Hi guys, it’s Shaythecoach here! UrbanMonk and Shaythecoach apologize about the “Know Your Values” Post. It was published prematurely without the citations, quotes, and credits fully complete. It also was a free-thinking draft that I need to polish, specifically around details of my training history with my esteemed coaches and Sensei’s. This post is the one though!!! Thank you for your patience and support! Enjoy the read 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Are you an orange zest person? Or do you like drinking the juice? Do you like it pulpy? Do you even like oranges??????
What does this have to with karate and exercise? I write a lot about this-the HUMAN BODY. The HUMBAN BODY is what will consume the orange, do the exercise, go to karate class.
What does this have to do with my week at the MGM Grand and the MAIA (Martial Arts Industry Association SuperShow? Let me try to explain..
I recently went to the MAIA Supershow held in Las Vegas at the MGM grand from July 5-July7 as a martial arts program business owner to learn more about how to make my school better for my students. What I gained was so much more! There were seminars from first thing in the morning all the way to into evening hours and then Opening Ceremonies and in between plenty of networking opportunities and chances to sit face to face with some of the nation’s top karate people and business owners. I soaked it up…not like an orange, but like a sponge.
Stay with the orange analogy…it will make sense a little later. Promise!
The seminars ranged from how to generate leads, recruitment, and retention. These are buzz words that I shied away from because they did not resonate with me. But at the Tradeshow, I sat in seminars that broke the words down into layman’s terms for me. In a nutshell: how to let the community know I have opened a school, how to communicate what the school is offering, how to provide the best customer service to students, how to keep students actively involved, how to keep the excitement going so students want to keep training at the school, how to..how to..how to.
Once I put my, “how to” hat on…I absorbed more and more.
One key seminar for me was the Martial Arts Business Forum for Small Schools led by Mr. Mike Metzger and Mr. Shane Tassoul. What made this seminar different from seminars I’ve been to in the past is while we were sitting in the seminar, Mr. Metzger and Mr. Tassoul asked participants to participate! They gave us a task to make a post right then on social media that brought immediate results. They emphasized that education without implementation is education. Education implemented is wisdom and growth. And grow I did! Within minutes, I had texts and messages responding to the posts. Thank you Mr. Metzger and Mr. Tassoul.
The second key seminar that I went to was that of Mr. Ernie Reyes Jn. He facilitated a workshop called, “The ABCs of Exercise Science.” He started by saying some powerful words…
“WHAT DO ALL KARATE STYLES HAVE IN COMMON?”
“WHAT DOES EXCERSICE SCIENCE AND ALL KARATE STYLES HAVE IN COMMON?”
The response…the million dollar response..
“THE HUMAN BODY.”
When he finished making that statement, I think my mind-body spirit started to drool with excitement (not literally, I was on a professional open sparring floor with top karate athletes all over the country)! But his words spoke to me and to my work. It was a great seminar. The icing on the proverbial cake was at the end when he introduced Master Michelle Landgren -Lee as someone who helped him put this seminar together and her role in embracing this connection. Master Landgren Lee is someone I have known for some time and has a very successful karate program in Arizona, so through the workshop we got to reconnect. In the workshop, we learned sports-specific exercise science drills to enhance karate training by focusing on three things: muscles, bones, and the heart. Mr. Reyes Jn.’s key point again, we all use these three things when we train in exercise science and karate. We may have different styles, histories, and backgrounds but we all have muscles, bones, and a heart. Beautiful! The most inspiring part of the story (besides getting equipped with more drills) was their drive for doing this workshop- to motivate children and people at large by educating them about the health benefits of exercising.
I had the opportunity to meet with them afterwards and share that I will be speaking and delivering a workshop in late August at the International Obesity Conference for Children in Atlanta, Georgia along similar lines. The workshop will be called, “The Mind-Body Connection and its Impacts on Childhood Obesity.” (For more information, you may go to the following link:
http://childhoodobesity.conferenceseries.com/
Have you gotten the connection to the title of the blog yet? We are humans. We all have bones, muscles, and a heart (Rind, pulp, seeds, juce). We all may not like the same part of an orange…we may not even like oranges! But we can still get together, move and make healthier choices.
The third and last piece I will write about here is the opening ceremony. It was epic. The Executive Director of MAIA, Mr. Frank Silverman hosted and it was a perfect blend of serious business with serious laughter. There were demonstrations, videos from karate YouTube channel “Enter the Dojo.” There were talks from Mr. Paul Webb, President of MAIA, Jon Taffer from Bar Rescue was the Keynote speaker. As if that wasn’t enough, Rickson Gracie, Renzo Gracie, and Calson Gracie Jr. were all present to accept the Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of the Gracie Family. The Gracie Family was described as follows by the program description, “For almost 100 years, members of the Gracie family have helped to create, establish, and spread the art of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Tonight we honor their legacy.”
Some of the key take-aways from the Gracie family were their statements about Martial Arts being imprinted in their DNA! They said it in a matter-of-fact, figurative way…and I can relate! They pointed out that we fellow karate instructors and karateka (karate practitioners) are so passionate and give so much that it is time to give the same passion to the industry so it can grow. Let us balance our teaching skills because ultimately, business combined with teaching is the greatest service to the community. The very same community that can use movement and coaching towards making positive and healthy lifestyle choices.
Are you getting the connection to the title of this blog?
Each presenter, each key part of the conference was like an orange. Each contributed in his or own unique way. Put together, made a whole piece of fruit. Some pieces where harder to digest for me than others! Some more enjoyable and memorable that others!
The grand finale…where did I get the title? When I got home, I sat with a neighbor outside on the patio excitedly telling him about my week. He grinned and told me a fable about two women in an orchard picking oranges. He said by the time they got to the orchard, there was only one orange left. The looked at each other and bickered and fought over the thing. Finally, they decided they would share it down the middle. They cut it in half and used it. Later on, they by chance ran into each other in town. Having calmed down, each asked the other what she used the orange for. One woman said, “Well I needed juice, so I used the pulp.” The other lady said, “I made a pie, so I needed the rind for the zest.” They two shook their head in amazement and humor, realizing if they discussed this beforehand they each could have had the whole orange. How?? Did you figure it out??
The woman making the pie could have peeled the entire orange and had all the zest. The woman making juice could have taken the rest of the orange and had all the pulp!
What does this have to do with karate? Since I opened this school (and even before that, since I have teaching)…I have been searching of ways to honor my traditional Okinawan Goju-Ryu training and my Sensei(s), while embracing and teaching karate in the 21st century. Attending this MAIA conference gave me the start of great answers to this question. The karate, the forms, the training does not need to change. Karate has been in existence a long time. A long, long, long, long, long time. If it is to stay, maybe the approach needs to be a topic of discussion.
Well done MAIA!
Shay Vasudeva is the owner and founder of URBANMONK, a company that helps people become the best version of SELF. She is a Certified Personal Fitness Trainer, Certified Nutritional Therapist, and Black Belt Karate Instructor. Call 480-253-9642 or e-mail [email protected] to schedule your free goal setting session now ! For more information about UrbanMonk you can go to: www.urbanmonk.biz. UrbanMonk is growing and if you would like to support its goal, you can go to: gofund.me/urbanmonk.
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