What Working with a Trainer Taught Me About Teaching

Sometimes doing things totally unrelated to teaching gives me a new perspective and teaches me something new.

Our family recently joined a gym & as part of the joining package I have been able to work with a trainer, once a week, for the last month.  The trainer I’m working with is a great fit for me, and has really challenged me to push myself to get better.

I have also seen parallels between working with my trainer, and the way I work with my students in my teaching.

Here are a few things I’ve learned:

1.  Insist on good posture and form:

My trainer is a stickler for proper form.   My reps only count if I have the proper form and boy can I feel the difference in my muscles vs. working out on my own! My goal is to get the form down, so I can get just as good of a workout on my own eventually.

This is also true when playing an instrument – your posture is your foundation.  Everything else will work better if you insist on that one point.   It may be annoying to hear it over and over but your teacher knows how important it is – so make it your mission to improve your posture!

2.  You can do more than you think you can!

It is human nature to do what is comfortable – and we often don’t push ourselves when left to our own devices.

I have found that each week I get stronger and do more than I thought I could, because my trainer knows I can and pushes me.  I feel so proud of myself once I accomplish something new that once felt impossible.

As a teacher I want to push my students just enough that they do more than they thought they could and get that same sense of accomplishment.  I have started to try to find one thing that I can push my students to do better each week and have them leave each lesson feeling like they have made a new accomplishment (however small) on their instrument.

I believe this keeps momentum going and keeps students motivated to keep working hard.

3.  Have a Goal  

I have worked with a trainer before without much luck (I actually didn’t care for the experience) but am really getting much more out of working out with my current one. I was trying to think of why and I believe it is the working relationship that my trainer has established with me.

Rather than lecturing at me about her knowledge of  exercise and then telling me what to do, she has helped me figure out my goals, listened to them and then each time we meet goes over what I need to do in order to meet them.

We are a team – she is the expert on exercise & I am the expert on me – when we work as a team I help her learn about me and she helps me exercise better.  This really applies to working with my students.   I don’t want to lecture them, I want to help them see how what I know will make them better at their instrument, or practicing, or memorizing – because it is their goal to get better.

Students without goals do not work as hard.  Whether the goal is playing in a recital, a reward of some kind, or graduating from their current book – helping students set and then work toward their goals is far more motivating to them then having them practice because I said to, or because their parents said to.  I am now making a concerted effort to make sure each of my students’ have a clear goal they are working toward and that each week we work together to reach it.

After the month is up I plan to continue on with my trainer. I can’t wait to see what else I will learn :)