The Academy

Quote of The Day

"To overcome a fear, here's all you have to do: realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway.”

- Peter McWilliams

Pineland Farms Trail Challenge

Yep, it's here again.

Pineland Farms Trail Challenge.

It's an annual trail running festival. It has 2 days worth of various events. Utra Marathons all the way down to 5Ks. Regular events, minimal shoe, and now a barefoot race!

Plus my favorite. CANICROSS!!!!

(Durfee and Milo, and Mabel and an off Camera Jay from last year)

We'll be taking our 3 bullies!!!! This will be Bella's (our newest) first "public" event. I may run with a few people that will take one each, or I may just wind up running behind 175lbs of Pittie Power by myself!

This will be FUN!

 

Featured Technique

One Of My Favorite Posts

I put this video up a while back. I know we have a lot of new people on the blog now so I thought I'd share! This video is AWESOME! Paleo In A Nutshell! -Jay

Quote of The Day

"Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work."

- Chuck Close

39 Ways To Not Be Like Everyone Else

Found this on Jason Ferruggia's Renegade Strength And Conditioning website. Thought it was worth sharing! Check it out.- Jay

39 Ways To Not Be Like Everyone Else

The problem with being like everyone else is that everyone else sucks.

My advice is not to do it…

How do you start your day each morning?

Do you angrily smash the alarm clock and roll out of bed exhausted, dreading another day doing what you hate?

Or do you spring up fresh and well rested because you went to sleep before 11pm like you know you should, and get excited to tackle another day doing what you love?

After hitting the bathroom do you stagger into the kitchen and get a pot of coffee brewing as fast as humanly possible?

Is that what it takes for you to wake up in the morning and actually feel alive?

If you eat, sleep and train properly the last thing you should ever need is caffeine to wake up.

What about your workout regimen?

Do you do focus on big compound lifts, advanced bodyweight exercises, strongman training and avoid machines and isolation movements like the plague?

Do you keep a detailed log book and track your progress week after week, year after year?

Do you stick with a program for longer than a week? It takes at least four to even have a clue what’s going and what’s working.

When it comes time for cardio do you hop on the elliptical or stair climber or do you go find a hill and sprint up it until your heart beat is visible through your hooded sweatshirt?

There’s always an easy way out. You can always live a life of mediocrity and unhappiness and do what everyone else does. Or you can choose to not be like everyone else. You can choose the road less traveled.

How do you do that?

Here are 39 ways that would be a good start.

1)    Eat only organic produce and organic, grass fed meat. Avoid any factory farmed meat like the plague and try your best to avoid conventionally grown produce when possible.

2)    Eliminate sugar from your diet completely. Fruit doesn’t count.

3)    Cut out all processed foods.

READ MORE......

You Can Do It!

Here's one of our new lifters. This is her only athletic endeavor in over forty years. I always say that you can accomplish anything you want if you're willing to work and you have the right help. Awesome work Leslie!!!!!!! First meet.... Here we come!

 

Arthur Haines On Paleo "Myths"

Here's a great video from Aurhur Haines, one of our original students and first Brown Belt. He's a primitive skills instructor, and amazing wealth of knowledge. Check it out! -Jay

Science= Change

I was teaching class last night and had the unenviable task of telling a student that the way they were doing a technique was not 100% correct. Now, that happens all the time. But, the reason that this one was tricky was because he was doing it EXACTLY like I had taught him a few years back.

Here's a riddle for you:

How can you do something EXACTLY like it was shown to you, and 2 years later, be told by that same person "That's not how we do it"?

It changed. It developed.

Look, nothing of value looks the same now, as it did a few years ago. Cars. Surgical technique. Christ, Frisbee making technology has probably been improved.

If you study something deeply...... you will find little adjustments. Little improvements. I know that every single time I teach, I learn. And I see the little adjustments. In positioning. In how I communicate the ideas to people. Drills, movements.... Whatever. But, every time I teach, I improve my teaching, and the art itself.

Don't worry. It's not like I change huge things. I couldn't if I want to!

The truth is what it is. This is a science. Airplanes have gone through SIGNIFICANT changes in the last 20 years...... BUT...... aerodynamics have not. We can play with placement of the wings on the body, but the teardrop shape of the wings don't change. No one has built a plane that looks like you're pushing an open umbrella! It wouldn't work. All science is the same. BJJ is no different. Although we make constant improvements.... they are changes that the untrained eye may not even see. I have changed a lot of things from the way I learned them. But most people would be hard pressed to notice them if we held them up side by side. There's a delicate balance. Find the improvements, without straying from the scientific essence of the art. 

My point is this:

When you are taking a class, and the instructor tells you to do it differently...... and you're SURE you're doing like you were told...... Don't stress. You're not stupid, or confused. They're not being mean, or rude. They haven't lost their mind.

They are trying to improve their teaching. And your performance!

Now, if you have a bad instructor, they'll make you feel stupid for noticing their "inconsistencies".

If you have a decent instructor, they'll admit they changed it.

If you're lucky, you'll have an instructor that is excited to show you how it's different, and why. They'll help you understand the change, and get you excited that you've found a better way!

Never hesitate to ask if a technique seems slightly different!

You're probably right!

And, I will love the opportunity to be a better instructor, and show you how and why!

Now, go train.

-Jay

Quote of The Day

“I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn't.”

-Michael Caine