Ep. 375: Becoming a Kids Coach, feat. Andrew Green

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I just want to let you know we released a new mindset course featuring Rob Bernaki from Island Top Team and BJJ Concepts. It's called Mindset for Betas. It's an amazing resource that breaks down a new way to build a resilient jiu-jitsu mindset. It's part of BJJ Mental Models Premium. I will spare you the full sales pitch because you can try it for free. Just go to BJJmentalmodels.com/beta. I will give you a free month, you can check out the course and if you decide that it's not worth your money, you can cancel, you won't have to pay a cent. I've already been told by subscribers that this is the most valuable piece of jiu-jitsu content they've ever received, so I hope you like it too. Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 375. I am Steve Kwan and BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent jiu-jitsu approach. And I'm here today with a first timer but a fellow Canadian. I've got Andrew Green on the line. Andrew, how's it going? Speaker 2: How's it going, great, Steve. Thanks for having me on. Speaker 1: I am happy to have you on. We're going to dig into a topic that is near and dear to my heart, kids coaching, how to build a good kids coach. But before we dig into that, do you want to give yourself a quick introduction? There's I guess two things to talk about. There's your gym and there's also the kids content that you released which made a bit of a splash recently on Reddit. Why don't you talk about both? Speaker 2: Sure, my gym's in Winnipeg. It's Innovative Martial Arts. We're primarily kids-based, so the majority of our members are kids jiu-jitsu. We also have a couple other side programs as well. And been at it for 25 years now. So, been around for a while, been teaching for a long time. The kids content. So yeah, we just released new project. It's the Kids Jiu-Jitsu Playbook and the idea is we're going to start sharing some of the stuff that we do with kids in order to make our program successful and to get it as big as it was. I know we do some things that are kind of unique and I've not run into a lot of school owners that do some of them, so it's just time to kind of give back and share a little of what we do. Speaker 1: Awesome. And the cool thing about your program, which I think is different from a lot of the others, is I believe it's free, right? I believe people can just go to school.com and download it. Speaker 2: It's kind of both. We it's a freemium model, so that you can join for free. There's a lot of free stuff in there and then there's a premium level. So basically the free stuff, you get all of our ideas, we tell you everything that we're doing. And then with the premium model, you get all the templates and the exact scripts and everything that we use, so everything's just done for you and ready to go. Speaker 1: Well, let's talk a little bit about your experience here doing this at the gym level and then maybe we'll get into some lessons about how other coaches can learn this skill set and go down that path. Tell me a bit about the journey of building up your gym into a kids program and what you've learned along the way. And I guess really what is different from this versus an adults program and the thing that people might be used to if they're teaching grownups. Speaker 2: Okay, so teaching adults, yeah, is very different than kids, especially as you get into the younger age groups. Like when you have adults, they'll tend to create their own social experiences around the gym if they want to. They'll go out for drinks or whatever after after classes, they'll hang out at the open mats and the coach is often be involved in that. With kids, they often come in and then they do their class and they go. So it's it's kind of part of what you need to do as a coach in those environments is to build a little bit of that culture into the program in order to keep the kids entertained and and engaged and and sticking around. Like one of the big problems that jiu-jitsu and other martial arts schools are going to have is every time there's a change of season, some of your kids are going to want to go and play soccer because that's where their friends are. And if their friends are doing jiu-jitsu, then they'll probably stay in jiu-jitsu. Speaker 1: Right, that's actually a good point. Adults can much more easily take ownership of their own social experience, whereas with kids, they're kind of at the mercy of their parents and of the instructor to create that for them. What does that look like? I mean, I've heard examples of this before, of course, you what a lot of coaches do when they're running kids programs is they'll run non-jiu-jitsu events, like they'll have movie nights and things like that. But what have you found that's been particularly successful for you? Speaker 2: Okay, so for us, yeah, we do the the parents nights as they're called, which, you know, we don't usually do movies. We try and keep the kids active and engaged in in physical things rather than sitting around a screen. So, we'll do like Nerf nights and things like that. We do some some large scale events throughout the year, like we'll do an Easter hunt event in the next couple months that will have 600 kids show up for and along with all their family members. Uh, we'll do some large barbecues in the summer. And then for us, one thing that I've never run into a school that does as many as us in a single location is we do close to 200 birthday parties for kids every year. Speaker 1: That's a lot. 200 birthday parties. I mean, that's basically a whole business in and of itself. Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much could be. It's very much a a self-sustaining thing. It wasn't really something we planned. It was something that, you know, years back some of our members asked us to do. We started doing it, started refining it, and it just became very scripted and and planned out and got to the point where the kids obviously have a great time, but the parents loved it because they didn't have to do a thing or worry about anything. We just handled everything for them. Speaker 1: That is actually really valuable as a parent myself. This is one of the challenges with having a a young child. It can be a lot of work to plan out a birthday party and when you can find a service provider who can do that and just take it completely off of your hands, it saves you so many headaches. I want to expand upon this process of learning how to be a kids coach though. That's something that comes up a lot in conversation and I don't really know if there's a good playbook outside of what you guys are making for doing this. If someone were experienced in jiu-jitsu, maybe they've got some practice coaching adults and they want to get into kids coaching or maybe they've been asked to take over the kids class for the first time. Something that you had said to me was that you can't treat kids just like little mini adults. There's different stuff you need to know. What are some of the first things that someone needs to understand if they're hopping in and they're teaching kids for the first time in jiu-jitsu? Speaker 2: Uh, okay, so first thing when it comes to kids specifically is that we go through different age groups and what that means for the kid. So even within, you know, teaching kids, there's going to be a big difference between teaching somebody that's five years old and how you would interact and present stuff to them versus teaching a 10-year-old. So understanding those differences in age groups and how they are in terms of developmentally, like what they're ready for, socially, mentally, physically. And I think the next step after that is like is understanding the, you know, we believe very strongly in the long-term athletic development model. So where kids when they start off, it's more play, it's just fun. And then as they progress, they start getting a little bit more serious as they get older. We don't want five and six-year-olds to be taking things super seriously and getting into heavy competition at that age. It should just be kind of fun and learning. And then when they start getting older, if they want, then they can start taking that path. But if they don't want to take that path, the great thing about jiu-jitsu is you don't need to. This is something you can do for life and never have to worry about getting cut from a team. