[wvbwxol]

I know there are all sorts of things we can do about altering the pacing of beginners courses or mixing up activities, but I think the biggest thing to instill in people is realistic and reasonable expectations. Speeding up the process and deviating from longer, slower training that develops good kihon is going to probably keep retention early on, but lose people later on when frustration sets in at the bogu wearing/jigeiko stage. You want your people in bogu to help continue to build the club and not have people that previous posters have mentioned may be useless and actually hurt the progress and image of the club. I think the basic fact is that you are going to lose people. It's simply a matter of time. The question is how to keep the good ones, meaning people who will work hard and be positive influences to the club, not just good from a talent perspective.

Do your beginners get to regularly see jigeiko sessions or are they only doing a beginners class? Do they practice before the advanced people and get to see the jigeiko sessions? Not forced watching, but plan the practices so they are getting subtle visual reminders of where their training is headed. Are the new people being told a basic time frame and being reminded that little by little they are approaching that light at the end of the tunnel? No promises of an ultimate you will be in bogu deadline, but at least a reasonable estimate.

I think that retention is based on people being reminded of how much farther they have to go and letting them know as they approach bogu that the time really is getting closer, rather than some mysterious far away deadline that never approaches. If they can see that they are getting close to something, they will hopefully keep going. These things are important to keep in mind in our interactions with the newbies at practice. Encouragement to keep training.

I have seen tennis training for school teams where the team has the usual core of 8 or so people who actually attend matches and actually play tennis. The rest of the people, many of whom just started for the first time, only hit forehand shots for weeks. Then you mix in backhands. They do repetitive drills and funny little games, but it is all essentially only those two hits, but the students stick with it because they have a sense of what is coming up. They can see the matches to get a hint of what it is like when it all gets put together. They know that some people will graduate out and next season they get the chance to do games. They have a reasonable expectation of how long they will be doing the beginner stuff, they are encouraged to stick with it and reminded of when "their time will come", and this keeps them going. I think a lot of retention or lack of it comes from these issues: encouragement, realistic expectations, and reminders that "their time" is getting closer each practice.

You also need to plan accordingly for little milestones along the way. For example, not starting with hakama and gi is important for proper footwork learning, but also when they earn the right to wear the gi/hakama, then they get encouragement from that. Then you can mix in special drills periodically that they can now do because they have reached another important milestone in their training. The first time people get thrown into kakarigeiko in the pre bogu stages could be one of those drills and special moments. Make a big deal out of it. Congratulations, now you are good enough that we can introduce the next level! Things that lead them to believe that they are taking on more difficult tasks. Bogu wearing is the ultimate marker for beginners, but if you can create special moments throughout your beginner courses, you can manipulate (not a great word, but with good intentions) the beginners to feel special and encourage so they feel they are moving up and not stagnating.