All too often instructors feel that the way to correct their students is to insult them and bark orders at them. You will never hear me telling my students that their technique is no good or that if they dont put their hands up they will get knocked out. You will also never hear me over correcting any of my students in front of the whole class. There is a strategic way to correct your students technique with out insulting them. The technique is called compliment and correct.

Let me explain...

Students want to impress their instructors and they want to do well in class. If an instructor always makes a student feel like they are not doing well it may cause a student to get frustrated and possibly even quit the class. I have personally witnessed instructors degrade and humiliate their students while attempting to correct a technique. Lets make sure this never happens at your school.

The first thing we need to discuss is that only the highest ranking instructors should correct a students technique. While students might mean well in trying to help other students they might come off as being arrogant and they most likely have not been trained in how to correct a students technique. Another problem is that they might not even know how to do the technique that well themselves.

Teachers should never correct another instructor in the front of the class. It is ok to pull a lower ranking instructor aside and make a small correction but never do this in front of the whole class. If one of my instructors is teaching a technique and I notice a small mistake I would NEVER point that out to him while he is teaching or while other students are present. This may cause the students to lose confidence in their assistant instructor and it may cause that instructor to become frustrated. If I do need to make a correction for an assistant instructor I will still use the compliment and correct method.

So what is compliment and Correct? Lets say you have a student in class and they are punching but their hands keep coming down instead of back to their chin. Rather than say "you need to keep your hands up" I will pick out something positive they are doing first for example I will say "You have a hard punch" or "I wouldnt want to get hit by that punch" Then I will say the only thing I would suggest is that you could bring your hands back to your chin.

If a student is a fighter I might say "nice job turning your hips" or "You have a lot of power" "If you want to throw that punch like a pro fighter just keep those hands up."

If a students is striving for black belt I might compliment and then correct them by saying "if you want to do this technique like a black belt dont forget to keep those hands up"

Once the student makes the correction I will then compliment them again with a simple "nice job" or "great work" Or something along those lines.

Just dont forget the three C's Compliment, Correct and then Compliment again!