Conditioning, skill and memory

Most adults understand on an intellectual level that in order to get better at something you have to engage in good practice. This means staying focused, executing the correct actions and repetition. It’s that last part that usually makes adults and kids wince – repetition. Again, most adults know that’s what it takes to get better but it’s so BORING to do things over and over again.

So you change the drill, change the timing, change the atmosphere and get students to do their basics over and over again. For today the method was inserting a new skill into the conditioning. Each student learned a series of kicks today and spent about five minutes working on their own with it – barely enough time to remember it. So to burn the skill into memory, the conditioning was a how many rounds in five minutes drill – one shuttle run plus one kick combination equals one round.

Everyone walked away happy from the endorphins of effort and (hopefully) a strong recall for the new skill.