Matching Teaching style to Developmental Level

[Chris McKinley]

In contrast to my most recent example of teaching style mismatch above, I believe that one of the reasons that TMA systems have lost and are losing so many students through attrition to MMA schools is that MMA schools by and large are not hindered by and do not perpetuate cultural trappings that inhibit learning that are unfortunately so common in TMA schools, especially among Chinese styles.

Comparison of tactical content aside for now, it's relevant that in the typical MMA school, the atmosphere is much more user-friendly to the absolute beginner and the complete uninitiate. Principles, theories, metaphors, and other higher-order symbolic language are not introduced until at least well after the learner is put to work actually doing something for a while. MMA schools as a rule do not traffic much in theoretical language, if at all, until such a time as the learner has so much direct experience that mentioning such principles, theories and metaphors is self-apparent and bordering on being so obvious as to be unnecessary to mention.

From the time a brand new learner walks into the MMA gym, he is directed in very plain English exactly what to do, how to do it, and when to do it, and he's put to work immediately in the repeated doing of it. He isn't burdened with anything else to consider or to try and integrate into his understanding. It's the K.I.S.S. principle in action, with emphasis on a high percentage of actually doing it and little talking about doing it. For people at the D1 level of understanding and development, this is absolutely ideal.

As the new MMA student progresses and becomes familiar with the general routine and format of class structure, he begins to slowly develop just enough skill that he's now able to begin not just learning, but practicing what he's learned. At this stage, the D2 stage, he's ready for more of a Coaching style of teaching. He's learned enough that he doesn't need his hand held on absolutely everything, but he still needs plenty of very specific guidance as to how to steer this newly built vessel of skill toward further correct progress. At this stage, a coach is of far more value to the learner than an inscrutable font of esoterica, aka, the classic shifu-style teacher, and MMA gyms are usually crawling with coaches.

Granted, at higher levels of learner development, D3 and especially D4, it gets harder and harder to find MMA instructors with the quality of insight, experience and teaching ability to allow the advanced MMA practitioner to continue to develop at the same rate of progress, but that is universally true of any endeavor and certainly not any more true than one finds in TCMA. However, the glaring difference is that, with the MMA route, a higher percentage per capita of learners actually reach the D3 and D4 stages of development in functional skill and understanding of MMA than their counterparts in TCIMA, for instance.

Yes, it may be argued that the level of mastery required to reach especially the D4 stage in IMA is much more complex and minute than what is needed to reach that corresponding level in MMA, but the fact remains that per capita, far more MMA learners reach well into the D2 stage with not only understanding but functional skill development than occurs in IMA, and that they do so years in advance of that equivalent level of functional skill in IMA. This is the absolute take-home lesson of this particular example, dear readers.

If we were to allow this lesson to inform the way in which we go about teaching and training IMA for actual, functional, demonstrable combat skill, and we didn't have to worry about upsetting or violating traditional belief about teaching method, what might we do differently in structuring our class formats?

[Chris McKinley]

Anybody interested in taking a crack at how re-callibrating teaching style with developmental level of the students might also re-invigorate the practice of CMA/IMA in the West as functional fighting arts (assuming anybody cares about that)?

[dragonprawn]

Chris,

Thanks for this - i have no problems with this model. I think I have benn doing this naturally for some time (that is adjusting my instruction to their accomplishment and needs).

Sometimes I work with another instructor at my teacher's school and, to put in in the terms of this model, he always directs. This is probably the main reason that students further along don't appredciate his input. I adjust to this by trying to "sick him on the newbies" as much as possible. This usually works because they are a receptive audience and can take up much of his time - leaving me free to assist the others.

In my own group at the college I get so many people trying it out that I let my most experienced student help others. Or sometimes he works alone with very little input from me. I thought I might be ignoring him too much. Seeing him as a D4 helps!

[Chris McKinley]

Glad to have been of help. I'm glad others are finding some value in this model as well. I've used it to solve a number of style-related personnel management issues in the business world, and in the world of combat training, especially in cases where there are foreign and/or jargonistic terms liberally used, it's been golden. Sometimes students just need the right amount of help at the right time to make big breakthroughs or at least impressively quick progress. The biggest obstacles to such experimentation that I have routinely seen are a lack of curiosity about what more could be accomplished and an almost unthinking, slavish adherence to cultural beliefs that are never objectively questioned or compared.

