Travel Blog: upward and onward

I had a great time down in Cheltenham - visiting my friend Tony Terranova and his students. I spent time with him and his inner circle in the late afternoon - and then conducted a general seminar in the evening. The next morning my friends Mark Collett and Roger Gilbert took me to the original Superdry Store in Cheltenham - ARE THEY TRYING TO TELL ME SOMETHING - before goodbyes were said and I headed north with Mark, for Macclesfiled. LAst night I held a no-gi session at the VOODOO Gym for Dave kari, who supplied a great Chilli feast afterward - thanks Dave - it's hard to find food i MAcclesfiled at 11pm! Much appreciated!
Today I'm heading to Stockport near MAnchester to work with Adam Adshead at Factory BJJ - looking forward to catching up with the Factory Crew again! Then tomorrow it'll be an early start for the trip to Coventry where Rich Green and Al Peasland are joing forces to organize the two-day training event. I'll be having dinner with my mate Geoff Thompson tomorrow night - so that'll be fun as well. Gotta run - new Superdry clothes to put on - seminars to teach.
JBW

PIC: Tony Terranova's Fighting Fit - inner circle.

Travel Blog: Caged Steel Gym

We had a wonderful session at Danny Mitchell's Caged Steel in Dewsbury last night. With fifty odd people on the mat, the place was packed - we even had to put a couple in the cage. Thanks to Danny for making it happen - and a thanks also to the crew who drove up from Liverpool - UFC fighters: Paul Sass, Mark Scanlon, Kam Atakuru and the rest - you guys were a coaches dream with your unswerving level of engagement and work ethic to go with it - nice.
The focus of the night was on side control escaping strategies, dovetailing into leg shoots. It was hard to leave - despite my jetlag, the adrenaline-response kicked in and I found myself fully wired up at midnight - and so Mark and Roger decided we should make the two and a half hour drive back to Cheltenham where I am at present. A few hours sleep at my good friend Tony Terranova's house, and I am beginning to turn my thoughts toward this afternoons session for Tony's inner circle. I have a great session planned fore this evening, after which I'll crash another night at Tony's place (in the beautiful Cotswalds) before heading north again with Mark Collett to Macclesfield and Manchester. HAve Gi - will travel,
JBW

TRAVEL-BLOG: Part 1

20 HOURS IN THE AIR – straight to the mat
I arrived in London on time – after a brief stopover in Hong Kong; bleary eyed but good to go. Headed north to Lincolnshire, a few hours drive from sunny London, just in time to hit the mat for a Sunday evening class. Our first session in Lincolnshire was devoted to evaluating what the students had been practicing since my last visit. After a few tweaks here and there – and some advice on future practices I had a bite to eat with Dan and Rick and headed back to my hotel for some much-needed sack-time.
Late next morning, I kicked off my Lincolnshire seminar, after first spending time on the mat with some of Dan’s higher-level students. We squared away a few rolling ideas before getting into the seminar, which was well attended by a great bunch of enthusiastic students. We worked a very technical session on the butterfly guard – and the three hours just flew by. The feedback was overwhelmingly good – making goodbyes all that much harder.
My good friends Mark Collett and Roger Gilbert are coming up from Cheltenham in the morning – and then we’ll be heading to Doncaster to meet with Danny Mitchell. Danny is a pro MMA fighter and teaches at the Caged Steel Gym in Dewsbury - I'm looking forward to seeing him again. Now it’s time for some food and a nights rest – before the week gets into high gear. JBW

Into the Blue ...

