Q:  Do you guys have a beginners class? A:  NO First off, we call them ‘New Students’, not beginners.  We tried doing ‘New Student Only Nights’ once over ten year ago as it was the normal thing to do because EVERYONE else did it that way.  I sat back and watched one of the classes and I came to the realization that it didn’t make sense and wasn’t practical.  No-one was actually learning the technique because they couldn’t actually do the technique.  What I seen was a bunch of new students wanting to learn but they weren’t able to actually do the techniques correctly because the person they were training with wasn’t conditioned to take the falls or the hits so it ended up being a bunch of students looking at each other and being afraid to hurt each other.   How can you learn anything if  you don’t actually do it?? How do you know if a technique is going to work if you don’t actually try it?  YOU CANT ! All the other gyms were doing it this way so I thought it would be best to offer it the same way to my students.   I offered this course for about two weeks until I changed and mixed things up.  Now, everyone trains together. So now, we have new students train with everyone else.  I normally pair new students with those students who have been here for a while so the they can help answer the new students questions.  This allows new students to learn techniques quickly as students can actually do the techniques faster and harder without the fear of injury.