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Admin

Admin has written 452 posts for The Black Belt Blog

It’s all me, me, me

I wonder and have doubts about the idea of being properly analytical about your own training. I think it is possible but I think you have to monitor yourself very carefully. I hate the term “self coached” since that implies you almost came up with stuff independently, however for the bulk of my 20s and … Continue reading →

My old gi

This is what I think of as my brown belt gi. I call it this because I bought it in 2011 while a purple belt, and around the same time I decided that for my own development, the development of my students and the greater good of my club, I would rededicate myself to Brazilian … Continue reading →

Antisocial Media

I don’t know about you, but I find the internet, Facebook, blogs and so on to be a great disappointment. Once anything gets serious on social media, it becomes less and less social. We are promised that there’s a great collective consciousness out there, ready to debate, discuss, and discover new things. We can read … Continue reading →

Success and Winning

“No written word nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should be, not all the books on all the shelves but what the teachers are themselves.” -Elbert Hubbard Check out ‘Coach’ John Wooden’s talk on success and what it means, and why it’s different from winning. I speak a lot with my colleagues from … Continue reading →

A cuppa with some youth players…

I spoke a little bit with a young group I was coaching last week about their motivation, how they measure success and so on. It was an informal chat since we had to call training off early due to the weather conditions. A nice bloke from the club arrived in with 2 large pots of … Continue reading →

Some stuff for you try

This isn’t a programme or a schedule, just some things to think about. Throw them into your training, or start your training with them. Up to you. 1. Do 100 pronated shoulder width pull ups every week, in any order, at any time. See what happens. 2. Learn a new gymnastic movement each month. And … Continue reading →

That’s one small step for clean sport…

What is it about drug cheats that get our goat so much? Lance Armstrong, it would appear to me from my vantage point, is a liar, a bully, a cheat, and an egomaniac, and all of this would seem to add up to him being a pretty deplorable sportsman. However if he had admitted to … Continue reading →

Contacting me

It’s come to my attention that a few people have been trying to get in touch with me regarding training via this blog but have failed. This was due to a technical issue with the contact form on the blog. Sorry for any inconvenience! If you’d like to get in touch regarding anything to do … Continue reading →

Motivation and Valuing Your Training

Here’s a thought. The people I have programmed and trained for free are far less likely to follow my programming than the people who pay for it. This is an established economic and psychological phenomenon, which is lucky really or I would get offended very regularly. If you pay more for a product or service, … Continue reading →

Preseason GAA Training

It’s preseason time right now and I’m really enjoying working with a great bunch of young guys at Erin’s Isle GAA in Finglas. The guys are a dual code team (ie. They play both football and hurling) and we’ve been working together about 3 months now. We’ve completed a 10 week strength camp and now … Continue reading →