tallgeese

Yeah! Nice work and congrats!

Great work! Congrats!

Awesome news! Keep us posted on how it goes.

Congrats! Well done and welcome aboard!

12/14 am: Drilled guard passing. Moved into passing the butterfly guard. 45 min free roll. pm: Review of distancing and footwork. Knife disarm and control work.

So, after some consideration here's some thoughts on my 2014 Goals: 1) Continue my 3x per week average on the mats. I made it happen last year, I want to keep it going this year. It's not realistic to ask for more. I have family and work to adequately address as well. But keeping 3 should be do-able. 2) On the heels of this, additional workout time during the week on the weights and/or running. If I get to jits 4x in a week I'll let myself take a pass. But it I'm 3x in a week then I need another day (minimum) to do some extra fitness work. I've been slacking on this of late. 3) In addition to BJJ, I want to maintain my 1/ month deep work maintaining stand up. This lets me keep up my skill there while working in the new JKD material I've been exposed to in sparring. 4) Speaking of JKD, I want to get to at least 2-3 major seminars or in depth courses next year and 3-4 significant privates. 4a) I want as much of this as possible to focus on the FMA aspects of the art. 4b) I'd like to add classic trapping work to my toll box here. Most of my exposure is along the lines of functional trapping. Which is cool, but I'd like to see the source material. 5) On the jiu jitsu side of things, where I still want to spend most of my time, I'm gonna step out on a limb here...I hope to earn my black belt by the end of the 2014 year. That would be just over two years at brown. If I maintain the 3+ training sessions per week I should be on track to be ELIGIBLE for it. Like I said, might be tight on this one. But that's my goal. Obviously, I'll get there when my coach thinks I'm ready and that might not be 2014, but again, that's the goal. 6) One tournament this year. As busy as I am in and out of the arts it's asking a lot to get to regular tournies, but one should be do-able. There they are. Now it's on paper, gotta stay at it now.

Again, I think it's time to start putting thought into what steps we want to take as fighters and artists in the coming year to focus our training and make the most out of it. In the pursuit of this list last year, I discovered some truly amazing things. So, what are everyone's goals for 2014? I'll be back when I get to mull a bit.

So, as we come to the end of 2013, I thought it'd be a good process for us all to go back and see how we did. Here goes: 1-Check. All good on this one. 2- Partial. One tournament, it was the Pan. Didn't medal. As much as I wanted to compete more, I was spending money allotted to martial arts in other ways (more below) 3-Check. Was in great shape, no worries about weight. Strong camp. This was awesome because it really drove my game forward. 4-Happily (and surprisingly) Check. It helped we had some active fighters looking for partners this year. 5- Exceeded. I really got into this this year. I was able to make it to make 3 seminars than this and a week long intensive instructor's camp. Add privates and developing training partner into this and I was well ahead of the curve. And a bit in love with the FMA aspects of JKD. 6-Check. Ending the year with a fresh third stripe and a whole lot of stress over how close that puts me to black belt contention in BJJ. And for my second 6- Fail. Epic fail Like didn't even look at the iaido school as I drove by it occasionally fail. There's just no time, especially with my additional time and cash allotted to JKD/ FMA training on the side. I think next year I'll just leave it off. It's just not realistic for me at this juncture. Over all, very happy. I could have been a better competitor. That would have made me sink more depth of time into the mats. It's easy to let them slip by unfocused. The surprise for me this year was how much I enjoyed exploring aspects of JKD. This turned into a larger monetary commitment than I had planned, but I gained some real insight into why I put thing together the way I do, lesson plan building and design, AND picked up some great new tools. Like I've said, I'm pretty much a jiu jitsu guy these days. I had kinda thought that my time on my feet was kind of done and I was happy with what I had there. This year, I got really reinvigorated by the process of JKD. So, how did everyone else do?

Welcome aboard!

Welcome to KF!

