I Lost Two Students Tonight

Thesemindz

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Long story short, I had two students leave the school tonight. They are a married couple in their fifties who had been with us about a year, and the husband hurt his knee in class a few weeks ago. They thought it was no big deal, turned out it was an ACL tear, and now he's on rehab and his doctors don't want him doing karate anymore. I feel even worse because he hurt his knee while working with me.

We weren't doing anything very high energy. We were doing a ground work demonstration for the rest of class where I was slowly changing positions and demonstrating techniques while lecturing the class and showing them where their kenpo techniques appeared on the ground. He isn't even sure exactly when it happened, but at some point he felt like there was some slight pressure on the outside of his knee. It didn't hurt, he didn't even mention it, and we went on with class no big deal. It wasn't until later that he realized he was injured, and he thought it was just going to be a few weeks off until they finally did an MRI and diagnosed the problem.

I know these things happen. I know when we step on the training floor we all except two risks. 1. We might get hurt. 2. We might hurt someone else. That's karate. But I always feel awful whenever a student gets hurt, and I feel even worse that I hurt him. It's my job as the instructor to provide a safe training environment, not to cripple my students.

I know logically this is only so much my fault. These were older students who were extremely athletic. They danced, hiked, biked twenty miles at a time, and did karate. This probably had more to do with age catching up to him than what we did in class. He doesn't even think he was hurt from a lock or a sweep. He think it was just while we were rolling over our side from mount to guard. Same thing we've done a thousand times, simple low energy position change for demonstration purposes. And bam, he's done.

His wife is fine, but she quit too. I don't think she wanted to do karate without her husband. I get that. And I think she was also struggling with some of the invisible enemies of perfectionism and unhealthy comparisons. We made sure they understood they were always welcome, even if just to watch and take notes, and that they're still part of our family. But I'm really heart broken tonight.

I hate to lose students. I hate to hurt students. I hate it when students get hurt. I know that's karate, and I never hold it against my training partners when it happens to me. But I'm really struggling tonight.

It makes me want to hang it all up. To quit doing karate before I hurt someone again. I'll get over it. I'll use this to make myself a better instructor. Since the injury I've already made even more of a point to emphasize safe training, especially around the knees, which is a lesson I've always focused on anyway. Especially since my own knee injuries. I've also been emphasizing to my students the importance of listening to their own bodies before they listen to my instruction. I can't know how they're feeling day to day or where they're at.

This will make me better. Because the alternative is to get worse or give up. But it's not worth the price, because someone else had to pay it. Tonight, I feel like a failure. And that's a lousy feeling. And the fact that it's not as lousy a feeling as a torn ACL only makes it worse.

I wish it had been me.


-Rob
 

Bob Hubbard

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Don't give up. There is most likely nothing you could have done to prevent it. My grandmother walked through her kitchen door, took a step and collapsed. Her hip just gave out. Stress fracture due to age and lifestyle catching up with her. My grandfather was fine, doing some wood working, and just 'rebooted'. Heart attack. Perfectly healthy, but his heart just skipped and down he went. The best you can do is emphasize safety, recommend they get physicals and regular check ups, and accept that sometimes good people will just have things like this happen. I can't see anything in what you wrote to suggest you were at fault here.
 

ATC

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I've also been emphasizing to my students the importance of listening to their own bodies before they listen to my instruction. I can't know how they're feeling day to day or where they're at.
This is the best piece of info you can give. And it is up to each to head this info. Good instructions. Don't sweat it to much. Life happens.
 

Flea

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Rob,

I don't have too much brilliant to add to the above, except that you know your stuff and you are a seasoned and conscientious professional. The fact that you have a classroom full of dedicated students, and a superior who trusts you implicitly, is a testament to that. The injury might not have anything to do with anything you did; it might have just been the final micron after a lifetime of slightly off-kilter movements.

And besides, he may surprise his doctors with a strong comeback and want to train again.

So don't beat yourself up. That's what we're here for. :mst:
 

Kurai

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I wish it had been me.


-Rob

This statement alone, shows who you are as an instructor. Injuries happen, regardless of art that one chooses to practice. I feel that instructors who really stress safety, are better instructors. IMHO you sound like a better instructor. The gentleman who suffered the injury may have easily been working toward that injury through his athletic pursuits outside the art. Sometimes, thing just happen. Either way, you have to accept it. Learn from it, and move on.

I currently am working with a husband/wife couple who are coming along nicely. When I notice a particularly hazardous point to a technique we are working with, I advise them to slow to a crawl at different aspects since they train together to practice, outside the dojo. Emphasizing the potential for injury since they don't have the control yet. ATC summed it up for you. Do everything you can, within reason, to keep your students safe, but regardless, life happens. Don't hang it up. The world needs more like you teaching Budo.
 
