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The Quiet In the Dark – Heidi J. MacDonald

The state of our world now, in the wake of Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo has been tense and politically charged, to say the least. Over the past several months, we have seen scores of women step forward and for the first time, publicly discuss in great detail their stories of sexual harassment in the workplace, traumatizing sexual assaults, and overall discriminatory behavior by their male counterparts.

The backlash since then, has been both positive and negative. Habitual predators such as Weinstein and Spacey, among many names, are now under investigation for criminal sexual assaults. Inappropriate behaviour is no longer being excused as “boys being boys”, and even those in esteemed positions, such as Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, have been terminated from their posts.

Corporate America and Silicon Valley has been recently forced to review their inadequate sexual harassment policies and predominantly biased male culture after a female employee posted a rather extensive blog post, detailing a rather uncomfortable year at Uber. The result of this, and other bad behaviour made public, forced the CEO of Uber to step down.1

The results of all of this, as well as the sobering statistics on sexual assault 2, has encouraged social media dialogues, on the path that perhaps these recent scandals could used as a catalyst to further encourage women’s self defense courses, on a broader scale.

Do I believe that there should be more women in self-defense and martial arts school? Certainly. But my take on #MeToo is from a different angle.

You see, I have been involved in self defense and martial arts since I was 22 years old. But, I will be as transparent as possible, and inform you that it did not completely insulate me from violence. I was raped by an ex-boyfriend who is also involved in the SD and MA community, only a few years ago.

I am also profoundly deaf, and rely on a cochlear implant to process sound.

So as much as I am encouraged by the #MeToo Movement, I am also acutely aware of the fact that it is not just one particular gender who are vulnerable and seeking solutions to end gender violence, but also this: that those who are disabled must be part of the conversation to find solutions.

Governor Baxter School for the Deaf underwent an investigation in the 1980s, that revealed decades of physical and sexual abuse inflicted upon the deaf children who resided in the residential facilities on Mackworth Island, outside of Portland, Maine.3

Sadly, this was not the only school for the deaf, where young deaf children were physically and sexually exploited.

  • There was the Washington School for the Deaf. 4
  • The Manitoba School for the Deaf. 5
  • Even Gallaudet University, an institution that has prided itself on serving higher education to the deaf community, has struggled with creating best practices to assist students who have been sexually assaulted.6

There are so many articles and research pieces that I came across while researching sexual violence against disabled populations. Too many, to be honest. It shocked even me. Why isn’t this discussed more in the SD and MA communities? Why aren’t we assisting this population more?

There’s no denying the fact that deaf women and children are at a higher risk of sexual assault and abuse. If the study at Rochester Institute of Technology in 2011 is to be believed, it is more than 25 percent higher than their hearing counterparts.7

Think about this carefully: the deaf community is very small, and often times the schools for the deaf, are THE center of the community’s culture. Rochester Institute of Technology and Gallaudet are certainly proof of that. Ask yourself, how do you go about reporting your own abuse or rape, if everyone in your community knows your assailant?  Also take into consideration that in such a close knit community, your identity as the victim, will NOT be a confidential matter.

Everyone will know who you are. As the victim, you have just given yourself an unfairly heavy mantle of causing a rift, unwanted trouble within a community bonded by its own culture and language.

You could be very much dependent on your abuser/assailant for your basic care and communication with the world, at large. By going public, you are placing yourself at a great physical risk, and the possibility of being cut off from communicating with others.

If you think you can’t live without texting, just think of how valuable text messaging on a smartphone must be for a deaf person.

If you do make the brave decision to report sexual assault, there is still the matter of whether the police in the community have appropriate training, or the resources to fully communicate with you via an ASL interpreter.

I was particularly disturbed by reading of one female Gallaudet University student identified as deaf/blind, and her difficulties with gaining assistance from the University’s Title XI Coordinator, who took two months to respond to her emails, and identified her during the course of a meeting with her assailant. When she finally made a complaint with the University’s Department of Public Safety, the police response was woefully inadequate.8

Female victims have often faced the perils of being called unreliable or a liar in court, so consider the additional hurdle if you are deaf, the questions you must face by police and legal professionals:

  • How capable are you of identifying your assailant if you are unable to hear? Even worse, how credible are you at identifying your assailant if you are a legally blind individual?
  • What’s your mental facility? Keep in mind that it wasn’t that long ago that deaf individuals were routinely considered “deaf and dumb.”

