Episode 881 - Thoughts on Martial Arts Testing

In today's episode, Andrew sits down with Jeremy a couple of times to talk about his students upcoming test and how it went.

Thoughts on Martial Arts Testing - Episode 881

Many of you may know that Jeremy opened his most recent martial arts school this past summer.  His students are now ready to test for their first rank and Andrew sits down with him to chat about how things went up til this point, how he thinks it will go, and then chats afterwards about how it did go!

Show Transcript

Jeremy (01:06.398)
What's going on everybody? Welcome on today's episode of Martial Arts Radio. We're gonna talk a little bit about what I'm doing in my school around testing. It's a little different and we're recording two parts of this because I've got my first ever testing in my school tomorrow. So I'm pretty pumped. So Andrew and I are gonna have this chat. We would have had this chat anyway, but now you get to listen in or watch in. Watch in?

Listening? Both, sure. Laughing? No, that was a show. That was a show. Roland Martin. Yeah. Isn't that where Lily Tomlin got her start? Uh, or what's it, hee haw.

Both before my time. Yeah. And your time. But I remember watching Hee Haw with my mom. My mom didn't like Hee Haw. Yeah. She liked MASH. Anyway, welcome to What's Okay, Martial Arts Radio. We are, if not the best, at least the most prolific martial arts podcast that you will find. And here on Martial Arts Radio, we talk about the traditional martial arts and always we bring on guests. We do lots of great stuff and we enjoy what we do.

because we have a shared mission here at WhistleCake to connect, educate, and entertain all of you out there on the way to getting as many people in the world, in fact, every person in the world to train for at least six months, because we think that will make the world a better place. Yep, thank you for joining us. And if you wanna help us along our mission, lots of things you can do. You can watch and share our content. You can contribute via our Patreon. If you're a martial arts school owner, definitely take out the...

Check out the Whistlekick Alliance program. There is nothing out there like it. We launched that recently. It's been a crush. We're really excited for that. But let's talk about testing. Testing. Let's talk about martial arts testing. And I think we've even got some upcoming content. We're gonna talk about testing in a different way. Yep, yep. It's maybe a little more broad. But we did, when did we release the episode about me opening my school? Oh, three-ish months ago.

Jeremy (03:09.838)
Okay, so it might even be four by the time this airs somewhere in there. I opened a martial arts school for the second time at the end of July 2023. Here it is now, it's early December 2023, and I've had some students come through. They've been there since day one, and I've got four of them that are testing for Yellow Belt tomorrow. And I think it's important to mention, if you're not going to go back and...

Check out that episode. Part of why I started the school is because I had some ideas. Yep, yep. And you and I have talked about these ideas and you and I talked about some of these ideas long before the school because if you know me personally, you know that I'm constantly talking about ideas and my brain does not shut off. And I had a theory that if we took the royalty, that if I launched a school that did things, I'm gonna call them better.

that I could help people progress in half of the time. That was my theory. And if you've been to my seminars, if you've explored the material that we now call Lucian Development Method, MDM, if it didn't create light bulbs for you, you likely were in a group where somebody went, where there were light bulb moments for people. And so this is the fundamentals of my school. Yeah, so I wanna talk a little bit about

Because there may be people that haven't listened to that first episode that we did about not first but the episode we did on you opening your school Your first test that you're giving Administering your new school is tomorrow What

Did you do differently to get students ready for this test? So I worked backwards from a few things. One, I wanted as simple and objective a standard as possible. I believe that it is impossible for a subjective standard to be applied equally. And in most martial arts contexts,

Jeremy (05:26.222)
we don't even try to be objective. It's, you are now a, or ready to test for this rank. Now in a lot of schools, maybe the forms are the limiting factor, but I find that if you look, you'll see, okay, there are some consistent inconsistencies. Sure. You'll see that certain schools have...

priorities placed on the things that the instructors are better at or enjoy more. But I suspect for most of them, if you were to really pin them down and say, is that okay, they would be apprehensive.

