Tuesday's Program

Teaching two tracks is challenging when there's only one instructor on the mat but sometimes that's the situation you find yourself in. Dave is not available today and Nigel is out of the country. But training goes on.

I could easily say, today we will have just one track and everyone does the same thing. But that would be taking the easy way out. With a little creativity and a lot of planning, it's possible to have two tracks (grading training and competition training) so that your players are better served.

First of all, it helps if you know who exactly is coming for training. On paper, we should know because we use an app-based booking system where players are supposed to indicate the days they will be attending training sessions.

There are a few players who like to wait until the very last moment to do their booking. It could be that some of them might not know if their schedule permits but that's usually not the case. Usually, it's just plain old procrastination.

Of course those who do last-minute booking will still be allowed to participate but they will just have to tag along and do whatever has been planned for those who did bother to do a booking.

When I plan a class, I don't just think in terms of what to teach and what drills the players should be doing but also who their training partner for the day should be. There may be two broad groups (grading and competition) but I try to customize the training down to the individual.


This is particularly so with the competition players, who do require individual attention but in some cases this is needed for players training for grading too. A person could be particularly weak in a specific technique. If so, I would ask them to spend more time on that technique and identify the best person to be their partner for that exercise.

So, knowing who is coming is important for my planning. It serves the player well for them to let me know in advance if they are coming for training. But not all do that. It's their loss. The ones who want to benefit more for each training session will book in advance because they understand that is how they will get training customized to their needs.