Episode 827 - Handling Distractions in Class
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about Handling Distractions in Class.
Handling Distractions in Class - Episode 827
Distractions can be a common occurence in a martial arts class and a classic example is flatulence. As an instructor or a student, how should distractions be handled in martial arts classes? In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about Handling Distractions in Class.
Handling distractions in martial arts classes is an essential skill for any teacher. By prioritizing the group's education, instructors can think of better ways to handle distractions in class.
After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section down below
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Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, and on today's episode, I can't say it. We have to say it later. We're gonna talk about distractions in class and you will understand soon enough why I'm laughing, why Andrew's laughing. Cause I was actually gonna do this at the top and I just can't bring myself to do it. Hang tight. If you're new, welcome. You've picked a great one to start with. My name's Jeremy Lesniak. I'm the founder of whistlekick, where we do a whole bunch of stuff in support of traditional martial arts and traditional martial artists, probably people like yourself. Joined by my good friend, co-host, producer for Martial Arts Radio, and off-travel companion Andrew Adams. Andrew, how are you?
Andrew Adams:
I'm great. I'm doing well.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Good. Glad to hear. Thanks for being here. We're gonna have a fun episode today. That is for sure. Now, if you are new, I'm gonna encourage you. There are two places I want you to go. I want you to go to whistlekick.com and see everything that we do. Check out the links to Martial Journal. Check out the books that we do. Check out the events that we host. Check out the store. It's one of the ways that we cover our bills. And if you buy something in the store from, you know, a shirt, we're wearing almost the same shirt, not quite, hats, which Andrew was not wearing a whistlekick hat. I do not have one right here. But we do all kinds of great stuff and you can use the code podcast15 to save 15%. Martial Arts Radio has its own website cause there's so much going on because we do two episodes each week, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. And if you go over to that website, what are you gonna find? Yeah, you'll find the episodes. You'll find audio. You'll find video. You'll find transcripts. Jeremy, why do I care about transcripts? Because you can search. Because a year later when you're going, what was that episode? That person said that thing, and you remember like three or four words, you can search it. And you can search it from the website. I actually recommend using the Google search. It's actually a little bit easier to do that. whistlekick Martial Arts Radio quote phrase you remember, end quote, and it's gonna pull it even faster. The power of Google. Okay. We do everything that we do to connect, educate, and entertain all of you on the road to getting everyone in the world to train for six months. That is our stated mission here at whistlekick. It is what we want because we believe martial arts brings out the best in us. And our sponsor today also believes that martial arts brings out wonderful, wonderful, I dunno if I'm gonna go so far as to say that Jason believes the best in us. I don't wanna put words in his mouth, but I know he thinks very highly of martial arts cause he is a martial artist himself. I've had the chance to train with him. He's a wonderfully insightful, contemplative intelligent man who has founded the, well, we're gonna call it a brand, Safest Family on the Block. It's a podcast, it's also a book. The book came out of the podcast and the podcast covers things like martial arts, but it also covers a lot more. What are you gonna find at Safest Family on the Block? You're gonna find episodes on fire safety, mental health, all kinds of things...
Andrew Adams:
Car safety.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Car safety. What else do I have here in my notes? Emergency preparedness.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
There's incredible stuff over on that podcast. If you have a family and you want your family to be safe and you have not checked out what Jason does, I don't understand why. He's bringing it all together for you, and he's a great guy. He's been on the show and we appreciate his support and I hope that you in support of us as well as yourself and your family will check out what he's doing, including the book Safest Family on the Block. It's 101, tips, tricks, and hacks that you will find relevant. And you can save 25% on that book using the code whistlekick23. Find Safest Family on the Block, Facebook, Instagram, and we'll have links in the show notes to that stuff. Did I miss anything on that? The sponsorship stuff is...
Andrew Adams:
No, I think that's great.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We're getting better. I'm getting better. We're all getting better at this, but it's still kind of new and I appreciate Jason's support on this. So, I'll say it now.
