The winter Jiu Jitsu kids camp was a lot of fun. We started with an hour of Jiu Jitsu class where I focused mostly on helping the kids improve their takedown skills. We drilled our usual attacks from the feet and introduced the fireman’s carry which is a great takedown in the gi. It was fun watching the kids improve their new technique as the class went on.

 After we ended class the mat games began. This was the highlight of the last camp so I added some games and spent more time playing than last time. We played relay races, sumo matches, sharks and minows, tug a war, and two new dodgeball games that I learned from coach Aaron. One dodgeball game keeps everybody playing by having the kids who are “out” run to the other side of the arena and still be able to tag the other team with the ball. The other one has 1 person start on each wall and everyone else in the middle. The people on the wall have to stay on the wall but can throw the ball at the people in the middle if they get tagged then they pick a wall and can throw the ball. We spent the most time on the two new games the kids liked them a lot. 

Snacks and Board games are what came after mat games. It is a pretty chill way to spend the last half hour of camp. I’ll have to invest in some more board games to give them some more options for the next camp in April. My goal is to do these camps for every major school break in 2022 and a couple others for small holidays. I would like to get twenty kids at each camp I think that will be a perfect number to make the camp as fun as possible. Spring Break will be the next one I’m very excited to start planning it and see how I can make it better then the last two.

Coach Danny

 2021 was a pretty good year. My goals this year were to compete in two major IBJJF tournaments and three local tournaments, get my purple belt, transition to making a living doing Jiu Jitsu and finish every match on my opponents back. I was able to accomplish a few of these; I competed in 5 tournaments, two of them being major ones (worlds and nationals), I transitioned to being a full time Jiu Jitsu coach, I finished a few matches on my opponents back but not all of them unfortunately. 

Worlds was my last tournament of 2021. My expectations for myself were very high. I lost my first match and was really disapointed with myself. My two biggest mistakes in that match were pulling guard after getting frustrated with not being able to quickly get a takedown and going for a choke instead of sprawling on my opponents single leg. I’ve also learned that I can do way better preparing for tournaments. I think my biggest lesson from competing this year is how far behind my guard is and that I badly need to improve it. Naturally, I’ll be working hard on that in 2022. Right now I’m working on categorizing my goals for next year and getting a little more detailed on how I will accomplish my goals for 2022.

Teaching BJJ this year was awsome and I have learned a lot. The most important thing I learned is the importance of an organized curriculum. Having that organized curriculum gives a clear path from belt to belt and stripe to stripe. This year also taught me the value of getting stripes for the kids, I always knew it was important but I didn’t really understand what it meant and why it was important until now. Teaching has forced me to think more about techniques that I already know so that I also know how to explain and teach them which has made my Jiu Jitsu better. Something as simple as the scissor sweep that I would never think about since I can just do it becomes something I have to study and learn why it works and what can make it fail so that I can explain those details to seven year olds. I love teaching the kids class and am grateful I get to do it. I can’t wait to see how much better everybody gets in 2022.

Coach Danny

Sisters, Ella and Emma, lead by example and have embraced the idea of being ok being uncomfortable. When they first started jiujitsu the class full of unfamiliar faces and contact was a bit overwhelming. They made adjustments and worked through adversity. Now the two are the leaders of the kids jiujitsu class. They may be smaller in stature but don’t let that fool you, they are relentless and persistent, a real force to be reckoned with.

Gray-Black Belt Promotion: Congratulations Ian on a well earned promotion! Ian has trained hard for the past 5 years and brings a positive attitude on the mat. He is quick to help others and follows instructions very well. We’re so proud of you, keep up the good work!

The Jiu Jitsu camp scheduled for Thanksgiving break will be a fun event for ages 7 and up. There will be games, activities and of course a lot of Jiu Jitsu. The Jiujitsu camp is also an oppurtunity for students to build stronger friendships with eachother which turns into us being a stronger team. Teamwork and team building will be the main focus of the camp. Having the campers split up into different teams will be a fun way to keep things competitive and fun while practicing working together as a team. Something I talk with the kids about a lot during jiujitsu practice is that if we get stronger as a team we all get stronger as individuals. To practice these skills we have to be good teammates.

The best way to be a good teammate, in my opinion, is by becoming friends with the people on my team. A lot of the games we play on the mat in Jiu Jitsu are team building activities that are competitive and require as much brain as brawn. The kids have fun playing these games and the more they are having fun the more they are learning. A few examples are; relay races and tug a war.

Another focus of camp will be gratitude. I think we should always be focusing on what we have to be thankful for but Thanksgiving gives us a day or a week where we are really reminded to think of these things. Helping kids think about gratitude and recognize things that they have to be thankful for helps them build an attitude that leads to living a happy life.

One thing I am grateful for is the oppurtunity to teach Jiu Jitsu to these kids. It is so much fun to watch them progress and grow in so many ways by participating in a sport and martial art that I love so much. It is an honor to be a part of that process.

