Stick Drills

I’m a huge fan of students answering other student’s questions.  The question today (and this happened in both the kids and adult class, though I had to answer the question in the adult class) was: “why do we do this stick drill?”

The answer, as given by the student was “because after you use a tool, you’re less scared of it.”  Awesome!  The purpose of many of the beginner stick drills is simply to deliver some familiarity.  There are, certainly, applications to be gained from the drills like  body mechanic and coordination but they are secondary (to beginners) to just gaining some comfort with the use of the sticks.

Before going through the stick drills, we talked a little about ethics and consequences.  I had the students come up with some good and bad possible consequences.  The good ones that students came up with were “learning to use the stick” and “being able to use a stick in a self defense situation”.  The bad ones were “accidentally hitting yourself with a stick” and “accidentally hitting someone else with the stick”.  Good stuff.

Check out the adult’s feedback on their stick class here.