
point but are unsure how to inject some fun and excitement into your
classes, then start today by implementing these five simple tips for
making each lesson different.
1. Brainstorm all of the different training drills and teaching
methods that you currently use in class and write them all down. Now
you have a starting point for organizing your content and your
delivery methods. Next, organize these drills and methods into similar
categories such as basic training, forms training, sparring drills and
additional content. From here, you now know what your base content and
methods are and you can gradually begin to build your teaching
repertoire and incorporate new drills.
2. Make a monthly schedule of what needs to be taught each class and
then plug your training drills into each lesson. By making a monthly
teaching schedule of which content you will cover in which lesson, you
commit yourself to focusing on different content for each class and
you will not allow yourself to fall back into the trap of teaching
what is most comfortable for you. This method still gives your
students what they need and it forces you to stretch your content
knowledge and overall teaching skills.
3. Change the order of presenting lesson components. If you have done
steps one and two and you still find that you have several lessons
that cover the same content, a simple way of making the lesson
different is to change the order in which you present the content. For
example if you are used to beginning with a warm-up, then doing basic
techniques, then going to forms training and finishing with some
partner work drills, why not begin by using forms training as a warm-
up, then move to partner work drills and finish with basic techniques.
There are several ways that you can change the order of your content
and thus make each lesson appear to be different despite teaching
essentially the same material.
4. Adjust the pace and focus of the lesson. Another easy way to make
your lessons different while covering the same content is to first
change the pace of your lesson and then adjust the focus. For example
if you want to teach punches in two separate classes, the first class
could focus on a detailed explanation and practice class on the fine
points of each punch and the second class could be a fast-paced
workout with multiple repetitions of each punch. To adjust the focus
you might want to use line drills in your first class and pads and
targets in your second class. There many other ways to adjust the pace
and focus of your lessons.
5. Alter the context in which you teach your content. A simple change
in the context of your lessons can very easily make two lessons that
appear similar have a very different theme. Let's take forms training
as an example. In the first lesson, your context could be to teach
Form #3 of your style, focus on the performance of the movements, and
relate this to tournament participation and demonstration. In the
second lesson on Form #3 of your style, your context could be to look
at the sets of movements within the form and apply the different sets
to self-defense situations.
So as you can see, these five simple tips can dramatically help you
design multiple lesson plans for your students that focus on similar
content but which are delivered in different ways with interesting and
varied approaches. These types of adjustments in your overall teaching
methods can also lead to increased student retention and improved
skill levels for all of your students.
If you would like to learn more about different teaching methods, then
please check out my FREE Report on "Instructor Mastery: How to Become
a Great Instructor Right from the very First Lesson". You can download
it at http://www.freekarateinformation.com.
If you have any questions on how to become a better instructor then
contact me today at Pa...@freekarateinformation.com and I will be happy
to help.
Good luck and best wishes on your journey in karate.

The 7 Most Effective Self Defense Techniques - http://www.selfdefensev.tk/