Andrew Adams:
I was gonna distract you during that, but I decided not to because I have respect for Jason, because I've also trained with him. Great guy.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
I was like, you know what, I'm not gonna distract Jeremy at this point.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Alright. I am done with my tea, so that's gonna go over there. I won't be drinking it anymore.
Andrew Adams:
So you won't be distracted by...
Jeremy Lesniak:
I will not be distracted by my tea.
Andrew Adams:
Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So the original like, as some of you might imagine, we have internal names for some of our episodes, and the internal name of this episode, when I emailed Andrew, I said, we need to do an episode on farts. And you know...
Andrew Adams:
That's true.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Because we needed to. But the best thing about you, Andrew, is that you're willing to go pretty much wherever like you wanna do an episode on farts? Fine. Like sure. But I felt I needed to explain. Now, obviously, the title of this is not farts. As funny as that would be. But I see farts in the context of martial arts class as a wonderful metaphor of how distractions are handled in general. And so let's talk about the specifics of farts and then we're going to just keep going and we're gonna talk about the subject a little more generally, right? If you've been training more than, I don't know, a month, especially at a kid's class, you've probably had a scenario where somebody ripped one. The sound alone, forget about odor, the sound alone is immensely distracting. And depending on the culture of the class, the way it is handled is dramatically different.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Some class...
Andrew Adams:
Your class could have been going one way and how you handle it could change the class for the whole rest of the class.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yep. If you teach kids and you find farts funny and you encourage it a little bit too much, I'm gonna be blunt. One of your kids is gonna crap their pants. It's gonna happen. So you have to be careful. But there's also kind of the other extreme of completely ignoring it every time. Not everyone can handle that. And I see this at really formal, traditional, usually karate schools, and it ignores a reality. Somebody farted, people are laughing. To ignore it, suggests a disconnect with reality among some of the newer students. And then you've got options in the middle, like, yeah, yeah. Come on guys. Everybody farts. It's not a big deal to, alright, you have five seconds to laugh. 5, 4, 3, 2. All right. And now we're focused, right? Things kind of along that line. What are other ways, Andrew, that you've seen martial arts schools handle flatulence?
Andrew Adams:
Those are the ways that typically, it's either completely ignored, it is you know, okay guys, let's get over it. You try and reign the class back in and we're talking kids classes. When it happens in an adult class, it typically doesn't change the mood of the whole class. And when it has happened to me in an adult class, yes, I do fart. I farted in class before.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You mean that universal biological function has occurred for you?
Andrew Adams:
Yep. Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Wow.
Andrew Adams:
That is true.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I've never, no, not once.
Andrew Adams:
Nor my wife. Nor my wife. Nope. But you know, for the kids' class, you get the whole, oh, come on guys, let's get over it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or you get the, you know, the whole class Snickers and so does the instructors. I'm not going to say any one of those ways of handling it is wrong, but you have to understand that each one of those responses will change the class.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. Right. Now we could spend the entirety of this episode just focused on this one example, but what I think makes it really relevant is that this example becomes a window into the way distractions are generally handled.
Andrew Adams:
Correct. Cause flatulence is not the only distraction that can happen in class.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. I grew up in an environment where the instructor's dog would wander through, small children would wander through. We worked out in a, it was an old high school that became the community center for the town. So we were in the gym, but the town offices were there. So sometimes people would press their faces up against the glass and they would watch, or sometimes people would be out in the parking lot making a lot of noise. Or what's another one? The lights might flicker. A bulb might go out, right? These are all very common things, and maybe they don't all happen all the time, but when you take the entirety of distractions and you put them all in a pile, you're gonna have a distraction every single class.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
They might be small, they might be large. How do you handle them? Now, Andrew, you teach kids, you teach adults and you teach over Zoom. You teach drumming over Zoom and the whole of someone's environment is available to distract them. You don't have control over that. You can't make them mute their phone and put their dog in the next room. How do you handle distractions? Do you have a general philosophy?
Andrew Adams:
So it totally depends on what the distraction is. It really, really does. Going to flatulence, I just like to say flatulence.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's a fun word.
