WWID - what would I do

I recently watched a world renowned black belt teach a double underpass that was supposed to have amazing details but I thought he missed out quite a bit of important information.

Then I watched another world renowned black belt teaching a scissor sweep and again I didn’t think it was that great, some critical details missing.

I wondered if I had developed some kind of arrogance where I know better than world renowned black belts but maybe it’s not arrogance, maybe I do know better.

If so, then why and how?

I think it is down to not having a resident teacher which was a curse and a blessing back in the day. I saw Chris Haueter once or twice a year and did a few seminars but ultimately playing trial and error with my training partners was the way I learned.

If I was totally baffled, I would wait until Haueter came over, he would give me one of the light bulb moments and I was back on track.

Although we always need direction and a healthy training environment from people that are more experienced, I wondered if you learn better when you are taught or when you figure something out for yourself.

When you find things for yourself instead of being told, you instantly have the how, when and why feedback so you retain the information better.

I now realise that Haueter taught me so much by not teaching me so much.

I know some people see it as a waste of time and think they are re-discovering the wheel as they could have just asked their instructor but we are still developing new stuff even now thanks to this idea.

Which do you think will give the best results?

Years later when we trained with SBGi, Matt Thornton always pushed the ‘Inquiry method’ which is basically what we were doing and probably why I liked his approach. Not surprising Matt thought this way as Chris was instrumental in helping Matt form SBGi.

We developed so much Jiu Jitsu training this way. There would just be a few of us exchanging ideas “if I do this, what would you do” put in 10 reps while we got the basic idea then tried it against a little resistance building up until you can do it against full resistance.

While Lloyd Irvin and his medal chasers were micro-drilling 1000s of reps of a real small part of the puzzle, Cobrinha was on the other side doing what we had been doing. He told me that he would do 10 reps of a technique then straight into drilling against resistance building up to restricted sparring, this suited me personally because I always hated specific drilling and always loved situation sparring.

I'm not saying one way is better than the other across the board, you have to find what works for you personally. Some people explore and others have to be told. Pick the one that suits you.

Ironic that when I tell people they should question things, they never ask why :0)

DC

P.S. The Socratic Method is relatively similar to this approach and fits quite well with this concept.

Socratic method (also known as method of elenchus, elenctic method, or Socratic debate), named after the classical GreekphilosopherSocrates, is a form of inquiry and discussion between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas. It is a dialectical method, often involving a discussion in which the defense of one point of view is questioned; one participant may lead another to contradict himself in some way, thus strengthening the inquirer's own point.

Check out the Wiki definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method