And I also wanted to create a format that if I opened a second school or 12th school and I wasn't teaching all the classes, that it would be as close to the same as possible. Notice I'm not saying the same because it's never going to be exactly the same because there's no way to have complete objectivity. But I wanted to get, take some steps in that direction. There's another reason for that. I, and we were talking about this as we were prepping episodes.

few minutes ago. I believe that these standards should be applied across the board regardless of age, gender, physical capacity, right? If somebody rolls in a wheelchair, I want to have a standard that applies to them from the get-go, not oh, now I need to modify this. Right. I wanted that there at the beginning and I believe I have.

Hmm. Excellent. Interesting. And what makes it that way? What makes it so different? So it shows up in a few different ways. Like the curriculum is very simple. We have 25 techniques that people have to know. That's it on the on the. Kehong, right, if we use the karate term, the basics, there are 25, five kicks, five blocks, five stanchions, five punches, five strikes. That's it. Are they going to learn other things? Yes.

Jeremy (07:40.958)
If I teach someone a front kick and a roundhouse kick and a side kick, they're gonna find a crescent kick. It's gonna happen. And you may even have one in one of your forms that may come up later on. And I do. Sure, even though it's not one of your quote, official techniques, they're gonna learn that regardless. Because do I feel, and this becomes a small tangent, but do I feel that someone has to know a crescent kick? No.

If they pantomime that through the form, am I good with that? Yeah, because if that technique was more important, it would show up more often. Sure, that's fair, right? So a simpler curriculum that anybody can do. Why a simpler curriculum? Because the more you ask people to learn, the less well they know any of it. Ask someone to memorize 100 things versus one. They will know the one thing far better than any of the 100. We also have five forms.

For Yellowbell, which is what people are testing for, I don't have stripes, they have to know their first form and their 25 techniques at what we call level one. There are five levels. Yes, the number five shows up in everything. If you watched that other episode, I think we talked about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why? Because five is the maximum number of divisions and or choice that most people can handle easily. The psychology of choice.

So I have, and I've spent a lot of time and it will continue to refine, what is a level one form two, three, four, five? What does that look like? Well, level one's pretty easy. Can you stumble through it? Does it kind of look like it? Sure. That's pretty much what most yellow belt forms look like. Yeah, that's fair. They start, they stop, they do it themselves. They, it doesn't look very good, but they can do it and they can do it well enough they can practice on their own, right? That's why that standard is important.

Sure, right? So the Y is rooted through there. Probably no surprise if you've been watching any of this material. Sort of the same deal on the techniques. If I say, outside forum block, can they do an outside forum block? If I say, back fist, can they do a back fist? I don't need them to be able to regurgitate 25 from memory. Sure. But they will be able to pretty soon because we've got them broken down into five sets of five.

Jeremy (10:06.986)
And we have a five week rotation on our basics. Today's technique, I think today's, tomorrow's technique's at two. I don't remember what's in set two, but oh, it's these, right? Sure. So it's a pretty quick test.

But here's the other piece. I don't just say, and now you're ready to test, right? We have what we've gone back and forth on, my assistant instructor and I, have gone back and forth on with, what do we call it? And we're calling them evaluations. Not pre-tested, but evaluations. Anybody at almost any time after class can ask me to evaluate one of their...

techniques, where they're for. And I have a sheet. And once they have checked off level one for their first form, and all 25 of their techniques, now where they are eligible to test, I'm setting them up for success. So all they have to do is not regress. Yep, that makes sense. Or freeze. Interesting, so the whole test will take.

Four hours then, right? Absolutely. Oh no, sorry, we're stuck on five. Five hours. Five hour yell about that. Yeah, so these four folks will be put through a test. It's a little more rigorous than the evaluation, right? We'll have them work. We're gonna do it after class tomorrow, so they'll be warmed up. And it'll probably be about 20 minutes. Do they know it's happening? Yes. Okay. And in fact, it is optional. No one has to test.

