Elite Training Center: Redondo

Several people have come up to me in the last few weeks expressing anxiety about how their hectic schedules and outside commitments keep them from training as often as they’d like. It can be frustrating to watch fellow students advance at a rapid pace because they are able to train several hours a day, and while you’re happy for them, you feel like you’re moving much slower in comparison. I completely understand this frustration…I’ve felt it myself on countless occasions! What’s helped me is to try hard not to compare and to look at the bigger picture and see the cycles of life a little more clearly. Maybe you can’t train much because you’re rehabbing an injury or because you work a demanding job. Maybe you have young children and caring for them fills your days. And then you look at that college student who has a comparatively open schedule and a freedom in his life that you remember only vaguely (if at all!). It’s easy to feel despondent and discouraged, but everyone’s life moves in cycles. Eventually, at one time or another, most of us will feel the pressures of work, family, or injury. We also will have times when we have fewer outside pressures and can make it into the school more often. What’s truly important is that we keep training and keep moving forward on our own individual paths. For some of us that path is a career as a professional fighter, but for most of us it’s a lifelong commitment to improving our lives and the lives of those around us through martial arts. Elite Training Center in Redondo Beach is here to help you attain those goals. Try to train steadily and consistently to the best of your ability while maintaining a balance in the rest of your life. Martial arts are about enriching and adding to life…try to enjoy your particular path, with all of its slow climbs and occasional steep jumps!
Here’s a good goal: Aim for ten minutes of shadowboxing each day, running through and reviewing the techniques that you know, from kickboxing to kali to jiu jitsu to Krav Maga. By the end of the month, you will have logged five additional hours of repetition of your skill set.

Hit first, hit last! Words that we encourage all students at Elite Training Center to adhere to.

Krav Maga, Kali Silat, BJJ, Muay Thai Kickboxing, and MMA all express the importance of timing. To wait or anticipate is too late.

In no way are we condoning to go and punch someone in the event of any altercation. The idea of waiting for someone to throw the first punch can lead to…wait for it…wait for it…BAM! You just got punched! Be aware! This is a judgment call. If all exits and reasoning have been exhausted then it is time to act.

Don’t be beaten to the punch.

This Saturday, March 3rd at 1pm, is the next Krav Maga Promotion and Test. Whether you are promoting, testing or just coming to support your fellow students, you will be a part of an amazing day. Come join us for a little bit of everything including a great workout, Kickboxing, Krav Maga, MMA and teamwork.

CM

Stand up for something! Fight for what you know is right! Be something more than a faceless drone in the sea of billions!

Martial arts were developed to protect the practitioner and his/her fellow warriors. The battlefield is what brought the martial way to the forefront. It was because people stood up for something. This isn’t to say that all armies of old were standing up to something evil. There have been many instances where invading armies did not have the best of intentions. But in order to change anything, it takes the will of one.

All of the martial arts taught at Elite Training Center in Redondo Beach, CA were created by people who stood up to or for something.

Krav Maga, Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), and Kali Silat were all at one time a component for change or protection. These martial arts all stood for something.

What a treat to be able to teach Muay Thai in the snow for 10 hours! It is interesting to see how much the art itself evolves with time going from tropical to mountain terrain. Tommy and I were truly impressed with how well everyone picked up the information. Much respect to all my colleagues for a job well done and mostly to all of you who picked up a vast amount of information and retained it! Looking forward to our next expedition. -A. Haro

Elite Training Center’s Winter Survival Education Retreat was an enormous success. It’s taken a few days for the magnitude of the knowledge and experience to sink in, and I’m finally ready to share my thoughts.

To begin, getting a taste of what it’s like to fight in the snow with winter gear on was an eye opening experience! From kickboxing, to kali, to Krav Maga, to MMA and jiu-jitsu, students discovered how different it is to fight and defend themselves off the mat. It’s one thing to train in a controlled environment, and it’s another challenge entirely to adapt and apply those techniques in a more unstable and unfamiliar situation.

