Don't Teach More Than You Have Time To Practice

So the past few practices have been planned with an attempt to make everything relate to the other stuff, and to create a flow. Soon we might actually tie it together. :)

As I mentioned, we started with the guard. I don't think that's a particularly bad place to start. We began by explaining the principles of the sport, and what I consider to be the priorities: namely, defending yourself, controlling your opponent with your legs, positional dominance, and trying to end the fight.

I've tried to stay cognizant of what frustrated me when I didn't know anything... Basically that I didn't know anything. My focus is, and has been, defensive in nature. My game is defensive. My demeanor is defensive. I don't go out there trying to overwhelm my opponent, I look to defend myself and capitalize on him making openings when he tries to overwhelm me. It's MY perspective, and I know a lot of people disagree completely with it.

Well, of course the people training with me here don't have the luxury of other perspectives right now, so, being cognizant of my own limitations and proclivities, I've tried to look at the positions as both offensive and defensive. So I taught basic defensive principles from the guard, but a couple lessons ago we did a basic sit-up sweep (or "white belt killer", depending on who taught it to you).

Naturally, I taught it backwards, because I was overthinking my lack of anything offensive. So I taught the kimura attack first, then came back and said "and this actually comes from the basic movement of the sit-up sweep." Oops. Oh well.

But they got it. Of course they did.

So my thought going into practice today was how all this stuff relates. I decided we'd focus on the mount (top and bottom) for the next few lessons. What I INTENDED to do was crawl through a sequence of escapes, sweeps, controls, and attacks from mount. My brain was definitely going overtime, and I tried cramming in too much today, despite every warning I've given myself about teaching more than one technique per class.

So today we started by reviewing the upa-and-roll escape, because my intent was to do some position sparring from mount later, and I wanted them to have some defense as well. Then we reviewed the sit-up sweep. So far, so good.

Then we discussed mount control. I took it straight from the Gracie Bullyproof videos and explained it in 3 pieces: wide base with your arms, leg hooks (or grapevining), and hip pressure. They all got these principles very quickly, and I think we'll do some more position sparring from here next time, not to finish, just to maintain mount.

I should have stopped there. But I was excited about teaching an attack, so cruised into an Americana from mount. We had hit on this in a previous class with one of the three people there today, so it was a little bit of a review for her, and the two guys picked it up quickly.

In my excitement, I decided to press forward with a SECOND attack from mount instead of getting into sparring. Mistake on my part. Not a horrible one, by any means, but still something I will fix for future classes. Anyway, we started learning a basic arm bar from mount. I guess I never realized how many moving parts that damn technique has. It was much tougher than I expected to teach, and much tougher than I expected to learn, especially since I don't have anyone in the class that has done this stuff before.

So, suffice to say, when I had to take off, they were just starting to get the idea of the movement. I was not thrilled with myself today, because I tried to teach more than I should have, and I KNEW better. And worst of all, I had to sacrifice sparring because I was an idiot.

Well. It won't happen again. I guess I can't make that promise entirely, but I will do my damnedest to make sure that I only teach one technique per class (for the time being), and to always leave time for sparring, because I consider that to be the most important part of the class.