Good sized class with 20 on the mat tonight. Started with pass or sweep and played that for about 30 mins. Then moved into grappling with 6 pairs on the mat and looser making the call on who stayed.

A bit of a messy night and some people getting a bit angsty! Overall a good class.

After class Johnny said something that stuck with me for a while. He mentioned his fantastic win in the US earlier this year and said it had more to do with his fundamental skills than anything else.

He claimed the thing he had over everyone he fought was his ability to control and escape. He attributed the control and tightness of his game directly to his fundamentals skills. Pretty good recommendation for our club and training I think.

I also come across this email in my files and its relevant, Laurie trained with us for a couple of months, she had no Gi and was a bit erratic in attendance but was a really nice chick. She is from the US, here's what she had to say about the training:

Dear Geoff,

I'm glad to hear that you're feeling better and back in training. Thank you for the good training while I was in Wellington. I think that I did not fully realize the benefit of what I was learning until I returned to Santa Cruz and started training here again. I am astonished by how much my grappling has changed, and improved, since I left - despite my having taken a year off. I really don't know how to describe it, since many times in NZ I was unsatisfied with what grappling I did. However, since coming back
and returning to full-fledged grappling I am struck by how much of difference those 1-2 classes a week of working on the fundamentals made. I am grappling better than I have ever done before.
Please send my best wishes to everybody in the dojo. I hope that everything is going well there and that transfer into the new place is proceeding smoothly.

Best regards,
Laurie

p.s.
I'm sorry if this sounds like a gushy e-mail. But it's a pretty good feeling when you return to grappling expecting to get your ass kicked and instead find yourself with tighter control, better technique, and the ability to pull off fancy submissions that you never tried before. So here is another person in praise of the fundamentals.

As a low ranked school, (ie no Black Belt) there is always the question of stunted learning. By that, I mean I only know so much and as a result, I can only teach you so many relevant things, compared to someone like John Will. But on the flip side you're not overwhelmed with fancy low percentage submissions or skills. There is only so much I can teach you therefore your skill set will be that much more polished.
I do try to counteract this by allowing you to watch the DVD's for inspiration and ideas and hopefully that expands everyones games and aims n the mat.

It just seems that with everyones progress lately things are really coming along nicely. I just want to say Well Done!