[Chris McKinley]

TTT

Anybody interested in taking a crack at how re-callibrating teaching style with developmental level of the students might also re-invigorate the practice of CMA/IMA in the West as functional fighting arts (assuming anybody cares about that)?

[Eric_H]

Hello Chris,

I've really enjoyed this thread as I think it outlines not only one of the major struggles I've had in my martial arts career, but also what I have seen in several of my sihingdai attempting to open/run commercial kwoons. As with anything the law of percentages shows how successful both a teacher and a system are. And, as you've stated, MMA schools are typically getting a larger percentage of their student base to whatever their ceiling might be, whereas many CMA kwoons are not. My only suggestions about training in what you've called the D1 and D2 stages would be:

d1) Don't talk. As a teacher, one of the most common mistakes I see other teachers make is talking too much. Heavy emphasis on movement, high cardio (many people come to schools simply looking to get in better shape) and attitude are necessary. Don't tell people how to do it, show them how, demonstrate on them. I'll never forget the first time my first teacher threw me, my thought process was exactly: "Holy sh*t! Ouch, how the hell did he do that? I want to be able to do that!" Which is a great thing for beginners to feel, it instills confidence in the trainer and motivates them to chase the skill.

d2) Give mild leadership responsibilities to a student in front of their juniors. This can be as simple as having them lead footwork drills, forms, etc. They get to see how far they've come and it makes them feel good to be considered "leadership material" by their trainer. It's a simple cookie that tends to keep people around/help out with their confidence. I've also found that by assigning them a "buddy" with the intent to train a specific skill for a period of time will help, because most people won't want to let their "buddy" down. Example would be "Bob, you're good at X, and Steve is good at Y. I want Steve to teach you to be better and Y and you teach him to be better at X. You're both going to have to do them in sparring against senior student Bill one month from now, get cracking."

The more we can do to get more people to fight functional and visibly doing it in the community, the better the reputation of CMA will be.

[Bhassler]

A couple of thoughts in no particular order...

RE: Tradition and cultural biases
Cultural biases can take many forms, including many that are not imported along with any particular art. Some of the very best guys in my area are former military, including special forces, or are self taught in many areas of their life (my own teacher taught himself English and Calculus while sitting in the snow in Mongolia with a math book listening to Voice of America). All these guys are extremely self-motivating, and just have no connection with folks of lesser determination. Whether they don't understand how to motivate others or simply think it's not their job, often the underlying belief is "I figured it out with less information than I'm giving to you, so if you aren't getting it then you just aren't trying." This is just one example, and an astute observer could probably pick out many others.

As far as the jargon and things that are imported many times with the art, there are certain concepts that don't have a close corollary in the english language as well as things that are not very easily or satisfactorily described by the western scientific model. Emergent fields like Systems Theory may eventually make a good run at it, but even so that's not necessarily something that can be translated from words to practice effectively. How many hours have you spent studying things like neurophysiology or NLP that allows you to understand biological and mental processes that you see in students? Those are tools that most teachers don't have any clue about, either in terms of what they are or even that they exist. So, while it's true that part of the problem with traditional MA is that the skills of teaching are not respected as being equally as important to a professional as the skills of kicking ass, part of the problem is also that teaching this stuff can present some inherent challenges that many teachers don't even have the tools to frame as a source of difficulty, let alone know how to solve. (Not that you've denied it, I just wanted to acknowledge that many teachers stuck in the "that's the way my teacher did it" mold are there for a good and valid reason, that being that they honestly don't know no better.)

RE: Teaching MMA vs. TCIMA
Part of the difficulty in teaching IMA vs MMA (or EMA in general) is that MMA already matches the cultural paradigm from which the majority of students are drawn, whereas IMA does not. Just watch any action movie to see the proof. The good guys are always stronger and tougher, and generally win by hitting the bad guys in the face harder and more often than they themselves get hit. The prevalent belief in the US at least is still "no pain, no gain." To be effective, IMA requires at least a temporary suspension of that mindset so the student can learn a different mode of operation in the physical world. Combine this with an inherent difficulty in presenting new concepts and modes of operation to replace the old due to differences and/or deficiencies in the language (or even the linguistic framework itself), and it is understandable how difficulties and misunderstandings arise.

