Developing a Lesson Plan

Last time I discussed creating training plans in general. This time, I’m going to break down developing a lesson guide in specific. I’m going to use my templates (PDF or XLSX). If you have Excel, I suggest downloading the XLSX file (if you don’t have Office 2010, you can still use it, you just have to get the patch from Microsoft to open the file), otherwise use the PDF and hand write out the guide. One more suggestion before we get on to the meat of the project: keep records of your guide it can help for future classes covering the same or similar topics or as necessary in other situations.

 

This is my standard template for my lesson guides. As you can see, at the top, I identify which class. For me the class name is “Roswell Judo Club, Adult Class” (or one of the other classes I run). Below that is the “Class:” section, here I identify what level class, such as Junior 1, Rokyu, or Semester 1, for example. This helps me identify what the group of students is the target for this lesson guide. Finally, for the header section, I identify the date for this lesson. This helps me know when I will teach or have taught this particular lesson. If I have to be away for a lesson or several, this helps the assistant instructor know what the plan for teaching is for whichever day he or she teaches.

Weekly Goals. These are very important. Without goals, as I’m sure most have heard, you haven’t any idea where you’ll go. I only have three weekly goals for any level of student. Three goals, for two to four hours of class a week, are about as many as an instructor or coach can truly impart. Choose the three most important things for your students or athletes for that week. Anything more and you’ll spend more time doing less important activities.

Let me talk about goals for just a minute or two. In judo you have two major types of students: the Competitor and the Non-Competitor. How you treat these two doesn’t matter to me at all. At Roswell Judo Club, we have more students learning about judo rather than competing. This means that most of my lesson guides emphasize learning techniques and practicing rather than developing athletes to win tournaments. You may have the opposite. Whichever direction you go, make sure your goals are appropriate.

Back to Weekly Goals, let’s look at examples of a weekly goal, in my class, the goal for my first semester college students (this week) is learning Kesa Gatame, how to Bridge and Roll Escape from Kesa Gatame. So, for this week, even though we’re off for Labor Day, I have to concentrate their classes on getting into Kesa Gatame from standing, Bridge and Roll, then escape. That means that I shouldn’t concentrate on any one throw, just any throw into Kesa Gatame. Nor should I concentrate on other hold downs. Nor should I concentrate on other escapes than the Bridge and Roll. If I waste what little time I have in class on developing their Seoi Nage or some other throw, then I’m wasting their time and no instructor or coach should do that to their students.

Well, I hate to do this, but I’m going to break this up into three more sections, one on Warm-ups, Ukemi, and Technical Instruction.

What do you think of it so far?

Training Plans

I’ve said before that I’ll write up how to develop a training plan, including calendars and lesson plans. So here we go.

The first thing any club instructor has to do before they think of calendars or lesson plans is to figure out what exactly they want to do and when it has to be accomplished. Because I can’t give you all the possible variables, I’ll tell you what I did and why I did it that way.

My perspective is based on a lack of competitive opportunities within three hours of Roswell, NM. Since there aren’t very many, I’ve decided to concentrate on developing technical proficiency and knowledge with emphasis on developing instructor training for higher levels. I also have a very specific set of promotional requirements for both juniors and seniors (available at http://www.roswell-judo.org/promotion.html). We hold classes on an academic schedule at Roswell Judo Club because of the ease of scheduling for youth, parents, adults, and college students. The academic schedule and the promotional requirements provide the backbone for developing the class calendars.

Each level, from beginner to ikkyu, has a separate calendar because they each have different promotional requirements. Classes are held on specific days and only those days, so every promotional requirement must be covered on those days. While it makes for a lot of initial work for the instructor, it makes future planning and class planning very easy. All of my calendars are online at http://www.roswell-judo.org/promotion.html under each grade.

Once you have your calendar for your time frame, you must have some kind of lesson plan or guide to keep the class moving in the right direction. One thing about lesson plans, really quick, a lesson plan is a guide it should never be seen as a non-adjustable procedure. If you look at it as inflexible, you’ll either rush over something that needs more time or you’ll put too much time on something your students grasp quickly.

