Elite Training Center: Redondo

Strikeforce: Tate vs. Rousey last Saturday night was exciting to watch. It’s great to see female fighters exhibiting the skill and technique that up until recently was only really seen in the men’s fights. At Elite Training Center in Redondo Beach, we have a large number of women participating in all of our classes, from jiu-jitsu, to Muay Thai, to Kali, to Krav Maga, and so on. We even have a mixed martial arts class especially for women. Whether your goal is to be in the cage, gain self-defense skill, or simply get healthier, every woman should give it a shot. All female Elite students are welcome! We learn a lot and have a great time…hope to see everyone there!

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.

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!

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!

If you find yourself struggling to understand information that you receive, just ask! Far too often students on the martial path fear the judgment of their fellow martial artists if they ask questions. “I don’t wanna hold up the class” or “I’ll just ask later” then forget. Firstly, ego must leave the equation. Never feel embarrassed by asking a question. Chances are that you aren’t the only person on the mat with a question.

Krav Maga, Kali Silat, Muay Thai Kickboxing, MMA and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu were developed by people asking questions. The improvements over the years were lead by those who asked question. Perhaps the burning question could one day revamp or improve the many martial arts practiced at Elite Training Center.

Elite Training Center hosts 5 schools under 1 roof. This is done as each system is complimentary to the next. Krav Maga shares many movements derived from not only Muay Thai kickboxing, but from Kali Silat, another self defense system taught at Elite. The ground work takes pieces and elements of both Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Japanese Jiu Jitsu. In fact, any school that is worth its salt will understand the above mentioned and will be able to explain how each system works within the next. This is simply MMA or combative mixed martial arts.

Keep an open mind and remember that to truly understand the martial arts it is important to examine and investigate them all.

  Think Big – Dream Big – Achieve Big!
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Think Big…Dream Big…Achieve Big…is all about seeing a bigger picture of what you really want to achieve in life. Big Goals demand our best effort,
energy and focus. They bring out the best in us and force us to grow. We need to have goals when training whether it be within Krav Maga, kickboxing or Thai Boxing, Mixed Martial Arts, Kali or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu…
 
To experience a QUANTUM LEAP YEAR you must strive for achieving BLACK BELT EXCELLENCE instead of accepting MEDIOCRITY in any area of your life.
 
Do you want to be an A-rated student or be satisfied as a “B” or a “C”?
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Would you rather be wealthy -or- poor for the rest of your life?
 
Which goal would motivate you to stay focused and take more action?
 
When you think big and strive to achieve big, it’s much more exciting and causes you to take more positive action than when you think small and aim for easy targets that are set low.
 
Think Big…Dream Big…Achieve Big and make a Bigger Difference in the lives of others as well.
 
Training to be an A-rated Black Belt Champion is a big, exciting and purposeful goal. It’s a goal that has life long lasting benefits and causes people of all ages to transform their habits, attitudes and actions. It will change and improve their mental, physical and emotional well being.
 
Similar to any big achievement, it’s not what you get, it’s what you become.
 
In our Goal Setting for Greatness series, we encourage you to…
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THINK BIG – DREAM BIG – ACHIEVE BIG…
 With this mindset you will not fail when training within  Krav Maga, kickboxing or Thai Boxing, Mixed Martial Arts, Kali or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu…or anything else you set your mind too..
Nobody suddenly becomes a World Class athlete or achiever.
 
Make 2012 your Best Year Ever by staying  focused on your BIG GOALS and GO FOR IT!

Let’s Get To Work
Shihan Brian Rauchbach

This is a big weekend at Elite Training Center! We have nearly forty students promoting or testing to higher belts in Jiu-Jitsu, Krav Maga, and Mixed Martial Arts, and many of these students are advancing in more than one discipline and truly becoming complete martial artists. We are so proud of everyone, and we’re proud of the students who have shown up to support their teammates and to help them succeed. Keep up the great work!!