Tag Test

It was a busy night on the Martial Arts Class front last night, as it was tag night. I decided to include all the instructors on the Tag planning in the Staff session so that it would give them some degree of ownership as well as giving them an idea of what was going on so that they could assist more effectively.

The Jedi's was well attended and it ran far more smoothly than the last tag test 2 months ago. The Tag system is still a new concept and is being constantly refined. By now only doing one drill at a time for the whole group, it makes it far easier for the kids to understand, as well as me to make comment. Matt and I did come up with an improvement that we will implement for the next tag though, from now on we will select 4 teenagers to be pad holders, this will help improve the quality of techniques not to mention having a mini coach on each station.

The next 45 min after Jedi's was spent with one of the parents that is majorly disgruntled with me about her child failing. To be honest after 45 min of trying to help her understand that we are not a belt factory and that her child failed a senior belt because 1. she is nowhere near fit enough. And 2. because her attitude is lousy she still feels that it is my fault, some peoples brains just will not allow them to take responsibility for their own actions and sadly this is passed on to their children. I left the meeting making the promise that if the child truly wanted to succeed I would give up my own time 3 times a week to help her achieve it. The parent left by saying that it was unfair that her child was now behind other kids that started after her! god help me!!!

Next was Adults, good turn ot and excellent work rate, it was nice to see (in both classes actually) that there had been some real technical improvement. The Adult Martial Arts is one of the most knowledge demanding but easy classes to teach as fundamentally they are all their to improve, and train at 100%. after the Tag 4 very tired guys went on to re-grade in the slip test. as one was going for brown and white I put my kit on and did some LC Sparring with him. Although I wasn't particularly in the mood for a fight, I enjoyed the moving around until I dropped him then I thought oops better back off. Afterwards I introduced him to the BRIDGE.... I joined in to and did 20 elevations getting up there in a variety of ways. Very scary coming down in the dark