RE: State dependent learning
Thanks for the elucidation of state dependent learning. Why is it that some learning is more persistent than others regardless of state? For instance, very few people will knowingly touch fire regardless of stress levels, yet examples of martial artists losing all vestiges of their training are commonplace even under the comparatively mild duress of a sparring competition. Can learning be structured so that native contextualization is only minimally necessary, or perhaps necessary only to a much milder extent than it's true native context?

[Chris McKinley]

Eric H,

I'm glad the thread has been helpful. I like the general tenor of your recommendations. Too much talk, especially about theory and principles, is a hallmark of IMA training at every level of development, but is especially confusing and distracting to uninitiate learners who need more than anything else to set a foundation of a volume of reference experience before any of these high-minded esoteric (from their point of view) principles will have any meaning in the real functional world.


Giving students a chance to teach, IME, is generally best somewhere between the D2 and D3 levels of development. Until the student is actually able to relate to the principles from direct personal experience, preferably lots of it, he has no business teaching others about them. In fact, that goes for any instructor of any level with regard to teaching the principles.

Your buddy system is a good idea so long as the partners aren't acting out power jockeying and are giving purely objective feedback. Even with such a system in place, though, the actual direction should be coming primarily from a qualified instructor. If not, there is an inherent risk of abdicating the responsibility for teaching to the students wholesale. Don't get me wrong....students can learn a great deal from each other and from the act of teaching. However, the final arbiter of technical advice should still come from the instructor directly to prevent the students from having to reinvent the wheel or from unknowingly wiring-in dangerously wrong information. It all depends on the material being worked, of course.

[Chris McKinley]

Bhassler,

RE: "All these guys are extremely self-motivating, and just have no connection with folks of lesser determination. Whether they don't understand how to motivate others or simply think it's not their job, often the underlying belief is "I figured it out with less information than I'm giving to you, so if you aren't getting it then you just aren't trying."". Such people usually make very poor instructors. Being unable to relate to your students is pretty much a dealbreaker if you're thinking about becoming a teacher. They're also commonly completely self-absorbed with their own progress and frankly don't care about whether or not others progress. They're better as inspirational role models instead.

RE: "As far as the jargon and things that are imported many times with the art, there are certain concepts that don't have a close corollary in the english language as well as things that are not very easily or satisfactorily described by the western scientific model.". The latter is debatable, but the point is certainly taken. IOW, there are inherent and at least partially unavoidable difficulties teaching certain kinds of material, so we have all the more reason to optimize what we can of the process.

RE: "many teachers stuck in the "that's the way my teacher did it" mold are there for a good and valid reason, that being that they honestly don't know no better.)". That is certainly the primary reason. People generally do what they know to do, not necessarily what is best to do. In fact, they'll often continue to do it even when they know there's a better way, especially if they don't know how to incorporate that better way. You see it as much in sport coaching and parenting as you do in martial arts. That's what I was getting at when I wrote, "Many instructors are only taught one way of teaching, so that's all they know. However erroneous or maladapted to the current circumstances of their students, they continue with that method because they have no other alternative methods to draw from.".

RE: "Part of the difficulty in teaching IMA vs MMA (or EMA in general) is that MMA already matches the cultural paradigm from which the majority of students are drawn, whereas IMA does not.". Yep, that seems to be the case. Though much of what doesn't match is not so much a matter of content but of style of presentation. What the content is "couched" in, IOW. MMA could be esotericized, with a resulting loss of integrity of transmission. Eventually, it might come to resemble IMA's overall lack of combat functionality here in the U.S.

Conversely, at least to an extent, the IMA could be given a presentation overhaul such that the material was given its former status as a body of fighting skills first and foremost, and the lofty and scholarly esoterica could be put on the backburner. Students could be given lots of time right off the bat spent doing the business of learning to fight with IMA instead of bullshitting themselves and successive generations with excuses of having to build at least ten years of shen fa first or else it will spoil the pudding. It's amazing what regularly getting bopped in the nose will do for accelerating your functional fighting ability.

