Sowing the Seeds for Personal Growth

Over the past few years, I've put in a lot of effort to develop the gym membership and individual members themselves. This is especially true for the CM and BJJ programs. Often assisting Sam's classes by coaching on the sidelines in BJJ or leading the class when Sam's away, the results of our combined efforts are rewarding.

As there are more blue belts gracing the mats at KDT nowadays, I've decided to talk less and train more. I've already informed a few of the more regular members about this so it should come as no surprise. After all, there are now so many more blue belts on the mats who are more than willing to help out the beginners compared with when I first started training.

This frame of mind has been a concern for a while and I need to do something for myself again. This doesn't mean that I will not be assisting the classes and so on, but as with all things, I feel that I've reached the point where I need to improve my jiu jitsu skills in order to better understand the sport so don't be surprised to find me less attentive to what you are doing as I'll be busy training for myself too.


The recent visit from Tarbo and his talented children highlighted the need for me to further simplify my communication ans skills transference abilities, to be able to teach an activity like jiu jitsu to a 6 and 8-year old without verbal communication (experientially) was an enlightening experience in "chicken and duck" talk but with very satisfying results.

It also highlighted the old adage that "to teach is to learn" and indeed, I learnt a lot about communication skills, my frustrations of breaking down techniques into bite sized components so that a child can follow and copy and generally snowballed the thought process of generally improving my overall mat skills.

Teaching the kids was actually a breeze as they are very talented and already very much into the ethos of physical activity. It's no wonder that they are champions and winners in their own right. Very much deserved and their talent shows on the competition arena where they excel.

I hope that with more focussed training, my mat, communication and coaching skills will be improved with time. I'm looking forwards to the results of this goal.