Here are the first six days of my lesson guides for my junior beginner class (I'll post those a little later) and my college class (http://roswell-judo.org/ENMUR_Begin_LessonGuide.pdf). As you can see, I identify what class, what level, what day, weekly goals. I further break it down into the three class elements: warm-ups, ukemi, and technical instruction. I like weekly goals because they give me an idea of what is really important for my students’ learning that week.

I use the warm-ups based on the activities to be covered and to develop my students’ conditioning. Ukemi, to me, is one of the most critical elements for judo players. My expectation for my students is that if they get into a tournament and they get into a very dangerous position, some position where the execution will result in bodily harm, I want them to be able to save themselves even if it means losing the match. With such an expectation, I place great emphasis on ukemi training.

Finally, the technical section is where I line out the general flow of technical instruction for the class. In this section I tend to break down the instruction into essential elements when I start teaching the project. Once students have learned the fundamentals of the technique, I tend to bring in greater drill practice and practical application to ensure that not only have the students learned the techniques but can also apply them in randori or shiai.

This is just a brief overview of developing calendars and lesson plans. I’ll put together something on developing lesson plans later on. Calendar programs are all over the place on the internet, but I tend to use http://www.pdfcalendar.com for my preliminary scheduling. After I have the preliminary done, I use Microsoft Publisher because they have an easy calendar creator and it produces a nice, printable calendar that I can print to PDF format which is then easily distributable. For my lesson plans, I use Microsoft Excel which allows me to set up a template that is protected from adjustment of the non-adjustable elements like the name of the class and the names of the segments. The inputable segments are not protected because they change with each class.

So those are the basics of how I create training schedules in the rough. What do you think?

Fall 2011 Judo Sign-ups

We’re going to be very busy this semester. We have four classes, three of which are at the Yucca Center and one is for the cadets at New Mexico Military Institute. So far we have right around 50 students signed up, a little over half of whom are at the Yucca Center.

This semester the college class doubled in size with about four students returning for the class, but most all of them returning for judo. We have a lot of brand new people to martial arts, one with some experience in Brazilian JiuJitsu (and Gracie Combatives), and so far, after four classes, they are all having a great time.

The youth classes are growing slowly and steadily with about half of them being new to judo, although one of the new ones has had a little bit of experience. The others are continuing through, we should have our first Junior 4^th in December as well as a couple of new Junior 3^rd’s. It looks to be a lively time with them.

Our adult classes are growing as well with a healthy dose of brand new students and students mixing in from the college class. We should have a quite a few gaining ranks by the end of the semester, especially considering the amount of hard work they’re putting in.

The NMMI class has a lot of returning cadets, thankfully enough it’s not an exclusively Sunday class this year, instead it’s on Tuesdays and Thursdays (3:30pm to 5:00pm). They should all do nicely. We have a few more sign-ups than the facilities will allow, but we’ll make it work somehow.

Competitively, I don’t expect we’ll send very many to tournament in the fall, but we will probably be sending a few in the spring. I’m hoping to take a few to Dallas in January/February for the Okuri Judo Club’s Lone Star Classic. I’m also hearing tales of NMSU’s Judo Club sponsoring a tournament with the City of Las Cruces in the spring which would be a great place to send students for tournaments, from all four classes!

As for what we’re planning, I’m hoping to hold a coaching clinic, maybe with clinicians that will teach the ever-elusive “Kelly’s Capers,” to bring at least two of my students into the certified coaching fold. Our last clinic, the one in June, brought in 20 participants and was quite well received. (I’m still working on the DVD’s for that, but it turns out that the HD DVD program I have burns Blu-Rays, not DVD’s.) So I expect that the spring clinic should be quite well received.

We’re also looking for a volunteer willing to coordinate fundraising efforts for the club. We still need new mats and if we can come up with the funding for the mats, I’d like to put in a spring loaded floor and have tentative approval for all of that.

And one final announcement, for parents or adults over 16 years old, if you would like to learn Gracie Combatives with us, I’m willing to run the program (no cost) on Tuesdays and Thursday evenings from 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm as long as you’re willing to make a commitment until May to come to practice. The only catch is that I need six people to make that commitment.

Growing Judo in the United States

One of the big concerns I hear a lot online about judo in the United States is its lack of growth. Most of the time, the concerns are expressed in tones of distress as though there’s nothing that can be done to grow judo or that the concerned don’t feel that national organizations are doing enough or are just doing the wrong thing. The lack of growth is a great concern for judo in the U.S. but one of the problems with that line of thinking is that it removes the individual coach from any responsibility for growing judo. That’s the wrong thinking.