[Chris McKinley]

RE: "Why is it that some learning is more persistent than others regardless of state? For instance, very few people will knowingly touch fire regardless of stress levels, yet examples of martial artists losing all vestiges of their training are commonplace even under the comparatively mild duress of a sparring competition.". Because one is a simplistic survival reaction that has been in place hundreds of thousands of years before humans were humans and does not require any conscious awareness, and the other is utterly dependent upon the complex cognitive processes provided only by a cerebral cortex.

RE: "Can learning be structured so that native contextualization is only minimally necessary, or perhaps necessary only to a much milder extent than it's true native context?". When it comes to combat skills relevant to life-threatening violence, IME, the answer is a resounding "Mostly No". Obviously, one does not have to engage in the kind of actual combat where one of the trainees dies in order to work the skills correctly. But we're a long ways away from having to worry that maybe our contextualizing training is getting just a bit too intense. The problem is of course quite the opposite, which is a giant reason why we see so little functional fighting ability in the IMA among its average practitioners.

[DeusTrismegistus]

My teacher pretty much follows that model although I am certain he has never heard of it.

I think the biggest problem if you are looking at CMA and teaching style carrying over into effectiveness is that of talking too much. It is something I am guilty of too sometimes. Its easy to get caught explaining more than is necessary or carried away in the hows and whys of something and before you know it you lost valuable training time. Talking will never replace getting in there and doing and no matter how good someone can talk it doesn't mean crap if they can't do it. Personally forms to me don't count as doing it. If you can't do something with someone at least trying to lightly punch you in the face then you don't know it.

Regarding a traditional and cultural bias, I am lucky that my teacher has never used chinese terminology, and realized that he must change his teaching not just with different students but with the times as well. Honestly the way I was taught as a kid is completely different than the way the kids are taught today, because kids today are not the same as when I was a child, and I am only 25.

As to withholding info, I think there is a difference between deliberately withholding something a student can use and benefit from, and not telling them something because they are not ready for it. If I tried to teach a new student everything I know about a simple drill we do every class it would only confuse them and they would never retain it anyways. If a student can't align their wrist properly there is no way I can teach them the nuances of developing power in their punches.

I think people think about teaching as only showing people something new. That if your time spent with a teacher isn't being told something you didn't know or doing something you never did before then you aren't learning. Really teaching is as much about getting in time doing in a way that is continuously engaging and consistent. You will never get good doing something different every class for 5 years. But do 10 things every class for 2 years and you will get good at it, then you have been taught something.

[Chris McKinley]

Insightful post, Deus. At the risk of sounding like I'm patting myself on the back, this thread's posters have advanced the conversation on this general topic a lot more than I've seen in recent years. To me, reading the rational thoughts of thinking people applying their intelligence to the subject of martial training in ways that open up that training to new potentials of progress instead of just blindly and vapidly parroting the traditional party line represents some of the best of what any internet martial arts forum is designed for. If we're not sharing objectively useful information with each other that improves each other's training and performance, we're basically just a water cooler or a knitting circle.

RE: "It is something I am guilty of too sometimes. Its easy to get caught explaining more than is necessary or carried away in the hows and whys of something and before you know it you lost valuable training time.". Mea freaking culpa. True as hell and, without self-regulation, I can be one of the worst offenders. If I have the luxury of really explaining something, such as in a private lesson, I'll do it. However, if that same student is also able to attend a group training of mine, especially if it's of a more intense professional variety, they're occasionally surprised at the difference in teaching style. I say as little as possible, keep everybody "doing", and if they stop to talk off-topic they get a warning. Next time they're either asked to choose either training or leaving. With certain groups, they don't get a second chance, they get a surprise hit. Unfortunately, you really can't do that with the public at large....more's the pity.

RE: "If you can't do something with someone at least trying to lightly punch you in the face then you don't know it.". You're too generous. IMO, if you can't do it with someone trying to hit you full on then you don't know it.

RE: "Honestly the way I was taught as a kid is completely different than the way the kids are taught today, because kids today are not the same as when I was a child, and I am only 25.". Yeah, things are quite a bit different than they were in the 70's when I started. Today, if they allowed minors to participate in the same kind of full-contact stuff we did regularly back then, they'd be raided and arrested for all sorts of crimes and years of lawsuits would follow.

