As good as it gets?

Friday, 4 June 2010

I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine last night about training and in particular getting high level, world class coaching.
He'd been on a recent visit to London and amongst other things had visited one of the training academies down there. He had been thinking and was articulating this to me in his usual way! How could we ever compete on their level when they have so many high level coaches and competitors? He also mentioned how formal and professional their class structure was compared to ours.



Well of course this got me thinking and although on first thoughts I thought he was right I reconsidered. At AMAG we get a lot of world class and high level coaches and instructors coming to visit us and teaching for perhaps one or two days. The way they teach us is that they pass down techniques, drills, training methods and bad jokes for all the students to take away and practise. But one thing may have been overlooked on the first pass, so to speak. AMAG has a unique approach in that it has some good level instructors and coaches teaching there all the time. These instructors also take part in the seminars and training sessions of the high level guys and learn the material, often quicker and more effectively than the students. This new material then becomes the basis of the classes taught at AMAG and before you know it the students are able to do and use the material taught at the seminar to much better use than if they had just attended on their own and had only taken notes for example.

I know that what I have just described is not the same as being taught on a daily basis by Marc McFann or Erik Paulson or Guro Inosanto or Daniel Lonero or Rey Diogo or Ajarn Chai or Toco but with AMAG's unique approach we can maybe reach 85%?? I think this puts us on the level with students who have these guys on their back door step. Even if we do have to perhaps train and think harder.


Also when you reach a certain stage in your martial arts career, you start to travel to these guys to train with them and improve even more. For example, some of us travel to LA or Brazil for weeks at a time to get exposure to the best in the world and then we bring that back to the gym for others to benefit from too!!

This


brings me onto my final point about class environment. I personally don't like a too formal class approach because basically I don't think it is conjugative to learning. The best approach that I have seen from all over in the different places I've trained is a light hearted semi formal environment, where there is a lot of respect going around for one another and the instructor, but light hearted enough for people to talk and discuss what they are doing. I think this is the best way to learn and if there is an element of play in there then I think that is where you see the best results.



Such as sparring or rolling for instance. You need to take things easy to learn the stuff as well as hard to see what you've got. But as far as sparring goes the fight is in the ring or on the mat, not in the gym with your training partners. There are a lot of people that won't ever have the courage to go and compete and they are the worst for trying to kick everyones ass in the gym. I know that was slightly off subject but a good point all the same.

I'm glad in had the conversation with my friend because it reminded me of just how good our gym is and how far we have come.

Keep training :-)