Teaching Beginners in Judo.


Many instructors have a policy of separating beginners from advanced Judoka, particularly in the first few weeks or months of training. I recently was a ‘fill-in’ instructor for just such a class, and was advised by the other Brown and Black belts of their policy of separating the brand new white belts from the other colored belts. It was carefully explained to me that some of the advanced students were competitors, and needed to work on skills for competition.

They were, unfortunately, disappointed that I didn’t take them up on their suggested course of action. I merged everyone together in the class, and did what I routinely did. Which is to describe the technique I wished them to practice, and then walked around and gave individual changes for particular students.

For example, while the entire class was practicing Kesa Gatame, the advanced students were working on Ushiro Kesa Gatame. While the beginners were training their Osoto Gari, the advanced students were either practicing the setup for Osoto Gaeshi as Uke, or practicing Osoto Gari, Nidan Kosoto Gake combinations as Tori.

I tend to think that you shouldn’t single out beginning students, they should be immediately merged into the class… since no Judo class is composed of Judoka who are all at the same level. We have Yudansha at the Encino Judo Club training the same techniques that the rest of the class is doing - yet they are adding in combinations, or doing them off of difficult grips, or adding other variations to their practice. In this way, you can lead a class and keep it on the same technique, yet Judoka who are more advanced can be getting something useful out of their practice as well.

Of course, every instructor is different, and may have different methods of instruction - it would certainly be a boring world if everyone did things the same way - wouldn’t it?