Besides training in martial arts, we learned survival skills that are so important yet so difficult to come by. Land navigation and orienteering, shelter building, fire starting, water purification, fishing/hunting/gathering, and first aid were just some of the topics. What made the information even more valuable was the real-world experience behind it; we had a former Army Ranger and former Navy SEAL as our expert instructors, and their experience and knowledge lent a unique perspective to each lesson.

On a personal level, I was privileged to witness some of the more subtle yet crucial necessities of survival at work. My team’s positive attitude, teamwork, and calm demeanor were critical to their success. It was also fantastic to watch them apply survival lessons learned at the last retreat, such as organizing effective search parties, and to see them have such success with those techniques.

I consider myself so fortunate to be a part of a school that teaches all aspects of martial arts. Martial arts, at the core, are about survival and defending those who are weaker and less able to defend themselves. An army defending the freedom of a nation cannot succeed if they can’t survive conditions long enough and well enough to actually fight. The same skills and mental fortitude can enable a family to survive if stranded in a snowstorm. I feel so much more prepared and equipped to handle such a situation. Elite is unique, and has enriched my life in immeasurable ways…I can’t wait to be a part of the next adventure!

Katie T.

In tonights class we explored the full potential of shadow boxing combatively. Repetition always creates success. Shadowing a technique over and over will instill it in your body over time. This allows your mind to begin to think under stress and as you begin to experience this, you can begin to gradually increase in speed, intensity and aggression. Along with this you will find conditioning and timing come to you. Consistant application of this method will allow you to perform any technique smoothly in the blink of an eye. Nicely done everyone, keep up the fantastic work!

All martial artists come to a plateau at some point during training. It is important to recognize why the burnout is occurring.

At Elite Training Center in Redondo Beach, CA we encourage cross training. Cross training often leads to new perspectives. The instructors at Elite whether Krav Maga, Kali Silat, Muay Thai Kickboxing, MMA or BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu), encourage everyone to partake in as many systems as possible. The “old” way of thinking was to “focus on one art.” This way of thinking is closed minded and somewhat archaic. To resist gaining knowledge on your martial path is a true disservice to the arts. Whether the instructor is giving proper information or improper at least there is something to be learned.

In the event you are “burning out” on Krav Maga, then work on BJJ. If you are “burning out” on Muay Thai, then work on Kali Silat.

As mentioned in previous posts Elite’s systems will blend together. Although you may be doing similar techniques, hearing the perspective of another instructor or training with different students may be the water that pushes out the mud of your regimen.

Truth is in everything, but there are no absolutes other than what is being trained at the moment.

Really great to see everyone in the kickboxing class excited to train the thai clinch. Slowly but surely everything comes together and just when you thought there was a lot, there’s more where that came from!

When we learn to read, we don’t immediately jump into books with long, complex sentences. First we learn our letters, the formation of each and the sounds they make. Once those are mastered, we are taught how to combine them into words and then how to put those words together to open worlds of stories and knowledge. The martial arts are similar. For example, in basic kickboxing, we are taught how to perform a proper jab, cross, hook, uppercut, parry, elbow, knee, and basic kicks. We practice these individual techniques over and over again, embedding them in our minds and muscles so that they become second nature. So when we move to the more advanced program we are ready to learn how to combine these different elements to form a seamless flow of techniques as well as tactics and strategy. Those initial basic building blocks of movement are essential to every piece of our journeys. Although kickboxing was the example, this is true of all martial arts. At Elite Training Center, we are very proud of our programs (Muay Thai kickboxing, MMA, Jiu Jitsu, Kali, and Krav Maga); each of them has a defined and comprehensive basic training curriculum that truly prepares students for the large amount of knowledge and challenge present in our advanced programs. Our students succeed and progress because they are so well equipped with the fundamentals.
There is a time when reading clicks…when those letters cease to be seen and sounded out individually. We see the whole word and even phrases without even thinking about it. This is how martial arts skills evolve as well. Enjoy the process!