fighterforlife,
In this situation where someone takes privates over and over on a regular basis it starts getting much harder to be prepared in regards to questions to ask and so forth. The reason for this is because the private sessions after a while start to turn into one on one classes.
Is your son still training in the regular classes? If so, he should take notes after each class with questions that he might have to ask Rani when the private session comes up for the week.
Any questions he can think of he should write down. If during class he gets caught in something he should try to remember it right away and then write down a question related to it.
The best way to take advantage of a private session is to have questions about situations and problems you are currently experiencing so then the instructor can fix the issue or build off of what you are doing.
Or if your son is having trouble hitting something, he should write it down so he can as Rani about it.
When you start to take a lot of privates it starts to be run just like a regular class where the instructor just shows what comes to mind on that day and may not directly reflect on what the student should actually be learning at the moment.
Private sessions should be specific and should never turn general. There should also be a flow where the student is asking questions about things they need to fix or improvement up and and where the instructor is building off of weaker areas that they see the student experiencing.
Hope that helps a little.
Thank you for your response. He trains regularly. Rani's class is no gi, but his privates have been in gi since he has ran into trouble in his first couple of orange belt tournaments. Rani analyzes the videos to determine the next course of action. He also trains Gi with Roger Defreitas 3 times a week. Once a month or so he gets to train with Margarida. Do you think his brain is getting overloaded? He loves to train and never wants to miss a class. Is there such a thing as training too much? I have allowed him to go as much as he wants. My thinking being, he's getting to roll with a lot of different people, mostly blue belt adults. He's got privates on every Weds, so I'll let him read your article after school today before his class. We'll start taking a notebook to class. I think that is a very good idea for him. Thanks again for your advice.
You're welcome. Next time you get a chance to learn from John Stutzman make sure you do.