confidence creation

Confidence creation in training

Creating Confidence when Instructing

Why is building confidence in delegates on physical skills training courses, such as self defence or physical intervention, so important?

It’s actually hugely important when you’re trying to facilitate learning, and this the reason why I’m looking at this in the video which is embedded on this page. What promoted me to produce it was is because I experienced a really good example of physical skills instruction that built confidence from my Systema Instructor Andy Travis the other day. Indeed, the reason why I thought that this was such a good piece of instruction was because it was me who was actually the fortunate recipient of this instruction and it made a huge difference to my confidence and understanding of this aspect of Systema.

Now, in my opinion, what I believe makes the difference between good and poor instruction is the ability to instil confidence in participants, not just in the actual skills which they are learning (and it is vitally important that they have belief in the skills and principles which they are taught), but also in their own ability to be able to utilise what they have learnt in order to survive a potentially violent confrontation.

I’ve seen it many times myself – as well as having been on the receiving end myself – where instructors have undermined the confidence of their participants, either as result of their own egos or through well-meaning unconscious bias or ignorance when delivering physical skills training. In fact, there’s quite a few things which I’d call my ‘pet-hates’ in instruction, such as framing everything in the negative (‘don’t do this’, ‘don’t do that’), belittling the participant or praising one participant at the expense of another.

This isn’t really about the sort of ‘all inclusive’ stuff which – rightly or wrongly – might seem prevalent in education now, where the prevailing philosophy is that everybody should be made a winner. That’s not something I totally agree with. The competitive training environment, such as competition martial arts, very much has its place because we all need to learn how to fail and succeed BUT it is – to be honest – the wrong context in terms of self-defence training because that is very much about survival not winning.

The problem is that there a lot of instructors out there who are stuck in the ‘ego-competitive mind-set’ and this frankly isn’t something that is conducive to training survival skills, because we are in the business of teaching people that very thing – how to survive an attack or a threat.

In this respect, I believe it’s absolutely essential for a good instructor to rise above the ‘ego-based’ approach and foster encouragement and praise equally amongst participants when delivering training – even for the smallest achievements. Of course, it’s never going to be easy to train everyone to the same standard as there will always be somebody who doesn’t quite get it. However, it’s our responsibility as instructors to try and bring that individual up to standard by helping them build confidence in the skills they are learning.

Indeed, building confidence in participants is something that Bruce Siddle emphasizes in his book ‘Sharpening the Warrior’s Edge’ which was published 20 years ago. And if you happen to be an instructor in physical survival skills, then this book is very much one of the ‘bibles’ in this subject.

Siddle talks about something called ‘Belief Circles’ in the book which are essentially values which a warrior can adopt in order to manage the survival stress response which will be experienced in a confrontation situation. These values he calls ‘Faith System’, ‘Belief in Mission’, ‘Value of Life’ – and right in the centre of the concentric circles is ‘Confidence’. And essentially he states that training underpins confidence, because the warrior is aware of his or her abilities and limitations through training – and the bottom line is that possessing confidence in skill should reduce the likelihood of any hesitant responses from occurring if sufficiently understood and practiced.

(If you’d like to purchase this book, you find it on Amazon by clicking here.)

So, we can see why confidence is so important in survival training.

On the video, I explain about my recent Systema lesson where Andy assisted me to build up confidence in forward-rolling by breaking the principle down into component parts then re-building it (you can also watch it by clicking here.)

Now the breaking down of technique such as this is also something else that Siddle mentions in his book, where he talks about breaking techniques or principles into threes: a beginning, middle and end. And this was effectively what Andy was more-or-less doing, by providing a beginning, a middle and an end in his approach to his instruction.

Now I couldn’t say whether I’ll be able to do exactly this the same when I go for my next lesson – who knows? – but I can’t wait to find out when I do!

This really illustrates the importance of building confidence when instructing, not just in what you teach (which, by the way, needs to work) but also in how you teach it by strengthening the self-belief of the participants that they can actually do what they are being taught. And I’d certainly like to say a big thanks to Andy for teaching me that!

So that about wraps it up with regard to confidence, although this is something I’ll be returning to in a future video. If you have any questions about this, or any of the subjects covered in the other subjects covered here, then you’re very welcome to contact me on mail@nicholas-davies.com.

Links:

Bruce Siddle – Sharpening the Warrior’s Edge (on Amazon)

Andy Travis & Russian Martial Art GB

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