I strongly and passionately believe that self defense and martial arts instructors need to take into consideration not just women’s vulnerabilities as being smaller than their male counterparts, but also the very real vulnerabilities of those with physical and mental limitations. This is a segment of the population that is very much at a higher risk.

But, we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we claim that our self defense and MA schools are true fortresses of safety. It’s not true. We need to be realistic and acknowledge that sexual predators exist everywhere: our homes, our workplaces, churches, and yes – even our schools.

Considering that most self defense and MA schools do not face any sort of regulations or oversight committees (never mind background checks when hiring prospective teachers), we do need to be cautious and look twice at who we hire in our self defense schools. Here’s a few examples:

  • A jiu-jitsu instructor in Winnipeg last fall was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual assault. 9
  • A photo of Rickson Gracie with a man identified as David Arnebeck, made the rounds on social media. The photo of the smiling men sparked an outrage as it was determined that Arnebeck had been convicted of molesting a minor in 2013, and yet still continued to teach, receive belt rank promotions. Since then, it’s been revealed that two more prominent members within the organization also had convictions.

Should there be more self-defense courses, and more women in the halls of our martial arts dojos? Yes.

But in the process of promoting our programs, I advocate that we have a  responsibility to ideally, create 2 things:

  1. Take more responsibility and do more background checks and research into the instructors we potentially hire. Because we are not just teaching self defense, but we also have a moral obligation to have instructors who will not further harm students in a sexually abusive or harassing manner;
  1. We must discuss and craft comprehensive self defense and safety programs that includes those who are at a higher risk than their more physically capable counterparts.

If we’re going to advocate changes in the wake of #MeToo, and actively help those individuals who have difficulty advocating for themselves, then we also cannot ignore the fact that we need some form of oversight with regards to our instructors.

We owe it to ourselves to ensure that the potentially vulnerable, do not face, yet another predator on the training mat.

1 Fowler, Susan J. (Feb. 19, 2017) Reflecting On One Very Strange Year at Uber. Retrieved from: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber

2 https://www.rainn.org/statistics

3 Shattuck, John. Bangor Daily News (April 14, 2013). Lessons Learned After Sexual Exploitation of Deaf Students in Maine. Retrieved from: http://bangordailynews.com/2013/04/14/opinion/lessons-learned-after-sexual-exploitation-of-deaf-students-in-maine/

4 Teichroeb, Ruth. Seattle Post-Intelligencer (April 24, 2001) Decades of Sex Abuse Plague Deaf School. Retrieved from: https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Decades-of-sex-abuse-plague-deaf-school-1053009.php

5 CBC News (October 6, 2009) Deaf Students put in Dog Cages, Suit Claims. Retrieved from: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/deaf-students-put-in-dog-cages-suit-claims-1.811411

6 Khan, Azmat. (February 2, 2015) The Hidden Victims of Campus Sexual Assault: Students with Disabilities. Retrieved from: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/12/the-hidden-victims-of-campus-sexual-assault-students-with-disabilities.html

7 Dube, William. RIT News. (January 8, 2011) Study: Abuse Rates Higher Among Deaf Children and Hard of Hearing Children Compared to Hearing Youth. Retrieved from: http://www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=48054.

8 Khab, Azmat. (February 2, 2015) The Hidden Victims of Campus Sexual Assault: Students With Disabilities. Retrieved from: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/12/the-hidden-victims-of-campus-sexual-assault-students-with-disabilities.html

9 Bissell, Tim. (September 25, 2017). Martial Arts Instructor Accused of Sexual Assault and Child Abuse at Winnipeg Jiu Jitsu Studio. Retrieved from: https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2017/9/25/16363224/martial-arts-instructor-accused-sexual-assault-child-abuse-winnipeg-jiu-jitsu-studio-crime-news

 

Design Matters in Self-Defense Instruction Part 1 – Tammy Yard-McCracken

Every once in a while, a story hits the media about someone touting the differences between men and women as the source of abilities (or lack thereof) related to science, math or military service. Welcome to proof-texting, taking a quote or data point out of context adding validation to an otherwise erroneous argument. Proof-texting works for the women can’t do science type of arguments because there are subtle differences between male and female brains. Using these differences as arguments to bolster positions about intelligence or aptitude is categorically without merit. Understanding how the differences influence decision-making can go a long way to effectively manage communication at the broad stroke level. Conflict management and prevention, applications to negotiations, sales, and all forms of personal and commercial relationship can benefit.

