Teaching a class using only one technique?

I've been a fan of "repetition by stealth" ever since I heard about it, and last Friday I wanted to
challenge myself as an instructor and see if it was possible to teach a whole class with a narrow focus on one technique without it being boring for the students. To challenge myself even further I decided on going on the most basic of techniques, the traditional straight punch (one hand going back to the hip as you punch). It is heavily featured in our Poomsae, and it is also the perhaps most often trained hand technique in traditional Taekwondo. The Friday class consists of students from 13 year old to people in their 40s. Theres beginners (just gotten their uniform) to black belt students in that same class. Teaching this kind of class where everyone gained something from it, and narrowing the focus down into one technique was a challenge. So I made a rough plan, then tweaked it into a more detailed plan and "went to work" :-) Below is how the class was done.




19:15-19:20 We lined up, did our beginning salutation followed by meditation. I ALWAYS take a little class time before and after training to meditation, as this was how I "grew up" in Taekwondo.

19:20-19:35 Warm ups. First we did a "game" for the general warm up. I got everyone to make one long line. People turned their belts so the knot was on their back, and grabbed the belt to the person standing in front of them. The foremost person was then tasked to start 10 meters in front of this line, and on the order "start" he would try to reach the last man on the line. The front person in the line would be tasked to drag the line around hindering the runner to get to the last man. If the line breaks (people let go of the belt) everyone except the runner takes 5 pushups and then reset. Once the runner gets the last man he becomes the last man and the one in the front takes over as the new runner. If it takes too long I will reset by doing this so everyone gets a go. It's great fun, and it gets everyone warm in no time.

After that we did more specialised warm up, by pairing up into twos. We then had one round of pushing, one round of pulling and one round of pushing and pulling, shifting as I yell "Shift". This is a great way of gently implementing a very very very low level of standing grappling into regular training. Then we shifted emphasis on shaddow boxing alone, moving about, changing angles, vary the punches and blocks, but only hand techniques. This represents the most specialized part of the warm up.

19:35-19:40 We started the lesson proper. I demonstrated 3 different kinds of punches; The "traditional" (hand on hip for no reason etc), the "boxing punch" (punching from a guard while maintining a guard), and lastly a "practical application punch" where the hand pulled back to the hip is doing something, in this case pulling the opponents arm out of the way of my punch. A short discussion on what was the most prefferable punch, and then the revelation that there was no real difference between the traditional punch and the application punch :-) I also touched upon the different roles the pulling hand has (pulling opponent off balance, pulling the front hand turns the back/dangerous hand of the opponent away from us if you have a cross grip, removing obstacles etc).

19:40-19:59 Here we started the technical training. We stood in fighting stance (essentually a dwit koobi or back stance) and then shifting our weight forward into ap koobi or long front walking stance we punched with our back hand while pulling the front hand back to the hip, and then shifted back again. We did this 10 reps on each side.

We then partnered up and one taking the mantle of "puncher" the other the mantle of "human punching bag" the latter had a high guard, which the puncher grabbed the lead hand, pulled back to hip while delivering a punch to the head. We wore no gloves, nor head gear so we introduced the flaw of less realism by not connecting the punches, only marking them and stopping a fraction of an inch before the target. Both sides were used, then the roles reserved so the other person could try on both sides.

I then talked a little more about the pulling hand and how pulling the hand to the hip, the punching arm only has to follow the arm up to find the head, so that you don't even have to see the opponent. I demonstrated this too.

Now that we had done marked punches pulled short of target we did essentially the same drill again, this time on focus mitts. We stood a litte more sideways on the opponent as the focus mitt became the "head", and the other hand was placed in front of the mitt so it was pulled back toward the hip of the puncher, clearing a way for the strike. Now we had impact, but now we were not hitting a head, so no matter what we do we introduce flaws into training for safety ;-) Both partners tried this for some time on both hands.

Below is an old video which shows the back hand and lead hand version (we only worked on the back hand) of the padd drill:

20:00-20:05 Water break :-)

20:05-20:10 We focused on power generation, moving from one ap koobi forward into a new ap koobi (from one long front stance, moving forward into a new front stance. Where in this sequence does the punch connect? Not in the end position ;-) The ending is a follow through. The students got to experiment on the pads, "walking through the punch" as I called it.


20:10-20:25: We placed the focus mitts back in their place before partnering up again and started partner work with drilling a 1-2 straight punch combo toward the opponents head which the opponent flinches and covers up the head, the puncher flows into stripping away the flinch with the pulling hand delivering a finishing blow using the stepping through method. The 1-2 combo was "unnatached punching" or without the pulling hand to the hip, the last one was a traditional punch using the pulling hand :-)

20:25-20:35 Tiring out punching on the focus mitts. One holding the pads, the other did a jab-cross combo (unnatached punching, from a guard no pulling hand), resetting in a half second before delivering a jab-cross combo again. It's almost continually jab-cross but there is a slight pause between each combo. Each combo is delivered with as much intensity as possible, and the puncher kept this up for some time until exhaustion before switching roles.

20:35-20:40 lining up, stretching the arms, meditation, ending comments, ending salutation.

None of the students seemed to be bored at all during this session, and they seemed to enjoy it. Those who are generally interested in hand techniques, practical applications and or self defense, fighting were very happy with it. I have no idea how many straight punches the students did during this session but it was A LOT of punching throughout.

Have you ever done anything like this to challenge yourself as an instructor? If anyone out there reads this and wants to have a go, do not hessitate to let us know how it went :-D