Part Two: Instructors: Buy or Build (Second of a Three-Part Series)

Wait a minute! Buy or build, what do you mean? I can imagine some people are saying just that right about now. I promise, I’ll explain!

Part one talked about the differences between the two main types of instructional staff and even touched on the term sensei. Part two’s only talking about instructors and how you get them. You can hire them from outside sources (Buy) or you can train them yourself (Build) from your own students. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages; it’s up to you to decide which you want. I’ll talk about just a few.

First, if you don’t run a martial arts school and you’re not a martial artist and you don’t know any martial artists, you need to learn a martial art first. If you do run a martial arts school or you are a martial artist, this is decision time. Do you really want to run a martial arts business or will it just be a club where a bunch of people get together, hangout, and do some martial arts? If you want a social club, this can help. If you want a business, pay attention.

Instructor qualifications are critical. Decide on the goals of your business, layout what you need, and fill that instructor position to further your business goals. So, what are good qualifications for a martial arts instructor? Simply put, the instructor has to be at level where he or she can teach, usually a black belt but some arts (like Brazilian Jiujitsu) have instructors as low as Blue Belt; he or she has to be able to successfully transfer knowledge form instructor to students, yes plural you don’t want a private instructor as your primary instructor for a business; he or she has to be able to develop lessons and use standards to guide the program. In other blog posts (here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.), I’ve talked about some of the ways to develop lessons and program schedules.

Now, how can you evaluate an alleged instructor to know if they’re telling you the truth or if they’re sunshine salesmen? The truth is, like any employee you don’t know in advance, it’s very difficult. I suggest having them tryout and run a class to show you their instructional style. When you interview them, ask them to bring sample lesson plans or training programs they’ve developed, especially if they’ve implemented them and can tell you about how well the plans actually worked. Question them about their philosophy of instruction for youth and adults (a hint: if they say they’re the same, they’re the wrong people to hire!). Of course, check their credentials with the right sources (national or international governing bodies, previous schools, even martial arts fora like Bullshido, JudoForum, and others).

So, the meat of the post is buying or building, what is best? What is the difference? Buying is basically hiring someone you didn’t teach at all and having them teach your martial arts classes. Building is training someone to be an instructor for you and hiring them to teach your martial arts classes. Let’s talk about those a bit more in depth.

Buying an instructor is an ideal solution for the first time martial arts school owner who doesn’t know much or can’t teach but has the money to start a business. In this case, you can hire a qualified and competent instructor to teach the classes while you handle the background aspects. Unfortunately, if you hire an instructor like John Kreese from The Karate Kid (that’s the bad sensei), you’ll end up with a lot of injuries and probably some lawsuits. Or, perhaps you hire someone who’s made up their own martial art (this happens a lot in the U.S.). Either way, eventually your reputation will be ruined. Sometimes, you’ll need to buy an instructor to teach something you can’t, say a competitive class for national and international level competitors or maybe to add a martial art (like adding Brazilian Jiujitsu or Karate if you don’t teach them) to your school’s offerings.

Building an instructor takes a long time. Even if they started somewhere else and are almost ready to teach. The biggest reason it takes so long is because you have to know how to teach people how to teach (that looks repetitive, but it’s not). If you can teach people to teach, you also have to teach them the way things need to be done in your school and, most importantly, WHY! I’m a big believer in understanding why things are done a certain way because, if you know why, you can modify everything to accomplish the task without sacrificing the underlying character of the school or yourself and the student learns what they are supposed to learn. If your school has been around long enough, you should be building your own instructors pretty easily, but if it’s newer, it’s hard.

Again, building or buying is your choice. Think about what you need, whether you can provide it, and whether what you want is available at a price you’re willing to pay. Then make your decision.

Part One: Instructional Staff

Part three: Coaches: What do you need?

Let me know what you think of this idea, post in the comments below or e-mail! Don’t forget to like the Roswell and New Mexico Military Institute Judo Clubs on Facebook!

Drilling and Sequencing

This year has been a very busy year for me with judo. I recently made Third Degree Black Belt and earned certification as a National Level Coach, both of which through the United States Judo Association. I'm also teaching a lot of judo at New Mexico Military Institute and my own Roswell Judo Club. It's been very busy.

I noticed, after looking at what people are visiting most on my blog, that a bunch of people want information on how to develop lessons or plan classes. I think that's absolutely great! I'll put some more ideas up on that next week, but this week let's talk about drilling and sequencing.

Almost everybody I've known who teaches judo or jiujitsu knows what drills are. Quite a few know how to teach drills. Unfortunately not many people use drills as effectively as they could. I can hear it now, "I've been teaching or using drills for years, what do you mean I'm not using them effectively?"

I'm not saying that you're doing it wrong, I'm just trying to show how I use drills and that's through sequencing. Gerald Lafon (where I heard the term first) and several others call it shaping. Two basic styles of sequencing are forward and backward. The idea behind sequencing is to drill a group of logically linked techniques so you can practice like you'll perform.

Let me give you an example, last weekend at the NMMI Judo Club we started the weekend by drilling both the Figure-4 and Half-Nelson turnovers continuing into yoko shiho gatame. That's a pretty basic drill, but it limits the practical application because we don't look at any counters or continuations. The turtle position is fairly common which makes this attack something to know if you have to attack the turtle, but what if you are the one in the turtle, to quote the television show "Alice" and its cook, Mel, "The best defense is a good offense!" With that in mind we added a morote gari as an attack from the turtle, but, because a morote gari tends to have tori end up in guard, we continued with a basic guard pass and transition to side control.  Maybe you've noticed that, so far, the techniques ended in a side control position. There's a reason for that! 

I don't really believe in escaping in a tournament/competition setting because, once you escape and the referee stands you up, you've given your opponent another chance to win the match! I believe in getting out of a technique by transitioning to another position, preferably one where you're on top and in control.

Now, for the reason for the finish in side control: I learned a fairly simple escape/transition to a triangle from side control when I was at Gary Goltz's club in September! Once we learned how to perform and did a few isolated drills on the transition, we started linking the various turtle attacks (from both the top position and the bottom position) all the way through the transition from side control to the triangle to the tap.

If you drill and don't sequence, you are missing out on a big way to improve your and your students' performance. If you can't figure a good sequence out, I'll be happy to offer some suggestions, just drop me a message!

I have a few ideas about a way to give students references better than the standard videos or books. Unfortunately I lack sufficient talent to craft those references. If you know anyone that's good at computer animations and likes judo, would you let them know about this opportunity!