THE RED CORNER

NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE NORTH STAR ACADEMY OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS

WEEK OF AUGUST 12TH, 2024

 

Happy Monday Team!

This past weekend we brought a small crew to our sister academy, 8 Limbs in West Philadelphia, for a day of friendly, competitive sparring.  These events are a great pathway for our competition-oriented students to get in front of some spectators and showcase their skills and, ideally, work out some of the nerves that come along with that.

On fight night we are rarely at our best.  In the gym, we can train, spar, and work with little distraction or pressure.  Just being purely focused on the task at hand in the tiny little universe in which we and our partner are the only two people.  But on fight night, it’s different.  There’s music, there’s cameras, there’s lights, and there’s a huge crowd watching.  That’s the part that can really throw you off.

So, like anything, it takes some getting used to.

This event was great for me as a coach because some of our more senior students stepped up to coach: Chris, Tre, and Joe.  This meant that I basically just had to hang out, relax, and watch some fun sparring (I know, poor me).  Our coaches did a great job keeping the athletes centered and focused on the right things, and our athletes performed extremely well.

Big shout outs to Pat, Sam, Neiko, Andy, and Geo for some strong performances today.  Moreso than their performance relative to their sparring partners, their performance round over round was exceptional — making adjustments, maintaining pace, and staying locked in to that narrow range of flow that’s very difficult to catch ahold of and keep.

Much of their success yesterday stemmed from the concepts and subject matter that we’ve been working in our 201 program, too, so that was fun to see.  Congrats everyone!

This coming week is more of the same, but without the hurricane winds and downpours that frustrated last week’s efforts.  Please note that our Judo workshop is now scheduled for this Tuesday @ 7:30pm, and our Wrestling workshop has been pushed back to the 19th @ 7:30pm.

I’ll see you all on the mats!

–Coach J

You can find this week’s Monday Mindset HERE

You can find this week’s Junior Samurai Stripe Challenge HERE