Performance Coaching World Alliance

PCWA Trainers and retreat attendees

Singapore, 2-8 November 2006

Trainers and enthusiasts from all over the planet, S.Africa, UK, Australia, USA, Indonesia, Singapore and our lot from Malaysia attended the first Performance Coaching World Alliance retreat under the mentorship of Rodney King, a world-renowned coach for a unique experience.

Using the martial arts as a vehicle to develop and enhance interpersonal skills and self growth, the PCWA offered a wide range of functional martial arts including the unique Crazy Monkey Defense Program, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts presented by a seasoned team of trainers over the 6 day period. Training was as much physical as it was cerebral, with many philosophical and ethical considerations presented and technical skill being trained.

The main trainers were Rodney King for the CMD and John Will of Will-Machado BJJ Australia. Each trainer presented highly technical lessons in improving our standup and ground skills and for the trainers program, we learnt how to put the material together and how to present it to our own students with the objectives of learning truly functional martial arts as well as personal growth, and how the same spin-off benefits us in our professional as well as personal lives.

There is too much to write about the overall experience and how well the group trained together. For many this was the first time they ever met and to be able to get on the mats, slap on a pair of gloves to spar is very intimidating for many. For others, this was their first exposure to grappling instruction from such a high level of skill and experience and the threat of being injured was never present. The atmosphere was fantastic and everyone learnt a great deal.


KDT Academy was represented by Charles Wong, Mike Gong, Imran Johri, Laurent Alessio, Adam Shahir Kayoom (Trainer-in-Training) and myself. Robert Bruce and Leon van Soest could not attend due to work commitments and it was a great loss for them to miss out on such high level of training.

I hope to get more members involved, men and women (and there were a number of Singaporean gals there in boxing gloves and on the grappling mats) so I'm sure the Malaysian girls can also step up.

On a side note, my reasons for attending and co-hosting this event (same for Adam) was to get exposure to this high level of trainer's training. That I got. It was a fantastic learning experience to see how other coaches work and how much I had to learn to become a better trainer. I put in a lot of work and effort to attend all the programs that were on every day and night.

Some notes borrowed from Advanced Trainer Phil Wright from the UK:
Rodney's seminar over the past couple of days ran through balance and the importance of this. There was a fair breadth of level on the main seminar so this was massively useful for a lot of the guys there. Once these basic foundations were covered Rodney could move on to appying the various phases of CM, focussing on CM1 & 2 but also covering 3 & 4 to a lesser degree, and how the Choas Coaching and CM Sparring models enable optimum development.

The intro session John ran took us all through a cycle of transitions that covered switching positions, escapes and escape counters. The main aim was to set a culture of technicality from minute one of the retreat and this definitely worked.

Matt Jones ran a retreat participants session on posture and maintaining a neutral spine which was really well recieved and has had Matt fielding questions ever since. Good job. John has continued his intro to BJJ sessions and there have been a number of great trainers only sessions.

The first of these was BJJ for trainers with John taking us through a method of applying The OODA Loop as a method of keeping ahead of your opponent when rolling. John was impressing on us how orienting yourself to control whichever position occurs faster than your opponnt is the key to shutting down their game.

Kon then took to the mat with a session on how a striker can deal with a grappler. From blocking shots, sprawling to recovering from guard, his session gave a step-by-step approach to keeping in a position from where you could recover to your feet and get back to laying in some of the kicking options we looked at to finish.

To round the night off, Nuno went through some of the ideas behind his game. He concentrated on how, as a smaller fighter, he works much more movement into his CM to keep from having to ride the storm constantly against bigger guys and how that movement can be used to set up some sneaky, sneaky hits.


The final day kicked off with John wrapping up his BJJ essentials series with a session on hooks (butterfly) guard. John's approach throughout the week has been to give us small groups of techniques that work together from a common point to allow you to form a mini-plan.String these plans together and you have a game.

This is tied in with some really clever little details that have a tendency to unlock your game in that area. This was the case again last night with some excellent arm drag set ups into a sweep and some really strong priciples I'll be applying to my game.

Bobby was up next with some mean ass Vale Tudo work. Looking at using hits from top control to set up submissions while giving your opponent plenty to think about. Really good fun, although I did have to deal with Cecil's disconcertingly pink gloves.

Last session of the retreat saw Rodney tie everything he'd covered with a CM sparring for performance session. Working through a simple set of principles that help keep your sparring game on track and every sparring session productive. This is a great model and I'll be covering it with all the UK guys when we get back.

*************************












For the guys who only attended the weekend seminar, this is taste of what you all missed for the rest of the week. You also missed witnessing some fantastic sparring sessions and awesome display of technical boxing and defenses and
Rodney doing what he does best.

(Pic left: Rodney watching Adam sparring)


On a side note, I was pleasantly surprised to receive email notice from Rodney that I had been licensed as a Assistant Trainer which is part recognition as well as greater responsibility as a Trainer to provide a higher level of coaching skill. I am looking forward to my new challenge and embrace the future successes along with the many mistakes I will be committing (after all you can't learn if you don't make any mistakes).

On this,I share with you a story that John Will told us about succeeding:

When John Will was still a purple belt, a huge 250lbs wrestler came into the gym where he was training and Rigan Machado, his coach, told him to grapple with the wrestler. After a losing the first round, Rigan Machado told him to go again but John lost again and tapped to the strong wrestler.
Another student was asked to grapple with the wrestler, at which he quickly grabbed a gi and asked the wrestler to wear it, with which he proceeded to choke out the wrestler and walked away in victory.

On seeing this, Rigan Machado took John aside and taught him how to beat the wrestler from the position where he had to tap. The other student did not benefit from this "extra" lesson because he fed his ego with the victory while John learnt a valuable lesson from that loss. Guess this means not every victory is as good as it looks!


Finally, Rodney King was given permission by Apidej to teach Muay Thai under his name. Now, Apidej never gives permission to anyone but he has to Rodney so this is a fantastic step forward for PCWA!