how many demonstrations of a technique are ideal?

Does anyone know of any literature (ideally
scientific or academic) which discusses things like retention of
knowledge following technique demonstration? In paricular, I am looking
for evidence-based argument that supports, for example, the more often a
technique is demonstrated the better the retention or even that just
one demonstration is adequate. The purpose of my interest is self
defence instruction for police and prison officers where training is
only provided once a year. Thank you.

To set up an experiment like that would probably be very artificial, and require demonstration by tape rather than real life, so that one can verify that each demonstration is identical as well as the words spoken during the demonstration.

There does exist a study that was recently published that claims that modern-approach teaching in martial arts aimed to competition is more effective than traditional teaching. Yes, I know ... rather shocking, and I have several concerns about the study, but I am just telling you what the study concludes. Obviously, to come to a certain conclusion you would have to teach the same classes not just in Western martial artists but also in Japanese or East-Asian students, and you would have to make sure that your student population is the same. Students who follow competitive training usually aren't complete novices as there is little sense in following competition-oriented training when you don't master any ukemi and not any technique or basic judo.

justcurious wrote:


The purpose of my interest is self
defence instruction for police and prison officers where training is
only provided once a year. Thank you.

I think the task you have been set is not only impossible but dangerous and totally unrealistic. It is, of course, a political situation. The prison service can then write that there officers are trained in self defence, same with the police force.

I ponder if the police force would expect its officers to learn their professional responsibilities within such a hideous time scale?

It has to be remembered that building a sense of false security in an person can do as much damage to them as telling them they are now qualified in self defence.

I don't value your position within this role. It is totally unrealistic for them and you.

Out of interest what on earth can you teach them within a few hours each year?

Mike

I taught self defence courses in local schools for a year once. The courses were six one hour courses, usually taught twice a week. There were about five different techniques for the first five lessons. They were very simple, two step techniques - release-strike - taught mechanically and systematic. The process was demonstrate, demonstrate and explain, demonstrate and explain again. Participants then went through each technique in stages, individual kata-style (5 to 10 times). Then they were paired up for five minutes or so.

After about two months, most kids I bumped into could only remember 2-4 techniques. Very few could perform them adequately.

I taught mainly as advertising for my dojo. I dislike self defence courses because, without on-going repetition, practice and randori, techniques do not work.

My ju-jitsu feels terrible coming back from a few weeks off over the Christmas break. Imagine how it is for a prison guard who has been through basic training and three annual one-hour courses, and who is attacked nine months after the last course. My money is on the prisoner who has got boozed up and scrapped once a week since he was 14, and who has been lifting weights for the last three years he has been in prison (well, at least until the cell team arrives with shields, etc). Unfortunately, we have had three prison guard deaths from initial attacks here in the last couple of years.

DougNZ wrote:I taught self defence courses in local schools for a year once. The courses were six one hour courses, usually taught twice a week. There were about five different techniques for the first five lessons. They were very simple, two step techniques - release-strike - taught mechanically and systematic. The process was demonstrate, demonstrate and explain, demonstrate and explain again. Participants then went through each technique in stages, individual kata-style (5 to 10 times). Then they were paired up for five minutes or so.

After about two months, most kids I bumped into could only remember 2-4 techniques. Very few could perform them adequately.

I taught mainly as advertising for my dojo. I dislike self defence courses because, without on-going repetition, practice and randori, techniques do not work.

My ju-jitsu feels terrible coming back from a few weeks off over the Christmas break. Imagine how it is for a prison guard who has been through basic training and three annual one-hour courses, and who is attacked nine months after the last course. My money is on the prisoner who has got boozed up and scrapped once a week since he was 14, and who has been lifting weights for the last three years he has been in prison (well, at least until the cell team arrives with shields, etc). Unfortunately, we have had three prison guard deaths from initial attacks here in the last couple of years.

Indeed so my friend, indeed so!

Mike

justcurious wrote:Does anyone know of any literature (ideally
scientific or academic) which discusses things like retention of
knowledge following technique demonstration? In paricular, I am looking
for evidence-based argument that supports, for example, the more often a
technique is demonstrated the better the retention or even that just
one demonstration is adequate. The purpose of my interest is self
defence instruction for police and prison officers where training is
only provided once a year. Thank you.

Others addressed the possiblity of some sort of study.

In reality, if a person does nor practice regularly a method/technique under as close to reality conditions as possible, they won't retain it or be able to perform it under pressure.

That's from teaching Judo for about 25 years.

Ben

I'm not sure about studies of retention of SD skills, but I know that even amongst medical professionals, retention of CPR training is pretty poor - typically less than six months after their training, they are not doing it correctly any more. So I'd expect that retention of SD skills from a one-off training session would also be similarly poor.

I also suspect it depends on how physical the students are. Students who are into athletics, have learned to use their bodies in specific ways have a basis of understanding movement and the movement of others whereas those who lead a sedentary lifestyle need more basic instruction and more repetition, especially in moves that feel counterintuitive.

KISS - keep it simple. The more the student repeats the moves, the more the student retains of what s/he practices. So, the demo by the instructor is one thing, the practice by the student is quite another thing.

And I do agree with others - a class once or twice a year without continued practice, corrected by a qualified instructor is basically worthless, and at worst, gets people seriously hurt.

Perhaps the question should be, how many repetitions of movement does it take to learn the movement, and then how many more repetitions does it take for those learned moves to become reflexive? Sure, there are a few great athletes out there who seem to pick stuff up without thought, but most people have to process and go through their own process to learn skills, especially physical skills, let alone make those skills reflexive.