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one of the things that I've always loved about the sport is its adaptability to your goals. Jiu-jitsu can kind of be whatever you want it to be in a way that other sports can't because you might age out of them or maybe they're so competition focused that if you strip that away, there's nothing left. Whereas in jiu-jitsu, look, you can make this a full-time job if you want, or you can just do this casually, like I do, and train it for fun and train it as long as you want to, whatever pace is appropriate. And I think that's especially good for kids because so many kids competitive activities kind of force them down that road, but not all kids want to do that. And having that flexibility is awesome. I think it's also nice to have an option like jiu-jitsu where kids can learn to defend themselves, but you also don't have to worry about them getting concussed that much. You know, if someone in jiu-jitsu gets concussed, something went seriously, seriously wrong. So, in terms of how you actually have to deal with kids psychologically, you'd mentioned that even one or two years of an age difference can be huge with children. That's a concern you don't see so much with adults. I mean, if someone's an adult, you just throw them in the class and I mean, you got to be worried about things like size differences, but generally speaking, these are grownups. With kids, it's a bit different because they can vary wildly from six years old, seven years old, eight years old. I see this with my nieces and nephews, you know, some of them are just just a few years younger than my kid. And the developmental difference between like a six-year-old and an eight-year-old can be gigantic. Maybe tell me a bit about the different phases of development that you've noticed and what coaches need to be aware of if they're teaching like a tots class versus a young kids class versus a slightly older kids class versus a teen class. Speaker 2: Yeah, no problem. So, our youngest age group that we start working with is is three and four-year-olds. And at that age, they just like they like to run around. They want very much to attach to the coaches and the adults in the room. A little less so to each other at that age. It's much more about appealing to the adults and the coaches. They're very big in mimicry. So, you can explain things all you want to them, but they need to see it and then they need to mimic it in order to get it. And, you know, they're kind of very self-centered at that age too. They don't necessarily realize that there's other kids, so you don't want to do things where they're losing or getting upset through that. It's much more of just kind of like a a playtime, like a come in, get some basic jiu-jitsu, wrestle, start building that ability to work within a class rather than trying to focus on making things terribly technical. And keeping everything super simple. Like we don't need a super technical single leg takedown when you got a three-year-old. As soon as you pick their foot up above their knee height, they usually just fall down until they've been doing it for a while. As they get a little older, they start getting a little bit more competitive with each other. They start making friends within the classes and start getting a little bit more ability to learn the technical skills in a a more detailed way. But even five and six-year-olds, there's there's a limit to how much they can do. Like they're not going to have terribly great grip strength if you're trying to teach them how to grab collars and hold on. That's going to take a little bit of time to develop. They're going to have a hard time maintaining a closed guard because their legs just don't do that sort of thing yet. So it takes a little bit of practice to get them there. By the time they get to like 8 to 10 years old, they're usually pretty capable of doing almost anything the adults can do in terms of technical skills and that's really where they can start trying to get good at at jiu-jitsu and and learning all the the nuances and pieces that that are there. Up until then, it should just kind of be focused more on just having fun and getting into the class and learning things. But, you know, if you do have a kid that starts at three or four years old, by the time they get to eight, they're going to be a scary eight-year-old. And then as you get into teens, it's a completely different world because they start caring much more about the social side than anything else. They stop wanting to appeal to the adults as much as the younger kids, as much as appeal to each other. So it's a very different dynamic to try and navigate. And I think it's one that a lot of people kind of miss the boat on because in jiu-jitsu often see where, you know, you got a kids class and then you got an adult class. And then there's a bunch of kids that are maybe 8 to 10, 8 to 11 years old, and then there's a bunch of adults and there's just not many in the middle. So I do think that teens especially need their own class if you're going to have a a strong teen program. Speaker 1: So how does that differ? When we get into teaching teens, I mean, of course, you're getting closer to adults, but there's still a huge difference. What would you say are the main differences between a teens program versus like an adults program or a younger kids program? Speaker 2: Teenagers, it depends on the teenager and why they're there. If they want to be there and it was their decision, they can sometimes almost train like an adult, but socially they're not going to maybe be comfortable wrestling on the floor with an adult. We will have some teenagers that come in and they have that very strong, I guess, fear of failure or they're looking at their friends and they're they're more interested in how they appear to their friends rather than wanting to give their all and get tired out and fail. So, you can get a little bit of that. But in terms of how you interact with them, teenagers really strive that that sense of respect and a bit of autonomy, whereas adults kind of take a little bit more for granted when it comes to that things. But if you're working with a teenager, you you've got to give them some respect, you got to give them some freedom that you maybe don't with the kids. But just to kind of make them feel like they are an adult, even though they're not really old enough to be in the adult class or comfortable to be there. But treat them that way. Speaker 1: That's a really interesting point about respect. I'd love to hear you maybe expand upon that a little bit because these are, you know, these are kids who are getting older, they're approaching adulthood and they're probably starting to define their own sense of identity and have their own goals and aspirations and probably getting frustrated that they're running up against the rules all the time, especially with grownups. And this is an interesting consideration for a jiu-jitsu coach. I mean, you have the benefit in many ways of being able to provide a really useful and different perspective that a parent can't because you're kind of a an external third party. Something that I know coaches have said to me before is when you're teaching kids, you have to be mindful of the fact that like you don't know all of these kids' home life. You might be the closest thing they have to an adult role model, right? There might be value that you can provide that they don't get from home or from somewhere else. I'd love to maybe understand tactically when we talk about treating them with respect, how does that manifest in class? Like what does that actually look like? Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, like teenagers have spent their whole lives trying to ignore and tune out their parents for the most part. So they're very good at that, but they also when they come into a class, especially if they're coming in new, the school system doesn't necessarily treat them in a way that gives them respect. But as a a coach in a a martial arts school, you can start giving them leadership responsibilities. You can start listening to them, valuing their opinions as opposed to just bossing them around, giving them orders, which they will not respond well to at all. So, with us, as our teenagers get in there, we try to gear them as much into to taking on leadership roles as possible. A lot of our coaches come out of our teen program and it's something that the other teenagers in the class do see that, hey, yeah, we are hiring the people in your class to come in and and teach at younger kids or to run birthday parties or to work at our special events. Speaker 1: Something that I have found is with a lot of gyms, the kids program is often something that gets handed off to, you know, blue belts or young adults, like you said. And I've always wondered whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I've heard some coaches say that like, look, with the kids program, you've got to treat that as professionally as you would with the adults program. And that means that, you know, you want to have really experienced coaches there. And that's I think there's a lot of wisdom to that. But on the other hand, I think there's also wisdom to the fact that kids might respond better to someone who's closer to their own age. As an example, my kid trains jiu-jitsu and her favorite coaches are the younger kids, even if they're less experienced. I don't think, for example, a young child is really going to be able to tell the technical difference between whether their coach is like a, you know, a purple belt or a black belt. But there's other things they might look for. And I'm wondering, do you see different credentials being important for kids classes versus an adults, whereas normally with an adult, you're looking for, okay, what is how good are they at jiu-jitsu? How much do they actually know about jiu-jitsu? How good are they at communicating that technical knowledge? Are they up to date on modern coaching and curriculum practices? For kids though, I'm guessing there's a different set of concerns that might be more important than that because again, you're not necessarily trying to build star athletes when you're talking about kids that young. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that translates just to everything else. Like what makes a person a good kindergarten teacher is going to be very different than what makes somebody a good graduate degree professor. You need a very different skill set. And with kids, it's much more about how you can interact with them, how you relate to them and building those connections so they trust and like you and they want to listen to you and they want to do the things that you're you're asking them to do, even when it's it's hard and it's challenging because they trust you and they respect you and you've you've shown them that you respect them as well. In terms of age, I don't know if age necessarily is the the thing, but it can certainly help. Most of our our kids coaches are younger. I'm finding as, you know, I've gotten a little older, the kids definitely like the younger coaches more than me at times now. And it's just it's it can be draining. Like if you're teaching three or four kids classes in a row, that's a lot of energy output in terms of bringing that that energy to the room because when you work with kids and you're teaching kids classes, you're coaching and you're teaching, but you also have to entertain to a little bit of a degree too. You have to be more interesting than the person next to them if they're going to listen to you rather than the kid sitting next to them. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. I don't think kids would respond well to like a John Danaher style of teaching, right? There has to be a some degree of entertainment provided. How do you do that? I mean, is it just a matter of being upbeat and positive? Are you making jokes? Like what kind of vibe do you bring to the kids class that you find keeps them engaged? Because I do see when watching kids train jiu-jitsu, especially at a young age, holding their attention span is usually the hardest part. Speaker 2: Yeah, so like with our coaching development process, we run them everybody through a a workshop first. So they're going through a whole course with us on how to interact with different age groups and how to teach different age groups. We usually have our junior coaches start off with special events and things that are very scripted. So if somebody's starting to become a coach, the one of the first things they'll do is they'll do like some summer camp stuff or they'll do some parents nights or they'll do a bunch of birthday parties. Things that are very scripted, so they can work more on learning how to interact with the kids and how to present themselves in that environment rather than having to worry about, you know, how to plan the class or how to manage the curriculum. It's just it's very straightforward. And once they have that piece and they're they're good in front of a group of kids and they know how to build those relationships with the kids and how to handle the the obstacles that come up, then they can start moving into a bit more of a coaching jiu-jitsu sort of roles. Speaker 1: How much of teaching a kids class do you think is really non-jiu-jitsu related? I mean, one of the reasons people put their kids into something like jiu-jitsu is not always because they want them to be in a sport and they want them to learn how to fight. Sometimes it's just they want to teach the kid discipline and character. How much of teaching a kids class do you find is secondary skills to jiu-jitsu versus the actual technique? Speaker 2: I think I could probably count the number of times I've had a parent come in and tell me they want their kid to be able to fight on one hand. It's always about something else. It's always about discipline or confidence or getting them fit or keeping them active. It's never about them fighting. That's just kind of, I mean, that's what we do and the vehicle we use, but the other skills are really what the parents are interested in and they're the ones that are going to keep with that kid longer. Like if we're teaching a kid and maybe they come in, they join, they're five years old, they stick around, they're here for five years, then something happens and they go away. I