Trapping is a fun, and useful tool. However, there is a tendency to "over-trap". In other words, if trained improperly, people can start to trap for trapping sake rather than elicit it's primary purpose: to open a path to a soft target. That's the core of what has become an over mystified element. It's simply a way to get an attack to it's intended target. Now what you really have to look at is how are you utilizing trapping training against certain types of attacks. Trapping fluid strikes that give minimal reference points (ie. boxing instead of karate) is really different than trapping someone who rigidly presents a blocking appendage or coverage. This does not mean it does not work, but work must be done functionally to adapt it. And this work must be pressure tested. Please note, this is not my original thoughts, but the work of people much better than myself that I've had the opportunity to spend JKD time with. I'm just not that smart. Lastly, remember that even in classical JKD (and certainly in the concept/ training methods circles to an even greater degree) that the trapping element is a single tool in the arsenal for attacking. In fact, it's often regarded as the most difficult and highest technical aspect of attacking an opponent. Considered an "Attack by Hand/ Foot Immobilization (HIA or FIA)" it's at the highest spot on the hierarchy of such things on a lot of teaching models. It's not the primary way of creating such things, but an option for the student who has the advanced level of reading body posture and movement AND developed the physical attributes for working them. So, while a good tool and one I wholeheartedly agree needs to be addressed. It's not the only or even primary mode of presenting attack. The key is in building the proper foundation and then properly addressing the training methods for the tool to use it across a wide range of styles.

12/13 Been recovering for the past couple of days after the weekend and travel. Today, I eased back in. Review of knife patterns. Disarm sequence. JKD footwork and structure focus strikes.

Welcome to KF!

12/11 Drilled guard break and under leg pass. Limited free roll drill with the above technique. 15 min free roll.

Bit late here, but good luck. I'm sure you did fine.

Congrats!

12/7 Busy weekend. Day full of various seminar topics: Am of functional movement training for BJJ. 60 min free roll. Striking for MMA block. Kali elbow training course. Crucifix series. Rear leg round kick for JKD. Escaping the arm triangle. 12/8 Defending the back mount and Escaping the turtle. Fence work for MMA Pressure work for top. Private on FMA/ JKD knife work. That's it for the camp. I am exhausted but learned SO much. Now to work on all those notes.

It was a super cool class. This one was the product of my coach in collaboration with our jail's CERT team and was specifically built based on their input. We've done the same thing before with general control tactics. I will try to get the video for you. 12/6 In San Diego area for a Roy Harris instructor camp. Spent last night doing guard passing. The man is amazing. After years if doing this I thought I knew pretty much all there was to guard passing. I was wrong. More amazing was that he worked on material that simply refined techniques that you learn at white belt level to make them highly functional. 2 hours of tech technique. 1 hour free roll with some absolutely amazing people. Back in for more today.

12/5 8 hour day of MMA for Law Enforcement course. Excellent look at transitioning tools from mma and BJJ into LE compatible tools.

12/4 Drilled arm bars from mount focused on pressure. 40 min free roll.

Congrats to everyone!

Congrats! Well earned!

Historically, the red bar (or the variation with the white border stripes) indicated an instructor. That's not as hard and fast rule as it used to be for sure. Back inthe day, I believe that the white bar indicated a fighter out of the older Vale Tudo tradition. However, I'm not 100 percent on that, it might not be accurate. In either case, the white bar isn't seen much these days. It seems that the red bar is becoming more standard than anything else. I think it's partially due to the fact that it's historically rare to see brown and black belts without some sort of instructor capacity here in the states. That's changing with the explosion in popularity. Used to, the higher ranks were rare and almost HAD to teach. Now, there's getting to be schools even outside the big juggernauts that have multipe black and brown belts floating around routinely in the US. It's what 20 years of increasing popularity will breed, even in an art where it takes 8-10 years to black. I do see a few straight black belts here and there as well. But that's just my perception from what I see around. Different areas might produce different results.

I fought in the SCA in college. A bit after as well. From my experience with the groups I was part of Wastelander is right on target. There's a few EMA (I like that acronym ) and a larger portion of reserch types. It often gets lit up for not being authentic. That might very well be a legitimate criticism, I don't have enough of a background in WMA to argue intelligently one way or the other. It is; however, a ton of fun as a full contact sport.

I think that's the gist of what I took away from the presentation. Some people might just learn better that way. And no matter how I would try to use alternate methods to convey the concepts we'd be working on, it wouldn't matter. That's just how some people would be wired. The effectiveness of either modality is unimportant. How the student learns best it what matters more. In times past I've kept working and working to convey concepts thru the methods I've learned just because I view them as a more streamlined route. If that's true on not doesn't matter to an individual who would learn better via something like kata. I think that's why it's good to have associations with all kinds of artists. I couldn't get thru to an individual like that no matter how hard I tried. But I could send him to a traditional coach I know and it would be much better for him. Probably my sanity as well.