The first thing we have to do is develop judo students into good judo players. That means we don’t concentrate on making champions before they are safe. We concentrate on developing their basics like falling, throws, and hold-downs before we teach them how to grip fight or competitive rules and variations. Once they’re safe, then we start teaching them how to randori, maybe “Kelly’s Capers” will help that, and from randori to shiai.

That’s just the first part of growing judo: develop the players. After the players are developed, then we develop the coaches. A good coach knows how to compete and has been on the mat fighting for the win. They know what training has to happen for success. They know how to motivate their fighters in training and on the mat. This is not an easy thing to teach, but it is seriously lacking because too many don’t see their players as individuals, but copies of themselves. The coach emphasizes what works or worked for the coach while ignoring the player’s needs and abilities.

Our current coaching education program is definitely a work in progress, but they’re being very close mouthed about it. I can’t find much in the way of information, the program, apparently, changes every time a new chair comes in. It happened when Big Jim took over and it seems to be happening now that Bill Montgomery has the chair. Personally, I don’t care, but this kind of constant flux for an education program is foolish. Certainly updates should happen, but complete overhauls should be rare.

The last time I looked at the program (http://www.usja-judo.org/GrowingJudo/GrowingJudo2009_01.pdf) the only real references and resources were incredibly limited. However, when I went to the clinic in Las Vegas more references were provided and some mention was made of modifications of the program. Unfortunately, I’ve heard naught since then. It would be nice to hear about some updates.

After coaching, we need to develop teachers. Coaches are not teachers and teachers are not coaches in their duties. While one person may be both a teacher and a coach, the roles are definitely separate. A teacher teaches, a coach refines and develops for sport. USJA doesn’t have any teacher development program. That’s absolutely not any good.

I’m not sure how to formally teach teachers, but I have a process that I use and it’s a lot of hands-on teaching. It’s been successful for me, though I haven’t produced any black belts, yet. On the other hand I have some very exceptional teachers of whom I am very proud (Alana, Rolando, Eddy, Ashley – this means you!). One of the things that I use is a very thorough and detailed standards and benchmarks, promotional standards, and calendars. I also teach my students about lesson planning, scheduling, and interpretation of standards and benchmarks toward application. Mostly, though, I teach the how to teach by having them teach others that are junior to them, in some cases Juniors. My method is definitely not the best; however, it is very effective for me.

The goal for me is to build a cadre of effective teachers and coaches to place in every school in my town. I think this is one of the keys to growing judo. The more emphasis we place on youth programs, the better off we’ll be by developing judo players from the beginning and developing ways and means to keep them integrated and involved in judo. I expect this will take awhile because I have to develop a number of instructors because I just don’t have very many.

The first stage was actually creating the club itself. I started that in 2007 and we’ve been slowly growing every since. After that was to start a program at either the military school or the local community college. Unfortunately the local military school still hasn’t decided about judo as an academic class, although it has allowed me to create a club (thanks Ron), though growth there is tenuous. However the local community college has allowed me to teach a credit course in beginning judo which has really taken off (10 signed up first semester and 11 signed up for this semester).

The next stages involve taking some of my instructors and branching into the high schools, then middle schools, and finally elementary schools. These programs will be after-school activities rather than academic classes in the public schools based on public school standards and benchmarks, though I will certainly be working to figure out a way to implement judo as a high school class at the military school and the local high schools.

So, that’s my theory on how to grow judo in the United States: Build a good youth program and get judo in the schools! Build good coaches and help them become good instructors!

Extra Resources:

• Successful Coaching - 3rd Edition by Rainer Martens (ISBN: 978-0736040129
• Growing Judo, January 2009 (p. 13-22)
• Growing Judo, March 2010 (p. 12-14)
• An introduction to the USJA Coaching Program
• Searching for Judo Blog, Sundays Events (As Promised) – 8 February 2010
• Searching for Judo Blog, The Last of the Las Vegas Clinic – 26 February 2010

Personal Work This Year

I have some grand plans for myself this year. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last five years teaching judo with very little time dedicated to my own personal growth. I’m not going to change that either! But I do have some work I’d like to do and three major goals by May. The first is to finally get my Yawara rank and USJA rank in synch and finally get ranked as a Nidan in USJA! I’d also like to move up to a Level C Coach certification through USJA and, in conjunction with that, learn what all the hoopty-do is about the “Kelly’s Capers” program.