mean, 20 years later, they're not going to remember a lot of jiu-jitsu, but hopefully we can still have made an impact on on their life. And I've had plenty of kids that are or I guess adults that have come back and said, hey, I trained with you as a kid. I don't really remember what we were learning, but I remember this piece and that's been very valuable to me since then. So it's it's like jiu-jitsu is the fun part. It's what we use to communicate and it's what helps build those life skills. And I do think that's important. Like, you know, if you want to teach a kid about resilience and fortitude, having somebody sit on them and hold them down and crush them and them having to use their their brain to get themselves out rather than just flailing around, gives a very good basis for for challenges that are going to hit them in other areas of their life. But the parents don't worry too much about that. That's not their goal. Their goal is to help their kid get confident and able to stand up for themselves, not to have their kid go and win medals. Speaker 1: Yeah. If a parent came in to a jiu-jitsu class and they said their number one goal was to turn their five-year-old into a killing machine, that would be a little bit concerning more than anything. The motivations are very, very different when you come to children in that regard. I would love to ask then, you know, what one thing that comes up with adult programs is the idea of a mat chat, which is the coach sits down and talks to you. And I know many coaches who suggest that at the end of the class, you should spend a few minutes sort of addressing the class. Now, there are downsides to this approach. When you're talking, you're not training. And so with adults, the challenge to giving that lecture is you're actually taking away from their training time. And, you know, an adult really does not need a 10-minute rant about discipline and character. That said though, I wonder if you find that the experience with children is different because there are different considerations. They might benefit from that in that there could be information there that they haven't encountered and it's again, your goal is not to necessarily turn them into a star athlete. But on the other hand, you also have to deal with attention spans, which are often much shorter for children. Do you find that there's a portion of the class which is verbal that it with kids and if so, does that vary from how you would teach an adults class? Speaker 2: Yeah, and those sort of things aren't something that we do. We've tried those. Personally, I don't think that they work the best. I think that once, you know, if you got kids all full of energy and they're sweating and they're out of breath and then you try and sit them down and have a conversation about something, it's just not going to go well. I also think that within a kids class, if you're trying to have those sort of conversations and, you know, you got 20 kids, either it's going to take half an hour to have any sort of meaningful conversation with them or it's just going to be you giving them a five-minute lecture and them tuning you out. For us, what we do with it is, you know, if there's an opportunity, like if something comes up in a class that makes sense for us to have a quick chat about, we certainly will sit down and coach either one-on-one or bring it to the group and have a quick chat with the group. That works a lot better in class. We'll also tie the things that we want to to reinforce into those classes. Like for with our program, we do our striping a little bit different with kids, so they'll get a different stripe for different sorts of behavior that we want in class. So one of their stripes is for sportsmanship, right? So if they are not showing good sportsmanship, they cannot get that stripe, they can't get to the advanced to their next belt. And they know that. So they might look at their belt and realize, okay, I'm missing my sportsmanship stripe. And we'll have a little goal written down for them that they need to, you know, what they need to do in order to get that. So we try to tie our life skills pieces in a little bit more organically rather than taking five or 10 minutes out of the class at the end to sit them down and and do it. We also go with a system where every every two months we put out a a little kids magazine for them, which is actually part of our our kids jiu-jitsu playbook. It's it's in there. And within that, there's, you know, a bunch of projects tying to a life skills. Right now they have a goal setting one since it's a new year. And if they complete the projects, like all the little worksheets in it and read through the material, they can come and bring it to our front desk and they'll get like little gym currency things that they can select prizes off the prize wall. So they're all motivated to actually do it rather than, you know, ignoring it. And yeah, like the other day we had a kid come in and he'd taken three of the booklets and completed all three and wanted three times as many tickets for for having done it. We had to be, no, no, you can only do it once. So, making it a little bit more organic, making it something that the kids want to do rather than sitting them all down and and trying to give them a lecture that, yeah, when we tried that, they just kind of tuned it out. They didn't get to participate in it either, which is not the most useful. Speaker 1: I love that idea of a kids magazine and kids prizes. I can tell you again, as the father of a young child, trinkets have a lot of value with a small child. It's amazing how much mileage you can get out of a a small gift or something to hold or play with. Tell me a little bit more about this approach. What kind of stuff do you put in this magazine? How often do you release it? I think this is a really cool idea that I've never heard anyone else doing in a martial arts class. Speaker 2: We do it every two months. So this month, I said it's on goal setting. So there's a couple articles in there on goal setting as well as tying that directly to jiu-jitsu and and progress within that. And then there'll also be three or four sheets that that they can fill in. It asks some questions. They set a goal, set up the, you know, the process, what do you need to do to reach that goal, who's going to hold you accountable for that goal, and they fill it all in there. So, once they complete it, they get their tickets. And yeah, the prize wall, it's it's like it's like you said, it's trinkets. Like there'll be Pokemon cards and art supplies and and just little things that kids want that they can earn for completing that or for just having, you know, exceptional good behavior in class or being a leader in class or whatever the the skill that we want them working on is. If they're going above and beyond, we might give them a few extra. And you're right, like it's amazing how much you can motivate a kid if they know that if they do the thing, they can select a prize. And yeah, we get some really funny and really neat answers in some of these booklets. Speaker 1: I love that you bring up Pokemon cards. I mean, you can motivate a young child to do amazing things if the offer and the prize are Pokemon cards. Like that's the ultimate carrot that you can dangle in front of a child to get them to do what you need them to do. Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's kind of the key is like the kids actually do the stuff because they're motivated to do it. And then when they do it, they tend to enjoy it. And the parents like it because the kids are actually doing the things that that relate to that. So they're they're setting goals, they're learning about leadership and and all the other different concepts that we have as a part of that that program. So, yeah, we're trying to take the life skills piece and just make it much more organic and and make it something that the kids want to do and something that they can actually have the time to do as opposed to when, yeah, we sit them down and try and give them a lecture and then by the time they get in the car, they've forgotten everything we said anyways. Speaker 1: I guess an interesting factor with children, especially young ones that you're not going to encounter with adults, has to do with emotional regulation. Not that adults don't throw tantrums, it's just when they do, they normally go on Reddit and they do that. Whereas with children, when they throw a tantrum, they're going to do it right in the middle of the class. I always see this happen where some kid just has a freak out and then then just lies down and flops on the mat and they won't move and they won't budge. And I always feel so bad for coaches who have to deal with this because you're simultaneously trying to run the class while children are not playing ball with you. What are your thoughts on this? Because that's got to be one common problem that happens on almost a single class basis. It comes up repeatedly, especially with younger children. Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a spectrum there, right? You go from when they're when you got a baby, they have no language, they have no means to communicate. If they want something, need something or whatever, they they just cry. That's all they got, that's what they know how to do. Up to, you know, once they're a teenager or adult and they have full communication ability, they got good use of language, they can actually tell you and communicate and understand the feelings that they are having. Now, it's not just like an on-off switch. There's a full spectrum that plays out in there. So when you have the younger kids, if they're upset about something, they might not even understand why they're upset or how they're supposed to communicate it. So they just fall back into what they can do, which is make some noise and get some attention and hope somebody else can sort it out for them. So, when you have a kid that's that's in that state, I think the biggest thing is just to try and sit down and talk to them. Ask them, you know, try and figure out what's going on, why are you upset? And hopefully you can kind of start getting to the bottom of it. Sometimes all they need is just for somebody to sit there and and let them feel like they've been heard and they've been seen. And usually kids can come out of it once they get past that. Sometimes they just need something to go, you know, something to give them that little, yeah, you're okay. Let's keep going. And how we react to those sorts of things as as the adults in the room matters too. Like if a kid is running and they trip and they fall and the adults go, oh no, are you okay? Then they're immediately going to probably start crying. But if they have the same trip, the same fall and you go, oh, just get back up, keep going. Then chances are they'll just get back up and keep going because they they respond to how the the adults respond to whatever happened as well. But when they do hit that state and they're just there and they're crying and we need to sit with them, some that's, you know, we'll have an assistant just go sit with them, talk with them, try and figure out what's going on. And then sometimes just give them the the the option. Do you want to get back in the class or do you want to go sit on the side for a little while? Sometimes that's all it takes, then they'll wipe the tears and they'll, okay, I want to go back in class. And then they go back in class. But they needed to feel like somebody heard them and somebody was sitting there and listening to them and recognizing that they had whatever issue it was. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely makes sense. Now, of course, the challenge is when you're a coach, your attention is being split in multiple directions and that can be hard enough when you're teaching grownups, but when you're teaching kids, again, if one of them is having a a tantrum, now you got to deal with that while you're teaching and it can feel like your attention split in a lot of ways. So this leads me to ask about staffing considerations. How do you deal with staffing a class for kids versus adults? Do you find that you need to have more teachers in an individual class? You need do you need to have a different student to teacher ratio or how does that line up? Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Like if you got 50 adults in a room, one person can kind of keep them all doing what they're supposed to. You don't have to worry about anybody crying or going missing. Whereas with younger kids, sometimes you got to be constantly telling them, okay, I need you to do this, I need you to do this and just poking them along. So as you go younger, your your ratios are obviously going to change. Like if you got three and four-year-olds, a class of 15 kids, you might want three coaches, or one one coach and a couple assistants in there. We kind of operate on that there should never be a state where somebody's running a kids class and there's no other assistants around for that exact reason. Sometimes the unexpected happens and somebody's got to take care of it. So even if it's a smaller class that one person can run, there should at least be somebody available that can, you know, be pulled into the class if they need to because, you know, if you got a younger kid and somebody has an accident, you have a situation that needs to be dealt with immediately, right? Whether it's a a bloody nose or somebody threw up on your mats, you need that second person to be able to step in and and help you deal with that situation. Or yeah, in the case of it's just a kid that's having a bad day and they have some anxiety and they're not able to get back in the class because they're crying, somebody's going to be able to go sit with that kid and get them back in. Speaker 1: Yeah, I really like how you're bringing up how kids take emotional cues from adults. Even at the adult level, I think we don't talk about this enough about emotional contagion and how you as the person leading a class, whatever vibe and energy you bring into a class, people will take those cues from you. That's especially important when you're dealing with children. And so being able to maintain your composure and your upbeat nature in the face of a child who's struggling emotionally is tremendously important. Getting mad at and getting visibly frustrated with a child because they're being difficult is one of, in my opinion, one of the worst things that you can do to resolve the situation. But I mean, you tell me if I'm wrong or if you've got a different take on it. Speaker 2: No, you're absolutely right. Especially, yeah, the younger you go, that more that becomes apparent. If you go into a class of kids and you're in a grouchy mood, you're going to have an absolutely terrible class. No matter how much you try to read it, they're going to pick up on the little cues that you're just not in a good mood and then they're not going to be a good mood and the class is going to go awful. So we've we've certainly have it where if if one of our coaches is just they're they've had a rough day and they're not feeling it, okay, well, somebody else is going to take over and lead