How do you deal diplomatically with this common place scenario?
Last week you taught how to pass the open guard in all classes.
Student John does not attend any of the classes. He is a member of the academy, but has only come to a few classes and you do not have a close relationship.
This week, at the end of class John approaches you and asks you how to pass open guard.
You obviously can not do a tutorial for every student who misses classes and then wants to play catch up.
Especially if I just showed this last week and the student didn't show up for class.
John is a nice guy and I am open to answer questions from each student's specific game, but this to me is a different situation.
"As per part of the curriculum, we are going over guard passing presently & will be going over open guard shortly. I know you've missed some class time frequently & I hope everything is getting worked out so that you can join in with the rest of class when we hit those techniques"
Or he can ask you or an upper belt during open mat. Hope this helps
Advise him you covered it last week in class and he can find other to work with what was covdred with peolle during open mat time? Ono one can expect you to vive anyone a review on demand....if its something he really wants he should consider a private or semi private lesson.
He should be asking his partners, if he doesnt k ow this already....call over a senior and ask them if thie willing to spend a little time reviewing. Your senior guys should understand this is part of their development to sempai novices along? John gets his answers and learns the way the system works.
Tell them to ask someone else in the class as it was covered last week. This will also help the person they ask to reaffirm and practice their technique.
Meet google.. Everything you want to know about bjj is now on the internet and it has revolutionized the learning process.. This wasnt available to the generations of practitioners before you, consider yourself blessed.. If you study the game and do things like watch film outside of class your learning curve will go down immensely..
Generations before you relied soley on an instructor for their information.. That was eons ago.. However, to perfect it, you need to show up to class so you can get mat time..
But start by learning how to long step, leg drag, and knee slice, because stacking doesnt work on anyone with a good guard..
Obviously you aren't going to go into the same level of detail as you did in class but he is a paying student of yours who is asking for your help. Show him one of the passes you taught and let him work with that. If you actively encourage questions, you should help him.
Rogans Heroes - Obviously you aren't going to go into the same level of detail as you did in class but he is a paying student of yours who is asking for your help. Show him one of the passes you taught and let him work with that. If you actively encourage questions, you should help him.
My thinking for not automatically saying yes and showing him is twofold
1) I want to encourage the students to attend the classes that I have structured to bring them along. Simply, if you want to learn the techniques, you have to show up for class.
I think it creates a bad precedent if students know that they can miss a week, but rely on me to give them a private tutorial to catch up. I couldn't imagine how my university professors would react if I missed a week of lectures and then asked them to bring me up to speed.
2) I had only seen the student 2 previous times on the mat, This is not one of the guys that is a real regular and missed because he was sick.
This student may have the potential to be a loyal, long time member. But until I have seen their regular attendance for a while, I don't see them trhe same way as I see the guys who are at every class and helping with cleaning the mats.
Meet google.. Everything you want to know about bjj is now on the internet and it has revolutionized the learning process.. This wasnt available to the generations of practitioners before you, consider yourself blessed.. If you study the game and do things like watch film outside of class your learning curve will go down immensely..
Generations before you relied soley on an instructor for their information.. That was eons ago.. However, to perfect it, you need to show up to class so you can get mat time..
But start by learning how to long step, leg drag, and knee slice, because stacking doesnt work on anyone with a good guard..
Im not an instructor but a paying student and I wouldn't attend a school ran by somone with your mind set. Why do you give a fuck how often he shows up if his check clears? most of your money will come from casual students. You explaining a pass to a guy is nowhere near the equivalent of him getting reps and real time corrections in during class and he knows this. Everywhere ive ever trained they just want you to get better.
JGooch - Im not an instructor but a paying student and I wouldn't attend a school ran by somone with your mind set. Why do you give a fuck how often he shows up if his check clears? most of your money will come from casual students. You explaining a pass to a guy is nowhere near the equivalent of him getting reps and real time corrections in during class and he knows this. Everywhere ive ever trained they just want you to get better.
If you missed last week's classes and showed up wanting a private review of what you missed then you would probably be better off "training" elsewhere
You get better by showing up to class everywhere I've ever trained
People come and go and come back in bjj all the time. Most people are not full time competitors so work and family are going to come first. Im just saying if you expect all of your students to be at every class your not gonna end up with many students. Even brown belts at my school have big chunks of time where they cant train regularly because life gets in the way.
shortyjj - "We covered that last week. If you want to go over the material you missed I'd be happy to schedule a private with you"
I usually open with what shortyjj wrote here. But also, I will throw him a small answer in the moment (no more than a couple minutes), because I'm not trying to play "let's make a deal" when he has a burning question.
JGooch - People come and go and come back in bjj all the time. Most people are not full time competitors so work and family are going to come first. Im just saying if you expect all of your students to be at every class your not gonna end up with many students. Even brown belts at my school have big chunks of time where they cant train regularly because life gets in the way.
This is reality and consistent with my experience also
The point being discussed is mnissing a week of lessons and then asking for a perosonal tutorial on what you just missed
After every single class i teach i ask my students if anyone has any questions about anything. Most people don't but i'm offering 5 min of my time to anyone thay does. I encourage questions like you're describing.
My thinking is that my current curriculum may not be covering the most important thing at the moment for each student. The most important thing for them is whatever situation they keep getting stuck in currently. If they have to wait for what you're teaching for the week to cycle back around to it they could be waiting a very long time if they're unlucky. You're literally crippling that person's ability to move forward with their training by telling them to wait til next time you teach it. I think that outweighs any lesson to show up more you're trying to teach. You'll likely drive them away by not helping them rather than get the results you think will happen. People tend to show up more if they know their instructor will go out of their way to help them.
I think what JGooch was saying was that people miss training all of the time for various reasons. This guy wants to know what he's missed, at least he's interested enough to ask. You can say no or you can say yes, but I don't think you should paint the guy in a negative light for wanting to know.
I personally would give him a 5-minute run-through of one of the techniques and tell him that you can help him some more during an open mat session until your curriculum circles back around to that topic. Being a new student is hard. New guys need the support of their instructors the most, by blowing the guy off and punishing him for being absent you're alienating a guy that could eventually be a great student.
Take 5 minutes and show him. He needs to rep it during open mat. I'm a brown, only make it once a week currently and its open mat. My instructor shows me what they have been working on during the class that week and lets me drill it on him. Then I work on it with resistance on the lower belts while sparring.
