This issue's quote; "Discipline yourself so others won't have to." John Wooden
TRAINING AT THE BARN OF TRUTH
It took us 17 hours to get to Perrysville, Ohio from Kansas City, Missouri; 4 hours more than normal and making it the longest road trip in a long time. For some reason, the traffic around Dayton, Ohio (no matter what time of the day or night) is terrible. We ran into 3 traffic jams and at one point Eric Millsap was driving no more than 7 miles per hour for about a 20-minute stretch of time on I-70. We had guys in 2 cars and Eric and I played catch-up to Nick Rothwell, Jeff Owens and Derrick Darling most of the way. At least, the traffic jams provided for more chances for all of us to solve the world's problems and tell dirty jokes. Okay, enough griping about the road conditions...the workout at John Saylor's barn was great.
John had a good crew of 
guys at the Barn of Truth on the last weekend of September. Mike, Scott and Miguel drove in from Maryland and the rest of the bunch were Ohio guys who wanted to get a good workout with the Welcome Mat bunch. Sean Daugherty and Mike Hallman ran several of the workouts and had some great drills that we certainly will work on at Welcome Mat. Mike's fast-paced and mobile style of groundfighting is not only effective, but a lot of fun to do and I'm glad he lent his coaching skills to the group assembled. Sean's a stud on leglocks, and I'm looking forward to having him get together next May with Jarrod Fobes at Saylor's Spring Camp (May 14 and 15, 2011). That will be a leglock clinic that will need to be filmed.
guys at the Barn of Truth on the last weekend of September. Mike, Scott and Miguel drove in from Maryland and the rest of the bunch were Ohio guys who wanted to get a good workout with the Welcome Mat bunch. Sean Daugherty and Mike Hallman ran several of the workouts and had some great drills that we certainly will work on at Welcome Mat. Mike's fast-paced and mobile style of groundfighting is not only effective, but a lot of fun to do and I'm glad he lent his coaching skills to the group assembled. Sean's a stud on leglocks, and I'm looking forward to having him get together next May with Jarrod Fobes at Saylor's Spring Camp (May 14 and 15, 2011). That will be a leglock clinic that will need to be filmed. We started things off right with a good 90 minutes or so in the Barn's weight room before getting on the mat and John introduced the guys to some of his training methods. John has a hard core gym, and is my kind of place. The kind of place where spandex isn't appreciated, but sweating is. This photo shows Jeff Owens benching with John Saylor spotting him. We all gave Jeff a lot of credit for not running away after looking up and seeing that scary view of Saylor from the bench. Seriously, look at the thick PVC pipe Jeff is pressing and what it's holding on each end. Not your typical bench press routine, but one that works the ever-living crap out of your upper body providing serious, functional strength.
We trained on the mat about 8 hours per day for 2 days, getting in as much mat-time as possible while we were at the Barn. And while the workouts were great, the comraderie of being there was even better. I guess there's nothing like shared abuse to make for a cohesive group of people. Melissa Stage, John's office manager, worked her rear end off to make everyone feel comfortable and welcome and she has our sincere thanks. Unfortunately, John didn't have any of his famous potions available for us to drink (see last issue) but that didn't dampen the atmosphere. By the way, Jeff Owens was promoted to Shodan in Shingitai Jujitsu (Saylor was impressed with Jeff's progress since he saw him last year and wanted to make the promotion at the Barn) and Mike Hallman was promoted to Yondan (in an overdue promotion...Mike is really-make that really- skilled). Belt rank isn't the main thing in our world of jujitsu and judo, but these two guys deserved their advancement in rank.
My main goal was to have our Welcome Mat athletes work mostly with John, Mike and Sean and I made it a point to only chime in when asked. We picked up a lot of good ideas on position drills and leglocks from Sean Daugherty and some really effective guard passing drills from Mike Hallman. Fritz Goss and John Powell also stopped by, offering a few words to the group. I know Fritz has done some motivational speaking recently and I would love to see him talk to a bunch of salesmen or something. He would have those people so worked up, they would sell stink to a skunk. John Powell related some of his experiences in Vietnam and it kept everything in perspective when anyone might think he's a "tough guy" after hearing some of the stuff John went through. It's one thing to roll around on a mat, but it's a totally different thing in combat.
One of the highlights of my trips to Perrsyville is spending some time with John's parents. While everyone stayed at the Barn and listended to Melissa's band "Hagatha's Bluff" practice on Saturday night, I went over to Rev. and Mrs. Saylor's house across the road and had a nice, quite visit with them. Melissa's band is great...really...they are professional musicians and play good rock and roll, but it was a good time to get away and have a chat with the Saylors. I might add that John (like me) is an animal lover and I always like visiting his cats and dog. His cat, Dippy, has more personality than a good many people.
All in all, it was worth the long trip. It always is. We had some concentrated, serious workouts with serious people. No one, not one single athlete at the camp, was a specialist in kuchi waza. Everyone drilled, rolled and worked hard...and we enjoyed the comraderie that only shared abuse can engender in a group of athletes, even if it was for only a couple of days.
As October goes on, I'll pound out some more thoughts. The weather's beautiful in Kansas City and tomorrow is Saturday. That may call for walking around the block a few times with some dumb-bells after some time in the weight room. Nothing like trying to irritate father time on a pretty Fall afternoon. More later; until then stay healthy.
