Tag Archives: martial arts

Kids Jiu Jitsu

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

I recently finished reading Mindset by Carol S. Dweck. This was one of my favorite books I have ever read. The book was about the differences between a “fixed” mindset and a “growth” mindset and how having a growth mindset can foster a love for learning and set people up for success. The book is split into different categories; Sports, Business, Parenting and Relationships, it gives a lot of examples of each mindset in each chapter and the results of that mindset.

One of my favorite sections of this book was in the parenting chapter. It talks about how difficult it can be to teach children how to have a growth mindset even if you (the parent) are a growth minded person. One of the strategies it talks about is praising children for effort and hard work instead of results. One of the examples was of a family who at dinner always asked each other; What did you learn today? What mistakes did you make that taught an important lesson? What did you try today that was very hard? I thought this was really cool.

At the end of the book it talks a lot about how to start building a growth mindset and passing it on to others. It says that everybody actually has a mix of fixed and growth mindset and that’s just part of being human. The author did an exercise with some of her students where they all had to name their “fixed mindset persona” and write out things that persona says to them and how it makes them feel. I liked that exercise a lot. Even though all of these students were pretty growth minded they often dealt with intrusive fixed mindset thoughts and I could relate to that a lot. 

Danny

Adults Jiu Jitsu

Training and staying healthy

 Something I’ve been struggling with lately is staying healthy while preparing for tournaments. I tend to always get sick when I am a couple of weeks out from competing. It is stressful and frustrating for me to take a break from training so that I can rest and if I try to ignore how I’m feeling and train while I think I might be getting sick, I end up getting worse and worse until I cannot ignore it.

In these situations it’s really important for me to decide what is in my control and what is not. If I stress out and obsess over the things that are outside of my control I am putting myself in a losing battle. When I figure out what I can control I can give those things my best effort. In this situation where I keep getting sick before tournaments I can’t control how I feel, I can’t control that I am sick and am missing practice. Some things that I can control are how well I take care of myself to get better, how consistent I am with my rest and supplements to try and prevent this from happening as much as possible, and my attitude. When I separate things into those two categories it makes it really clear what I need to work on. For me in this situation I have bad rest/recovery habits that I should change to see if that fixes the problem.

One of my coaches was telling me about a book he read. In the book it talked about athletes continuing to train through injury and sickness through visualization. I’ve been trying that out a little bit. It feels kind of silly but they have done studies on it and it’s proven to work so I’m going to keep using it. 

Danny

Tournaments

EDH BJJ compete in JJWL Competition

 The team went to Stockton to compete in a Jiu Jitsu World League tournament this last weekend. We had three Juniors class competitors, one Juvenile competitor and three adult/masters competitors. Out of our seven competitors we took home three gold medals and two silver medals.

Our Juniors class competitors all looked great. They were able to execute techniques that we have been working on in class and that were a part of their individual gameplans. I saw them hit good takedowns, sweeps and use excellent top pressure and guard retention. Our Juvenile competitor fought hard in some action packed matches. He won a silver medal and it was exciting to watch.

The Masters competitors dominated their divisions. They displayed some great Jiu Jitsu all around. I was most impressed with the guard passing and a couple of the submissions by those guys.

My matches didn’t go well which was frustrating but I am excited to get back to work and compete again in November. Going to tournaments is always fun when there are a few or more people from the team competing, overall I had a great time coaching and competing. 