If you don’t know yet, I’ve not always been associated with the USJA. As a matter of fact, I’ve only recently (since about 2002) become minorly involved with regard to ranks, though in 2007 I really started getting more serious about national organizations. I grew up in Yawara Judo Association and still believe that the Yawara standards are far more important and thorough than USJA’s, although one could hardly tell prior to my re-write of the requirements (by request of the senior leadership of Yawara). So my grades have never coincided yet, but come November they will!

But to get this rank situation dealt with, I’d really like to have some time to work on the two kata Yawara  requires (Nage no Kata and Katame no Kata), work through the various nage waza, and a host of other things, but I need to coordinate with my Nikyu about that.

Now, I do have a little bit of a thought to ponder regarding Time in Grade and exceptions for competitors. Competitors are frequently given exemptions for their time in grade based on competitive success and I think this is acceptable. What I find unacceptable is the lack of exception for club leaders, especially junior black belt grades, who have to start clubs because, for some reason or another, no other clubs exist in their area. Why should a competitor who is, arguably, working harder for their competitive success than a non-competitor who just comes to class be able to ignore time in grade requirements while a club leader who is, definitely, working hard than a non-club leader who just comes to class cannot? (I may expand on this topic in the future.)

Either way the wind blows, and I don’t expect it to blow towards alleviating that concern, come November or October I’ll have satisfied the ridiculously long three year time in grade requirement for USJA Nidan and then I’ll be eligible. Once that’s done, I’ll just have to carry through with the promotional requirements and process the paperwork.

The next major goal this year is the Level C Coach certification. I don’t even know if this is still the coaching certification scheme, but I don’t know where to find out more information about it. So, instead, I’ll just keep trying to find some good coaching clinicians and try to attend. Although, if things go well this year, I’ll hold a coaching clinic in March to bring out one of the clinicians that can teach “Kelly’s Capers” and certify about 10 or so coaches.

About “Kelly’s Capers” I know an extremely limited amount because the USJA is being extremely tight-lipped about what it entails, however they are claiming that it is a remarkable program for bringing students into randori and from there shiai. I think it would be a good deal if they released some teaser trailers of clinics or what Kelly’s Capers is all about, that might drum up some more interest in attending these Kelly’s Capers clinics.

Personally, I think every coach or educator or sensei or however you want to think of yourself, has the responsibility to constantly update, learn, steal, or whatever to keep their students interested in and learning new ways to learn and apply techniques. If the coach doesn’t constantly update, stagnation begins and clubs start running into problems with retention because it’s always the same old thing. I try to make sure that I’m looking at new methods, teaching techniques, theories about why something works, or what they’re doing in the rules/matches today. If all the coaches out there subscribed to that theory, maybe we wouldn’t be so far behind? By the way, one of the best resources is reading AnnMaria’s blog about judo.

Ronda’s MMA Match (12 August 2011)

Friday night, Ronda Rousey had her third professional MMA match. Her opponent was Sarah D’Alelio. It was a very quick match ending in 25 seconds by “verbal” tap out. Immediately at the stoppage, D’Alelio and her corner were protesting, declaring that she didn’t tap. Instant replay and slow motion confirmed that there was no physical tap. However, Ronda reported that D’Alelio made some sort of verbal groan and fighters were told prior to the match that such noises were cause to stop the match. The color commentator queried both fighters at the end and D’Alelio’s response was that she said “Argh!” (It is a little difficult to write what she said because it was some kind of noise.)

According to Rhadi Ferguson, on his blog for ProMMANow.com, “if you scream, you tapped!” I don’t know if this is written anywhere (if you know, dear readers, let me know!), but this is certainly reasonable to me.

If you haven’t seen the fight, here it is, courtesy of YouTube:

I think it was a wonderful fight with a very beautiful and rarely seen from Ronda, “flying armbar” transition. I know Ronda and AnnMaria have so much experience with and know so many entries to juji gatame this particular entry should be no surprise, but it was. The biggest reason for my surprise was that Ronda hasn’t shown this in any of the judo matches or other MMA matches (granted the MMA matches have all been under a minute, so…) and the transition was pulled off so smoothly, you would have thought this was a regular “go to” move for her.

