When people take up a sport they want always strive to be the best, the champion, an so forth. But for me I’ve decided that my path will be a litter different, I want to be the best teacher that I can possibly be. During my hiatus from ATB (Mainly form being too lazy to blog, a spell of chicken pox and a 2 week holiday in Gran Canaria) i’ve been given the opportunity to teach out Thursday classes when our regular purple belt teacher is unable to do so.
It’s a daunting task, mainly because even though I am teaching, our main brown belt instructor will be attending, not as a teacher but as a student, so there is always an added pressure to teach well. However, it’s a pressure that I relish, it drives me to teach the techniques properly and also helps me analyse my game in a completely new way.
For anyone who does BJJ, or anything that they love, I would definitely recommend that they teach, it opens up to you whole new world of details that you’re unable to grasp when you’re the student, when you’re learning, there’s always a tiny detail that you might miss, a detail that might not make the move fail, but a details that will make the move less effective to a resisting opponent.However, as the instructor, teaching the tiny details becomes important.
As a blue belt it’s nice to be given the opportunity to teach a session every few months, and it’s even better when you finish the night with everything complimenting you on how good the class was, especially when they come from the same or higher level grades.
As a final piece of advice, if you’re ever asked to teach I would recommend that you prepare, don’t rock up with no technique ideas and expect to wing it, you will only stumble and put out a half-assed lesson.