2025-08-27

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

Teaching students to have “dangerous intent” is hard. I can teach you how to punch, kick, block, strike, throw, etc. … but I can’t really teach you how to mean it when you do. Consequently, students tend to be “too nice” to each other in class, with attacks that are more like a flyswatter and less like a nuclear detonation.

To help students through this, I’ll have them do partner drills and tell the attackers something like, “No contact to the face, but I want you to attack the body hard enough to leave a bruise.” Then I tell the defender, “It’s your job not to end up with bruises.”

Of course I don’t really want my students bruising each other, but I want the attacker to attack hard enough that they could leave a bruise, and I want the defender to defend as though their lack of bruises depends on it.