April2014.pdf April 2014 | Page 25

News the best make it through and the ones who need it the most get weeded out. DD: Sounds exciting, let’s keep going, what else does the program offer? One of the problems is, instructors use the Ceiling Plan: that’s where they look up at the ceiling and decide what to teach. Roland: The most powerful thing is the Coach’s Huddles to inspire & educate athletes. retention of techniques or an end goal of each curriculum season. Then you add the “spar or die” mentally where students are thrown into sparring instead of building a solid foundation of fundamentals and confidence. The next thing you know, you’re losing students. ~ Roland Osborne than being good and no one likes you. Self Respect is powerful for building a fight athlete. The Coach’s Huddles educate fightDD: We’ve all done that! ers in 4 areas each month. This last 5 minutes of every class are powerRoland: Totally, haha. And you can ful and the students leave inspired, pull it off, but most Jr. instructors the areas are: can’t, and long term, its “When the students mind shifts from: Respect: We This is Sparring to, This Will Change My teach students not the best strategy. An- Life we have done something powerful. how to Earn They are learning to put bullying behind Respect and other issue them and Live Their Best Life. That is a with that is Give Respect. sparring program worth showing up ev- There is nothcongruency: ery week for.” There isn’t ing worse Our first approach is to build the fight athlete from the inside out so they are excited about every class and leave empowered to win in the ring and win in life. Bully Defense: We teach all the athletes how to team up and end bullying in their schools and life. We cover bully defense techniques so they are sharp and ready for when it occurs. Fight Science: We teach the science of fighting with real life data so they are the most knowledgeable fight Dojo Digest • April 2014 25