Hi M2, Rowe.
I've read both of your points of view and approaches to the discipline and, if i may, i'll post my own.
I think that you're talking about teaching versus learning, and eventhough i feel it's a little unnecesary, it may be useful to point out a couple of things specially for the newbies.
Yes, i do think that the right way you should follow is to learn, practice and master all the techniques already developed in order to have a wider range of options when you're moving, and to obtain that proficiency you talk about, i totally agree. But you may agree with me if i say that you shouldn't seek proficiency only in your techniques, say your speed vault (to quote your same example), but instead, seek proficiency in your movement, regarding what technique, trick or vault you're performing, if you think other way, you may get stuck in just that set of moves. And I've got to understand that PK is not one vault, not even a set of vaults, I'm not doing PK when i perform one speed vault, i'm just doing a vault, no, PK is movement, fluid, efficient, aesthetic movement.
I also agree that you should be able to adapt to every environment you get into, to be able to feel the movement and perform it right. You should be able to know how to place your feet, how to throw your weight, how to put your hands and twist your torso in order to get that speed vault right and land it properly and safe. Each time. And this come out just with practice, and doing it in every different situation you may think of.
Now let me tell you what i think, but mostly, what i do when i teach.
I've come to teach individuals from almost every single background you may think of: sport billies, martial artists, runners, triathletes, professional swimmers, retired grand dads, weekend warriors, skinny children, overweighted teenagers, young moms, sedentary young adults, etc., what you'd see in a normal modern society. Each one of them has approached PK for different reasons and all of them have different learning styles and different skills, so they approach their training and evolution in a different way.
Some years ago, I used to teach them how to speed, kong, dash and reverse vault as soon as possible, because I used to think that as movement. Then i had to stop teaching for personal reasons for one year and during that time I had the chance to focus more on my training and mostly see how other people trained both themselves and other people, and I leant a lot from that, and for a couple of years now I focus on five things for the newbies: conditioning, feet placement, balance, jump and proprioception.
So now I don't teach the newbies one standard set of moves and I don't mean them to learn it in a standard period of time. I've found better if I teach them, or let me put this way, if I help them to learn how to know how their bodies perform, how they move and how they react, and this way, they learn how to control them. Then they start to understand what work they need to do in order to move the way they wanted the first day they came to the gym, and I work just as a guide for them.
I help them understand how to make their muscles and joints strong and powerful, and why. They learn how to use that strength, power and endurance in order to keep moving. They learn and understand how to place their feet before and after each obstacle so they can pass it easily and flow into the next one with no rush nor extra effort. They build strong cores and lean how to engage them so their bodies work as a unit, trying to use all the muscles as one system for each movement, this way they understand how to pull their backs to raise their hips to raise their legs, and they learn that what really matters is that they should perform the moves just the way they want, and by this I mean that they should choose how to move, doesn't matter if it's fluid or not, aesthetic or not, efficient or not, as long as they are choosing to move that way.
So after a couple of months they start to move in ways they never thought they could. They're now starting to control their bodies because they're beginning to understand them and knowing how to feel the movement, so now i can feel free to teach them specific techniques. I know that they will nail them in a couple of hours or less, 'cuz they already know how to move.
Of course not everybody likes this approach, as i said before, everybody comes from different backgrounds an environments. And what i also see is that lots of people, specially young male teens, have an incredible RUSH to learn, they MUST nail the kong vault NOW. As if their lives depended on that, well, their social lives if such. And this is matter for another long-as-this post, because i've also noticed that this rush is also caused and promoted by our educational systems, but the moment they understand that there's no rush, that if they want to do this for all their lives and that if they want to be and if they want to last they should be patient with their knees, they love it.
So yes, it's a play between teaching and learning. But remember that as a teacher, you must be there for your students. They're not there for you, and we should be focusing in forming athletes, not just cool jumping people.