Andrew Adams:
For the adult class, I will typically make a funny joke. Because adults can handle that and it'll be like, if I'm teaching in class and it happens, I'll be like, excuse me, I'm the one teaching here. No talking, I'm teaching. You know, like it's funny, like obviously he wasn't talking, right? And for the kids, it depends on the situation. It depends on the kids I have in class. I generally try to ignore it as a general rule. Actually, I'm thinking of one specific example actually, like two or three weeks ago, like pretty recent. We were working and we were sitting on the floor. I was going through some techniques with the kids and you know, I was on my knees so that I was down at their height so they could do the arm, wrist lock, or whatever I was doing. I don't remember specifically. And the kid sitting next to me totally ripped one. You couldn't hear it. There was no sound. But it obviously happened. And I smelt it and was like no joke, I almost gagged. It was really bad.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
But I completely 1000% ignored it. Cause it didn't disrupt class other than me. Cause no one else was sitting by us. I was gonna be working with him. I was watching the other students that were working the other partners. And then, you know, I just ignored it. Went about the rest of the class and then came back, was working with him later and I don't want people to think, well, maybe he just smells. Like, no, he didn't poop his pants cause he was fine. He smelled great. Okay, that sounds bad. I'm not going around smelling my kids all day. But then like 10 minutes at later, he ripped another one. And this time, cause I was sitting next to him, I heard it a little bit so I know he was farting. And again, I just ignored it because I knew that if I let him know and you know, found it, it would disrupt the class and he might feel embarrassed first off, right? And I don't want that to happen.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right.
Andrew Adams:
But if he sees it as a funny thing, then he's gonna keep doing it more.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
And I didn't want that to happen.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. And I think the key here is that it becomes really individualized. And this has become one of the more, I guess advanced elements of teaching. That there are things that given a certain mix and a certain day, certain environment you do that you might not do other days.
Andrew Adams:
Yep. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If I'm working with a group of three kids that I know and I trust them really well, and one of 'em, let one go, you know what? I might think that's funny. Or to use a non-toilet humor example, if one of them makes a joke or asks a silly question or is learning a form and does something really weird with their hands that I look and I find it funny. I might laugh. But if I'm working with a larger class and I don't know them as well and there's more of a mix, I'm not gonna air with that because I don't necessarily know what the outcome is going to be.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. Yeah. Now you asked me about other distractions when I'm like teaching drumming and stuff on Zoom. And for me, there's two kinds of distractions. There's a quick distraction of like a dog is barking or you know, the mom comes in the room and walks through and is then gone. And then there's a distraction that's gonna continue to happen. And I think, you know, you have to look at those differently. Well, and then there's the one that like happens quickly, but could happen a lot more. Like a dog barking. Like the dog barks once, okay, it's a quick distraction. Oh, what was that? Oh, okay. My dog. Okay. Mailman was here. Okay, it's fine. Or the dog barks and then later barks again and barks again. Let's say, okay, well, can we find maybe a different place for us to be, or for you to be? Can the dog go in a different area of the house or something like that?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. Here's my framework, whenever I'm teaching, and this is universal for me. First priority is to the group overall and my efforts to educate them. Notice I didn't say teach them, educate them, right? Because I could teach without people learning. I could teach to an empty room. I can set up an environment where I'm giving wonderful information, but people are, let's say, terrified or distracted. Okay? So there's the whole and then there's the individual. In the example of you teaching over Zoom, your efforts are to make sure that that person is able to learn. So if a dog barks once, not a big deal. If a dog barks continually, well, now we're running the risk of the, in most cases, children not learning adequately. And that is your job is to help them learn.
Andrew Adams:
Exactly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The reason I point that out is because some people look at these distractions, especially if they are occurring from an individual and the first place they want to go is disrespect. That they take it as disrespect. You know, how dare you fart in my class? That's disrespectful. Maybe it is. So what? If your job is to educate them, they are the priority. Show up for them. Meet them where they're at. The kids dropping bombs, you gotta work with it.