There's a reason that we can learn osoto gari as our first throw, and spend the rest of our lives learning more about osoto gari, practicing it 10,000 times, learn another nuance of osoto gari, practice it 10,000 times, etc. If we teach a total noob the osoto we'd teach a well seasoned student, we wouldn't expect the noob to understand let alone effectively be able to practice osoto gari. If we demo the basics of osoto gari, concentrating on 2-3 things, to a noob, we can't expect the noob to understand let alone apply even the basic osoto gari - it'll take practice, practice, practice. And, even then, it'll be an intellectual exercise for the person until the noob has executed the throw enough times for it to become automatic.

A seminar never produces reflexive action unless it is practiced and practiced a lot - far more times than are available during a 1 day seminar dedicated to that technique.

Stacey wrote:I also suspect it depends on how physical the students are. Students who are into athletics, have learned to use their bodies in specific ways have a basis of understanding movement and the movement of others whereas those who lead a sedentary lifestyle need more basic instruction and more repetition, especially in moves that feel counterintuitive.

KISS - keep it simple. The more the student repeats the moves, the more the student retains of what s/he practices. So, the demo by the instructor is one thing, the practice by the student is quite another thing.

And I do agree with others - a class once or twice a year without continued practice, corrected by a qualified instructor is basically worthless, and at worst, gets people seriously hurt.

Perhaps the question should be, how many repetitions of movement does it take to learn the movement, and then how many more repetitions does it take for those learned moves to become reflexive? Sure, there are a few great athletes out there who seem to pick stuff up without thought, but most people have to process and go through their own process to learn skills, especially physical skills, let alone make those skills reflexive.

There's a reason that we can learn osoto gari as our first throw, and spend the rest of our lives learning more about osoto gari, practicing it 10,000 times, learn another nuance of osoto gari, practice it 10,000 times, etc. If we teach a total noob the osoto we'd teach a well seasoned student, we wouldn't expect the noob to understand let alone effectively be able to practice osoto gari. If we demo the basics of osoto gari, concentrating on 2-3 things, to a noob, we can't expect the noob to understand let alone apply even the basic osoto gari - it'll take practice, practice, practice. And, even then, it'll be an intellectual exercise for the person until the noob has executed the throw enough times for it to become automatic.

A seminar never produces reflexive action unless it is practiced and practiced a lot - far more times than are available during a 1 day seminar dedicated to that technique.

You may find it interesting to know that it takes an average of 62 (consecutive) days to make something entirely new into a habit. It's not exactly the same as learning a new movement, but it is also not entirely irrelevant. Nevetheless, those who teach judo also know very that there always is a proportion of judoka in their clubs who do not seem to evolve. Some factors are related to poor evolution. One is age. Children dealing with puberty in general have huge problems with motor learning, that has been known for a long time. Students who do judo at a frequency of just 1 time per week and never get back to that information at any other time in the week, usually do not show the greatest evolution. Practice, regular practice is important certainly in the learning process but also in the process of maintenance. There is a reason the Russian piano and violin schools produce such quality students: endless practice.

When it comes to didactics, the quality of those didactics is important too. Kodokan judo is didactically far from ideal. Kano did some good things, but he was also remarkably poor in others. There is no doubt that, for example, judo's tachi-waza is didactically far better constructed than judo's newaza. If I ask you to to show me 8 different throws many here will likely be able to comply without great difficulty. However, when I ask everyone to show me 8 different ways of turning over the opponent who is lying on his belly, many after a certain number will start to hesitate. Even though judo's newaza is structured, I have shown before that its structure beyond katame-waza is poorly known. That is didactically very relevant in teaching or learning judo. I will illustrate some more. I have perceived certain similarities in judo students and in college students, particularly freshmen. Many freshmen initially really struggle learning new material, particularly the amount of new material they have to swallow, which seriously exceeds what they have known in high-school. When they see what a graduate student can process, that is nearly incomprehensible for a freshmen how one can do that. Take music. When you try to play a piece of music, it is hard, yet you will know the tunes and words of your favorite songs without problems. Still does not compare to concert pianists who know entire piano concerti and sonates off the top of their head, complete with length and time of the notes, expression, loudness, etc. Incomprehensible how someone can do this. Or take Japanese or Chinese to someone who does not know the language: incomprehensible how someone can master all these similar symbols. You see the same in judo. For most blackbelts, the order of throws in nage-no-kata is so obvious that it is hard to explain, yet students who are learning this kata are continuously mixing throws. Yet the blackbelts have their limits too. When you start asking around how many black belts can perfectly recite all the names of goshinjutsu or koshiki-no-kata in the right order, their number becomes very slim. So why can people do things that to others are near impossible to comprehend. IQ sure plays a role, but let's put that aside. It's simple; it's a matter of relationships and patterns. To someone who does not know relationships and patterns it is all incomprehensible code, but to someone who knows it is perfectly logical. At least one major reason as to why a very experienced graduate student can learn and process and retain so much more is that in their learning they automatically create patterns in their information whereas the dilletant freshman attempts to process chaotic information.

In the didactics of judo Kano was successful in creating suffiicient patterns for people to recognize in tachi-waza. He did so by creating a gokyo, by dividing throws in te-, koshi- and ashi-waza and two categories of sutemi-waza, and by creating three separate phases to throws, namely tsukuri, kuzushi, and kake. There is nothing like that (that is commonly known among judoka) when it comes to the didactic structure of newaza. This is one of the most prominent reasons why so many judoka have great difficulties with retention of newaza outside katame-waza. But even in tachi-waza, the existing didactic organization is sufficient for moderately and advanced experienced judoka, but it is still far from ideal for the kyu-ranked judoka below 1st kyu whose technical progression and skill retention in most cases is not stellar.