Being active in 2006

With the New Year upon us I've been looking at how engaged people are with their training, on a number of levels. I think many of us fail to realise our true potential due to passive responses to situations whether on the mat, in the ring or in life in general. I want to look at a few examples of changing passive responses to active ones and hope that some of you may look at making some of the changes I am looking at for my training training over the next year.

As a coach I spend a fair amount of time trying to convince people to come down training, whether that be new students who are thinking of trying the gym or old students who have let their training slip. The most common 'reason' I hear back for not training is that people, who are often extremely interested or have enjoyed training in the past, couldn't find the time.

Those pesky time thieves at work maybe?

For the most part it is a case of not making the time. Many coaches, and students, train/teach a number of nights a week, prep lessons, work full time and juggle family commitments. We make time because we have/want/need to.

These two sides of the passive/active balance have most leverage on how successful your training is. If you can only make time to train once a week guard that time and make the most from it.

It is easy to allow work commitments to erode time for everything else, working 14 hour days to try and hit a deadline, burning yourself out and living off microwaved leftovers. I've been there in the past and know how easy it is to allow work to expand to fill free time. Notice the use of allow, passive voice again.

Making time to train becomes vital if this is the case. Splitting up your day for a chance to get refreshed and energised by training is important. Even a tough work out that leaves you trained physically will give you an opportunity to switch gears and recharge in other ways. For example, taking your mind off work, relieving stress or just giving you a ritual that divides the work day from family time.

All necessary as part of taking control of how you balance different aspects of your life.

As well as working on a macro level - we can look at how being actively engaged can change your approach to both learning and physically training your skills.

First let's look at learning. How active are you on this score? Do you turn up to class and wait for your coach to tell you what to work? Or do you come in with personal goals in mind and blend your learning with the coaches teaching to get as much out of each session as possible?

Taking the second gives you real hands-on control of the development of your game, you know your problem areas, as Paul Sharp wrote a while ago, work the things you hate. Look at your game and work out where you are sitting on your laurels. What skills have you consigned to the box 'Good enough'? This is that passive response creeping back in, dragging your game down like an anchor.

If you don't know where your weak spots and lazy habits are, ask your training partners they will be able to tell you in an instant because they'll have been exploiting them in every round of sparring and every roll. B*stards.

Once you've identified them, meet them head on, drill your weakest areas - physical, technical, mental, theoretical and emotional. Control them rather than letting them control you.

To help you with this keep a training record, set yourself goals and write them down, work out exactly what outcomes you want and write them down to. Then you will know when you have got to where you are going. Make notes on what you cover in class, what you were working to improve, how much progress you made, what new challenges you identify along the way and how you are thinking and feeling about your training while doing this.

Then make time to go and talk it all through with your coach/training partners/Rodney/people on here... I'll start keeping a training log on a blog as an example of this for people to see. If you just keep it to yourself and never look at it with anyone else then you will only get from it what you already know. Having someone else talk through your training with you will help you keep this up.

Finally I want to look at performance. Possibly the single biggest difference between beginners and experienced players is level of efficiency and efficacy. Many of the techniques you learn in the first 6 months of training will become the core of your game, but the more advanced players make them work better with less effort.

This translates as pressure, you can't get away from a tight, efficient, aggressive game and the more advanced guys (and girls) seem to be able to generate time from nowhere as they make use of beats you didn't know existed.

Bullet-time aside, much of this comes from activity, not in a go like Speedy Gonzales sense, but by making everything work all the time. Nothing gets left behind.

Look at grappling as a great example. You should be able to take a snapshot at any moment in a role and mentally check whether everything is doing it's job. Is your base good? Are you balanced? Are both your arms and both your legs working to help you? If you have a grip on a gi, could adding pressure with your arm help? Same thing with feet, shins, knees etc in guard. What is your head doing? Can it help?

At any given time you should be looking to co-ordinate everything to further your progress. This is active and whether in microcosm or macrocosm it'll help your game and make the time you do make to train much more valuable.

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