BJJ

Work hard. Train hard. Until that becomes ‘normal’. The dial it up a bit until that becomes your new normal. Rinse and repeat. This is how you move away from the ordinary.   I’ve had a lot of martial arts instructors ask me how to improve their training, get better results, live better lives, etc. The answer is as easy as I have already stated. Just teach four private classes and four regular classes a week - plus do your own training. When this becomes ‘normal’ - double it. And again. By then, your ‘normal’ is well out of the ordinary. Do the same with other aspects of our lives.   Create your ‘new normal’.   Pic: with pals Craig Moorfoot and Andrew Bews.

Dealing with injuries isn’t just a part of Jiu Jitsu - it’s a part of life. We are creatures playing ‘rough and ready’ on a spinning ball of water and rock … we have to expect our share of injuries throughout life. We are of course, fortunate in the extreme, in that we now live in a time where we have the miracle of modern medicine on our side. Much of the stuff that would have killed or crippled us 100 years ago, we can attend-to fairly easily now. My son Felix just broke his tooth in training a few days ago … and although it set him back a bit, we know that we’ll be able to get it seen to …. it’s just a part of the job. Life, when played hard, by risk-takers, and by people who won’t let small obstacles hinder their choices and actions, will get scars. There’s an old saying - first through the door is always bloodied’ - and so we accept this as just part of the cost of living a life, more extraordinary than most. If we put our life 'on hold' just because we are injured - we ma

We need to understand this basic tenet: normal actions provide normal results - to get abnormal (ideally better than normal) results - we need to climb out of the box. Most of us feel very comfortable in staying ‘on the tracks’ - after all, we are essentially genetically programmed to ‘stick with what is safe and known’ - this is one of the underlying survival imperatives that allowed all of our ancestors to live long enough to procreate. If it weren’t for our ancestors sticking with the ‘tried and true’ - most of us wouldn’t be here. So I get that it’s difficult to ‘jump off the tracks’ - to try new things - to experiment - to think outside the box … but hey, for me, that’s where the fun is!

In some ways I am a slow learner; so it took me a while to come to this particular realisation; but I’d like to share it with those who are interested. Money is a tool. Like a hammer, or a car. It is a means of solving problems. It can’t, of course, solve all problems, but it does solve many; many more, than say, a hammer. A hammer is a tool that solves a very particular problem - that of embedding nails into durable surfaces. Other tools are even more wondrous; computers for example - they can help us solve a vast range of different kinds of problems. Money is like this in a way; it allows us to get stuff sorted. They say that ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’ - but, as is often the case, this cliche doesn’t deliver up the full story … Problems have the potential to make us decidedly unhappy. Money though, may prove to be very useful on occasion, as a means of ‘solving the particular problem’ we have - and thereby drive us into a state of happiness. It’s a tool. A very useful tool. It all

Over the years I have had several ‘conversations’ with ‘school principals’ over the rights of a child to legally (and ethically) be able to defend themselves from physical assault … Sure - I get it that schools have a ZERO BULLYING POLICY - but there needs to be a clear distinction made between that and a ZERO SELF DEFENCE POLICY! The fact is that a ZERO SELF DEFENCE policy is a breach of human rights - as well as a policy that would stand clearly outside the scope of the law. The simple fact is that common law and legal defence trumps school policy. - if the assault was an emergent event, there is simply no time to go and call a teacher - if it was as easy as that, all assaults in the world could be prevented by just politely asking the criminal to wait, while we call the local police and solicit their assistance. The bottom line is this - we all have a legal and intrinsic human right to be able to ‘defend ourselves’ from physical violence. - the school policy of ‘zero tolerance for p