Sure, that's fair. And I've told them, you don't have to be evaluated. You don't have to test. You never have to put on, I teach karate, a gi. You never have to put on a gi. You never have to wear a belt if you don't want to. If you simply want to show up in street clothes and train for the next however many years, I'm good with that because I'd rather you be there. Yeah, and that makes sense. That makes sense. How do you anticipate it's going to go? I think it's gonna be fine. Yeah. I don't think it's gonna be...

Jeremy (12:21.474)
great because if it's great that means they're over prepared and I probably should have rolled some things out sooner. My instructor's instructor had a saying that I agree with which is there are really three times that you get to and I'm using air quotes pressure test how you react in stressful situations one is an actual altercation.

One is competition, that you have to deal with the stress of that, and one is doing a formalized test as opposed to a, you know, you're ready, here's your rank, and there are some schools that do that. But, you know, in this case, there is a clearly defined test, they know that it's coming. Your students are likely going to be somewhat anxious and nervous. And I told them, I said that this is part of the reason we're doing it this way. We've already proven you know the material. Yeah.

Now I need to give you a little bit of pressure. And then when you test for your blue belly in whatever period of time, I'm gonna apply a little more pressure because that is part of the plan. Now, none of your students that are testing tomorrow will see this today right now. Correct. So what do you plan to do to make it a little stressful for them tomorrow? To make it a little different than just regular? The biggest change is gonna be in how I conduct myself.

Oh really, interesting. Yeah. Okay. So in my classes, my classes look very similar to the way I run seminars. Okay. Right? Fun, laughter. I don't sweat the small stuff. I figure that people wanna be there. I don't nitpick how people bow and everything, because they'll figure it out over time. Sure, sure. Right? And...

That will not be the case with testing. It will be formal. I will probably use way more Japanese than they're used to and then, you know, mention the English because I've got to shake them out of the environment. We're gonna be testing in the same space. Sure. Right. I could, there's two floors to the space we use. I could bring them down to the basement, but it's December, it's a concrete floor. Yeah. You know, it's gonna be a little cold. You can bring the test outside.

Jeremy (14:44.554)
Yep. One of the things that we will not do, um, that will happen with future tests is sparring. And here's why. So sparring is on the requirement sheet, but if you've been to all in weekend, or if you, you've trained in my seminars, you, you're familiar with the dials, the speed and what I'm calling not powered with the strength dial now, zero to five, speed of zero is you're not moving.

power strength of zero is it just instantly collapses right like there is no rigidity there My students have to be able to spar for yellow belt at one one. Okay, you know how quickly that happens Yeah, yeah, they've all been doing it since the first class. Yeah. Yeah, so that I'm gonna check off Why because I don't want it. They don't have gear And I don't want to set them up for injury

I need to see how they're going to handle the pressure before I decide, OK, this is a person I need to watch because they're put in very little of a pressured situation for Blue Belt and Beyond as those start to move on. Yeah, we're going to have to break that out. Well, and one could make the argument that sparring at 1-1 is actually more difficult than sparring at 4-4. For a lot of people, the longer you've been training. Yeah. So this was all...

As I said, to prove that I believe I can get people there in half the time. Now, some of you out there have probably done the math and you're like, okay, so four months, four months for yellow belt. That doesn't seem that far off. Yeah, that seems fairly average. I would say. Except that I tell you, we train once a week.

Yeah. So that is the equivalent. Most of these people, if I had started teaching the form earlier, would have been there earlier. So could I have gotten people to yell about in two months? Yes. Two months at two days a week. Yes, I could have. And the people that are coming through now are reaping that benefit. They're one of the people testing tomorrow started.

Jeremy (17:00.014)
months after a month and a half after everybody else. So she's got way less time now she has a background in dance her ability to memorize the form matters but she's there. Yeah, excellent. Well I'm looking forward to chatting with you after the test happens and we'll see how things go. We'll see how it goes. All right we'll put a pause in there for now.

Jeremy (00:01.174)

And we're back!

Andrew Adams (00:02.563)

Wow, that was like instantaneous.

Jeremy (00:05.347)

It's almost like it felt like it was a couple of days for us, but to the audience, it was insta-

Andrew Adams (00:10.103)

I mean, you...