Let’s look specifically at an area of communication and relationship with a dominantly male leadership community and a target demographic largely female. Self-defense.

If you want to frustrate a female student, assume she is wired just like a male student. There are a variety of ways we can investigate learning and processing differences among all our students – again – regardless of gender, for this conversation I want to look at where gender differences can matter.

Specifically, take into consideration two structural/design differences between the male and the female brain1:

  1. The male brain has about 6x more grey matter and the female brain has roughly 10x more white matter.
  2. The female brain’s corpus callossum (the cord connecting the two halves of your brain) is about 10% thicker on average.

White matter and the connectivity between the hemispheres are collectively responsible for the ability to make inferences, drive curiosity and discovery oriented decision-making, integrate large caches of information and remain open to changes in how one navigates problems and solutions. The reason for this is pretty simple. White matter is made up of myelinated axons. An axon’s job is to connect to other axons and collectively, they serve as the brain’s information highway connecting the points where data is stored (grey matter). With more white matter, a female brain has more myelinated axons v. the unmyelinated version of grey matter and as a result, more interconnectivity and interaction among the data storage centers2.

Think of white matter as the train lines in a subway or commuter rail and the grey matter as the individual stations. The more stations that are interconnected, the more there will be travel between all the points, the more often the travel will occur and the more station hopping there may be on a single trip. It’s one of the reasons women can have a multi-dimensional conversation without losing track of all the different topics being discussed simultaneously.

What this means in teaching women in a mission-oriented paradigm like self-defense? The subtle increase in gray matter causes men to be slightly more inclined to approach a task through a mission directed mindset. Get it done. “I need new boxing gloves” – goes to vendor or store, finds boxing gloves of correct weight –buys gloves. Done.

Women are more likely to consider how long the previous gloves lasted her and how they were used during that time frame. She may measure out the weight of the gloves against her training goals and her upper body strength along with the color and design as they influence how she feels about the gloves. She will investigate the vendor as well as the product and do more comparison shopping. If this is the first pair of gloves, the guy is going to ask the instructor: what should I buy? Tell him 18 oz gloves in X price range and he’s good to go. She is going to want to know more information, or may go out to buy them and come back with a fistful of questions instead of a pair of gloves.

On the mat, tell him he needs to move offline at a 45-degree angle and he has a mission to accomplish. Done. Tell this to her and out of respect and the power differential, she may jump in with the same mission-oriented approach. For a while. Eventually, she is going to wonder about why the 45 degrees is the preferred angle for this skill. She is going to think about other situations and circumstances and where the failure point is.

She may even play around with the failure point. Like she investigated the purchase of her gloves, she is going to investigate the technique. If no one else is doing this in class, she may wait until she’s off by herself, away from the critical eye of her fellow students and instructors. She may play with it in her thoughts and visualize it instead of a physical test of the thing, but she is going to play with it.

6 Takeaways from 20 Years in the Trenches Part 2 – Andy Fisher

Telling Tales

Anecdotes – nearly all of us use them but not necessarily strategically. A good story, told at the right time in a class can be an excellent teaching method. It can allow the abstract to become concrete and can help a student gain an embodied understanding of something which was, up to that point, just theory. I have met few coaches who do this better than Tony Blauer; he is a raconteur but his stories are never self-aggrandizing and nearly always deployed to lay down mental blueprints that his students will be able to draw upon when needed.

So, stories have their place in a coach’s arsenal, but this does not mean we have carte blanche to hold court with hyperbolic tales of our ugly altercations on the streets, simply because a memory is triggered in a session we are facilitating. Often these narratives are more about reinforcing our credentials than helping our students to learn whatever is the focus of that lesson.

Don’t Forget the Scaffolding

To acquire any complex motor skill, a coach will be obliged to use ‘scaffolding’ – that is he or she will begin with a simplified version of the technique or principle to be mastered. Those who learn to ride bikes have stabilizers, those new to the pool have floatation devices. In time, they are removed and the training protocols increasingly come to resemble the final performance criteria. This happens in nearly every coaching arena I know…except in the combative arts. Too often, we have grown men and women, claiming to be prospective lifeguards with an invisible polystyrene shark’s fin strapped to their back and day-glow arm bands (see what I did there with my well-timed analogy? Too much?).