that class and bring the energy and you can be an assistant a little bit more in the background that day if you need it, but whoever's in charge of that class and in front of that class needs to be able to go in there with a positive attitude. Otherwise, it's going to be a messy class. Speaker 1: Now, if someone wants to get into teaching kids for the first time, it can feel tremendously overwhelming and scary to be put in that position. With the benefit of hindsight, what are some of the things that you would encourage people if they're getting into this for the first time? Like the first few things they should do. So maybe you've been tasked with or you want to start running a kids program and like the first month leading up to that. What should you focus on in terms of skill development for you as a coach? Is there anything particularly you need to learn or structure before you can be productive in that environment? Speaker 2: Well, I can walk you through our process, which is like if somebody wants to be a coach, we run somewhat regular coaching workshops and seminars. So the first step would be they would start coming to those. So within those, we teach them how to deal with different age groups, how to deal with special needs, how to deal with different archetypes of kids and the way that they're going to behave and interact with you and get them into that. Then we'll start them off as assistants and things that that are are fairly straightforward. Like I mentioned earlier, we'll do like they come and assist with birthday parties and parents nights and special events and things where they're not needing to necessarily worry about how to teach jiu-jitsu, just how to interact with kids. Because that's that's the part that you really can't fake. Like anybody can learn how to do an arm bar and demonstrate an arm bar, but not anybody can learn to handle a crying five-year-old, right? That's a different sort of skill that, you know, is is probably more important when it comes to to getting the kids doing things because like you said, like if you put John Danaher in a front of a group of kindergarten kids, it would be interesting and I'd like to see it, but I don't think it would be terribly productive, right? Whereas somebody that's just naturally good with kids, you can teach them the technical skills a lot easier than you can teach them the soft skills in terms of how to handle that group. So we want to know that they have that ability first. And some people are great adult coaches, but not great kids coaches and and vice versa. So that's kind of how we start them. Once they have that, then we'll put them into to classes as as assistants. So they can kind of see how classes run and interact with the kids in more of a a technical environment. And once they've been at that for a while and they're comfortable, then we kind of switch the roles. So whoever was leading the class will let them lead the class and then become their assistant. So we can kind of coach them through how to do things and and help them out if they get in trouble. And then eventually they can start taking the lead position themselves. Speaker 1: I like that. It's almost like a buddy system. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And it's a process. I don't think we'd ever want to be in a situation where you just, okay, you just got your purple belt, go, teach that class. Can't see that going and and expecting too much to come out of that that's good. Unless that person already had a a significant background in working with kids. Speaker 1: Now, I know a lot of people who just say, I don't like kids or I don't want to deal with this. Do you think there is a type of person who just doesn't have the mindset or the personality type to teach children and just shouldn't be doing it? Or do you think this is a skill that anyone can acquire? Speaker 2: I think the mindset's probably the biggest piece. If you don't want to teach kids, you probably shouldn't try. Whereas you can in any school, there's going to be plenty of people that have that ability, they want to do that. And you can train them to be able to do that. But anybody that comes in and says, I don't want to teach kids, if you don't want to teach kids, the kids probably aren't going to want to learn from you, no matter how good you are technically. Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, you mentioned earlier, and I think this is great, that you recruit from within. I think this is fantastic from any organizational culture when you show that you want to bring people in and promote them up into roles. So when you as a coach are looking around the field at students who potentially could one day be another coach, and in this case, particularly a kids coach, what are you looking for? How do you know that like this person might be someone that I might want to offer this job to one day? Speaker 2: A lot of it's just kind of intuition and gut, but I mean, when we look at the teenagers and the younger adults that might end up in that role, the biggest thing is looking at, do they seem like they would want to do it, right? If they want to do it, great. And then do they have maybe the personality and the temperament to do it? I don't want anybody that, you know, gets upset easily, right? Because kids are going to test your patience sometimes. I want somebody that's got, you know, some a strong sense of empathy that if somebody's having a hard time, they'll try to sit and talk and and figure out what it is rather than just assuming that assuming the worst. Like if you have a kid and they come in and they're they're just having a rough day and they're misbehaving, you don't know what their story was and why they might be acting that way. So I don't want somebody that's just going to come in and act like a drill sergeant and yell at them and be like, hey, you need to stop doing that and sit down and listen. I want somebody that's going to maybe try and figure out how to, you know, what the actual problem is and why why the behavior is that way. Because you can make things a whole lot worse sometimes if you don't do that. Like if you had a kid and they're misbehaving, they're talking over you, they're wandering, they're not paying attention and you yell at them and then somebody else comes and tells you later, this kid like their their grandma died two days ago. They're really close and they're having a really hard time and you just yelled at that kid. That's going to push them out of martial arts and and break any trust that you might have had before. So we want somebody that's going to assume the best about the kids and take the time to get to know them and figure out what's going on rather than resorting to trying to yell at them and discipline them that way. Speaker 1: Now, when the coach makes a mistake, which is going to happen, I mean, what do you suggest they do to to deal with it and resolve the issue? You brought up, ideally as a teacher, you don't lose your temper with your students, but everyone makes mistakes now and then. How do you resolve that issue if you do flub it and maybe you get frustrated with a kid? What's the proper way to deal with that? Speaker 2: Well, I mean, even if you're not losing your temper, sometimes kids just need somebody to yell at them because they're doing something that's unsafe or or whatever. But it's it's what happens after the fact that maybe makes that difference. Like if kids misbehaving and it's not safe and you have to raise your voice at them a little bit, what do you do next? Do you keep putting that kid under that that lens and yelling at them or do you give it a couple minutes and then go sit with them and say, hey, I I I'm sorry. I needed to yell at you because you were doing this thing that wasn't safe. You might have been hurt, your friend might have been hurt and sit down and have that chat with them to kind of get them rebuild that trust and make sure that they know that you're not mad at them. You were stopping something that needed to be stopped. