whenever you teach a given technique, do you immediately teach the counter/defense to it in the same class?
for example, drill #1 - how to apply triangle from guard, then drill #2 - how to escape from triangle.
No, for me that would destroy the flow of the instruction, going back and forth between attacker and defender. JMO.
No, or people will learn the counter and nobody will stick to the original technique.
matt thornton covers this question in his "notes on drilling" article here. http://aliveness101.blogspot.com/
basic idea is that he doesn't want to teach the counter until students are getting caught in what he initially taught.
I'm trying to follow this idea myself right now, with teaching knee on belly/top flow.
I'm waiting until i see the stuff i'm teaching take form in the students games before I start teaching counters.
I want them to have the opportunity to play with it before everybody starts thwarting their baby steps.
If everybody is doing the proper counter right away, the student may not think that the new technique "works", and abandon it entirely.
hope that helps,
andrew
omoplautistic - matt thornton covers this question in his "notes on drilling" article here. http://aliveness101.blogspot.com/
basic idea is that he doesn't want to teach the counter until students are getting caught in what he initially taught.
I'm trying to follow this idea myself right now, with teaching knee on belly/top flow.
I'm waiting until i see the stuff i'm teaching take form in the students games before I start teaching counters.
I want them to have the opportunity to play with it before everybody starts thwarting their baby steps.
If everybody is doing the proper counter right away, the student may not think that the new technique "works", and abandon it entirely.
hope that helps,
andrew
thank you for the input.
i actually posted this thread based on what i read on matt's blog a while back
http://aliveness101.blogspot.com/2008/05/notes-on-drilling.html
2 weeks later but only if people are actually using the original technique... if no one is implementing the move into their game there is no need to teach the counter yet.
+1 at everything in this thread
I agree with everyone else in that I don't teach the counters at that time.
I want the students to develop some confidence with a particular technique prior to them working on the counter.
i mention the counters when im talking about executing the move, so people learn how to work around them. like, when i teach the homer, i mention the kneebar, kimura, and triangle and how to avoid them.
I do not teach the counters in the same class.
OCCASIONALLY I teach a counter if I'm showing the reason a move is done a certain way (to prevent that counter from happening). But that's the extent of it.
The reason is simple: you are teaching your students with the goal that they will develop skill at the technique you present. If you show their classmates how to counter it, then how will they get any practice with the technique?
i like the idea of saving specific counters for more advance students anyway, and have less advanced student focus on positional escapes and not giving the opportunity for submissions in the first place.
Like everyone else, no, unless I think the counter is more important to the audience than the submission, i.e., heelhook.
JRockwell - Like everyone else, no, unless I think the counter is more important to the audience than the submission, i.e., heelhook.
Agreed and very well said!