Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Words

While I’ve touched on relations of this topic before, my experiences during Monday’s day class reminded me that I’ve been slacking in my studies, and that an instructor can help his or her students in some simple ways.

Kim is one of ECU’s newest warrior women. After JoJo showed a slick take-down to submission, Kim asked JoJo what the techniques were called. JoJo named the techniques and Kim said that it would help her remember them better.

For the Student:

Write down what you’ve learned after every class. Taking notes/pictures might even help during class. Just don’t post anything on YouTube without your instructor’s permission. :)

For the Teacher:

Try to give every technique/drill a name. It makes it easier for us students to remember. ECU Brown-Belt, and No-Gi instructor Jordan Lutsky dubbed an inverted-guard drill, “The Under the Legs Twirly Drill” – guess the name that’s burned into my mind? I’ve become quite good at that drill.

Before I hit class tomorrow, I’m going to buy myself a brand-new notebook, and make sure that I’m taking notes from now on.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

“A Deep Breath”

First, and foremost I’d like to apologize for the delay between posts. However, I feel that the delay fits perfectly with this topic.

For the past few months, I’ve often talked about how intense the training has been at ECU. That training paid off!

Numerous ECU students medaled in competitions large and small. Those who didn’t compete learned what it meant to train like a champion.

Now that we’re in a lull between competitions, JoJo has wisely decided to throttle down the intensity so that all ECU students can heal and get stronger.

As JoJo likes to say after our typically intense warm-ups, “Take a deep breath and get some water.”

I’d like to think that this month JoJo is giving ECU a collective chance to take that breath and work on what we need to improve.

JoJo: “Intense training all the time can burn everyone out so we have to tone it down and repair our beaten up bodies. That way, we’ll all be ready for the next season of hard training.”