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I've always found that with kids, I mean, if you treat them like human beings and you're reasonable with them, they can usually receive that vibe. Whereas if you're just being a disciplinarian and you're just yelling all the time, it's hard to maintain their buy-in over a period of time. As you said with with kids, a big part of keeping them engaged is it has to be something that they really enjoy. And if they're not enjoying it because the coach is difficult or especially if they feel like the coach doesn't like them, it's really hard to keep the kid engaged in a way that they'll keep showing up. Speaker 2: I don't think that's just kids, adults are kind of the same on that. If we just as adults have a little bit more autonomy to maybe make that decision ourselves. Whereas if a kid doesn't like it, it might take them a while to stop coming to classes because their parents keep bringing them or their parents keep trying to encourage them, but once you've poisoned that well and the kid is doesn't trust the coaches and thinks the coaches don't like them, they're not going to have a good time in class, whereas an adult would just be like, oh, this this is stupid. I'm going to go somewhere else. Speaker 1: Now, you mentioned parents and we got to talk about parents. That's the big variable with kids that you don't have to deal with when you're dealing with grownups. The parent is one of the most volatile aspects of training a kid. In addition to the fact that often the parent is the one who's bringing the kid, so you kind of have a a captive audience that's been brought to you. That's a very different cultural thing, right? Because with an adult, when they come in, they come in of their own volition. A kid is coming in because their parents brought them. So you've got that factor. But then you've also got the factor of having two customers involved here because in addition to the kid, you also have the parent and you've got to please them both to some extent. What are some of the factors and challenges of dealing with parents? How do you deal with that dual audience where you have both the student as a customer, but also the parent as well? Speaker 2: I think the biggest thing is just setting expectations for everybody up front, knowing what our program is, what our program's about and what it's not about. And then in terms of the day-to-day, I do think it's best to keep the kids and the parents separated at least a little bit. Like in our gym, the parents are not sitting at the edge of the mat. They can watch the classes through a window, but they can't sit at the side of the mat where they can interact with the kids during class. I know a lot of schools have trouble with that where the parents are trying to coach their kids while the kid is in class and that's not productive for anybody because the kid needs to listen to the actual coaches. And if they're getting mixed messages, it just creates confusion and makes class more chaotic. So we believe in keeping the parents, like they should be able to see what their kids are doing, but they shouldn't be able to be interactive with it. If you didn't have the space, then it might even be a case where just the parents can't stay. But sometimes maybe once a month or for graduations or in-house tournaments, that's where they get to come in and see it. There's also value in that and that if they only see the kid doing jiu-jitsu every month or every two months, they'll actually see progress, whereas if they're seeing it every day, it just tends to look the same. And parents can certainly sometimes be the worst critics of their kids. Like if their kid is fidgeting or sitting there and they're talking to their friend, it might not be a disruption for the class, but then the parents start yelling at their kid in the middle of class and that certainly becomes a distraction. So that's one problem. The other is sometimes like kids or parents see their kid differently than than they see every other kid. So you might have parents that are asking about, well, why is why is this kid getting promoted and mine mine isn't? And again, I think the answer is just setting those expectations clear up front. Like here's how we promote people, here's what your kid needs to do. You know, once they have met these requirements, which you can see here, then they can move to their next belt. Yeah, I think that's kind of the key thing is just setting expectations for the parents and making sure that they understand those right from the start. Speaker 1: I think that's a really important point. A lot of the things that might come intuitive to parents outside of the gym are not behaviors that are helpful inside the gym. If the parent is continuously interjecting in the class while the coach is trying to command the kids' attention, it can be a challenge. And as you mentioned, sometimes the parent's presence itself is a distraction, especially if the child's not used to being in an environment like that. I remember when we first put my kid into jiu-jitsu, she kept trying to get my attention. I would be sitting there on the sidelines and she'd be waving at me and focusing on me and because, you know, she's used to trying to please dad and hang out with dad and this is a new environment. So sometimes just removing the parents entirely can be very helpful. Now, when I drop my kid off at jiu-jitsu, a big part of what I do is I just go over to a coffee shop and disappear for a bit and then come back after. That way, I'm not there as a distraction. My kid is fully focused on and engaged with the coach and maybe most importantly, I'm sending a signal to my kid that my the coach that is there is actually the authority on the ground. And if they have a problem, they don't need to come to me to deal with it. They can go talk to the coach. That also teaches a degree of independence from the parent as well, so that my kid doesn't feel like I always need to be there and she realizes that everything's going to be okay if dad's not here all the time. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Kids will always behave differently when they know their parents are around. And what those sort of differences are change as they change ages. But I mean, there's a reason that in any environment where you expect real learning to happen, like school, there's no parents sitting in the classroom with the kids, right? It wouldn't work, right? The parents would provide way too much of a distraction and the teacher wouldn't be able to actually teach. So, like I said, with us, everything's separated, like they're behind a wall and they can look, you know, watch through a window a little bit, but for the most part, the kids don't see the parents. And I think that's always the best thing is is and, you know, part of the goal of any program should be to try and teach kids a little bit more in terms of independence. And in order to do that, they need to be able to do things without having their parent sitting right there with them. And like one thing that we've noticed a lot with like summer camps and things is the parents that linger tend to create problems in a sense too, right? Like if the kid's upset and they're feeling anxious and they're crying and they're hugging mom's leg and they don't want to leave or they don't want their mom to leave, the longer the mom stays, the worse it gets. Okay, whereas if they just drop them off and go, within three minutes that kid is happy and smiling and playing. But we need to get the parent out of here for that to happen. Until that happens, they're just crying and upset and trying to get mom's attention. But as soon as the parent leaves, they're good, they're happy, they're playing and they're they're interacting with their friends. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a great point about the the attention span of children and how quickly they will move on from crying to happy. It's it's unbelievable to watch. It's like a a tropical storm. It just appears out of nowhere and then it disappears a few seconds later. All of this makes me realize that teaching parents is almost its own thing. And in addition to children, you have to also give parents an education about how they're expected to conduct themselves when they're in classes. Because the parent can be a a wildly volatile element to the class, especially if they're not familiar with jiu-jitsu and they see their kid there in an apparent fight with another kid and they feel like their kid is being beat up. It's hard sometimes for a parent to sit by and watch that happen. And as a coach, the last thing you want is a parent jumping in and having a freak out while your students are practicing. What do you tell parents about jiu-jitsu and their child's education here so that they understand how they can provide value to this process as well? Speaker 2: Okay, what we tell parents when it comes to jiu-jitsu is that as a martial art, it's very control focused. They're not we're not teaching their kids to punch and kick. We are teaching them to remain calm under pressure and to control their opponent rather than than trying to hurt their opponent. And that's kind of the way that we phrase that. And I think a lot of parents resonate with that because they don't like, you know, nobody wants their five-year-old punching and kicking somebody, but they do want their kid to be able to get themselves out of trouble if they find themselves there. And in order to get there, like sometimes those kids need to feel a little bit of pressure. They need to be stuck in a situation where it is hard. Otherwise, they're not going to be able to get themselves to that next level, right? You can't get strong lifting an empty barbell. You got to eventually put some weights on that thing. So, in order for the kids to get better at jiu-jitsu, we have to challenge them. We have to push them and at times that's going to result in some emotions coming out. Like if you've ever seen kids in a jiu-jitsu tournament, there's going to be tears. Not always tears because kids are hurt. Sometimes it's just they go in, they have a a really hard match, they give everything they got. Win or lose, they're going to come off the mats with some very strong emotions going through them. And that's okay, that's part of the process and that's what's going to help make them stronger. But in order to get there, they have to go through that themselves. Speaker 1: Right. Well, as we tie this one up, Andrew, I just always want to make sure I give people the opportunity to to just say anything else that we might have missed. Were there any other important details or topics we needed to get into here, which we didn't cover? Speaker 2: I think we got most of it. The only like I think when it comes to teaching kids, the biggest things are making sure you have the right person in front of the group so that they're able to connect and lead and get the kids to trust them and that they legitimately care about the kids that they're teaching. It's not something that they come in, 45 minute class goes and at the end they just, that's it, I'm done. They actually care about those kids. I think in order to build a a strong kids program, just like a strong adults program, it's it's all about the culture you create within the classes and the gym. And in order to create that culture, it has to be maybe a little bit more coach or or gym owner led than than it necessarily does with adults because that's going to be a little bit more fluid. So we have to do those special events. We have to do those times where they get to come in and just play and have fun and and socialize. And we have to do the things that kind of trigger the kids' motivation. They're used to playing video games where they get rewards constantly for everything they do. So taking some of those gamification elements and and translating them into the jiu-jitsu mat so that they can feel those accomplishments and they can feel those rewards for doing the things that maybe they don't necessarily want to do, but in order to get what they want, they need to do them. Right? Because kids will spend hours just grinding away at a video game in order to get a new skin for their character. We can take that kind of mentality and translate that into the jiu-jitsu class and and get them to to do the things that we want if we provide the right incentives in the right environment. Speaker 1: Well, thanks so much for coming by, Andrew. Before we pause this and wrap this, let's maybe talk about the program that you've put together because if people want to learn more from you, you've got all of your material online. Where can people find it and what can they expect? Speaker 2: Yeah, we are on uh school.com, S K O O L and it's the Kids Jiu-Jitsu Playbook. So we're starting to put up all of our materials. We have our full coaching manuals in there. Our life skills based magazines and newsletters are in there. About the games that we use in class, like the group games, the individual games are all in there as well. And we're putting in all the internal events that we do. So like whether they're retention based or marketing based, we're putting everything in there along with all the the assets for those, the templates and everything. And yeah, it's it's it's it's blown up far faster than I thought it would. So I'm I'm very happy with where it's going and yeah, it's nice to see a group focused on kids jiu-jitsu actually getting some attention because it it seems like it often gets neglected. Speaker 1: Yep. Agreed, man. Well, I will put a link to that in the show notes to make it easy for people to find. So if you want to check out Andrew's program, just pop open your podcast player and go to the notes or description section. There should be a one-tap link, you can go to find it. I'll also put a link to our stuff. Everything we make lives at BJJmentalmodels.com. The podcast, both mini episodes and full length episodes like this are all completely free, plus our newsletter, so you'll want to check those out. And beyond that, please do consider leveling up with us at BJJ Mental Models Premium, the world's largest audio library of jiu-jitsu master classes on strategy, tactics, concepts, very different from the way that traditional instructionals are oriented. If you like listening and learning through audio, if you like having passive information being provided to you in the background, I think you'll find this approach very useful. So all of that is at BJJmentalmodels.com. But Andrew, my friend, thank you so much for coming by. This is a really good episode. Speaker 2: All right, thanks for having me. Speaker 1: Most welcome. Thank you to the listeners too. Appreciate you as well and we will talk to you next time. See you then.