Beating the Burnout

For BJJ instructors, that is. We all know that regular school teachers deal with burnout all the time. The challenge is always keeping your students engaged, excited, and willing to learn. Being a “teacher” of jiu-jitsu is no different. We need to keep our students engaged so that they want to come back the next day to learn more.

However, just like regular school teachers, jiu-jitsu instructors often deal with the same kind of burnout. Despite having a curriculum to teach from (or not), a lot of instructors find themselves getting lazy when they feel burnt out… often times skipping teaching technique altogether and having their students spar in hopes that they will figure out how to get better on their own in the shark tank. This, in particular, can be counterproductive – especially for newer students who need to learn more techniques, or at least drill the ones they know, before they are able to engage in a live roll situation. Moreover, if you have students in the class who are nursing injuries (but who can still train), it forces them into a weird situation where they feel obligated to participate in sparring but don’t want to get hurt by others who don’t know what they’re doing. While they might be trying to flow, their training partner might be doing otherwise.

Renato Laranja always keeps it entertaining during his turn to teach. 

If you are teaching a fundamentals class with new students and lower belts, it is imperative that you teach technique, have your students drill and save the sparring for live training after class is done. A few helpful ways to keep things lively (including for yourself) is:

Keep changing up the warm-up. Don’t let things get stagnant and predictable – those things encourage complacency. A good rule of thumb is to always come up with a new warm-up for each class to keep you and your students on their toes.

Build upon your techniques that you teach. Get students excited to learn (and to get you excited to share), your favorite "go to" moves. Keep it very basic at first and then build up the complexity to stir up the challenge in your students. If you have a set curriculum, add your own personal touch to the moves by including stories of why and how that specific technique worked for you. 

Make things fun. Being serious all the time is no fun for anyone. Not you, and especially not your students. Yes, there is a time and a place for joking around… and sometimes it can be during class. It will definitely lighten the mood and you’ll have more fun teaching if you stop taking things so seriously.

If all else fails, sometimes we all need to take a break to appreciate the things we have. Take some time off to recharge your batteries and to really think about if teaching is something that you want to do. No matter how much you can fake it, people are aware of when you’re just not into it… and who wants to learn from someone who isn’t into it?