Andrew Adams:
I mean, on one hand, you could say they pay you to do that. They pay you to be there. If they fart, well, they paid you to be there and fart.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. But because the priority is the group, where am I gonna intervene? You talked about that child who let a few go. Well, if the kid's out in the middle and nobody's able to focus, I'm gonna take that kid, you know, and I don't necessarily know exactly how I'm gonna handle this, cause I don't know the kid that you're talking about. But I might say, hey, why don't you go to the bathroom and see what's going on? Right?
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Or if there's a parent there, maybe I'm gonna offload that responsibility to the parent to say this is what's going on and I don't want them to be embarrassed, but it has created a distraction and it needs to be addressed.
Andrew Adams:
Or maybe it's something as simple as they're not in the middle of the room. Maybe they're in the back of the room.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure. And we could come up with plenty of other examples, hiccups. You've probably had hiccups at some point in your life that were so pervasive that you couldn't focus on things. If I had somebody in my class that could not focus, I would say, okay, why don't you go sit down and pay attention as best you can, and when the hiccups pass you can come back to class. As opposed to everyone around them watching them and being focused on them cause, excuse me as I burp, they have hiccups.
Andrew Adams:
I found that very disrespectful, Jeremy.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It was, I absolutely meant it in that way. For me, I mean if we start to kind of sum this up, it's about first the group and how the actions of whatever thing is happening, whatever distraction is occurring impacts my ability to educate the group. I'm gonna choose the group over the individual because that is my job and I am going to do my best to be kind and respectful through whatever correction or mitigation occurs.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If you have a healthy martial arts environment, the distractions that we are talking about are not things you're going to prevent. You might have once in a while something weird pops up, but most of the time the schools that I'm aware of, there are very few true distractions. And honestly, this is part of why some schools and I think a growing number of schools don't permit people to watch in the same room. Because it's an opportunity for distraction, right? That's a whole other subject we could get into. But I think that the two parts of my rubric group over the individual and respecting kindness through any correction or mitigation.
Andrew Adams:
Yep. And I think it's also a smart idea to, you can't go overboard with this, but looking ahead to see if there are distractions that you can help mitigate before they even start. A perfect example is if you have a school with huge windows where there is lots of traffic that goes by, I'm not gonna stand with my back to that window because then all the kids get distracted by the stuff that's behind me.
Andrew Adams:
Exactly.
Andrew Adams:
Right? You know that stuff ahead of time. And sometimes they still can be a distraction. A police car goes by with the sirens on, right? That definitely is gonna distract the class. And so, you know, recognize that it's there, but then it's gone, you know?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well said. If anybody out there has other ideas, if you have healthy ways of handling these things that we didn't get into, if there are specific examples, specific distractions that maybe you've had happen and you don't think you handled it well and you wanna throw that into the mix, we would love to tackle this, so don't be afraid to reach out.
Andrew Adams:
Or maybe you did handle it well, or maybe it was funny. Maybe it's a funny distraction, tell us that too.
Jeremy Lesniak:
All the above.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. Cause farts are funny.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Farts are funny most of the time. All right. Can you imagine what would've happened if I had dropped that at the very top of the show? Today's episode's about farts. We didn't go off the rails. We're hanging on. I mean, we're taking the quarter of that wheel's up a little bit, but we got it. Audience, thank you. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. We appreciate all of you. If you wanna support, I'm gonna give you a couple things. You can join the Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick. You can share this episode with someone that you think would appreciate hearing 20 minutes about farts, or you could support Safest Family on the Block and Jason Brick's effort to make your family, everyone's family safer via the podcast Safest Family on the Block, as well as the book Safest Family on the Block, which you can find on Amazon. Yeah, right? It's on Amazon, isn't it?
Andrew Adams:
And I believe it's on Amazon, but you can't use the code.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's right. So, save your 25% and go direct whistlekick23. Thank you to Safest Family and to Jason for their support. Thank you to all of you for watching or listening. If you want to have me out to teach a seminar or you want to come on and take what at this time is the one open consulting slot that I have for your martial arts school, I would love to hear from it, jeremy@whistlekick.com. Andrew is andrew@whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.