{"id":1513,"date":"2012-12-17T13:01:42","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T21:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karateteaching.com\/?p=1513"},"modified":"2013-12-11T10:38:06","modified_gmt":"2013-12-11T18:38:06","slug":"finding-inspiration-and-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/finding-inspiration-and-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Inspiration and Focus for Your Karate Students"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At this time of year you know class can be REALLY challenging to teach&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People are busy&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Class numbers are down&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Kids can&#8217;t focus with their schedule changes and the excitement of the holiday season is upon us&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>And if you&#8217;re in the USA you know as well as I that flu season just hit and compounded everything even more&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The end result can be low morale at the dojo&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Low morale leads to frustration&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Frustration leads to anger&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Anger leads to the dark side&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>Whoaaah, hold on a minute Master Yoda. Let&#8217;s back up a little. Things aren&#8217;t that bad! Sheesh!<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Seriously though, how do you find inspiration and then focus an unsettled karate class that has become distracted?<\/h3>\n<p>Last week for the first time in ages, I was battling this problem in my beginner class for my 8-14 year old group. Instead of learning their kata, the 12 or so kids in the class were more intent on talking, messing around, looking out the window, yada, yada, yada.<\/p>\n<p>You know what I mean&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>(Wait &#8211; is every one of your classes like that? <a title=\"125 Dynamite Drills\" href=\"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/karatedrills\/\" target=\"_blank\">You might need this to help<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1525 alignleft\" style=\"margin-right: 10px; border: 1px solid black;\" alt=\"kata\" src=\"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/kata.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"193\" \/>Anyhow&#8230; after a few of them came up and performed their kata with all the enthusiasm of pot-smokin&#8217; lobsters, I was ready to ask Master Yoda for advice.<\/p>\n<p>Just then I had light bulb moment. One of my junior 1st kyu students was waiting in reception and I asked him to come onto the tatami.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Joel, would you please do a kata for the class?&#8221;<\/em>, I requested.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Sure Sensei!&#8221;<\/em>, a somewhat startled but honored Joel bowed in and quickly took the center of the mat.<\/p>\n<p>Joel, performed his kata <em>Jiin<\/em>, with speed, focus and power while the class watched with mouths agape.<\/p>\n<p>After he&#8217;d finished, I asked <em>&#8220;How old are you Joey?&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Eleven&#8221;<\/em>, he replied.<\/p>\n<p>I thanked Joel and asked the rest of the class to line up. I explained to the class that Joel started nearly 4 years ago in this very same class, and that next year he would be attempting his junior black belt. I also communicated that if they started to train harder and put forward more effort, there was no reason why they couldn&#8217;t attain the same level.<\/p>\n<p>Two days later the atmosphere in that same class had completely flipped. The energy was high, and all students were giving their best.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes it just takes a little inspiration to kick start a class.<\/p>\n<p>What other ways can you think of to lift the energy of your students?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At this time of year you know class can be REALLY challenging to teach&#8230; People are busy&#8230; Class numbers are down&#8230; Kids can&#8217;t focus with their schedule changes and the excitement of the holiday season is upon us&#8230; And if you&#8217;re in the USA you know as well as I that flu season just hit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1513"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1530,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions\/1530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}