{"id":20,"date":"2008-05-20T11:28:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-20T18:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karateteaching.uploadmysite.com\/?p=20"},"modified":"2008-05-20T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-20T18:28:00","slug":"the-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/the-heat\/","title":{"rendered":"The heat&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yikes.<\/p>\n<p>This week summer has hit early in Southern California.<\/p>\n<p>Where I live the last 3 days have been&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>100 F \/ 37.8 C<\/li>\n<li>106 F\/41.1 C<\/li>\n<li>101 F \/ 38.3 C<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s been brutal. And if it&#8217;s anything like last summer, we&#8217;ll probably get 4 months of it too.<\/p>\n<p>Although people who live here are accustomed to hot weather, it&#8217;s the change from moderate to hot that really affects the behavior of students.<\/p>\n<p>To put it simply, this week people have been downright grumpy. Students have been unfocused and lethargic&#8230; and when that happens the performance of your class takes a dive.<\/p>\n<p>To my best judgement this is for several reasons&#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li> It&#8217;s hot. And it&#8217;s just simply uncomfortable.<\/li>\n<li>Many of my junior students spend the afternoon in the pool, so when they get to class, they&#8217;re exhausted.<\/li>\n<li>Dehydration &#8211; people simply aren&#8217;t consuming enough water. I had one young adult student ask to leave class last night because &#8220;everything is starting to turn black&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The point to all this is that when there is a big change in weather, schedule, or anything else that is considerably different to the norm, usually you&#8217;ll see a decrease in the positive attitude and performance of students, particularly if you teach kids.<\/p>\n<p>What can you do about it?<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Expect less than their best<br \/><\/strong><br \/>Don&#8217;t demand their best on days like these. You more than likely won&#8217;t get it, and you&#8217;ll get frustrated asking for it.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Revise old content<\/strong>\n<p>When students are so unfocused, stick to revising past content or issue a challenge of some kind that makes revising past content fun.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Educate<\/strong>\n<p>Explain that in order to perform better, &#8220;you need to feel better&#8221;. Feel better by doing the things that put your mind and body in a good shape. Such as drinking plenty of water and eating healthily.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>It&#8217;s all fairly much common sense but so many instructors take a forceful approach and punish students in every condition, no matter what their rank. Sure if it&#8217;s your black belt class and you want to push them, go for it, but stay smart and <em>observe your students for signs of fatigue<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>When their gas tanks are empty, there&#8217;s no sense trying to drive them uphill.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Jason<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yikes. This week summer has hit early in Southern California. Where I live the last 3 days have been&#8230; 100 F \/ 37.8 C 106 F\/41.1 C 101 F \/ 38.3 C It&#8217;s been brutal. And if it&#8217;s anything like last summer, we&#8217;ll probably get 4 months of it too. Although people who live here [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20"}],"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=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}