“The person who is afraid to take risks takes the greatest risk of all” anon. - Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Camps have begun. We are back in Ames… we’ve been working on mastering some key fundamentals and of course the good old ankle pick.

I have a few quotes that I just came across that are very interesting. I have a thick folder of thoughts, notes, and quotes that I carry around in my brief case. But the first quote is from James Allen’s “As a Man Thinketh.” The general idea of the book is that people are ultimately what they think in their hearts. A person’s character is “a sum of all his thoughts.” The line that really stuck out tonight was “men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; therefore they remain bound.” As a coach and someone who’s job is to help kids be the best they can be, I see this almost daily. The kids who improve and make progress are the ones who are willing to improve themselves. Improving oneself is very difficult. You have to push yourself past your comfort zone. That is much more then just working hard. A lot of people are willing to work hard. A lot of people are willing to work until it gets difficult. Most people will run until it becomes difficult to breath and their muscles fatigue. The few that make continued progress run after they get tired. They except that pain and discomfort are part of making progress and they push on. most people are willing to make changes until it becomes really difficult in the critical moments. and it’s these critical moments that the change is needed to improve ourselves. That’s when they go back to old, comfortable habits. back to the habits that are binding them. It’s a very interesting concept. It’s much easier to blame someone else or a difficult circumstance as to why we aren’t making progress. And people know this but won’t accept, at least not personally. In order to make progress you have to stay committed to your new game plan in the difficult and important times. There can be no excuses. You either do it or you don’t. It’s not about the results, it’s about the effort. It’s no one’s fault but your own. They are your circumstances, no one else’s, you either improve them or you don’t. There will always be obstacles. Your coach, or the referee, or your girlfriend, or the weather, or your tummy ache are always available excuses to fall back on when it gets tough instead of just being disciplined and tough and finishing what you started. We’re talking less then 10%. We get so close, put in countless hours, and then are too afraid to push through the last 5% and just get the job done. People are so afraid to fail that they don’t attack out of fear of making a mistake. That’s the phenomenon. People are so afraid of losing that we aren’t willing to stick our necks out there to do what it takes to succeed. And we know to succeed at the highest levels it takes measured risks. Yet we never learn. You lose a match because you didn’t open up and attack with the necessary offense. Then we walk off the mat and find an excuse and don’t learn the real lesson. The real lesson is that you go out and fight with everything you’ve got. You unload your clip and let the bullets fly. You get mean and enforce your will. You use all of the skills and talents that you have worked so hard to develop. And you do that from the first whistle to the last. Then if you don’t win we can go back to the drawing board and get a real and honest answer to what we need to improve on. Unfortunately that rarely happens. What happens is people compete cautiously, worry about making mistakes so they limit their offense, walk off the mat with bullets in the chamber. They can’t figure out how to make progress because they didn’t shoot their best set ups and best shots. They don’t know what really could have happened because they weren’t willing to put it all on the line. It’s a crazy cycle. When I competed there was no uncertainty as to what I was going to do in a match. My strategy didn’t change with each new competitor. I was going to do one thing and that was, get to my tie ups, pull my opponent down and fire my shots when I felt them. my plan was to do that the entire match. If it wasn’t my tie up I tried to clear the tie and get right back to my simple attack mindset. If I gave up a takedown I got back up and went right back to the same mindset. I tried to take control of the match and my opponent. I did the exact same thing in practice. Consistency was key. It takes sacrifice, dedication, it takes pain, it takes a desire to learn and willingness follow through, it takes risk, it takes a simplified focus on the process of doing things correctly, etc. all right that’s enough rambling for tonight.

“The person who is afraid to take risks takes the greatest risk of all” anon.

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