However keen you may be to begin teaching, before you venture on to the mat and attempt to teach any of the basic techniques (or advanced) to students, it is necessary to know something of the combative principles they contain.
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The instructor needs to ask himself/herself what are they training for? Are you training competition style techniques, or are you training for self protection? Because each requires two very different skill sets.
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If it is self protection, then you should focus on learning correct self-defense principles, rather than techniques alone. Principles may save your life, techniques alone could get you into serious difficulty if applied incorrectly.
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If you’re training is directed more towards competition style techniques then you’re entering a world that can require a tremendous amount of discipline, athleticism, and tremendous dedication to training. The goal of training for a combat sport, or competitive martial art, is to display your skill set against an equally matched opponent.
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When it comes to self protection you don’t want to be limited by the path of competitive combat sports or techniques. The skill sets you need to develop for self protection, include the skills of awareness, avoidance, escape, and if necessary, destruction.
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The rare case where you would ever use your skills of violence are in the situations of asocial violence. This is where you are devoid of choice and facing imminent grievous bodily harm. Meaning if there was an exit, you would have taken it, if you could use your communication skills to de-escalate, you would have, but you’re facing another human being who is closing distance and intent on doing you harm. The threshold to use violence to protect yourself is in the situation you are facing.
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As you can see, when it comes to your self protection, it is not about memorizing techniques, but first understanding when violence would ever be the proper response, and how to properly use those tools of violence.
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Make sure as an instructor, you are giving detailed instruction and also a clear understanding to your students of what they are being taught. ??