Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 4 October 2025
I really wish I was on my way to the UK at the moment of writing this to attend the BFCC meeting in Brentwood. But I cannot fit it in my schedule. Hopefully I will be able to attend some meeting next year. I wish all attendees fair conditions and beautiful casts!
I do not think I am wrong if I say that a lot of instructors find that they have problems to get their students to practice in between sessions. Or that their students just sees them once and does not practice after that one session. The students are being blamed for not being highly motivated and not that interested in improving. Is that really true and fair to say that? Someone seeking instruction and paying for that not being highly motivated? I understand that there are different levels of student. But if this is not highly motivated people I do not really know what counts for highly motivated, only elite then?
I think that this is an instructor problem. At least partly. It is not only a problem on the student side. I think that someone not practicing after a paid session is leaving the session with too little knowledge and motivation from the instructor to get out and practice. If the student has not gotten a clear idea of what to practice on after the session then the hurdle to go out and practice is much higher. That is not the student’s fault, that is an instructor fault. Of course the supermotivated student that can find all the information the student needs by it self will still get out to practice. But if your students does not practice enough to really improve after a session I think that the instructor needs to improve.
So what do the student needs from a lesson? Some level of understanding what you have gone through during the session. The lesson broken down in parts that can be practiced by them self. These parts could be drills and games that replicates gist of the lesson. These drills can be part of a progression to some goal. I think it is very important here that these drills makes it possible for the student to know when the student is doing the drill correctly, what the expected output is. An other important thing here is that the student leaves the lesson with knowledge enough to identify errors in performance of the drills and even better if the student also leaves with knowledge how to correct these errors. These errors can also be a great topic for the next lesson.
I am happy to hear more reflections and insights on this topic.
Cheers, Rickard
PoD: Brentwood last year. Chris, in the brown coat, is at least partly to blame why I’m writing front pages. Meeting can have that effect, they get ideas. :D