I've always said that if you want to teach well, learn pedagogy, , don't look at BJJ, don't look even at other combat sports such as martial arts. Look into skill-based sports games where money is :) (tennis, soccer etc)

Thanks for sharing this, it's something i've been thinking about a lot. I grew up with sort of the opposite problem that my son will have. I was having fun doing lots of sport with no real direction or guidance. He will have a lot of direction and guidance, but i still want him to have a lot of fun. On some level there is a trade off, when I played rugby (11-17) I never crossed the line from just playing for fun into anything tactical. I always consider that I was just an athlete playing rugby, never a rugby player. In fact I actively disliked tactics at the time! It's kind of boring being told to execute a pre-planned move rather than run forward and see what happens, but without some balance between the two you'll either be miserable or unable to compete above a certain level. In retrospect I feel the average quality of coaching in encountered was pretty poor and at least partially responsible for my lack of enthusiasm for tactical play. As in a lot of the tactics and moves certain coaches had in mind were just a bit shit really. It wasn't until i played American Football for 2 years at University that I realised: 1. What good coaching looked like 2. How tactics can still be fun if you are actively decision making, albeit within some boundaries

Everyone looking into Ericsson and 'deliberate practice' look also into Jean Côté and his 'deliberate play'.

Coté's ideas seem to tie nicely into the work op Jean Piaget and his ideas about the role of play in the development of morality. I also see a lot of parallels with the work of Peter Gray (Free to Learn / Self-Directed Education) and his strong belief that play is vitally important. https://www.psychologytod[...]s-insights https://www.journalofplay[...]f-play.pdf https://www.youtube.com/w[...]g-GEzM7iTk

Everyone looking into Ericsson and 'deliberate practice' look also into Jean Côté and his 'deliberate play'.

I took a lot of my cues from youth wrestling programs and judo programs when building my kids programs. It really is night and day different how well established sports approach their teaching philosophy. That's one of the reasons I adopted the Reverse Classroom for my gym overall. I hate the 'technique of the day' random instruction.

Alex! This ties nicely into another concept re: skill improvement (across any field). Deliberate Practice (aka Purposeful Practice). I found it in the book Peak, by Anders Ericsson, but there are plently of resources online. It's all about specific games, with a lot of (positive) feedback, that take place right in the zone of proximal development. Which facilitates the input to grow.

Not to mix the coaching forum topic on pedagogy and this one, but - has anyone tried applying the drills/games/skills from LTAD models with recreational adults? It seems like building physical literacy and focusing on games would help with adult learning and retention too. If so, any other success stories? Any stories of when/how it's failed?

Can you expand on the Reverse Classroom idea?

Absolutely! For adults I have a curriculum website that they pull their lesson from, the lesson consists of videos filmed by me of the techniques, and they are structured in the order that in my experience best builds on progressively for skill development. So you aren't trying to learn a butterfly sweep before you've learned how to get to and maintain butterfly, you aren't being taught submissions from side control before you've been taught how to pass guard and get to side control, etc... The structured lessons like that go through white belt. Each student takes time either outside of lass or before class starts to review their lesson for the day, and they can use one of the tablets I keep in the gym to review the lesson while they are drilling it if need be. Once class starts everyone pairs up and starts drilling their lesson. One person might be on lesson 45 and another person might be on lesson 17, doesn't matter. You get 4 minutes to drill your technique, then swap and your partner gets 4 minutes. Then repeat. Then there is a 5 minute break where we circle up so people can ask questions if they had trouble, then there is another block of drilling. So each person gets a total of 4 four minute drilling periods for their technique and they only work one technique per class. If they have trouble and want to work on that technique for 3 or 4 classes in a row they can. If they get it immediately and feel comfortable with it they can move on immediately to their next lesson. For blue belts and above they pick what they want to work on from the library of video instruction, or anything else in the BJJ World. Youtube, other video instructionals, etc... and a mostly focus on teaching them how to build a game plan and plug holes, not just teaching them infinite techniques with no discussion of structure or linking them or anything like that. While people are drilling I'll walk around and offer pointers or correction if needed, and upper belts paired with lower belts can offer guidance as well, and the upper belts working with each other can workshop their techniques together. This means I never have a scenario where I'm trying to teach some super basic thing to my white belts, when my upper belts have seen it a trillion times and need to be drilling their own shit. It also means that I'm not trying to teach shit that isn't in my A game. I'm a white belt at Lapel Guard, so if one of my students wants to learn worm guard I bring up some Keenan videos off of Lapel Encyclopedia on the tablet and start them on that material. I can help them troubleshoot fundamental parts like breaking posture and balance, but the details they can get directly from Keenan. I'm 140lbs, so my super heavyweight guys I frequently refer to other super heavyweight instructors showing material because they are going to do it in a fundamentally different way when they are 6'2' and 280 lbs compared to my 5'7', 140lbs. So, reversed classroom. The needs of the students dictate their lessons instead of the instructor just teaching their random move of the day or a cyclical curriculum. Custom learning paths for everyone. With the kids it's a bit different, their paths aren't as customized, so it's a lot more wrestling games and everyone working from the same position, but working on whatever techniques they like best. The goal there is to just keep them working and getting used to grappling as a concept while slowly giving them technical ways to execute.

Thanks for that elaborate reply! I think I've heard about you, and this approach, when I interviewed Matt Kirtley / Aesopian a while back. It sounds super intriguing, but also seems to require a staggering amount of filming & indexing for this approach to work. How long have you been doing this? And have you seen a significant improvement / benefit to this approach (for instance, students improving at a faster rate, retention, etc?)

Here's the Aesopian article (about Bruce's setup): http://aesopian.com/blog/[...]uce-hoyer/