Wednesday, July 14, 2010

My Personal Tournament Results

Improved my diet.
Lost 7-8 pounds.
Trained harder.
Had fun.
Reconnected with old friends.
Made new friends.
Saw the results of my hard work.
Watched my friends/students face their own challenges and come out smiling.

Good tournament.


Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Watch Out For Snakes

We went camping at Natural Bridge State Resort Park for the 4th of July weekend. The park is great, wonderful trails beautiful campsites, the place is kept very natural which is what we like.

We were camping in bear country, in fact, very near the place where a bear attack happened just a few days before our trip. So we took the first step of self defense: awareness.

We learned about how to not attract black bears, what to do if we saw a black bear, and what to do if approached by a black bear.

We didn't see any bears.

We did see what we thought at first was possibly a copperhead, right near our campsite. As it turns out that one was more likely a northern water snake.
Copperhead
Northern Water Snake

That snake, however, reminded me about awareness, we'd been so focused on bear safety, I hadn't been thinking about snakes. So I started being more careful about where I walked, and where I looked while walking, and spotted this one.

So the lesson that I was reminded of was one I preach a lot. Awareness. Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we should try to be aware of, not paranoid about, but aware of the threats we are most likely to face. We should be aware of how to minimize those threats and protect ourselves. By the way if you didn't click on that last link, you really should, it will help you be aware of the threats we face in the USA.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Tournament Training

I've been training for the tournament. Training pretty hard too.

Once upon a time, tournament training for me was practicing my forms.

This year I'm taking it seriously. Not because I'm obsessed with winning. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm going to try to win, but winning isn't all that important to me.

I've simply discovered that by training to win, I'm really, really training. And that is a win.