Circles

More circles today – in our martial movement and our conditioning.  For the martial side, we had a half circle for a shoulder grab counter.  For the conditioning side, we had a full circle of students passing around the medicine ball.

Besides just making things fun and interesting, the hope is that by featuring the theme of the week in everything we do in class is that it really hits home for students.  It’s like that classic high school essay format: tell them what you’re going to say, say it and then tell them what you just said.

Repetition is a powerful teaching tool, to be sure but use it too much and the students get bored of hearing the same thing.  Change the presentation of the idea or alter the angle of the attack and suddenly instead of an exact you’ve got a variant.  Maybe I’m just talking in circles here but hopefully the gist is clear – pick a main idea, present it in a few different ways and hope the students not just the specific instances but the general concept.