Instructors>Student issues>Group effect

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Group effect

Intro

Studying the martial arts in a group rather than by individual instruction has its benefits.

Groups

While individual training may help the students correct specific problems, group training encourages students to work harder to become as good as the group in general. While a student may want to quit training when tired, not wanting to look bad in front of the group will cause the student to keep training. Peer pressure is a powerful thing.

A 1989 study by Bell and Yee, Skill level and audience effects on performance of a karate drill, found that an audience enhances the performance of a well-learned task, whereas performance is impaired for a poorly learned task.

A 1999 study by Layton and Moran, Effect of "group spell" upon Shotokan black belt performance of Heian kata, watched black belts performing kata as a group. They found that even though the participants had refined the kata over years of practice with their own timing, the timing became more consistent when the kata was performed as a group.

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