If we are to be true to our professed goals (to make our students safer) then we need to incrementally remove the scaffolding until they at least have a decent chance if they are thrown in the deep end. This, again, requires well planned drills – there are ‘latch-key’ teachers out there who plan their lesson on the way from the staff room, minutes before the class is about to begin. They sometimes brag about their ability to improvise – most are decent enough people, but terrible teachers.

Meet Them Where They Are

Finally, I try to always keep in mind that the root of the word ‘education’ is ‘educare’; it means to ‘draw out of’, rather than to ‘stuff into’. So many coaches think of their students as empty vessels waiting to be filled. Remember the hackneyed zen-tale of the acolyte who must ‘empty his cup’ if he is to learn what the master has to offer? Apart from a waste of good tea (which, as an Englishman, I find deplorable), I’ve never liked this story because it suggests that a good student must abandon their own wisdom if they are to progress. Being humble and coachable is one thing, but we should not ask our students to abandon their scepticism and current understanding of the world.

Conclusion

We must meet them where they are and build on what is already there. I hear too many reality-based self-defence coaches pronounce that ‘we are predators’ and that we ‘already have all the knowledge that we need to defend ourselves’, only to then go on to do everything in their power to overwrite the instincts that lie waiting to be uncovered. As Rory Miller and others have pointed out, a poorly-trained student is less equipped to deal with a violent assault than someone who is operating just from instinct. If what we are teaching does not increase the survivability of those who train with us, we have an ethical responsibility to step aside before we do any more damage. This may sound harsh, but a good teacher doesn’t shy away from the truth, however unsettling it might be.

Any decent lesson has a ‘starter’ to wake up the grey matter, the ‘main body’ of the lesson, where most of the heavy lifting takes place, and then a ‘plenary’ which provides a condensed summary of the ground covered…so…

Here are 6 things we might want to avoid as self-protection instructors:

  • We shouldn’t dominate the training space and mistake teaching with learning.

  • We shouldn’t coach unprepared, or without a clear set of objectives in mind.

  • We shouldn’t replicate inefficient and outmoded ‘technique-driven’ coaching.

  • We shouldn’t tell self-glorifying stories with little or no coaching value.

  • We shouldn’t leave ‘drill scaffolding’ in place, when it is no longer helpful.

  • We shouldn’t overwrite good instincts and movement which our students already possess.

Instead, we might consider adopting the following 6 strategies in our coaching:

  • Be the ‘guide on the side’ and help students arrive at an embodied understanding through hands-on experience.

  • Work from well-planned, innovative lesson outlines that offer solutions to clearly articulated problems.

  • Investigate and apply a principle-based, constraint-led training method.

  • Use stories as a purposeful learning tool which empowers those we work with.

  • Systematically remove drill constraints and create opportunities for progressive pressure-testing that more closely aligns with real-world conflict and violence.

 

Interview with Rory Miller Part 1 – Elie Edme

This interview was conducted  by Elie Edme for Corps Global, the English language version is reprinted in Conflict Manager and on the CRGI website with permission.

EE – What’s your martial arts background?

RM – Mother was a fencer and dad was a boxer and bar brawler, but that probably doesn’t count. Started in judo in 1981 when I went to college. Dabbled in everything available. Stumbled onto Sosuishitsu-ryu jujutsu when my wife (fiancé at the time) and I moved to Portland. I stayed with Dave, (my jujutsu sensei) until he retired and earned my mokuroku in 1991. During that time I was playing with everything I could. Martial arts was an obsession.

EE – What’s your professional background?

RM – How far back do you want to go? I’ve been a ranch hand, a porter, a dishwasher, picked strawberries– but the first job I had that included using force was bouncing in a casino in Reno in 1985 and 86. It was an education.

I went back to college after that and worked my way through with security jobs. Nothing particularly dangerous, just facility security for high-tech offices. Also joined the National Guard in 86. Went to Basic and AIT (Advanced Individual Training). I was a medic assigned to a self-sufficient TOW anti-armor unit.

Kuwait was invaded in 1990. Our intel said that Saddam Hussein had 5000 of the best (soviet) tanks made. I was in an airmobile, desert trained, anti-tank unit. I was 100% sure that I’d be in Kuwait, so my fiancé and I decided to get married immediately. The army doesn’t provide benefits to fiancés if a soldier gets killed.

