The Science of Teaching Jiu-Jitsu, Parts 1 & 2: Mass Appeal and Methodology

Part 1: Mass Appeal

L ike jiu-jitsu techniques, teaching is a skill that must be learned, practiced, and continuously improved. Since jiu-jitsu is fundamentally nothing more than a collection of motor skills, research in social science, psychology, and neuroscience is extremely useful in creating teaching strategies that optimize learning for jiu-jitsu students.

This six-part report will apply relevant research to optimize the teaching of jiu-jitsu techniques to maximize memory retention.  The research is compelling and will undoubtedly benefit any instructor, regardless of their teaching experience or competency.

Why Science?

Objectivity. Scientific research provides data, correlations, and guidance in behavior, brain activity, emotions, cognitions, working memory, and long-term memory. As instructors, it is important that our teaching methods are objective and evidence-based, free of whims or biases.

Appeal to Everyone

Lessons vary depending on the goals of the class being taught. In jiu-jitsu, instructors teach the students techniques to improve their capabilities and performance. The lesson should be efficiently delivered because every minute counts since the typical class is only one to two hours long. Significant time can be saved by delivering information in a manner that simultaneously appeals to all types of learners.

Several prominent educational researchers conclude learners are generally classified according to how they best learn new information:

Visual Learners : movies, photographs, live demonstrations, acting, graphs, etc.

Auditory Learners : lecture, music, conversation, discussion, etc.

Reading and Writing Learners : note taking, list making, reading textbooks and user manuals, etc.

Kinesthetic Learners : tactile manipulation, hands-on activities, feeling and touching, etc. (Fleming, 1992).

It is important to note that many students if not most, are “multimodal”. They fall into multiple learning styles but are biased toward one style (Prithishkumar & Michael, 2014).

Summary

Understanding how students learn shapes the manner in which instructors convey new information, yielding the most efficient and effective methods to teach jiu-jitsu techniques for optimal retention. For decades, educational researchers have proposed specific teaching methods, which are detailed and explained in the next part of this series,  The Science of Teaching Jiu-Jitsu, Part 2: The Methodology .

Part 2: Methodology

1. Convey the Problem

Adult learners need to know how learning will occur, what the lesson will be, and why the lesson is important (Knowles, 2005). In jiu-jitsu, the “how” and “what” are already known. Since students are presumably enrolled in jiu-jitsu classes, the expectation is that they will attend the class and learn jiu-jitsu techniques. The “why” is much more important to the students because it speaks more to the individual technique or series of techniques being taught. The “why” is often answered by solving a problem. 

Adult learners are task-centered, meaning they want to solve a realistic problem with the knowledge being taught or have real-world application for the material (Gagné, 1985; Merrill, 2002). Providing a solution or realistic application is the goal of teaching a jiu-jitsu technique. Researchers believe stating this goal at the beginning of the lesson enhances the student’s desire to learn (Mally, 2009). For added emphasis and to best appeal to various learners, the problem should be discussed and physically demonstrated.

2. Silent Demonstration

3. Shading

After silently demonstrating the technique, the instructor begins to simultaneously appeal to the auditory and visual learners by verbally presenting the essential elements of the technique in chunks as the instructor repeats the demonstration of the technique. With each demonstration, the instructor adds more and more detail to the technique. By teaching in “chunks,” students can easily digest the information (Gagné, 1985).

Ryron and Rener Gracie describe Gagné’s chunking concept as “shading.” They argue that teaching all of the details of a technique at once is the equivalent of painting a wall by throwing the entire bucket of paint on it. The result is that very little of the paint will adhere to the wall, most will run off the wall, and the wall will be poorly painted (Gracie Jiu-jitsu Academy, 2011). Instead, by shading the information during demonstrations and progressively adding more detail, students will not be overwhelmed by the information.

How many demonstrations with progressively more details are needed? A higher number of visual demonstrations aids in learning motor skills; however, no specific number exists (Bruzi et al., 2018). One method to assess students' understanding is for instructors to ask the students if there are any questions and address them with additional demonstrations, as needed.

4. Practice

Researchers believe practice, the “deliberate attempt to improve the performance of a particular skill,“ is critical to developing motor skills. One of the most accomplished academics in motor skill and athletic development, Richard Schmidt, unequivocally believes that practice time and practice quality are the two most important factors in learning (Schmidt & Lee, 2019). In many traditional jiu-jitsu classes, students “practice” by repeating the technique shortly after the technique is taught. This type of practice is known as task repetition training and has been an effective learning tool for over 2,000 years. Since physically practicing newly learned techniques is tactile in nature, it is perhaps most critical to kinesthetic learners because, up to this point, their learning needs have not been met. Task repetition is described in detail in Part 3 of this series.

The Science of Teaching Jiu-Jitsu, Part 3: Task Repetition Training