I’ve done a lot of reading about Ronda over the last four years or so and, personally, don’t think anyone she’s fought in MMA since she started is really up to her level of competition. I think she’s winning these matches so quickly out of habit, but perhaps she could play a little longer with her opponents? I think if she does that she’ll be more prepared for some of the variety she should be able to expect from Carano or Cyborg. On the other hand, I’ve seen her run the beach in Cali and I sure don’t want to be on the other side of the ring from her!

To Ronda, good on ya! Keep up the good work and I look forward to hearing great things about you in the MMA ring! (Maybe one day I can figure out a way to get you to come to Roswell to do a clinic?)

Judo as an Academic Pursuit

If you weren’t aware I just finished my Master of Business Administration degree (concentration in Marketing). It was a great experience, but let me tell you why I pursued it. When I started the Roswell Judo Club, I had no clue how to run a business or a club so I was just winging it. The first several years were difficult and I’m just now getting over that, but it is still slow going. About the middle of the third year I decided that I was ready to pursue further education and figured that if I’m going to run a judo club, then I should know how to run it as a business, especially if I’m going to run it as a non-profit.

Now that’s over and the real work begins. I’m planning on filing as an LLC (long overdue, I know), a non-profit in the State of New Mexico, and work towards 501 (c) 3 status with the IRS.

But what does all that have to do with “Judo as an Academic Pursuit?” A very little bit but it’s a little bit down in the foundation. In order for me to pursue judo as an academic endeavor, I have to be able to fund the operation sufficiently, which I haven’t been able to do to this point.

On to the meat of the topic!

As you may have gathered by now, Roswell is on the tail end of nowhere with a three hour drive to almost any major town and a lot further from many competitions. With that being said, I’ve concentrated on developing technically proficient judo players with a very broad base of knowledge. I’ve chosen to go this route because I feel that if I have enough people competent to teach judo, I can spread judo throughout Roswell and eventually create a significant population of judo players throughout the schools, and schools are the academic environment I’m targeting.

The first step is done. I have a college physical education class through Eastern New Mexico University – Roswell that is growing by leaps and bounds. (Perhaps in spring there will be enough to have two classes!) The second steps are classes at New Mexico Military Institute, which is proving a much harder nut to crack (a little alumni pressure might help – nudge, nudge). The third stage is involvement in either the elementary schools (which would require a lot of on-site instructors) or the high schools (which would only require two additional instructors). By that time we should have a very solid core of judo players in Roswell, but that will take time.

These plans require a couple of things. The first is a solid instructional program that is easily applicable throughout the programs. This is the hardest element to develop because of the great gaping hole in any universal curriculum plan based on educational standards and benchmarks. I have developed an entire set of standards and benchmarks based on the promotional guidelines I have.

Another element of the instructional plan, and one many experienced players/instructors bring up is what happens in a class with a lot of different grades? The solution for me seemed simple: set up multiple training plans with a similar thread for the different levels in any given class.

For example, on the first day of class, the population consists of brand new beginners, yellow belts, orange belts, green belts, purple belts, and brown belts. Obviously absolute beginners should be learning how to fall and be safe, perhaps even a simple throw to show what they can do. On the other hand, purple and brown belts should be working on harder techniques and applying them against significant resistance and drilling what they know. So a good instructor will organize the case with different objectives for every level while maintaining an overall cohesive theme.

So, one of the things that I did was to take my curriculum, the dates of the class as they’re spread throughout the, in my case, semester, and develop various training plans based on individual levels. Once that training plan is final, creating lesson plans that flow with the other levels is vital. Last semester’s Beginning Judo class at ENMU-R proved, to me, the effectiveness of this method.

So now I have the standards and benchmarks, a calendar for semesters 1 through 4 (for ENMU-R), and soon I’ll have the lesson plans for the entire spectrum. If you’ve got any ideas or suggestions, let me know!

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Judo Tip:

If you really want to be a good judo teacher, start going to coaching clinics and reading books about coaching. BUT! Don't forget to read about being a good teacher, studying learning styles, and planning lessons.