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Thesemindz

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Thanks guys.

I know it's not totally my fault. It's just hard to go through this. The other students see it, I start worrying about what they're thinking and whether they're afraid to train with me. I do train hard. I train my students hard. I always let them step out of any drill or activity and I always let them go lighter than the contact levels and speeds I instruct. I give them the option to decrease the intensity whenever they need to, although never to increase it beyond my instruction. We weren't even going hard when this happened, it was more lab/lecture time.

But we do train pretty hard. I try to walk the fine line between training safely and training realistically, without going to far in either direction at the expense of the other. But I also tell my students that if you do karate, even air karate, for any length of time you're going to get hurt. That's the nature of the beast. And we don't just do air karate.

Up until the injury they loved class. Always made an effort to come, always loved the intensity. So do my other students. And I know I can't get too inside my own head because then I'll start second guessing myself on the fly and the instruction will suffer and the safety level will actually decrease because intention will interfere with my actions.

My dad told me that when he played football in high school he learned that it was actually safer to go full speed than half speed, because at full speed you were reacting the way you'd been trained to absorb hits and make tackles, and at half speed you were flinching and thinking and that interfered with your clean technique. I don't train my students at full speed on the body, at least not most of the time, but I think there's a valuable lesson there. In order to be my best, both as a practitioner and as an instructor, I have to let the karate flow spontaneously. And if I start worrying about whether or not my students are judging my performance than I won't simply be performing any more.

I'll get over it. Part of why I'm upset is because I really liked these students. I try to really like all my students, but there's a special place in my heart for the ones for whom karate doesn't come easily, but who dedicate themselves to the study and come to all the classes and push themselves when we train. I took up karate when I was sixteen. I was a black belt by twenty three. These two were over fifty before they even started. I was so proud of them for facing a challenge like that at that age, and on some level I feel like I took that away from them. They were just getting to the point where you can start to see the black belts they could be some day. And maybe now that's never going to happen.

But maybe it will. I ripped my knee to pieces about ten months ago and I'm back on the floor. And despite their age they were both far more physically fit than I. Maybe he'll make a quick recovery and be back in no time. Maybe not. I'll keep teaching great classes and trying to pass on the knowledge that was passed on to me. Because that's the thing I want to do with my life. It's too bad my students have to suffer through my learning experiences as an instructor, but that's part of karate too.

Thanks for the encouragement guys. It's part of why I keep coming back to MartialTalk. No one outside of what we do will ever really understand it. It helps to be able to be honest with people I respect about the challenges I face in the pursuit of the Way. Thanks for giving me that chance Bob, even though I've never sent any money your way.

I'll get over it. He'll get better. We've all got a whole lot more life ahead of us. And for the rest of my life, I'll be better at karate because I met this student and trained with him while I could. Our time together and my time as an instructor don't have to be defined by the low points. It's just hard to have perspective when it happens. But I've been around long enough to know perspective comes with time. I just need to stay on the path and be patient.

Yeah yeah yeah, patience. How long will that take?


-Rob
 

Bob Hubbard

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Rob, if I was still training, I'd want to train under someone like yourself.
 

Jenna

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I hate to lose students. I hate to hurt students. I hate it when students get hurt. I know that's karate, and I never hold it against my training partners when it happens to me. But I'm really struggling tonight.

It makes me want to hang it all up. To quit doing karate before I hurt someone again. I'll get over it. I'll use this to make myself a better instructor. Since the injury I've already made even more of a point to emphasize safe training, especially around the knees, which is a lesson I've always focused on anyway. Especially since my own knee injuries. I've also been emphasizing to my students the importance of listening to their own bodies before they listen to my instruction. I can't know how they're feeling day to day or where they're at.

This will make me better. Because the alternative is to get worse or give up. But it's not worth the price, because someone else had to pay it. Tonight, I feel like a failure. And that's a lousy feeling. And the fact that it's not as lousy a feeling as a torn ACL only makes it worse.

I wish it had been me.


-Rob
I had something a little similar thing happen quite a time ago. Even though what has happened does not fall as heavily upon your shoulders as you are imagining, I can appreciate something of what you must be feeling. My only advice is to look objectively at your teaching in context of everything and do not isolate one incident and use it as a basis for your whole teaching. This is just one event in a thousand other events. It should not be your defining moment and IS not your defining moment (unless you decide so), please remember that.