Well - here begins another mini travel-blog series, as I am heading to the UK and Norway for ten days. I fly to Hong Kong tonight, and after a brief stopover, off toLondon tomorrow. Once there, I'll be teachiong for Dan Wait up in Lincolnshire, after which it's over to Dewsbury in Leeds where I'll be teaching at Caged Steel for Danny Mitchell. Then it's off of MAcclesfild for Dave Kari at Voodoo Gym followed by Adam Adshead at Factory BJJ in Manchester the night after. Then it'll be down to my friend Tony Terranova of Fighting Fit in the beautiful Cotswalds, then aback up to Coventry for Rich Green and Al Peasland for a two-day event. When in Coventry I'll be catching up with mater Geoff Thompson - hopefully, we'll have a chance to watch the JAke Shields and GSP UFC fight whilst dining on tea and scones. After that it'll be down to London to visit Ken Pankeiwicz of Kickfit - before heading to Norway to teach for Kenneth Fjeld. So that's the overview - depending on internet access I'll do my best to keep the odd report coming during my travels. Stay safe all ... more from the road
JBW

Colouring inside the lines

Colouring inside the lines affirms our sense of order; things are where they should be.
I have never been too good at colouring inside the lines, I remember once being told off by my teacher at school, for colouring everywhere BUT inside the lines. I think the picture looked better as a result - the only white space on the page was the animal surrounded by a pageant of color. Needless to say, I flunked art!
In my defence though - although boundaries are important (it's good to know where the 'line in the sand is' - they do by their very nature suppress our creativity in many ways. Boundaries restrict - obviously. Boundaries usually exist as a safety precaution but with the price we pay for absolute safety is lack of experience in the extraordinary. Discovery requires risk. Colouring outside the lines often results in nothing morte than a big mess - but sometimes .... just sometimes ...
JBW

A typical weekend

On friday night I flew to Sydney, where long-time student and excellent Black Belt Sean Kirkwood picked me up from the airport for the two hour drive to Newcastle. We had a great seminar in which I covered some MMA work, beginning with a rapid-fire Tabata warm-up, some superman punch drills and the like. The we hit the ground for some technical details on establishing and maintaining the Seatbelt grip. The highlight of the night though was the presentation to Toby Whittle of his BJJ Black Belt. Congratulations Toby - your unswerving dedication to training over the past decade has been outstanding; you are so very deserved of the new rank - you have made Sean (and I) very proud.
The next morning at 7am, Sean and I headed off to Sydney to run the first of three seminars for my friend George Adams. Here I spent the entire time on details of the Turtle position (defending and attacking from there). After saying my goodbyes to Sean (he headed back to Newcastle), George drove me over to Black BElt Simon Farnsworths place at Castle Hill where we worked for two hours on the Two-on-one control from Butterfly guard. We had a ball. (Thanks for the Gi Vince - I'll give it a run this week)
After that it was a quick trip to Fari Salievski's school in lIverpool, where we had a good showing of very keen BJJ'ers on the mat. The session's focus was different again, as we worked on Cross Control grips from Guard, setting up a variety of 'old school' sweeps. The session finished, a few pics were taken and then I sprinted to the airport, to make my flight with only 10 minutes to spare. I got home just after nine pm - in time to spend a few hours of my birthday with my family. 54 laps around the sun - it's true - so I caved, and ate some cake. Nice.
Sunday I enjoyed with my family - although a few friends from Melbourne made the trip to Geelong for a visit; nice. Monday morning now - time to shake off the rest and get to my strength and conditioning workout with Tahi Reihana and a couple of diehard friends. I better get some whey protein into me right now ... let the metabolic resistance training begin ...
JBW

WHAT IS THIS 'IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT' - BULLSHIT?

Many of us, as professional coaches, or even as athletes ourselves, can at times find ourselves gently sliding into the rut of daily routine and habit. People, as a rule, gravitate toward habit; we like to get up at the same time, we like to drive the same routes; we like to eat the foods we ate yesterday, etc. The reasons for this are many, but the most powerful reason is this: it worked yesterday (meaning that it didn’t kill us) so we should repeat it today. This ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ attitude though, is perhaps the single most powerful inhibiter to growth, development and future discovery.
Now, in the competitive arena (read: marketplace/competition) if no-one ever developed any new ideas, or made any improvements to the way they did things, then it may not matter too much if we adopted the same approach (ie: change nothing) – but the fact is that there are always people leading the way toward new ideas and new ways of doing things. In the competitive market-place, it is not only important to ‘Keep up with the Jones’s’, but if we really want to make a difference we need to leave the Jones’s in our wake.
Professional coaches and athletes should have a large part of their attention focussed on outcomes. As professional athletes and coaches we should want results (and extraordinary results at that) simply because people are paying us for exactly that – this goes to obligation! From a professional coaches perspective, it is important to understand that people are trading their precious time; time which they cannot get back; to listen to and learn from us – we are OBLIGATED to provide excellent instruction. To settle quietly into a routine that just sees us GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS - is the first step on the path to mediocrity. Is that who we really are?
JBW