Then the first air strikes pretty much wiped out the Iraqi armoured divisions. We were waiting for the call, but my unit wasn’t activated. And suddenly it hit me— I’m married. I have a baby on the way. So I started looking for a real job. The first one that came through was for the County Sheriff’s Office Corrections Division. I took the job. And just like that, I was a jail guard.

Have to explain jails vs. prisons, since most of your audience is European. In the US, and there is some variation between the states, we have two different correctional systems. Prisons are for people who have been convicted of a crime and are serving a sentence of more than a year. Jails are where we hold people who have not yet been convicted— but are usually too dangerous to be out on the streets until trial— or people who have been sentenced to less than one year’s time or, and I think this is specific to my state, people who are on their last year of a longer sentence.

In jails, we would get the same people who would go to prison as well as some that wouldn’t, and we would get them while they were freshly arrested. Still angry, still with drugs in their system.

I spent the next seventeen years working there. A lot of time in booking (where we got our most fights) and in Close custody and maximum security. After I became a sergeant, I spent more time working mental health. I was a trainer as an extra duty and was on the CERT as well, first as a member, later as team leader.

Around 2008, I was recruited to go to Iraq as a contractor advising the Iraqi Corrections Service. Did that for a little over a year and came back to settle down, teach and write.

EE – What was the kind of violence you experienced in your professional life?

RM – It varied within a set of parameters. A lot of breaking up fights. A few inmates trying to monkey dance or educational beat down. Probably the most common was someone who wanted a reputation. Ambushes. A riot. Cleaning up a riot. A few planned set-ups.

Most were unarmed, because our contraband control was pretty good, but there were a few memorable ones involving shanks, fist loads and most commonly, flails (a pad lock or several bars of soap in a pillow case.) Several with people who were psychotic, some with full-blown excited delirium.

EE – What lead you to the warrior’s way?

RM – I don’t think I can express how much I despise that word. If you have served as a soldier in a war zone (I haven’t— I have been a soldier and been in a war zone, but not at the same time) you were a warrior. If you have never been a soldier in a war zone, calling yourself a “warrior” is just as despicable as any other type of stolen valour.

I studied martial arts at first to improve myself and then because I loved the training.

I went into a force profession purely to feed my family and discovered I was good at it.

www.corpsglobal.com

Instructing Vs Howling – Garry Smith

I read 2 really good books on my last holiday, ‘Beyond the Picket Fence’ by Marc MacYoung and ‘Principles Based Instruction for Self Defense’ by Rory Miller. Both are packed full of goodies that I intend to use to improve what and how I teach. As you should know by now I am a lifelong autodidact and advocate of continual professional development. Passionate is a word others have used to describe my relationship with learning.

The martial arts and self defence worlds are disparate and diverse and many weird and wonderful things exist there. There are plenty of opinionated, if not always necessarily informed, people out their including some who love to voice their opinions on social media. A recurring topic that always amuses me is discussion, criticism, whatever of peoples ability to teach _______ (insert style/art).

Very often those commenting teach by virtue of having gained a black belt in _______ (insert style/art). They have no knowledge of pedagogy (the method and practice of teaching children), or andragogy (the method and practice of teaching adults).

Before we go further I am not in any way advocating that every black belt complete an honours degree in teaching, far from it, but they should at least explore a little on the subject and not just assume that they can now teach. Most of us have experienced good and bad role models as we trained and we adopt and reject what we like or do not like. Learning ‘on the job’ is important, but teaching others requires more than just observing others.

Very recently I have seen criticisms, including school yard name calling, between childish members of one clique of members of another clique escalating to threats and challenges to fight. Its not the first time. Basically each group criticises what, sometimes how, the others teach. Basically its a cyber monkey dance and the Howler Monkeys are making themselves heard. Sadly it is mostly noise lacking in substance as their emotions override what little critical ability they posses.

Is it necessary, no. Is it entertaining, hell yes, its a car crash on the web and its live. The thing is there are too many in our industry with closed minds. The have reached the top (in their opinion), they are black belts and often a good number of dan grades too, they are instructors who run their own club and have their own students. The king and his subjects (its nearly always men btw). Unhealthy.

