I recently ran a seminar at our gym called “Fighting Dirty” which entails a look at clinch range fighting for self defense. It’s a mixture of clinch work, stand up wrestling, dirty boxing, takedowns, and ground fighting.
This is actually the second time I have run this seminar, and as I was going through the seminar I realized it’s a good seminar… but it’s not great. It’s not where I want it just yet. Everyone that attended learned things. They had a chance to pressure test their skills in a meaningful manner. They had an opportunity to apply concepts they haven’t worked just yet. However, it could be better. Much better.
I think it’s important to be able to honestly evaluate a situation like that. All of the pieces of the seminar are great. The concept and idea is very valuable. However, the timing and the flow didn’t work together in the way I originally envisioned.
Often times where great ideas begin to come together, the initial execution might not be where we want it. It’s easy to take positive feedback from those that attended and say “Awesome, everyone loved it, so I am good to go.” It’s also easy to beat yourself up about it. Seminars and trainings rarely go perfectly. You can’t beat yourself up over it. 90% of the time, for the attendee, is was great and they learned. You’re the only one that knows you probably could have put it together a bit better and increased their experience that much more. But that’s ok. You will have an opportunity to do that next time.
When we ran the first ASR course, we got rave reviews. Everyone loved it. When The Blaze published the video on our seminar, it went viral and got amazing feedback. Since then, that course has gotten better and evolved and doesn’t look like the original seminar at all.
Does that mean the people in the original seminars didn’t get a good experience? Absolutely not. It just means that with time and experience the seminar got better. We adjusted. We took the feedback and made changes. We tested things to see how participants would respond. Sometimes it worked great, sometimes it didn’t. Trial and error. That’s how we progress.
So I am excited to reformat a few things and refine the presentation on this seminar. I look forward tor receiving all the feedback from everyone involved.
I was blessed to have a very talented local instructor attend the seminar and give some feedback.
I love this process. Truly love it. Experiment. Try things. Be honest about how they went. Then back to the drawing board.
Be good, stay safe, train hard.
-aaron
Aaron Jannetti 