I know you said that the test was gonna take you thought a couple hours, but I mean it went by so fast 20 sorry, sorry. Sorry. I was confusing someone else Invited me to one of their tests just a couple days ago actually and there's was gonna be a couple hours You're right. You expected 20 minutes It's now a couple it's now the day after I mean it was literally last night

Jeremy (00:20.228)

Yeah. I thought the test would be 20 minutes. It took 30.

Jeremy (00:28.194)

Yeah, it's all good.

Jeremy (00:37.29)

Yeah, testing was last night. It went 30 minutes. Four students are now yellow belts.

Andrew Adams (00:44.178)

Wow, that's awesome.

Jeremy (00:47.138)

So here's the interesting part. I'm sitting there, you know Cory, some of the folks in the audience may know Cory. She attends a lot of Whistlekick events. She's my assistant instructor, Cory Anderson. She is awesome. And.

She's sitting next to me and you know, the whole, the whole.

I believe we talked when we recorded the other portion that my main intention was that the testing would be the same material, but just I'm going to do it in a way that applies pressure and see what happens. And so I lean over to Corey. What's that? Yeah. And it was, so we're there and I'm being a little more formal and I lean over to Corey and I'm like, they look really good. And she's like,

Andrew Adams (01:19.882)

Yeah. Yeah, you said your demeanor. I said you said your demeanor was going to be much different.

Jeremy (01:39.894)

They all rose to the occasion, they all crushed it, and there was one overwhelming thought that I had.

throughout. If I had found a way to teach them their first form earlier, they could have tested them on third-party.

Andrew Adams (01:57.479)

Hmm, interesting.

Jeremy (01:58.658)

They crushed it. They absolutely crushed it. So one of the things we talked about in the other portion, right, was this idea that if I do things this way, I think they will progress faster. They did, without a doubt. I look forward to you seeing some of them, and three of them have some prior experience. Two of them have prior experience with arts that did not really kick.

Andrew Adams (02:20.019)

And that helped.

Jeremy (02:28.603)

One of them had experience with Tang Tsu-Do, so he's a little bit of an outlier. And then the fourth one was a dancer.

Andrew Adams (02:38.135)

Okay, I would make the argument that even those two that have experience but not with kicking, all of that stuff still translates because they know how their body moves, right?

Jeremy (02:48.322)

There is some translation, but if you watched what they were doing in month one and two, you would not have thought so. There were some things that they took to very quickly, some things took more time. But I, you know, taking a step back, and this was the important thing for me, do they look like yellow belts? Yes. Do they move like yellow belts? Did they do their form like yellow belts? Do they spar like yellow belts?

Andrew Adams (02:54.147)

Yeah. Okay. Fair.

Andrew Adams (03:10.711)

Yeah, okay.

Jeremy (03:17.658)

I would suggest that these are as good a crop of yellowbelts as I have seen. I'm not saying better, but as good as.

Andrew Adams (03:27.751)

Sure, sure.

Andrew Adams (03:31.415)

Now, you said two days ago, or 15 minutes ago, depending on your time frame of listening to this, that you anticipated the test was going to take about 20 minutes. It took a half an hour. What made it take longer than you anticipated?

Jeremy (03:45.622)

Yep.

Jeremy (03:49.774)

Uh, there were, the main difference was, so when I had them do the form, we lined up facing the other end of the building. Cause I wanted to see how they would do with that. And it threw three of them off. And when I had them go through as a group three times and I just, and they all did fine. You know, by the third one, they had figured.

Andrew Adams (04:01.031)

Sure, yep, facing a different direction. Yep.

Andrew Adams (04:16.551)

Mm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeremy (04:19.35)

But I asked all of them, I said, if you would like the opportunity to do the form yourself, if you don't feel that those last three repetitions were exemplary of your skill, then by all means, take the chance to do it again. One of them, it took them twice. I think the other one it took, no, one, and I think two. So there were four more times going through. So that was almost 10 minutes right there.

Andrew Adams (04:47.767)

Yeah, sure sure. That makes sense.

