Ultimate Force January 12th

Congrats to Danny Mitchell on his win last night. The fight went the distance but in the 2nd round Danny had his opponent in a tight arm bar, bent about 2oo degrees but his opponent somehow gutted it out.

Pete Hill also fought but unfortunately lost by judges decision. Pete has the edge standing but his opponent, Shay Walsh, had the edge on the ground where most of the fight took place. Unlucky Pete but I am sure he will be back.

Congrats also to James 'Scraps' Saville on his win. It was a close match with his opponent having weight advantage and some brutal power but James did enough to score the win.

John Kavanagh seminar

March 2nd SBG black belt John Kavanagh will be teaching a seminar at Caged Steel Gym in Dewsbury. Everyone that has trained before with John will tell you what an excellent game he has, you should really get to this seminar.

BJJ @ Caged Steel Gym

In addition to the BJJ classes run by Spenna at the moment, February will see us start our regular monthly Combat Base seminars at Caged Steel Gym in Dewsbury. next seminar is Attacking From The Back following the last seminar of Taking The Back from December. Date TBC

Coming Soon.....

January 12th Danny Mitchell and Pete Hill fighting at Ultimate Force in Doncaster.

January 19th Eddie Bravo seminar at Combat Base Northumberland.

January 27th X guard seminar at Combat Base Bolton.

Much, much more coming throughout the year, stay tuned.............

New addition to the Combat Base family

Welcome to our latest addition, Combat Base Bolton. The group is run by my long term friend Carl Fisher, who is currently a purple belt. Already Carl has started organising and promoting so look for a busy year.

Update to Leo's Page

Check out the Omaplata part 2, this has been Leo's project now for some time and contains a lot of excellent information to improve your omaplata. Here

GUTTED!!

Had tickets to go see The Damned in Manchester and was too ill to go. The Damned were always my favourite band and have not seen them live for quite a while so I'm quite rightly gutted.

To make up for it check out Song.Com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1tj-NKSPoY

Combat Base North East

Just returned from Combat Base North East where we conducted a little workshop on taking the back. It's always a pleasure to travel up there. Whilst there a few promotions were awarded.
Steve Muckle, CBNE head coach was awarded his brown belt. Steve's commitment to BJJ over the years has been total, even travelling a 270 mile round trip every week for years just to train with us. Plus his side control is legendary.

Promoted to purple belt were Graeme Allsopp, Ed Drysdale and our own Ben Mallows.

Further congrats go to Chris Campbell for his excellent victory at Fightzone the night before, capturing a nice big belt for his trouble.

Anyone in or around the North East should go train with these guys.

Man in the Arena

This must be the most inspiring quote ever written, so for no particular reason I just wanted to post it.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Roosevelt's speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Talent, dedication, the tortoise and the hare

The lesson of "slow and steady wins the race" is very common in martial arts. Any instructor/coach/long serving student have all seen naturally talented students begin training, pick things up lightening fast, have all the right attributes and experience a little success. These are the "hares"

On the other hand you have the guys that have to work for everything, a lot of work for little return initially but stick at it. These are the "tortoises".

The hares set off at a great pace whilst, in the meantime, the tortoises are just plodding away.

BUT these "hares" don't seem to have the long term dedication to see it through, they get to a certain point very quickly then quit. Some often return years later to find that there natural talent is not what it was and requires a little work then they quit again.

Hares can be a source of frustration to the tortoises, the tortoises are the ones who keep training yet sometimes are still "losing". This is quite short sighted as the result of a sparring match is fairly irrelevant in the scheme of things. Especially if the tortoise is of smaller build and outweighed by the hare to the point that attributes win the day.

The key is endurance, I don't just mean being able to train for a couple of hours, that's nothing. The real endurance is to keep training day after day after month after year.

My Brazilian Jiu Jitsu coach, Chris Haueter always says "it's not who's best it's who's left"

Keep plodding away, the finishing line is not that far away.