In my case there were no injuries, it was a matter of the student not coping, becoming disheartened and eventually breaking down and I think I was more directly culpable. To me, my student was doing great, personable, pleasant and an asset to the class, seemed to be absorbing everything and making good and steady progress and I think I blamed myself for taking my eye off the ball as it were. During class the student literally broke down and I had to take her off the mats for she was in such a fit of tears I could not calm her. I have never had to deal with anything much like that and trying to be my most logical I spent the rest of the class trying to figure out not only what I could do to reassure her that she was doing really well and but what the heck had happened to my empathy and my people skills and my student assessment skills and everything else, and what I should have done better, and how I should have acted sooner, and how I could possibly have missed the difficulties she had been facing all along. The student did not appear the following weeks. I even went to her house so full of remorse and she could not have been more magnanimous and nice to me and but did not return to class and I still to this day kick myself for being such an idiot as to miss a student in difficulty. That one I just had to let go. I learned what I could from it, I just never quite saw myself as being as competent as I had thought I was previously. I think it was humbling. I can get what you might be feeling. It is not your fault though. Please see it in context of everything else and do not isolate it. Learn from it and apply lessons to your other students and do not let it spoil your teaching or your obvious love of your art. Kindest wishes, Jenna
 

oftheherd1

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Really not much more to say. Things happen. When I taught, I had a student who quit because an old injury kept getting aggravated. I felt bad for not paying more attention and trying to show her ways to compensate. Of course she said nothing, nor gave any discernable indications of problems until she told me she was going to require another operation, and was quitting. Didn't make me feel better.

Keep trying to be better. That's all any of us can do. Since your students are flocking away from you, it is obvious you aren't doing bad things to them. Hope you heal soon, and simply take it as a life lesson for you, as well as any instructors you may now or in the future have under your wing. Good you have shared this, as others can learn as well.

Cheers.
 

Carol

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Of course its hard Rob...but all the stuff we like to believe about perseverence, resilience, fall down 7 times get up 8.....they don't mean a thing unless those words are lived. Its not what people say that matters, its what they do.

I always look forward to reading your lesson plans that you post up each month. Even though my own training has been really erratic...and I haven't trained in Kenpo for years...what you were/are posting was inspiring and it has given my ronin training buddies and me some great ideas for structuring our workout time when we get a chance to get together.

Its natural that something like this hurts you....give yourself a chance to adjust. Treat yourself (or your wife) to something good and focus on what you've kept, instead of what you've lost. But don't give up, your students need you.
 

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Rob,
Just my $.02 from a lower ranking students perspective. You might want to talk to your students a little about it 1) to keep the rumor mill from running wild 2) to let them know that you care about each one of them weather they are going full bore or not. It's a journey and has its ups and downs. Some days you feel great and others the body just says take it easy.

Based on what you've written here, I'd train with you any day.
 

oftheherd1

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Really not much more to say. Things happen. When I taught, I had a student who quit because an old injury kept getting aggravated. I felt bad for not paying more attention and trying to show her ways to compensate. Of course she said nothing, nor gave any discernable indications of problems until she told me she was going to require another operation, and was quitting. Didn't make me feel better.

Keep trying to be better. That's all any of us can do. Since your students are NOT flocking away from you, it is obvious you aren't doing bad things to them. Hope you heal soon, and simply take it as a life lesson for you, as well as any instructors you may now or in the future have under your wing. Good you have shared this, as others can learn as well.

Cheers.

Sorry I couldn't seem to find the edit butrton on the post above. I obviously meant your students were not flocking away from you. Obviously you are considered to be a good teacher by your students. In fact, it sounds like the two that left may have thought so too, simply following their doctor's advice (or a worried wife has talked her husband it to quitting).
 

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One of the hardest part of being an instructor is that students leave. It sucks, no matter what the reason. I've had students leave because of college, because they got old enough to start dating, because they reached black belt and, despite all the information they received to the contrary, they felt that they were "done", because their parents moved, because they were pulled from a tournament round due to injury and blamed me for "making them lose", because they got into some other activity... it's always hard. Having a student leave because of an injury that occurred in class adds to the concern any good instructor feels when students leave. That you are upset is simply proof that you are good instructor. That doesn't make it any easier to see students leave.
 
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Thesemindz

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This morning I received a message from the students who left.
Thank you for the encouragement you gave me when I was in your class. You always had that little speech you gave me that meant alot. I knew that I wasn't great at kenpo but I did try really hard. My motto was to beat me at it not try to do better than others. I think that is the only thing that kept me in it this long. I really miss being there. Thank you again. You are an awesome, inspiring teacher. We would like to have you and your wife over for dinner sometime.
That really meant a lot to me. So has all the encouragement I've received here on the forum. Thanks.-Rob
 

Brian King

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Awesome note, I hope that you take them up on the offer of dinner.


Rob have you repeated the specific lab/lecture yet?


