Combat Class! By Dave San

A cracking start for the first Combat Club Class of 2012!!! With 5 new students and a handful of the veterans coming along too, it was quite a turnout. Furthermore since the class we have been contacted by a few more potential students who are interested.
James San and I had a very definite idea of what we wanted to accomplish in the session but it is amazing how fast an hour goes and some of the concepts we had planned we simply ran out of time for.
That said everyone really enjoyed themselves and are very keen to continue with the Combat Class into the new year.
Taking the class is a great learning experience for the both of us, planning what we want to do, and the best ways of doing it with the new students. Our teaching experience to date comes from working with our regular dojo class mates who pick up sequences super fast so we are continually re-thinking how to explain concepts to beginners with little or no previous martial arts training.

A special mention has to go to Dohigh Kevin who helped us out on the opening session and who got great feedback from the new female student he worked with throughout the night (!!??), though he did look a little uncomfortable when we were practicing groin strikes for some reason!!!

The second week of our Combat Class went just as well as the first with another great turnout from both new students and veterans alike. James San and I were very pleased with how it went. Special thanks go out to Dohigh Will for bringing along his friend Mike.

After feedback from Richard San and Tim San our lesson was aimed at being an upbeat, high energy class and I think that all the students thought it was exactly that, as most of them looked shattered by the end of it.
New students just aren’t used to doing call backs and they were a bit quiet, it was really great that we had some existing students to show them how it was done.

Both James San and I agree that there is more to running a class than just stringing moves together and we are aiming to provide the same great level of instruction that we continue to receive.
It makes us realise even more how knowledgeable and skilled Richard San and Tim San are, but we’ll catch them up one day, though I don’t even want to think about how many years experience instructing they have, we’re glad to have them to learn from.

So we have more fun things planned for next week, and will be doing something different to previous weeks to keep things nice and interesting. Also we are planning to have Mark San come along and teach for part of the lesson, and other Sen’s coming along to teach will become a frequent thing in the weeks to come.

Remember to keep mentioning this to anyone you know who may be interested, and we would love you to come along yourself.