I am looking forward to seeing what the campers get out of this experience and hoping they have fun, get a good workout, learn something and of course bond with their friends/teammates.

Coach Danny

CONGRATULATIONS WORLD MASTERS COMPETITORS! This year EDH Jiu Jitsu had 4 competitors, 2 brown belts, 1 purple belt, and 1 blue belt competitor. The World Masters Championships were held in Las Vegas, NV and hosted by the IBJJF, Jiu Jitsu Con, and followed by the UFC event on Saturday.

Brown belts JON and ALLAN were up first on Thursday. Jon won his first and lost a close match at the end of the second match. Allan one his first two and lost in the semi finals to finish with a BRONZE!

GEORGE competed on Wednesday and he lost 7-2. George had a great focus on the process mindset and showed great perseverance and patience.

RYAN competed on Saturday winning his first two rounds. In the qtr final Ryan battled it out to the last few seconds of the match.

As a team, WE ARE ALL VERY EXCITED TO LEARN FROM YOUR COMPETITION EXPERIENCES. A special THANK YOU to Coach Aaron for flying out to coach all 3 days of the event! 

This weekend is the US OPEN (25th anniversary) at Independence HS. This might be a great tournament to go and watch if you have never been to a tournament before. 

Something teaching and competing have in common is they both force me to identify and improve my weaknesses in a way that casual training does not. I have learned from competing in Jiu Jitsu that if I neglect improving my weak spots then I will get beat there every single time when it counts. For example, I probably lost 5 matches by guillotine before I started spending significant time on the mat trying to figure out why.

What I’ve learned from teaching kids is they need to learn certain positions and techniques whether those things are part of my game or not. If I only taught them techniques that I like to do I would be failing them as a coach. For the last few weeks I have been teaching spider guard in the kids class. It has been really cool to see the kids learning and using the guard and also seeing where they are struggling with. Their struggle gives me the feedback I need to see where I need to improve my knowledge of the position. As a result, I use a lot of my own training time to drill whatever I am currently teaching the kids. Doing so helps me identify details I need to point out in class. The process has also been helping my own Jiu Jitsu a lot because I get to practice it on my own, explain it to a class and watch them practice the movement.

This process has been one of my favorite parts of teaching. I really enjoy studying Jiu Jitsu with a certain goal or purpose. It would be really easy to stay in my comfort zone and only practice positions and techniques that I like if I didn’t have to teach. Teaching gives me a feeling of urgency to learn more and improve faster, similar to getting ready for tournaments gives me a feeling of urgency to be in the best shape I can be and sharpen my gameplan.

As a result, I am contstantly analyzing a position or set of moves that I probably would not spend much time on. Spider guard is a really good example of one of those positions. I don’t really play spider guard and am not very good at it, but I’ve been forcing myself to use it and figure out the best way to teach it to kids. The results of following through with this process have been pretty amazing. Not only are the kids getting the hang of the movements and position but also my ability to sweep from spider and pass spider have improved significantly in just a short period of time.

Coach Danny

On saturday night I volunteered as a fight inspector for CSAC at a local MMA event. The duty of the inspectors is to enforce state regulations and make sure that athletes are not cheating. I was amazed at how many details there were to be mindful of.

The first thing they had me do was inspect the cage and make sure that it was safe to compete inside of, also making sure that the stairs going into the cage were stable and that the tables surrounding the cage were the proper height. I then learned the evacuation route and walked through it with the medics making sure that there was enough space to safely evacuate an injured athlete. While the athletes were preparing for their fights in the locker room I learned how to do “bag checks”, inspect hand wraps, and drug test the athletes.

As I watched my mentor do a bag check I was amazed at how thorough the process was. He asked to see the fighters shorts, cup, mouth pieces, nails and asked the cutman to see all of the medicines he would be using to treat cuts. As the fights began all of the inspectors were assigned fighters to shadow. When that fighter went out to compete the inspector went with them, sat in their corner during the fight and went in the cage with their corner in between rounds. During the fight the inspector has to make sure that the coaches behave appropriately (no standing, putting fingers inside cage, no taunting or disrespecting other fighter) and in between rounds the inspector watches the fighter and corner interact making sure that the fighter is responsive while not blocking the doctors view of the fighter. If the fight ends in a knockout or some kind of injury it is the inspectors job to make sure nobody touches the hurt athlete before the doctor. If the inspector is shadowing the athlete who won they have to make sure that athlete does not jump around the hurt athlete or do anything that could further injure them.

Overall I thought the job was pretty fun. I learned a lot and enjoyed working at the event even though it was stressful at times. It felt very strange having that much authority at an event like that, especially since I was just a volunteer. It’s really fascinating for me to see all of the behind the scene stuff in a sport that I have been a fan of for a long time.

Coach Danny