What factors make a martial arts instructor good?

I promised a couple of posts ago that I would tell you what factors I thought made a good instructor. Here is my list of expectations (I'm a very demanding student!):

1. I expect him/her to train me correctly in all aspects of the syllabus.

2. I expect him/her to correct me when I get it wrong and encourage me when I get it right.

3. I want him/her to push me and motivate me so that I can be the best I can.

4. I want to trust him/her to ensure my safety and know what to do if there is an accident.

5. I want the classes to be serious but fun at the same time.

6. I want to have a good grounding in the traditional stuff but have a chance to learn and experiment with more modern techniques.

7. I need my instructor to be friendly and approachable but also authoritative and in control of the class.

8. I need to respect him/her.

I don’t want much do I?

Does my instructor deliver? Yeah, he delivers pretty well on all these aspects. So how does he do it? Well, student’s eye view, but I think he does it like this:

He is very passionate about martial arts – it’s his life, his job. He trains regularly himself with other instructors and even occasionally with his own sensei. He continues to develop himself – he does aikido training and occasionally some jujitsu training as well as attending various seminars. New things he learns he brings back to class.

He plans every lesson and doesn’t just make it up on the night. He thinks about the pace of the lesson and each lesson is structured differently, there is no predictable routine. He is upbeat, injecting a lot of energy into the class -you never get bored.

He knows everybody in the club. He has over 160 members between his 3 clubs but he rarely forgets a name. He knows everybody’s skill level, their strengths and weaknesses and gives everyone a bit of personal attention in the lesson. You never feel that you are just an anonymous student in the class.

In my view he is a good instructor.




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.