Danny

Kids Jiu Jitsu

Jiu Jitsu Kids Camp in El Dorado Hills

 I recently ran my first Jiu Jitsu Camp for ages five and older. In the past all of the camps have been seven and up. It was a full camp and the most fun one yet. Having the younger kids there came with some new challenges but I was prepared for them.
The main difference having the younger kids in camp is being ready for the shorter attention span. I had to be ready to refocus the group or change activities much more often than when seven year olds were the youngest kids there. Another big difference was the class style had to be more of a peewee/kids hybrid class with the kids split into groups and a lot of hands-on coaching. For the next camp I will probably allow this age group to come again. It was fun having some of the peewee kids there.
For the class portion of camp we did a fun warm up and practiced some basics. After that we practiced arm bars on the coaches and did some Jiu Jitsu matches. There was a very wide variety of skill and experience levels in the room along with the variety of ages. After class we played all of the mat games that we have played before at camp with the addition of a free for all snow ball fight. We ended the day with some snacks and board games. I haven’t picked a date for the next camp yet but I am excited to start planning for it!

Danny

Uncategorized

The book: Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

 I recently read a book called The Alchemist. This was my second time reading it and it is one of my favorite novels. The book is about a shepherd who sells his sheep to go searching for treasure in another country.

The book starts out with this shepherd having a dream about treasure buried at the pyramids in Egypt. After speaking with a fortune teller and a strange old man he decides to give up his life with his sheep and chase his “personal legend”. Within his first day in Africa he gets robbed and loses everything. Then he spends the next year working with a crystal merchant. Eventually he sets out to look for his treasure again. The journey doesn’t get any smoother. He travels across the desert and gets stuck at an oasis due to a war that’s going on and meets The Alchemist. The Alchemist helps him travel to the pyramids. On their way there they get captured by a warring tribe and have to pull off a miracle to escape. Once he gets to the pyramids he gets beat up and robbed while digging for his treasure. He finds out that one of his assailants had the same dream he did; only his treasure was under a tree back in the shepherd’s homeland. He goes home and finds his treasure buried under the tree.

This book was hard for me to put down. It has a lot of interesting metaphors and life lessons. The overall theme of following one’s destiny or discovering one’s “personal legend” really resonates with me. I like how the shepherd just leaves everything he knows and is comfortable with jumping into the unknown. I also like how his journey is full of obstacles and he doesn’t let anything stop him from pursuing his goal. 

Coach Danny

Adults Jiu Jitsu

Watching and understanding Judo for fun and to learn Tachi Waza (standing technique)

In my free time I have been enjoying watching Judo lately. It is an exciting sport with a lot of similarities and some big differences to BJJ. I started watching it to study techniques that I could add to my takedown game. Then I kept watching  matches because I found them really entertaining. 

Watching Judo I learned about the rules. Each player is trying to “Ippon” the other one. This means they are trying to throw them and get their back flat on the mat. If one player throws the other on their side with partial back to the mat they score a “waza-ari”. Two of those are equal to an Ippon. The matches are four minutes and pretty fast paced. Stalling is called very quickly by the refs for lack of action, which I’m a fan of. Once the match is on the ground one player can win by pin or submission but the ref will stand both players up pretty quickly if the action stops. Most Judo players don’t engage very much on the ground based on the matches I watched. I think the length of the matches in Judo help make it an exciting sport, I probably have an unpopular opinion about this but I think BJJ should copy that. There are so many black belt Jiu Jitsu matches that are a very slow eight minutes with a two minute sprint at the end. I could be missing some rules but this is what I have learned so far. 

My favorite athlete to watch and study so far is Shohei Ono. He is an athlete from Japan. He has won three world titles and two Olympic gold medals. His matches are very exciting and he is known for doing a double sleeve grip throw (I don’t know the name of the technique). I will continue to watch and study this sport and hopefully be able to add some cool throws to my stand up.

Coach Danny

Kids Jiu Jitsu, Tournaments

Match Night at edh bjj

 We had our second match night last week at El Dorado Hills BJJ. Overall there were a lot of improvements since the first match night a couple of months ago. Especially in the PeeWee class, their Jiu Jitsu is looking better and better every month.

What I really Like about match night is that it gets the kids real match experience which will help them do well in tournaments. It is also much easier to organize and put on a match night than it is to do an in house tournament so we can do it more often. This is great because a huge part of competition is just experience, so the more matches we can get the kids the better.

