under the crust

"but even miles underneath the earth's crust is swirling hot magma"

I was having this conversation the other day with one of my color belts, and she was really surprised when I explained why I teach the way I do. As in, my philosophy of teaching being figuring out how a person is motivated, and in a way, manipulating them to do what I want them to do without them necessarily knowing that they're doing it. For example, I tend to start my Thurs classes with relay races, where students are divided into lines and the losing line has to do 10 pushups for each race. What they don't always pick up is that I run the relays until each line has done roughly the same number of pushups. It's an exhausting cardio workout and pushups suck, but it's more fun this way and they don't notice as much that they're in pain and want to throw up, even if that's what they look like.

Maybe that wasn't the best example, but that's the clearest one I can write without getting too specific about any one person.

Fast forward - the other night I had a conversation with Jr and basically realized that all this time, I thought I was figuring him out in sparring and learning how to take him on...when really all this time he's been deliberately doing or not doing certain things to develop certain techniques in me without injuring me. It was all pretty crafted and somewhat psychological - the more I think about it, the more newfound respect I have and the more dumbfounded I am. It's like my whole world turned upside down - I feel totally duped!

But...it's no different than the way I teach so I can't really be offended. But yeah, for one brief moment, it all made sense to me. Our whole conversation started because he didn't understand why I thought he was mean to me when he thinks that he's so nice to me all the time. And...I think I'm seeing the way they think, and by that mode of thinking, they ARE nice...

It's kind of like if you've been communicating with someone via sign language and grunts and nodding or shaking your head and then suddenly you can speak the same language and explain yourselves. So...they're NICE??? Haha, it's like all things I know to be true are...wrong. Jaac just laughed at me...

Totally floored.