RE: "As to withholding info, I think there is a difference between deliberately withholding something a student can use and benefit from, and not telling them something because they are not ready for it.". Amen. The utter incompetence that is exemplified by the former is endemic to our arts and deserves a nice big helping of blame for why nobody can fight. Put undiplomatically, almost nobody in IMA in the U.S. is teaching people how to fight, whether or not any of them are intending to. Sure, they're teaching people shen fa, forms, tradition, terminology, varying degrees of good posture, maybe some sensitivity in some cases, and some good old-fashioned hard-work ethic in most cases.

All good things. But I can count on one hand the number of IMA instructors I'd consider even marginally qualified to teach professionals how to not get dead in da realz, and even then, most of them have no idea what to do outside of the domain of empty hands. If I'm being generous, that number might expand to a couple of handfuls if we're talking guys who can teach average citizens to get home safe from a real life-threatening assault on the way home. At current, I'd label absolutely no one among IMA instructors (myself not even qualified to be in the running) who are fully capable of training up sport combat fighters to compete on a truly equal basis with even top-level amateur fighters in the MMA arena. Not one. Granted, IMA instructors are self-admittedly not training anyone for that specific purpose, but my point is that not one of us is even capable of it even if we wanted to. Kind of a sad commentary on the state-of-the-art overall.

Our arts and their practitioners need a huge kick in the pants, whether figuratively or literally, to get them even valuing the ability to actually fight again. After that rude awakening, it's going to take years of open-mindedness, experimentation, and stepping outside of the loyalty comfort-zone in training methodology before it can ever honestly be said again that IMA, as practiced here, are truly viable as fighting arts. Nevermind entertaining any notions of IMA as being legitimate viable alternatives on the basis of pure functionality to the MMA approach. As they say around these parts sometimes....that horse done already rode off.

[Chris McKinley]

Deus,

RE: "I think people think about teaching as only showing people something new. That if your time spent with a teacher isn't being told something you didn't know or doing something you never did before then you aren't learning. Really teaching is as much about getting in time doing in a way that is continuously engaging and consistent. You will never get good doing something different every class for 5 years. But do 10 things every class for 2 years and you will get good at it, then you have been taught something.". That is such an absolute goldmine that it deserves at the very least a separate response.

RE: "That if your time spent with a teacher isn't being told something you didn't know or doing something you never did before then you aren't learning.". The problem with that is that it's actually true. Learning, per se, is accurately defined that way. The real problem is that folks don't understand that learning is only part of the process. You've got to then practice what you've learned and further, in the case of combat skills, you have to then contextualize it.

RE: "Really teaching is as much about getting in time doing in a way that is continuously engaging and consistent.". That's a good description of what happens when someone is continuously checking back and forth between learning, practicing and contextualizing. I often use a custom race car analogy. A guy builds a car in his garage...basic chassis, power train, four wheels and a steering wheel. It ain't pretty but it's functional...or is it? To find out, he takes it for a basic ride around the track, nothing too fast or fancy, just to see if the thing will get him from A to B. With a foundation of good solid mechanical engineering, it does. Basic level success.

Next, he decides to start adding things to it and modifying it, so he takes it back to the shop. More powerful transmission, better brakes, a change in the steering ratio. With each change he makes, he's got to start with the drawing board, make or at least add the parts, then take the whole thing out to the track for a test spin to see what if any changes in performance his modifications made as well as if they hold up under the pressures of track speed. Typically, it's not perfect the first time on the test track, so he's got to constantly take it back to the shop to tweak it a little more, testing it after each and every tweak.

With each and every change, he's also got to get used to driving a different car. Sure, that compression ratio change to the engine now gives him 50 more horsepower and the mechanics are solid, but he's got to spend quite a few sessions taking the new, more powerful car for test spins around the track before he's as comfortable driving it under pressure as he was before the change. That has nothing to do with the engineering; that's all driver adjustment, but it's just as vital as build quality.

This process of coming up with a new modification to the car, taking the car apart to make the modification, putting it back together correctly, taking it out for a test spin on the actual track, taking it back to the shop for tweaks, and test driving it again is all vital to ending up with a high-performance custom car that's mechanically sound and that which the driver is intimately familiar with driving masterfully. This is, essentially, exactly the same process used in becoming a competent and functional fighter under the most difficult conditions if you're having to start from scratch. The best fighters are tinkerers, every bit as much as custom race car builders, and the learning, integrating, honing and testing process is a never-ending cycle of experimentation and improvement.