I teach, I am a 4th dan, I have a great instructor team, we regularly discuss variations on techniques, we regularly show each other different ways of showing things, share teaching tips. It a group of open minded people and a very health atmosphere exists where we learn of one another and the students. We all share the desire to get better at what we do. Healthy.

To this end we are writing our version of the instructor development course that I helped Rory to write, we have delivered it 3 times in recent years and each has been a learning exercise. So I have drafted an outline, take a look;

Ju Jitsu Instructor Development Course (JJIDC)

Instructor – Noun – A person who teaches someone.

This JJIDC course is for those people who would like to become instructors in Ju Jitsu and acceptance onto the JJIDC will be at the discretion of the senior instructors. The training will combine dojo based training and online based learning activities. The criteria for passing the course will be clear to all and support and feedback will be provided.

The classroom activities will be assessed using continual assessment in class and the online component will have testing built into the individual units and modules with progression dependent on achieving the set pass rate.

There will be three strands:

  • Junior Instructor – This is open to junior Black Belts.

  • Assistant Instructor – This will be open to seniors from Blue Belt.

  • Instructor – This will be open to senior Dan Grades.

The online course is currently being constructed and we are writing the full instructor course first then working backwards to assistant and then junior, we currently have 5 modules each with 6 units with inbuilt testing. It is pretty ambitious but with the people we have around us we are confident we can do this.

Why go to all this trouble, why not? Its about being professional in our approach, it is about setting high standards, it is to enable us to provide the best possible learning experience and it is what, ultimately, sets us apart from the howler monkeys.

Having a black belt does not make anyone a teacher, it never has. Being a teacher does not make you a black belt. Being either a black belt or a teacher is a particular set of skills and each set exists on a continuum with excellent at one end and terrible on the other. Using this as a model we can see the following:

A is an excellent black belt and excellent teacher.

B is an excellent black belt but terrible teacher.

C is a terrible black belt but excellent teacher.

D is a terrible black belt and terrible teacher.

A few people are naturally an A, unfortunately many are a D, the rest of us are somewhere in between. Of course most of us would like to be A, many think they are, especially the Howler Monkeys. The thing is there are lots of different instructor courses out there but there is no overall quality control, no gold standard. So its time to step up and see what we can do, its a challenge but an interesting one. Anyone interested in chipping in please do either by commenting below or emailing me. First we are focussing on our Ju Jitsu instructors so that we can be better as a unit but the basics and principles are universal.

So ignoring the noise in the jungle we will quietly focus on our continual professional development with the ultimate aim of improving our students learning experience. Meanwhile out in social media land the Howler Monkeys will continue upping the volume with little regard to substance. Life goes on.

PS. Male howler monkeys are famed for their deep, powerful roars, which are among the loudest noises made by terrestrial animals, and may help them compete with other males. But, alas, species with the most developed vocal organs also tend to have smaller testicles.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28380-howler-monkeys-have-to-choose-between-big-balls-and-big-bawls/

6 Takeaways from 20 Years in the Trenches – Andy Fisher

It was my first day on the job. I was kneeling on the perps head in side control and the hatchet he had charged at me with was lying a few feet away.

It was more luck, than chance that had made me turn when I did; a second later and it would have been too late. Maybe, subconsciously, I heard the collective intake of breath from the others who were watching the attack unfold. Maybe it was some ancient instinct that told me shit was going down. All I know was that I turned back from writing on the whiteboard to see all the other kids in the class staring open-mouthed, while Mike pranked the trainee teacher.

It was almost the end of a beautiful career – I sent for the Deputy Principal, ignored Mike’s wails of protest and continued my lesson on the use of the semi-colon without the photocopied worksheets that were sitting on my desk. Even though the hatchet was, it turned out, a blunt prop from the Drama department, I was pretty sure that this kid was about to be expelled and I was going to be applauded for my courage and restrained use of force. Instead, I was reprimanded, had to arrange a meeting with Mike’s parents to apologise and was told in no uncertain terms that the remainder of my placement would be contingent upon not assaulting any more of the students in my care!

That was my introduction to the world of teaching back in 1995 and, against all the odds, I am still in the trenches and trying to make a difference. It is a job I love and, while some days it feels like I am trying to pass kidney stones while running through a stand-up routine and completing my tax returns between sets, I wouldn’t trade for any other career on the planet.