CONDITIONING

Functionality is everything. The kind of conditioning that the BJJ or MMA athlete needs is the kind that results in greater outcomes for less physical effort. The Combat Athlete needs to have great cardio, great anaerobic fitness, muscular endurance, flexibility, core-fitness and co-ordination.
The kind of single-plane strength one gets from a bench press does not necessarily translate to the rigors and demands of the BJJ or MMA environment. The Combat Athlete needs to be strong and capable at weird angles and both ends of the range of movement; he or she needs to be able to provide/construct their own stable base from which to apply power/force to an opponent who is not co-operating like a machine would co-operate. In short, the Combat Athlete needs functional strength and fitness.
First things first; the Combat athlete needs to build a strong aerobic base. A good aerobic base is necessary so that we can participate properly in the style of training we need to get real results. In short, we need to be fit to do the right kind of training and a good aerobic base underpins everything. We need a aerobic base to be able to maintain intensity and good form while we train; if our aerobic base is sub-standard, our form will go out the window and then, we not only achieve less result for the effort we are putting in but perhaps more importantly, we become very susceptible to injury. A good aerobic base is crucial.
I use a constantly varying mix of strength and conditioning exercises done at very high intensity for short periods (eg: 30secs) – with small recovery periods in between each exercise (eg: 10-15 secs). My average workout lasts no longer than 30 minutes – but the intensity is through the roof. Here are a few pics from a session last week.
JBW

Three out of ten beats one out of one.

(A FAIL AT SCHOOL MAY MEAN A WIN IN REAL LIFE)

Often I have seen students free-wrestling and I see an obvious opportunity for one to attempt a submission or a sweep – but the student doesn’t ‘go for it’. What the student needs to understand is that when we are training, this is the perfect opportunity to ‘go for it’ – as there really are no bad consequences.
Many people wait for the perfect opportunity to arise before they have a shot at something; and it is this endless waiting that really impedes their progress. The bottom line is this – if you wait for the one perfect opportunity – and then you go for it and succeed – you have scored ONE success – but if you go for it ten times (not needing things to be perfect before you do) and you succeed three times – even though the school-score is Three out of Ten (in many circles this is considered failure) – in my view: THREE still beats ONE!
I would rather try ten times and succeed only three, than wait till things are perfect and try once only to succeed once.
The other benefit of this approach is that even though you have not succeeded seven out of ten attempts, you get to see what unfolds after each of the failed attempts; and you learn.
JBW

The Yellow Card

Here is an interesting training strategy that I came up with some time ago. I call it the ‘Yellow Card’. When a student is Yellow-carded, they can no longer go for any submissions during the wrestle; in fact, they need to give their opponent opportunities to win. This has several effects, the first being the obvious: the less-skilled student (of the pair) gets to feel what it’s like to get good position and attack someone who would perhaps more usually, be dominating them. But the real benefit goes to the student who is Yellow-carded; he or she becomes freed up to ‘relax’ and ‘observe’ during the roll; and in doing so, open themselves to working aspects and areas of their game that may otherwise be ignored. There is a lot to be gained by ‘kicking back’ and playing a less aggressive/competitive game whilst grappling; we see things we would not normally see, try things we would not normally try – we explore, discover and spend time in positions that usually we would prefer not to be in. The Yellow Card strategy gives us permission to do just this.
JBW