My Teaching Style

No – I do not teach STYLE … I am anything but stylish. But I do have my own style of teaching. I am often asked a question; and was asked it the other day by the excellent Travis Browne, at a seminar I took in Auckland – and it was ‘Where do I derive my teaching/coaching style from? And what are the ‘drivers’ that differentiate me from other coaches?” The full answer would no doubt be overly long and boring – but the highlights might be instructive, so here goes: - first and foremost, my teaching style stems from a place of passion. I am very passionate about my martial arts training and cannot help but love sharing it with like-minded people. - I am very analytical and like taking things apart to see how they work; I love sharing this process with other people. I believe deeply in the power of ‘understanding’ – as opposed to the idea of ‘artless mimicry’. - I derive immense satisfaction from be able to shift people from ‘unable’ to ‘able. I believe anything can be taught if the process is delineated with enough clarity. - I take risks – all the time. I do teaching experiments, all the time. I turn left, instead of right to see what happens, all the time. I am not content to stay with the tried and true, it doesn’t fulfil my need for adventure. - I enjoy seeing how the right kind of word-play effects outcomes in performance; hence at times, I come across as a little eccentric in my coaching style and phrasing. But I want results. - And regarding results; I am very outcome and results driven. My focus is rarely on my own performance levels (or looks) when teaching; I am fully prepared to look foolish if it gets me the results I want. - Finally, but perhaps most importantly of all; I love to draw the deeper lessons that I have learned in my martial arts training and bring them out and illustrate how they relate to the larger canvas of our lives. Deep learning’s are to be found everywhere and they hold so much more value than the base combative value of what we do as martial artists. And in using those lessons in our lives away from the mat, we are tapping into what true leverage is all about. So there are a few of the underlying drivers that power my teaching style – I hope they can be of use to you: JBW