I strongly believe that everything happens for a reason, but, it is up to us to figure out the lessons that need to be learned. Sometimes the lessons are for us to learn, sometimes for those we are interacting with and even sometimes for those on the peripheral of the interactions. The only time guilt should be felt is when excessive force was purposely used, negative emotions are given in to, purposeful negligence, or importantly if the lessons needed to be learned are ignored. It doesn’t sound like any of the above apply. If any guilt is still felt then that must be addressed as a lesson to learn about yourself.


As your thread exemplifies for someone injured during martial training there are usually at least two people injured. One person was physically injured which will include not only the actual physical injury but emotional and perhaps spiritual injuries as well. The person that accidentally injured their training partner will often suffer some injury as well, perhaps not a physical injury but an emotional and/or spiritual one. This is important in my opinion to understand and recognize as these type of injuries are often more subtle than their physical counterparts yet every bit if not more debilitating. Levels of confidence, empathy, faith, and will, can all be negatively effected. These need to be ‘rebuilt and strengthened’ just as the physical injuries must be rehabilitated. It is not difficult nor is it easy. It must be done deliberately and purposely.


Fear- Care must be taken by the students of martial ways to monitor fear in all its many forms. When accidental injury occurs the resulting fear as well as the physical injury itself should be recognized and addressed. Injury not recognized is as bad as an injury ignored. Injuries ignored will be dealt with...eventually, often positively as our bodies and psyche are amazingly resilient, but sometimes the ignored injuries will fester and grow until they can no longer be ignored. When an injury occurs during martial training there is often more than one person intimately involved, obviously the person injured, less obviously the person that injured the other and even less obviously those that witnessed the injury occur. There are two main aspects of fear that should be addressed by both the physically injured training partner and the partner that injured. Fear of injury- both the fear of being injured and fear of injuring.


The easiest way of addressing these fears is in continued training. While the physical injuries are being rehabilitated the corresponding fear should also be addressed. In Systema we do so with various breathing drills, working with the injuries slowly to build up both the body and psyche. But what about the person that injured. They often also have a new fear to deal with. Fear of needlessly accidentally injuring another. This new fear should also be addressed and of course the easiest most productive way of dealing with this fear is in continued training.


After any injury, the situation needs to be reviewed in military and law enforcement terms an After Action Report. What was the cause of the injury. What actions need to take place to keep the injury from recurring or to lessen the severity of the injuries. This does not have to be laborious process and should be able to be accomplished in minutes not days or weeks. Rob, once this action has taken place the exercise should be repeated, often. Most productive is if both parties can repeat the exercise. If the injured party is too injured or cannot continue the exercise they should do so when recovered. The party that injured should repeat the exercise right away hopefully with the injured but regardless repeated. Slowly at first then faster and stronger. For the person that injured faith has to be restored that the specific training can be accomplished without debilitating injury for the person that was injured faith in their body and their training and partners.

Good luck and full and speedy recovery
Regards
Brian King
 

Lee Ch'a

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Rob-
Thank you for sharing your experience, and also thanks to everyone else who responded. This experience, while a difficult one, offers a chance to learn a lot. It forces you to think about yourself and re-evaluate everything you may have thought you were sure about. And while this isn't always fun, it's a good way to grow and learn and feel more prepared for future instances.

You sound like a great instructor, I was actually quite inspired by your experience and the way you handled it. Your students quite clearly have a lot of respect for you, and I am so glad that although this was a tough situation, a lot of good did clearly come out if it. It seems you will continue to have a very good and healthy relationship with your two students, and while they may not physically be able to continue to learn material, martial arts will continue to affect their lives, as clearly dedicated as they were. As others have said, I would not hesitate to train under you; and remember that the next time you feel as though you should continue to blame yourself. Don't do it- I know I have not had this exact experience, but I tend to be very hard on myself in similar situations, and I think I have learned a lot from your experience.

Keep going, preservere and learn from the experience. This is what Martial Arts are all about.

-Lee
 
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Thesemindz

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dude, it is a business and like all businesses, you WILL lose customers.

it does NOT reflect on you

Doesn't losing customers ALWAYS reflect on the business and it's employees? I mean, ideally, we would offer a high enough quality service at a competitive enough price that we would NEVER lose customers.

I know that's not really the larger point we're discussing here. But it's my job as a representative of the business to show the benefits of the product to the customer. If I do that well enough, they'll never leave. If they ever leave, I didn't do that well enough. I'm not saying that's always possible, but at least in theory, those are the two alternatives.


-Rob
 

Josh Oakley

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That's the sucky thing about teaching. Despite our best efforts, we're still human, and nothing goes 100% perfect. I've torn my ACL twice and I remember it not hurting the first time either. On the plus side, the student may very well come back after recovery from surgery. It was great physical therapy for me to get back in the game, and I had a good teacher who knew how to help. You sound like that kind of teacher. Keep at it, bro.
 

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