04/01/2020
The rise of COVID-19 has been devasting to martial arts schools around the world, forcing many clubs to close their doors. This is a major hit for school owners and students alike, uprooting our way of life and disrupting our learning. That said, martial arts is our passion, and while many of us continue to train at home, we are concerned for our students and their progression in their training. Let’s look at 8 different ways we can maintain student engagement through the COVID-19 pandemic!
1. Communicate
Keep the conversation going with your students! The internet is a great tool, and we can use it to continue talking with our students about training, classes, and what we can be doing at home. Remember, you have been training for a long time and have developed methods to practice at home, but your students may not have. Your students are eager to train, share with them some methods they can use to continue doing so on their own time!
2. Share Written Material
If you have it already, share with your students some of your written curriculum. Maybe this includes pronunciation guides, one-person drills, or terminology! Now is a great time for students to focus on these areas of their training. It is also a great time for students to practice positions, postures and stances! Does your school teach the history of your martial art? Share that history with your students! History can be full of great reading and can potentially lead to some fantastic conversations.
3. Remember, People have Limited Space
Keep in mind that many of your students don’t have a lot of space to train. Many don’t have home gyms and are just training in their living room. If you are giving them ideas of what to do at home, it would be a good idea to build your home lessons around this fact! Explain to your students what they can do with limited space, there are still plenty of exercises, drills and techniques they can do.
4. Remember, People may not have Training Partners
Furthering from point 3, a lot of your students probably don’t have a training partner at home. For these people, try to explain how they can do one-person techniques. For example: practice your drills (punches, strikes, blocks, kicks), take it slow and aim for precision and control. Now is also a great time to practice kata! There are loads of options.
5. Create Videos for your Students
Put together some videos from your curriculum. Break down your techniques, katas, and drills. Compliment your written material with some visuals for your students to follow along with. Don’t have a partner? Show the students how to do the techniques by themselves, go through the motions, have them imagine your partner. It’s basically shadow boxing, or kata!
6. Pull Videos from your Archive
Dig through you video archive and share some videos from the past! Show your students some footage from seminars, tournaments, classes, maybe you even have footage from belt gradings. Give your students something to look forward to when they return, remind them how awesome their martial art is!
7. Try Running Online Classes
Have you considered running online classes? I know that it isn’t ideal, but we are experiencing an unideal situation. It can be daunting running a class without students in front of you, but it can still be fun! You won’t be able to make the same level of corrections that you might be able to in the dojo, but you can explain what you are doing while you are doing it. There are many great tools you can use to do this, such as Cisco Webex, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, or Facebook! In a Facebook group message, you can do multiscreen video where everyone who has a camera can share it at the same time. If they don’t have a camera, they can still see you and participate! Give it a try, it can’t hurt!
8. Share Content
Share martial arts content from around the web! Post videos you find online about MMA fights, sumo matches, point fighting matches, technique breakdowns, kata, or history. Post pictures like memes that you like to keep things positive, or action shots of martial artists! The internet is full of content, and it’s incredibly easy to share on sites like Facebook.
Let’s have a conversation about it! What other ways can you think of to keep your students engaged? What are your thoughts on our list? Leave a comment below and let us know!