Jeremy (04:49.018)

And then I asked them, this was a complete audible at the end. Why are you here? Why are you training? And that was really interesting.

Andrew Adams (04:55.644)

Yeah, my I was gonna ask I was gonna ask you if the test was completely physical do this or if you got it gave them any questions and you did you asked them why they're here.

Jeremy (05:08.182)

Yeah. And I think, you know, we did at the end, it wasn't scored, right? Like I didn't have him write an essay. I was just curious. And Corey and I, of course, debriefed after. And one of the things she brought up was that it's clear that they think about this. That nobody had to go, hmm.

Andrew Adams (05:15.139)

Yeah. Sure.

Jeremy (05:29.686)

They had good answers. And that's cool. That means that it matters to them. So I would say that, you know, obviously I can't say definitively that my theory of if we train in this way, people will get to black belt twice the speed, but I can say that is not disproven at this time.

Andrew Adams (05:31.099)

That's great.

Andrew Adams (05:48.859)

Yeah, it's too early to tell.

Andrew Adams (05:53.117)

Uh huh. Interesting.

Jeremy (05:55.062)

and what I'm expecting moving forward here, because if folks remember from the other half, I don't remember exactly what we talked about, but the curriculum is very simple.

Jeremy (06:06.442)

The thing that is going to keep them back because most of them are almost ready for that next level that next skill level Qualification for their first form which is that's what they have to have everything has to move up a little bit You have to go from level one to two on your first form One of them is pretty much there the other three Will be there in a few months. So in two to three months We might be having a blue belt test

Andrew Adams (06:32.923)

Mm-hmm. Now, one could make the argument that, so essentially having a test four times a year, but there are schools that already do that, so one could make the argument that that's not super advanced in terms of time.

Jeremy (06:50.082)

But I'm not seeing, now that may happen, but if, so it's not that it's gonna have to be at some certain cadence, right? You know, I'll do testing when it's appropriate. But how many people are at Blue Belt in six months?

Andrew Adams (06:57.604)

Uh huh. Check.

Andrew Adams (07:05.847)

Yeah, that's fair.

Jeremy (07:06.974)

If there is a testing every three to four months, it's usually, there's usually stripes or other things involved there. And I'm not saying nobody does it this way, but I think as we carry that out, I think it's very easy because I would likely be skeptical as well, folks watching or listening to say, I wonder how Jeremy's quality standards are. Now, if you're asking that question, it means you don't actually know me here. And you don't really pay attention to what we do at Whistlekick because...

Andrew Adams (07:11.652)

Yep, yeah, it could be.

Andrew Adams (07:31.459)

Yeah, that and that's fair.

Jeremy (07:35.378)

Everything we do here, quality is important and you can watch quality improve over time. That's paramount to our ethos. And I carry that into how I run my school as well.

Andrew Adams (07:39.536)

Thank you.

Andrew Adams (07:46.307)

Now, what do you envision, like before we wrap up, what do you envision will be different for your next, do you think you will change anything for your next exam and how you do it?

Jeremy (07:57.828)

There's another crop of four or five that will be ready for the yellow belt in one to two months.

and what do I think I will change for them? I don't think anything because the changes that come through are in can I get them to this point faster? Can I adjust things in what how when I teach that they get to those stages faster without compromising their experience, right?

And the big thing that we found early on was I needed to wait to start teaching the form, which arbitrarily held some of these folks back. Because if anybody's ever opened a school, you know, you get a lot of there's a lot of flux. And it did not make sense trying to teach a form to someone to a class where half of the people were brand new and the other half were, you know, four to six weeks in.

Andrew Adams (08:42.907)

Mm.

Jeremy (09:04.082)

But now what can happen, now that there's some stratification, we've got these four yellow belts, I can, hey, you, you and you, I want you to go stand there, you to stand there, you to stand there. Now we've got more examples. Now we put the people, and this is one of my favorite ways to help people get better with forms, you take the people who are new and you stick them in the middle. And now wherever they go, they've got somebody to watch. But we'll see how it plays out.

