YouTube demonstration videos aren't for learners

Tuesday Sep 26, 2017

Slightly weird maybe, but I was looking for demo videos at some of the Ju Jitsu throws I’ve been learning recently, in preparation for my next grading: not BJJ either, although there are massive overlaps with that and Judo too. I mean Japanese Ju Jitsu

Anyway, without exception every video seems to start with

Hello, My name is blah blah blah and I’m going to talk about blah blah blah and then talk about blah blah blah some more and then talk about one small bit of blah blah blah

…but not actually dive straight in to the thing I was looking for zzzzz

When I trained as a rowing coach (over 20 years ago!), we had a session on correct ‘clean’ lifting technique from a bloke from BAWLA (British Amateur Weight Lifting Association) and he was light years ahead of the YouTube rabble!

When demonstrating, his technique was to do the lift then do the lift and name the lift and only then go into endless flannel about do this bit and watch out for this and don’t do this. And he advised us to teach it to our rowers in the exactly the same way. Do the demonstration first. Twice.

Inspired.