I get a lot of grief from “traditional” instructors for testing so often in my Dojo. I offer rank advancement testing every two months, like clockwork. A lot of my colleagues thought it was near heresy. Just a couple of years earlier, I would have agreed. Heck, I used to join them in boasting about how “in my day, training way back when, in Japan” we didn’t have lower rank tests at all; students just trained and trained, until one day they were told to get ready for a big test. We felt that was traditional and “hard-core” not knowing what was coming, etc. Really, we just didn’t know better. You can imagine, then, that my idea of giving a test every two months seemed pretty extreme. My curriculum is designed around this constant testing schedule. Students know what is expected of them, and can plan on their testing dates long in advance. Not only do I offer testing every two months, but I make them public. Making them public adds to the stress of social evaluation. The incredible value this creates is described in another blog post you can read here (link will open in a new tab). Really, even that it isn’t often enough. You need more...
Learn MoreTHE NEUROLOGY OF STRESS I’m gonna tell you a little story about your brain. Don’t worry, all you neurophobes, this will be a simplified, reader-friendly story that you will quickly understand. This is a story about what happens in your brains when you encounter a stressor. A stressor can be anything that activates you: nightly traffic, someone cheating; and, especially significant for our students, someone trying to fight or attack you. First let’s look at our players: COMMUNICATION IN THE BRAIN For all intents and purposes, we are only going to focus on two areas of the brain: the limbic system (emotion and memory), and the prefrontal cortex (executive functioning). LIMBIC SYSTEM In the limbic system, we have: The amygdala (kind of the seat of emotion) The hippocampus (the seat of memory) PREFRONTAL CORTEX Meanwhile, imagine that you have, in the front of your brain, a personal White House where decisions are made. Every other part of the brain (including the limbic system) reports to this White House, and then this White House decides what will happen. NORMAL COMMUNICATION During normal communication, each part of the brain communicates with the other parts. Specifically, the front of the brain chats with the back, the left side chats with the right,...
Learn MoreWhether you deal with annoyed or angry people on a regular basis, professionally, or just have the bad luck to run into one every now and again, there are some simple ways to make it easy on yourself. You might think they’re being unreasonable, and you might be right about that. But chances are good that they don’t think so, and they’re determined to make sure they get their point across. The violence community has generally, and wisely, accepted Rory Miller’s model of the “Monkey Dance” for social aggression and violence. When frustration internally opens up into communication with other people, all too often that leads to a confrontation, at least verbally. It’s not logical at all. Rather, it is a predictable pattern of dominance display, that could become physical violence if both/all people involved continue. It’s not really so important in that moment to decide on the importance of what’s making them upset. In fact, judging them like that is likely to be interpreted as condescending attitude from you, which could easily spark violence, too. So, let’s focus on calming their inner Monkey brain. Wants vs Needs You don’t have to give them what they want, but you’ll do great if you give them what they need. They...
Learn MoreThere is power in emotions: training decides whether the power controls you, or the other way around. This is an awesome and clear example of how the classical martial arts got things right, and why they’re so darn relevant to real modern day living. For example, in some of our training, we learn that a “Flat Posture” is said to come from the feeling of wanting to protect something or someone of importance behind you. Look at this guard in the photo, working during one of the LA reactionary nights after some national news broke out. He is obviously experiencing very real emotion, and wants to protect what is behind him – his natural tendencies from there spread him out flat to cover that space. In training, I follow this plan: the emotions are going to be there, and they’re going to have an effect on how I stand, walk, talk, breathe, etc. By training with that assumption as a starting point, I can recognize when my body starts doing those things, in a “been there done that” kind of way, and then (hopefully) make more appropriate response decisions. But, do you want to train in a way that uses emotions as a base for understanding movement? There...
Learn MoreI’ve talked with lots of educators and coaches, and read some of the research from top researchers and sports psychologists … and even inadvertently ran an eight year experiment in how curriculum design affects martial arts students. Defining Terms Curriculum: Generally everything in your collection of knowledge to teach The specific requirements to reach a certain educational goal Which one of those are you using as your starting point? Either one is a valid choice. If you take all of your general information, you can find a way to get all of it taught, and even taught well, to your students, though they might not hit a particular milestone at a particular time. If you start with a specific goal, you can reach very directly at it and have surprisingly efficient skill building, but your students might not get the benefit of the entire spectrum of your available information. Linear Curriculum If you must study in a predetermined series of steps, with compartmentalized learning of each topic, then this might be what you’re doing. In martial arts settings, this might be: punching / kicking / bladed weapons / grappling / etc. And in a “modern combatives” linear curriculum, you could go to a series of classes on law, then...
Learn MoreSometimes training can be frustrating when partners just don’t “get it.” While the same complaint could be voiced to pretend something should work, in this case, it’s not a cop-out. That’s because I’m not talking here about my side of training at all – this is from observing other people training from a totally independent view. You can usually tell when somebody comes to a training session with the idea that they’re very good already. In this recent case, you could also tell that they were annoyed to find that “new” ideas were slamming hard into their long-term world view of how training works. When you think you’re great at something, and you also believe that your particular “something” is also great on its own, then it’s twice as painful to realize that none of it is working like it’s “supposed to” work. In my own case, I often train with either one extreme group or another: modern operators from various teams who use physical force as a tool to reach a goal OR classical martial arts enthusiasts who enjoy the pure academic pursuit and novelty of what were once horribly violent methods. They certainly CAN intersect, but they usually don’t come into contact with each other very much...
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