Andrew Adams (09:17.921)

Mm-hmm.

Andrew Adams (09:25.327)

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Andrew Adams (09:30.855)

So the last question I have is, so you had four students test last night, and you've got, you said another crop, we'll say three or four or whatever, that will be ready to test for their yellow belt in a couple of months. Do you envision your next test being this group of people testing for yellow belt and this group of people testing for their blue belt?

When do you envision that happening? Or will you always say, this test is only gonna be yellow belts, this one will only be blue belts?

Jeremy (10:06.306)

So I'm not willing to commit to that yet, but my instinct is probably. Because one of the things I don't like about testings is when people sit there and they're doing nothing. I don't think that serves them. It is more convenient for me as the instructor, but what I would rather do is if that's what we're gonna do then maybe we schedule another day and people have their time slots. You know, I know other instructors.

Andrew Adams (10:17.123)

Yeah.

Andrew Adams (10:31.849)

The only benefit to doing multiple groups on the same day is the people testing for yellow belt get to see what a blue belt test is.

Jeremy (10:41.066)

Yep. And, you know, I don't let anybody watch, right? Everybody was kicked out. Nobody got to watch the test. Yep. So, so that, that would line up with, with how I see things.

Andrew Adams (10:46.856)

Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah.

Jeremy (10:56.734)

I think it is unlikely though not impossible that these cohorts of folks are ready for their next rank at roughly the same time. But my expectation is that I will more easily be able to get the yellow belts ready and I'm not gonna hold them back.

Andrew Adams (11:14.251)

No, of course not. I get that. I get that. Cool.

Jeremy (11:16.778)

You know, it's a yellow belt test. It's a half hour, right? That's pretty easy to work in. Like, okay, in two weeks, you, and you stay after class and we'll test.

Andrew Adams (11:20.24)

E.A.

Andrew Adams (11:25.903)

Yeah, yeah. Cool. Anything that you wanna mention now that it's over.

Jeremy (11:34.278)

I'm curious if the things that we're doing in my school, if those spark anything for anyone that either, hey, we do this and here's what we found, or we used to do this and we stopped because, anybody that's come before that has insights that I might find valuable, I wanna hear them. My goal with this, I mean, yes, it's my school, but my goal is to test these theories and do so in a way that other people look and go.

Andrew Adams (11:54.535)

Yeah, sure.

Jeremy (12:02.102)

Hey, that's working, let me borrow some of that stuff. That very much fits with the whistle-kick ethos. Let's do cool stuff and other people borrow it. As exemplified by, hey, you have a podcast that does something similar to us and reaches a similar audience, come on our show. We're not trying to hide anything. We wanna promote all of these great things to people.

Andrew Adams (12:18.271)

Yeah.

Andrew Adams (12:22.311)

Absolutely.

Jeremy (12:24.311)

So that's it.

Andrew Adams (12:25.191)

Cool, cool. Well, congratulations to your four students. Not congratulations to you, whatever. Congratulations to your students.

Jeremy (12:28.891)

Thank you. It was great.

Oh, well, you know, I told them I took 90% of the credit. The other 10 was there.

Andrew Adams (12:36.923)

Hahaha!

Jeremy (12:41.69)

I don't mean that in case anyone does not know me. I don't mean that at all. It was I Provided the foundation they put in the work

Both parts are necessary.

Andrew Adams (12:52.275)

Well, great job. Yeah, for sure.

Jeremy (12:56.878)

Time to wrap. So if you love what we do, whistlekick.com, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, share it, buy stuff, podcast 15, tell other people, Whistlekick Alliance, Patreon, Apparel, it's all over the place, all in weekend. Marshall Summit, Matic Training, take a look at all the things that we do. We work hard for you and for our industry. Our social media is at whistlekick. My email, Jeremy at whistlekick.com, he's Andrew at whistlekick.com. And until next time, train hard.

Andrew Adams (13:25.639)

Train hard, smile, and have a great day.

Jeremy (13:27.472)

Smile and have a great day.