I’m very grateful for all of the volunteer help we received for both match nights. It is so incredible to see the team come together and help us in building the next generation of grapplers! There were enough Volunteer referees for me to be able to oversee and take notes on the matches themselves which is great. We would not be able to make these events happen without the team stepping up and helping out, it’s pretty awesome that we have people who are willing to do that.

Hopefully we’ll be doing these match nights every couple of months and will continue to see the kids improve as a result. They have a lot of fun doing it which is good, if they are having fun they are learning.

Coach Danny

Adults Jiu Jitsu

Black Belt Promotion and Jiu Jitsu Seminar in El Dorado Hills, CA

EDH Jiu Jitsu Black Belt Promotion and Seminar took place on June, 30th celebrating Allan Scott’s black belt promotion. Allan is an avid competitor and practitioner, with an enthusiasm for health, fitness, family, travel, and a sweet tooth on a special occasion. Allan earns his black belt promotion after 10 years of dedicated practice to the martial art of jiujitsu. He started his journey in jiujitsu at the age of 49 and received his promotion shy of his 60th birthday.

Some of Allan’s accomplishments on the international competition include:

  • World Master Gold medalist (blue belt)
  • World Master Gold medalist (purple belt)
  • World Master Bronze medalist (brown belt)

Allan is proof that consistent practice and intentional training in understanding positions, movements, and strategy are the keys to a successful experience on the mat. We’re excited to see him continue to challenge himself in training and continue to mentor others on their journey.

Kids Jiu Jitsu

Coaching jiujitsu in the kids bjj class

Coaching Kids Class
Coaching kids can be very difficult in BJJ. It can be hard to tell where the line between “over coaching” and not helping enough is. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and here are some of my thoughts.

There should always be a head coach and there should not be confusion about who the head coach is. This means when the head coach is giving instructions to the group other coaches should not be doing any coaching/talking. If the class is practicing techniques that are “review” from a class recently then there should be minimal interference from coaches, this means the coaching should be mostly done vocally not physically. Kids learn Jiu Jitsu by moving so the more they are moving with their partner without interruption the better. Learning NEW techniques can be a little different though. Some kids, especially new kids may need physical help at first to move through a technique, but the sooner they are moving on their own with their partner the faster they will learn. Even if it isn’t perfect (it probably won’t be) we can try to make corrections with vocal coaching and the head coach can bring it in and show a technique again if necessary.

When kids are doing matches or “sparring” the coach’s job will shift to more of a referee’s role. A referee’s job is to ensure nobody gets hurt. That means there should be absolutely no physical coaching/interference during matches, that will not set them up for success if they decide to compete in Jiu Jitsu. There should be interference if there is a submission or dangerous position that may result in somebody getting hurt. The arm being straight on an arm bar or a head outside single leg come to mind as situations where the coach needs to stop the match. Vocal coaching is still beneficial.

I feel very lucky to have so many parents willing to step up and help make the class better. The more we can all be on the same page the better we can make the class which will make us all stronger as a team. 

Coach Danny

Uncategorized

Match Night at EDH Jiu Jitsu

Match Night
Last week at El Dorado Hills BJJ we did a match night for the PeeWee, Kids and Juniors classes. It was a lot of fun for the kids and coaches. The goal of this event was to get everybody some tournament-like experience in class and that goal was definitely achieved.

We split the class into different groups based on size and experience level. Each group had at least one coach/referee. Once everybody was set we started the clock and ran a round robin style mock tournament where everybody got at least two or three matches. It was fun watching the kids compete with each other and show good sportsmanship. The coaches got a lot of valuable feedback from the matches as well.

There was a lot of volunteer participation which was really cool to see. It can be intimidating playing the role of a ref so I’m glad people felt comfortable stepping up and taking part. We could not have done it without everybody’s help. I think we’ll be doing several of these match nights a year since it was so successful which I am excited for because I thought it was a lot of fun. 

Coach Danny