Keeping your students happy at any given time is one thing, but keeping them motivated is another thing, a more long-term goal that will determine the future of your classes. In every session in your martial arts club, the motivation here plays a huge part as it is the reason why your students come back and train with you. Your students might have had a bad day in the office and other problems to worry about, contributing to a short attention span, and the last thing they want is a painful workout session at which they don’t feel motivated at all.
The key component of motivation for a instructor is bringing your best every day, even when you’re feeling less than 100%. As a club owner or instructor, you’ve got to set an example and be the energy. A positive attitude is infectious, and your students can definitely feel your positivity, and it will definitely rub off on them. Here are 5 easy tricks to motivate a group and get them coming back every time.
1) Group workouts
Ever had a workout buddy? If done correctly, it can be incredibly encouraging and motivating for exercise to have someone with similar goals. You can compete against each other, encourage each other, and act as each other’s checks and balances against either slacking off or working out too hard.
Training in a group is already a huge nudge of motivation for your students, as they are surrounded by fellow students who share similar goals, interests and reasons to be there. For warm ups before the lesson starts, whether it be passing a different weight ball around in a circle while doing squats or planking until the last one drops.
2) Praise
Positive reinforcement is an incredible motivator in any field of instruction – there’s a whole body of psychological research that extends from children in preschool to employees in large businesses, with the vast majority of data pointing to the fact that positive feedback just works.
Recognize who is performing well in your class, and simply praise them. It’s sure to give them a kick of motivation, and encourage them to keep doing better. Don’t just praise explicitly good form, too – if you see someone who has greatly improved since training began, make sure to point that out as well.
Make sure that you drop the name of the student you’re praising – he or she will feel specifically chosen, and then feel even more proud, as they’re aware that you’ve paid attention to them and the praise isn’t empty. This works vice versa, if you praise someone else, your student should have that sense of desire to do well and be on the same level of the person that was praised.
3) Short term goals
Set realistic goals that are achievable and celebrate them constantly. Rather than going for a nebulous long-term goal that makes it hard to see progress, break it up into short term goals as steps to getting closer to the last goal. Be specific with the goals like “You are going to be able to do the roundhouse kick end of the month”. People often lose sight of the small steps when they only set a longer-term goal with no intermediate goals or steps to keep them motivated. Breaking that big goal down into smaller goals, or simply ticking items off a daily checklist can help keep the motivation going over the long haul.
4) Keeping Track
Tracking improvement is an effective way to push your students to improve themselves or even try to beat other people’s scores. Sometimes your students need to be reminded about where they started, what progress they’ve made and how far they’ve already come. Even the smallest pieces of motivation along the way can keep them moving in the right direction.
5) Partner up
Sometimes not only just the instructor can give words of encouragement. Hand over some control to your students. The best thing about working in a group is you have many voices, so use them. Get them to partner up and rotate workouts, so one person is sparring and the other is holding pads whilst giving out words of motivation.
One added benefit of such partnerships is that students will develop friendships and a sense of camaraderie, which may very well improve motivation to keep attending as well.
The bottom line
Remember to keep these 5 things in mind before you enter any class and to be enthusiastic from start to finish. Always bring your A game and treat it as a class that you yourself would want to attend as a student. Get everyone on board with this motivation and you’re sure to have a whole host of repeat attendees and happy students.
