Do you take pride in your work?
I’m fortunate to have patient students.
Your students are your mirror – they show every scowl, every scar, every bruise, every problem. Or they show every laugh line, lesson learned, every ‘light bulb’ moment.
Do you have a broken mirror? Do you have a mirror you don’t like to look in? Do you have carnival mirror????
Recently in a class I had a great new student who was learning ground transitions. I teach backwards falling before I teach equilibrium to ensure students fall properly and mitigate injuries. He had attended some seminars from the RMA world in the past and so he began to fall down.
I have a saying that the body should make no movement you do not control. It’s your body – you should control every movement. Loose body parts get grabbed in combat…loose body parts get injured in falls. Loose body parts are sloppy and lead to inefficiency.
So, when he was falling how he had previously seen at a seminar, his body parts were loose, he was sloppy, and we had to correct it. It was constant reminding to not be sloppy, control that movement, do not be loose, control that movement, that was sloppy – I’d have to charge during falls and attempt to kick him, stomp loose body parts – he had to redo it.
He was patient, and he got it right and began looking great and suddenly he was screaming through the lesson.
Sometimes in Atlanta, I can come off as abrasive and aggresive. Teaching at the HQ is different from seminars because I see my students constantly, so I can be aggressive with correction on movement so they can be more free to explore and be efficient in the applications. We aggressively enforce the EPL attention weighting, so when they imprint – they make it their own efficiently. It’s a method and it works.
After class, I explained to them why I do this – and I want to explain it to you, the reader, in Australia, in Iowa, in Cleveland, in Florida. For those who will never train in person with me, to those who are die-hard Pramek fans.
I take pride in my students. They are a reflection of Pramek. A Kadochnikov practitioner from Krasnodar can still see Victor Zavogorodnij and Sergey Shvets in my movement. They took pride in me – because I reflect on them. When people come to my seminars and leave, they reflect on Pramek. I take the time to make sure they understand, I correct them and guide them because that is the way of Pramek.
I take pride in my students because I am blessed they want to study with me – not under me, but with me and beside me as we learn. I am the guide and it is my job to guide them in what they want to learn. It’s why they are there – not to drink, not to hang out. They are in class to learn, so I make class about learning and I give 100% effort to making sure that they are the best they can be…because someone once did that for me. They took a goofy, too smart for his own good kid and made me.
Whether you spend 5 minutes with me – or 5 minutes with Aaron or Avery or Walter, or in a training group…that 5 minutes is vital. When you walk away from that 5 minutes something should be learned, something should be changed, something should make you a reflection of Pramek. And you should be able to teach someone else that reflection, and make them a reflection of you.
When your student shows your mirror image to someone else, if they are bad, if it sucks, if they can’t explain it – they reflect on you. When they say, ‘I learned it from __your name__’ what will people think?
If you take pride, in decades, in a two day seminar, in an hour class, in 5 minutes at a party – if you put everything into each of those – you can walk away knowing that 5 people removed, you are still seen and still felt in your work.
And that is something to take pride in…
Matt