Congrats Sam! PeeWee jiujitsu class gray white belt promotion:
Sam brings focus to the peewee class where things can get kinda crazy at times. His leadership is in his ability to focus, concentrate, and show others how to train. Even in a class with four year olds with are brand new to the art of jiujitsu, Sam’s actions speak for the coaches. When Sam speaks every body listens.
Sam started jiujitsu with the invitation from his friend, and you will find them challenging each other, laughing, learning, and growing into the mat as a martial artist. Friendship on the mat is an incredible experience. Your friend becomes a person you want to beat, a person who will encourage you, and someone you will respect more each and every day you train.
Dave has challenged himself on the mat with tournaments, asking questions, video study and is also working on a community service drive, collecting supplies for the Sacramento Children’s Home.
Individual sports and martial arts are unique in that they often require an immense amount of teamwork to build a successful individual performance or development. This concept is unique in individual sports because in the heat of the moment only one person is responsible for the success and failure of the battle. However, to prepare and execute in battle it takes an entire team to do so. In life, just like in these individual sports, there are individual responsibilities that contribute to the success of the entire group. The ability to recognize your individual responsibility and contribute to the team is essential. This contribution might come in the form of being a leader, a follower, a silent voice of action, or mustering people together with your words and action. Needless to say we work on both of these skills on the mat at edh 
Only those that work together can be the strongest! Here, we aren’t just building grip and leg strength. At our martial arts academy in El Dorado Hills we don’t just teach technical and physical skills, we also teach skills of collaboration and working with others. This is a skill that is important on the mat but even more important in life off of the mat. One example of teamwork being taught is t
In December Jarrod led a community sock drive, collecting over a thousand pairs of socks for the homeless. He brought an awareness for a need that the community might overlook. We appreciate his attention to detail in noticing where different needs exist in our community and finding ways to fill them!
Sean began jiujitsu with curiosity to learn and perfect the art of self defense. His explorations to understand the art eventually spread to his life off the mat. With time, his jiujitsu came to represent a philosophy, a way of thought, in not only understanding himself but also those around him. His pursuits to self understanding has become a path to understand the human condition.
Here are some words from Sean after his promotion to black belt. “I was first introduced to BJJ in 2008 by a blue belt neighbor who showed me some BJJ in exchange for me helping him with his boxing. I ended up starting about a year later in late 2009, and started competing 3 months later. I met Allicia when I was a white belt. And we tried to be each other’s training buddy and motivator. The main reason i train Jiu-jitsu is for the self defense application; particularly with regards to controlling and understanding movement and body mechanics. My ultimate goal with BJJ is always longevity, to train for life.”
