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How to get your students to come back!

Your new students, especially those coming to practice for the first time, will leave from your lesson with an overall positive or negative impression of their training session. There are simple ways of improving this impression in order to increase the likelihood of their return.

 

A quite original research, involving colonoscopy, has demonstrated a powerful cognitive bias that affects us all: the peak and end bias. A cognitive bias is a shortcut taken by our automatic, unconscious brain to interpret and judge our environment. Daniel Kahneman, economist, psychologist and American-Israeli Nobel Prize winner, together with Redelmeier (2003), carried out some surprising research into patients' impressions and memories after a colonoscopy.

 

These researchers took two groups of people scheduled for colonoscopy and asked them to rate the level of pain they felt during the operation on a regular basis. They divided the groups into two:

 

  • 1 group where the colonoscopy lasted less time but stopped abruptly, when the patient's pain level was still relatively high.

 

  • 1 group where colonoscopy was prolonged but the patient's pain level was deliberately reduced gradually to bring the session to a gentle close.

 

Patients were then asked about their session, what they remembered and whether they would be willing to do it again in the future. The results were astonishing. Indeed, patients had better memories of their operation when the session lasted longer, but ended more smoothly.

 

The reasons? It would seem that two phenomena in the recollection of any event influence its overall judgment: the peak and the end of the event.

 

The peak: patients remembered the most intense moments of the operation.

 

The end: the way the operation ended had a strong impact on their positive or negative assessment (not the total duration).

 

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Concretely, as an instructor

 

At KMG, Krav Maga training normally ends with a summary drill, or Tarmaz, where we increase the stress and difficulty level of the techniques seen during the training in order to challenge what has been learned. This is important pedagogically, so that students are able to practice what they have learned under greater stress and complexity, as it will be the case in a real life situation.

 

However, if the level of difficulty is not well adapted, this can potentially lead to frustration due to greater failure. Indeed, under stress, it's more difficult to bring out the techniques you've learned. The sharp increase in heart rate and stress can have a negative impact on the way students feel - a discomfort that is both necessary and desired, but which can leave a negative impression, especially if the training ends with a moderate sense of failure.

 

There are a number of ways to remedy this, but I'd like to suggest two very effective calming exercises, which will gently bring the workout to a close and leave a more positive imprint on the participants' memories, thus greatly increasing the chances that they'll want to come back.

 

The first way is to use the relaxation exercise lying on the back and guiding the students to slow down their breathing, or even perform ventral breathing (see video). This exercise can last 3 to 5 minutes and activates the body's autonomic parasympathetic nervous system, which in turn activates the relaxation response: the body calms down and a feeling of well-being gradually appears.

Coupled with this, you can end the session with a small gratitude exercise by asking your students to recall a recent pleasant event they have experienced and to take a moment to recall this event in their mind and relive it as if they were there. The event can be something small or something bigger, such as a meal you enjoyed, a convivial moment spent with someone or an activity you enjoyed. By activating a pleasant memory, this exercise will also activate the emotions attached to that memory, which will leave a positive impression at the end of the session. This impression will then influence the memory of the entire training session.

In conclusion, this tool will give you an edge in terms of the impression students form of your training sessions, but this effect cannot compensate for a lesson that is problematic from a pedagogical point of view. It's clearly more important to create a quality lesson than to botch it and hope to save it with the tools presented here. However, by combining a quality session with the activation of the cognitive bias presented, you'll increase the chances that your students will return with a smile on their faces.

 

To summarize:

 

  • The cognitive peak/end bias means that the memory of an event and its impression is strongly influenced by the most intense moment and the end of that event.

 

  • To leave a more pleasant, positive impression of your workout, end the session gently with a meditation and/or gratitude exercise.

 

  • The effect will remain weak or moderate and will not compensate for a poor-quality lesson.

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SOURCES:

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EN FRANCAIS / IN FRENCH

 

 

 

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