Teaching matters and a good teacher does far more than beat the finer points of grammar into future generations. If you want to do the job well it is a demanding, exhausting and unforgiving career which takes a lifetime to master. There is a reason why those in education must undertake postgraduate training before they can teach in their subject of expertise. You can be the world’s best doctor, gymnast or martial artist, but that doesn’t mean you will automatically be a great teacher too. Teaching is a craft which requires more than lip service, and that’s why I get a little pissed off when I see half-assed dojo delivery or Grandmasters preening their egos, without the first clue of how to inspire their students to realise their own potential.

If self-protection instructors were to invest just a fraction of the time into developing their skills as a coach, as they do in perfecting their combative techniques, the industry would be so much better off. Students would progress faster and enjoy their training more, while instructors would have more faith in their curriculum and provide learning opportunities congruent with their professed reasons for teaching in the first place.

So, what pearls of wisdom have I gleaned from more than two decades as a front-line educator? Well, let’s assume that we are starting from a position of subject matter expertise, rather than open that can of worms! Here are some of the considerations I try to transpose from the classroom to my own self-protection seminars and training classes.

Be the Guide on the Side

First, aim to be the ‘Guide on the Side’ rather than the ‘Sage on the Stage’. Just because an expert is able to demonstrate a skill and lecture in granular detail about the finer technical points needed to replicate it, it does not follow that anything has been learned. This is the fundamental flaw I see in poor coaching – the assumption that we learn by being shown; in reality we learn by doing, experimenting, playing and refining from experience. There will, of course, be a phase of instruction that will be didactic but as a rule of thumb, the learning occurs once the teacher stops talking and the students try to meet the drill objectives – assuming they know what they are!

Fail to plan, Plan to Fail

Unless a coach has a clearly defined set of goals, objectives and a lesson outline that will allow them to meet those objectives, the training will always be sub-optimal. The reason teachers find planning so frustrating is because it is bloody hard! It requires a real clarity of thought and a toolbox of training methodologies. The reason why McDojos have their students march up and down in rows, mindlessly repeating paint-by-number motor-patterns is because that is the fast food equivalent of a nutritious educational experience. It is easily replicated, requires little explanation and looks like work is being done. If the objective is to get a little fitter, learn to obey authority unquestioningly and earn a new belt every few months, the training protocol is entirely fit for purpose, otherwise it’s just empty calories and clever marketing.

Use the Right Framework

A decent teacher doesn’t adopt a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach because we are not all one size…or one build, one height…you get the idea. In truth, the best teaching model I have come across is 1:1 Socratic mentoring, but this is not a business model that scales. Instead a decent self-protection instructor needs to find an approach that doesn’t just produce lines of clones who will succeed to the degree that their attributes happen to mimic their sensei. For those of you familiar with motor-learning pedagogy, you may have picked up the buzz of ‘constraints-led coaching’ and ‘principle-based learning’? While I haven’t the time or space to outline these methodologies here, I would encourage you to look into them if you are not already using them in your practice.

Peter Jones

Peter Jones has been training for over twenty-seven years, starting at aged eleven. He has amassed a number of grades including six dan grades and was instructor of the year for an international organisation in 2007.

He now heads the Kajuen Ryu, the Orchard School of Martial arts which is based in Worcestershire, England, and has a strong pragmatic focus.

Pete was able to continue training through university and finds his professional role as a specialist emergency nurse mutually complimentary with pragmatic martial arts (although not so much the shifts!)

 

Angela Meyer

Angela is a seasoned teacher of Yoga, Budokon and Self Defense. Her vision is to utilize movement as a modality for lasting change, healing and transformation. As a leader in the Women’s Self Defense Movement, she inspires women to be physically strong and safe, while also creating paradigm shifts in how we see ourselves in the world. She believes in pushing students out of their comfort zone in order to mirror back their resilience to rise.

She leads Yoga Teacher Trainings, Yoga classes, Women’s Self Defense workshops, corporate events, privates and kids training throughout the DMV area. Aside from her Movement background, she has a Masters of Divinity, is a certified End of Life Care Counselor, studied Buddhist chaplaincy through the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, and worked for 12 years at Joseph’s House AIDS hospice. She is a competitive Martial Artist in Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu and MMA. She also knows every 80s Monster Ballad and loves craft beer. ​​


Angela’s website