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Fine-turning Your Martial Arts Curriculum

Let me walk you through the processes that I went through to change the recipe of my curriculum. At first, it’s not easy to make wholesale changes to your program. We have a strong connection to many of these techniques and forms. However, once you begin the process of improving the recipes, it becomes exciting. This is also an important step towards finding your own voice. Question everything you teach and have been taught from the little stories we tell to the longest form. Take your artist hat off and put on your lab coat and ask yourself:  What Do I Want to Accomplish with This Program?

My First Changes to the Curriculum

My first step was reducing the number of forms. I asked myself, what does this form teach? Maybe, like Yul Kok, it had difficult combinations on each side that taught complex ambidextrous motion. Is there another form at the level that does a better or worse job of creating bilateral coordination? I’d drop one of them. Maybe there is a very basic form, like Chonji, that doesn’t bring anything to the table except making the life of a white belt and white belt instructor more frustrating. I dropped it. After walking through this process, I reduced 17 forms to eight.

Next, I looked at our board breaking. I was so tired of watching students bounce off boards that I dropped board breaking for all ranks except black belt exams. Instead, I created a quarterly Board Breaking Seminar where I charged the students to take a one-hour seminar on how to break boards. This turned a highly stressful aspect of the exam process that cost us money in dropouts into a highly profitable and fun special event that improved retention.

I also pushed multiple sparring back until brown belt.

Keep in mind that you can always teach students something you feel is important, but you don’t have to make it a requirement for rank. New school owners usually try to make everything a requirement because they want to create super students. That’s a good attitude with a flawed approach.

The less you require on exams, the higher the quality of execution. Plus, since you have fewer requirements to cover in class, you have more time to be creative and work on techniques, combinations, creative forms, etc. that you feel are important but not requirements.

For instance, a jump spinning crescent kick is a fun and very hard kick to execute. If you require it at a specific rank, then a percentage of your students will be able to perform it adequately, but many will not. It’s a difficult kick that requires jumping and flexibility, and some students will get nauseated from the spinning. This is especially true of students in the 30+ age group.

Ask yourself, how important is this kick? Well, I think it’s a skill I want my students to have. Fair enough. How about if you teach it and practice it in class but don’t require it? Then it’s a fun challenge for the students but not a potential obstacle to their advancement. You have the best of both worlds. The students who can perform this will, and those who would never use it after being shown it won’t have the concern that this may hinder their progress.

Round Two Less Yak – More Smack

After a year or so, we noticed an improvement in quality and retention. Also, classes were easier to teach and manage because we didn’t have so many requirements. Still, I felt we were requiring more traditional material than I felt valuable this early in a student’s journey. Despite my love of forms, I want my students to be able to fight first and foremost. Requiring the six basic blocks, four kicks, and three stances from white belt to orange belt was not giving my students the practical material I wanted them to have.

White to Gold Belt

As part of the solution, we inserted gold belt between white and orange. I used gold instead of yellow because yellow is associated with cowardice, yet gold is something we all want. From white to gold took six to eight weeks, and the requirements changed dramatically.

We dropped all traditional blocks and stances and replaced them with kickboxing skills. Instead of six traditional blocks, we had six fighting blocks.

1. Left cover

2. Right cover

3. Left trap

4. Right trap

5. Left down sweep

6. Right down sweep

These blocks were easy to learn, highly practical, and easy to work into drills.

For strikes, white to gold belts also learned:

1. Front kick

2. Back kick

3. Jab

4. Reverse punch (cross), which is very easy to feel competent at early.

5. Elbow #1

6. Elbow #2

Though this is actually an increase in strikes, they were much easier to learn than traditional blocks. So we were able to accomplish more in less time.

Gold to Orange Belt

The requirements from gold to orange also changed. Rather than teach the back leg round kick, as we had before, we taught the front leg round kick. This was much easier to learn and work into drills and combinations. We kept side kick at this rank but thought hard about moving it to orange belt. The back leg round kick was moved to orange belt.

Kicks:

1. Front leg round kick

2. Side kick

The strikes from Gold to Orange

Hand strikes:

1. Hook punch

2. Uppercut

3. Elbow #3

4. Elbow #4

We took the kicks and strikes they had been taught and created three required Fighting Combinations.

1.  Step finger jab to the eyes (jab with fist for kids) – step up side kick to the knee/legs

– elbow #2 to the head.

2.  Step in jab – reverse punch – clearing front leg front kick

3.  Skip in front leg round kick – jab-reverse punch-hook punch – clearing round kick (weight shifts back from hook punch as student fires a front leg round kick)

Students enjoy these combinations. Once you demonstrate them and show how effective these strikes can be, the students are excited to execute them with full force in the mirror and on targets. You can see in their eyes that they feel powerful. That is a very different look than before when we had them walking up and down the floor doing basics.

We took these three Fighting Combinations and linked them into a pattern to create Fighting Form One. This was an easy form to teach and learn. It was an excellent replacement for Chonji.

This also allowed us to spend more time in class doing pad drills, relationship (distance and alignment) drills, and defensive drills. These changes provided three immediate benefits to the students:

1. Students felt an Instant Value in the class that is hard to get teaching traditional vasics such as front stance down block-lunge punch.
2. The drills made the class more interactive, which added energy to the class. It also facilitated students’ meeting each other and bonding, as we would have them introduce themselves to their partner before each drill.
3. The drills pushed the students, which helped their conditioning faster than walking through traditional basics did. Often, white belt traditional class barely breaks a sweat, as the techniques require detailed explanations and then slow execution. Our new mantra was, “Less yak; more smack,” and it worked.
4. The defensive drills helped prepare students for sparring. Not only do many students need to learn how to deal with someone hitting or striking at them, they also have to learn how to hit someone. Have you ever seen a student, usually a female adult, do a drill and tap her partner with a punch and then reach out and say, “I’m so sorry…”? For the past 20 years or so, the “don’t ever hit someone” message has been drilled into a large portion of our population. Smart relationship and defensive drills really help you overcome this for your new students.

Retention was much higher as a result of these changes. Equally important, the principles that were important to me were now being expressed more clearly and directly in my school as a result of these changes.

Tradition is an attitude, it’s not a technique.

About the Author

Widely recognized as the man who revolutionized the martial arts industry, John Graden launched organizations such as NAPMA (National Association of Professional Martial Artists), ACMA (American Council on Martial Arts), and MATA (Martial Arts Teachers Association). Graden also introduced the first trade magazine for the martial arts business, Martial Arts Professional. John Graden’s latest book, The Truth about the Martial Arts Business looks into key strategies involved in launching a martial arts business and includes Graden’s own experience as a student, a leader and a business owner. Graden is the author of six books including The Truth about the Martial Arts Business, The Impostor Syndrome: How to Replace Self-Doubt with Self-Confidence and Train Your Brain for Success, Mr. Graden has been profiled by hundreds of international publications including over 20 magazine cover stories and a comprehensive profile in the Wall Street Journal.

http://MartialArtsTeachers.com

http://MartialArtsSchoolOwners.com

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