New Year:
With the New Year upon us, it’s a good time to include BJJ in your
resolutions for 2009. Goal setting is an important part of
self-improvement. Your jiu-jitsu goals may include physical goals like
improved strength, weight loss or improving cardio, technical goals such
as an improved submission, sweep or escape or mental goals such as being
a better training partner, more competitions to test yourself or simply
just showing up to class more or getting back into BJJ again after some
time off. I have suggested to some to keep a “book” of what you learn in
class and break it down into positions i.e Half guard from the top,
half guard from bottom…etc. You may find this helpful to remind
yourself of things you have forgotten. You may find this helpful in
determining your goals and reminding yourself where to focus. I am
encouraging each student to write a list of things they wish to
accomplish in 2009. Write them on a piece of paper and give it to me, i
will hold it until the end of the year and we’ll see together how many
goals were accomplished. Lets make 2009 a year of progress.

Saturdays:
I strongly encourage guys to attend ths at morning classes w/ more
frequency in 2009. This is where you will get good guys, you can train
whatever position you want, as long as you want. It is not mandatory to
attend the class before the open mat, you can just show up @ 11am. I
would like to see EVERYONE start attending these classes.

XMas party:
I would like to thank everyone who attended the 1st annual Xmas dinner
followed up by the UFC at my house. It was a great time and I am looking
foward to more in the future. Ron’s commentary on the fights was worth
the night alone.

Needs:
I strongly encourage everyone to have more than one gi. Gi’s need to be
washed after EVERY class. Gi’s are sold at the school or on a least a
million sites online. Also, please do not wear basketball shorts to no-gi class. Gameness shorts are sold at the school for $40 or again, buy a pair at one of the million online martial arts sites. Anyone looking to work on particular part of your game, private lessons are available to Savarese BJJ students at $75 per hr, $100 per hr for
non Savarese-students.

Looking foward to a great New year and hope to see everyone more in 2009
and hope to see the students again who have been taking a break. Time to
get to work Ladies and Gentlemen.

Also, i would strongly recommend the Renzo Gracie documentary “Legacy”
to all my students. Renzo was one of my primary instructors in my
journey through BJJ and alot of what i show you everyday I learned from
him directly. It is simply the best documentary i’ve ever seen about
BJJ. It can be ordered from budovideos.com for $17.