[DeusTrismegistus]

All good things. But I can count on one hand the number of IMA instructors I'd consider even marginally qualified to teach professionals how to not get dead in da realz, and even then, most of them have no idea what to do outside of the domain of empty hands. If I'm being generous, that number might expand to a couple of handfuls if we're talking guys who can teach average citizens to get home safe from a real life-threatening assault on the way home. At current, I'd label absolutely no one among IMA instructors (myself not even qualified to be in the running) who are fully capable of training up sport combat fighters to compete on a truly equal basis with even top-level amateur fighters in the MMA arena. Not one. Granted, IMA instructors are self-admittedly not training anyone for that specific purpose, but my point is that not one of us is even capable of it even if we wanted to. Kind of a sad commentary on the state-of-the-art overall.

Our arts and their practitioners need a huge kick in the pants, whether figuratively or literally, to get them even valuing the ability to actually fight again. After that rude awakening, it's going to take years of open-mindedness, experimentation, and stepping outside of the loyalty comfort-zone in training methodology before it can ever honestly be said again that IMA, as practiced here, are truly viable as fighting arts. Nevermind entertaining any notions of IMA as being legitimate viable alternatives on the basis of pure functionality to the MMA approach. As they say around these parts sometimes....that horse done already rode off.

Actually I am certain my teacher could train MMA fighters if he wanted to. Since he started teaching he has always been very realistic. We push each other into walls and learn how to fight with our backs to the wall, we don't stop for any arbitrary reason like getting to close to each other or something else. We have always worked all ranges of combat from kicking and punching, knees and elbows, grappling and throwing, to G&P and to a lesser extent ground fighting and subs. In the past he has trained people to be san shou champs. He just isn't interested in that right now. I am interested in that but I need a lot of conditioning before I can think of competing in that venue, and a lot more practice with ground game.

As to the learning thing. I guess you are technically correct about having to get something new. However I think people completely undervalue the refinement and efficiency that is learned by doing the same thing many many times. It may not be completely new but your body is still learning how to do a movement better. I am still learning new things about basic movements we do in class after many years of doing them.

I also really like the car analogy. That is very accurate IMO.

[Chris McKinley]

Deus,

RE: "Actually I am certain my teacher could train MMA fighters if he wanted to.". LOL, yeah....I kinda threw that one out there as a bit of a baiting comment in a way in the hopes of dragging some of the posters who might feel similarly about their teachers into the conversational mix. I still believe exactly what I wrote, but I'd love nothing more than to be proved wrong many times over. Even the vaunted Tim Cartmell, arguably the biggest contender to being an exception to my blanket statement, isn't focused 100% on producing top-level amateur MMA fighters. He's got his own competitive career, his teaching, his writing, and his preservation of at least some of his CMA to tend to....all of which take time away from producing champions.

Again, also, I need to reiterate that I'm not even hinting that IMA guys should all be switching over to teaching/fielding amateur MMA fighters. My sole point was that it's just a bit unfortunate that we couldn't even if we wanted to. Your description of your teacher and his training style is encouraging. That's exactly the kind of thing the rest of us should be doing, all thoughts of sportive application aside. Spending years honing shen fa is admirable, but nothing exists in a vacuum. You can't pay Paul without robbing Peter when it comes to apportioning training time, and if you spend all your time developing shen fa or sinking your qi or perfecting your form, you're going to suck as a fighter....no debate possible, and that's what too many of us are doing these days.

RE: "However I think people completely undervalue the refinement and efficiency that is learned by doing the same thing many many times.". Sure they do. That's part and parcel of the instant gratification culture. They miss out on the very personal satisfaction that comes from doing something slightly better, every day, over the long term. Getting people to actually practice something, regardless of the activity, has always been a challenge. Those that will actually follow through have always been rare, percentage-wise. All the more reason that they should be rewarded with the very best teaching skills we can give them and the most learning per-unit-of-time that we can provide. IMA instructors seem to shy away from allowing their students to learn too quickly for fear that if they do, we may run out of material for them to learn.