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Old 08-04-2010, 06:54 AM   #5
lbb
Location: Massachusetts
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,202
United_States
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Re: Teaching Aikido

I think there's benefit to coaching courses, although I don't know of any for aikido. I've been through such courses for alpine skiing and whitewater kayaing, and they teach such things as understanding learning styles and how to teach to them, developing teaching progressions, and peripheral care of students (i.e., whatever auxiliary skills and knowledge is needed to keep students safe and healthy in the training environment, which can be anything to recognizing and treating hypothermia to knowing when to take a break). You also learn some things that are very specific to the subject that you're trying to teach, but a lot of the value of a coaching course is fairly generic.

If you spend a lot of time teaching any subject, and you're genuinely motivated to improve and help your students, you'll probably stumble upon most of the above things by sheer trial and error...but it will be a while, and some of your students will probably not make it through your learning process, and you may not make it yourself. Likewise, simply attending a coaching course does not make you a capable instructor. Theory and practice, theory and practice, some of the former and a whole lot of the latter, does the trick.
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