From the “warmups. why” thread, I saw someone mention that their class is only 60mins. I hear this is a starting to become a thing.
Why is there a push for only 1hr classes? If you have a 1hr class do you generally do open rolling after or offer another class? For those who have open rolling after, when you bow the class out, do people generally stick around to roll?
My classes are 1:15. That last 5 minutes is usually positional sparring from the position we did that day. Then it’s immediately it’s rolling/open mat, which goes on until everyone leaves.
I STOPPED doing the whole “bow out & shake hands at the end of class thing” because psychologically people felt like class was over and would leave. So I started immediately saying “Open mat, I’ll keep time, so grab a partner if you’re rolling --or if you want to work on something in the corner, feel free” and it actually made a real difference in how many people stayed to roll.
Some people don’t want to roll or are nervous to roll after class. But they might want to work on something with a partner, so I let them do whatever they want. A lot of times I’ll notice that the guy who said he didn’t want to roll that day, will later be rolling with that partner he just wanted to drill with.
So, I’ll do whatever I think is conducive to getting people to roll, other than directly forcing them.
Oh, BTW, apparently 45-minute adult classes are the new “thing” in Mc dojo marketing.
There is both a Karate school and a Kenpo school in my area and their adult classes are all 45- minutes long.
45mins? That makes me cry. 1hr just isn’t enough for an advanced class, imo. I think beginner class, sure.
Here is the late Steve Fisher’s school in the South Bay (He was a top sport karate guy in the early days). The colored belt classes are all 30 minutes long. Just the black belt class is 45 min…
I used to teach a 1 hr fundamental class. 5 mins warm up drills. 30 mins for 2 or 3 techniques. 10 to 15 mins of positional sparring, and then normal sparring.
That leaves 10-15mins for normal sparring? If you add water break which is 5-7mins you’re looking at 1 maybe 2 rounds of rolling. For fundamental, I don’t think that’s bad. For my personal taste, I’d definitely want more for an advanced class.
Yeah, it’s usually 2 rounds of normal rolling max. But positional sparring counts imo, I’d even argue it’s more useful when I force them to start in the position we worked on. If anyone scores, reset to position.
Also, I don’t do water breaks, if you’re thirsty go get a drink and come back individually.
FWIW, most of my students are in their late 30s to 50s.
1- 3 rounds and they are all DONE.
I’m always trying to get someone to do one more round. Very different when someone is in their 20s. In my classes. rolling never goes longer than half an hour.
I guess I’m an outlier.
Not at all. For advanced classes I fully believe in mostly rolling. We do 30 mins roll minimum and open mat after class, similar to what Shen.said. The one hour fundamental classes started due to size and time constraints.
I think “class” should be 45 minutes as a minimum and less than an hour as a maximum. Meaning, the actual portion which includes warmups and the tecnics taught. If you add positional sparring, then 55 minutes as a maximum works. I only do positional sparring if the tecnics of the day were escapes. So only positional sparring if under mount, under side control, have your back taken, breaking closed guard etc. Any more than 45 minutes of drilling and warm ups and ppl just get bored. Quickly. They’ll do the whole look around and lounge until the teacher calls for open mat.
Now the open mat portion ideally goes as long as ppl want. The vast majority of normal ppl are done after 1-3 rolls. For the ppl who want to do 5+ that’s cool but it’s just not your average student. Even in the scenarios with many young eager students - 5 rounds with positional sparring and 1 min rest between that would make the total class less than 1hr30min.
Thread very relevent to my intrests.
So Covid really changed up my training…schools died, new schools opened and me and my old friends moved around a lot.
For the longest time I trained at schools that ran class for an hour and a half, and it was fucking hard. The warmup was about conditioning not just warming up.
Now I train at a school where classes are mostly one hour and the warmup is about warming up…but…there are multiple classes and you can do two or three back to back if you choose.
There are also multiple classes every day except Sunday, so you can put in a lot of training time.
So now I am over 50, and its a fucking miracle that I am even on the mats…the shorter, more frequent classes are way more my speed. In fact I dont think current me could survive the classes I did 15 -20 years ago and all the TRT in the world cant change that.
But…that also forces me to admit that the training I am doing now is softer, weaker and more driven by marketing and commercial needs than chasing excellence and thats a tough pill to swallow.
I went to just one Renzo class 20+ years ago and class was 3 hours long.
Multiple times I thought class was over. Renzo would show something. People would practice the move for a long time until it seemed as if class were now over and it was open mat, then he would show another move, then it was clearly open mat… then he would show another move. It went on & on.
It was a really good experience, I just had no idea what the class time was supposed to be.
As an older grappler I prefer 90 minute classes because I love to spar. With that said, I like to have the option of sitting a round out here and there to reduce the risk of injury. So in order for me to get 3-5 good rolls in there has to be at least 8 rounds. Since I also like to pick my rolls (one advantage of being a black belt) it helps to have a large group of people to choose from. That way I’m not always having to roll against the young, aggressive purple belt who outweighs me by 50 pounds or the 250 pound white belt who has zero control and no body awareness.
The older i get the less i can handle learning techniques. Show me one tech and let me practice it for 10-15 minutes, positional spar from there for anther 5-10 minutes and then let me roll. The last 5 years it’s been that way. Any more than that and my brain just shuts off and i don’t retain anything no matter how much i try to focus on it.
My mom did have early onset dementia in her early 50s and I’m creeping near that age so i fear it may have something to do with it. I’m just down right struggling with lots of memory things like words and names or places