Grappling Takedown Development and Dental Treatment

Photo Credit: Dave Freetage

As as grappler, takedowns are a very important skill. Another important related skill is takedown defense. Takedowns are critical because this is often the point at which one individual begins to dominate the fight. When I take someone down, this often becomes the pivotal point at which I begin to control my opponent. I have been focusing on my takedown technique for several months now, but this is still a set of skills where I am in deep need of further development. A successful takedown can often expend an extreme amount of energy, especially when one's opponent is skilled at takedown defense. At first glance, takedowns may appear to be simple or easy, but one does not become truly skilled at takedowns until s/he spends hours upon hours practicing thousands of takedowns.

I have found this principle to be true in many aspects of my life. There are professional skill sets that may appear to be easy from a distance, but actually require countless hours to perform successfully, skillfully, and effectively. Such skills are extremely important, require tremendous expenditure of energy, and are worth every bit of effort that is invested into them. One example from my life is the placement of a simple tooth-colored composite restoration (filling) on a child or adult with an intellectual or developmental disability. There are many variables that come into effect during the course of treatment, and many things have to be done well at one time in order to be successful. When all of the elements are performed correctly in synchrony, the result is an effective procedure with a satisfied and relieved patient/parent.

I Have Discovered a Secret for a Happy Life

I have discovered one of the big secrets for a happy life, and I consider myself very fortunate. I have found myself in a profession that I care about deeply, and I believe that this is one of the major keys to happiness. Indeed I have known people very close to me who have spent years in jobs that they do not like. In fact, most people I know that have "jobs" find them to be drudgery. Only when one finds alignment between his passion, his vocation, and his skills does he truly find enjoyment in his work. All three of these are essential components

My Second Family

I am very thankful for my family at Grove City Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy. I first joined the gym about a year ago, after attending sporadically as an outsider for a few months. By sharing time on the mats together, and by shedding blood, sweat, and tears together, we have truly become like a family. Jiu-jitsu has a way of bringing together people of all different lifestyles in a way that I have never seen before. I truly look forward to what the years have in store for me and my BJJ family.

Incredible Weekend!

I am extremely grateful for all the support I got for the Special Olympics Special Smiles event this past weekend. Dentists, dental students, residents, dental hygienists, lay people, and even some children came to help out for the event. I am especially thankful for the help from Nationwide Children's Hospital and The Ohio State University.

Should I let it die?

The previous posts on this blog were written by a different person. Yes, I wrote everything, but I have evolved significantly over the past two years! Honestly, I am not sure if I have even visited this page within the past two years. I was writing in my blog fairly consistently, and I really enjoyed doing so. I'm not sure how many people actually read it, but I really enjoyed the activity. The act of writing, in itself, provided an opportunity for introspection and reflection. As I look over many of these posts I have written in the past, I realize that I miss it. So now I am faced with a decision: Would I like to continue to write in a venue such as this? It seems as if everybody and his brother has a blog. Will anybody even read it? Do I really even care? Maybe I should let this blog die and start a new one. Maybe I should let it die completely. Innately, we all love to create! I hope to publish some scientific articles within the next few months. But this is totally different, and this is fun, so I think you can probably count on seeing more here in the future.

Ultrasonic

I had no idea our ultrasonic was a fan of fine art!

Ambling

4/9/2011
Last night was our third night in Kauai, and it was the first night that Beth and I both actually slept through the night. We awoke at 8:37 am, and enjoyed a delicions breakfast of reheated tacos. After a leisurely period of getting ready for the day, we set out to hike in the Valley.
The state park where we hiked was about an hour from where we are staying. For most people vacationing in Kauai, it would be about a two hour drive, but since we were already in the middle of nowhere, it wasn't nearly as long of a trip. Arriving in the visitors' center of the park, we had waited enough time since breakfast that we decided to eat some sandwiches in the park's restuarant, saving our peanut butter and honey sandwiches for the trail.
Leaving the restaurant, it took us about four passes past our turn-off before we finally realized correct direction we were supposed to go to find our six mile loop. Once we finally discovered the correct location of the trailhead, we started off down the trail. Although the signs were relatively well-marked, we missed the first turn that the trail takes, so we spent several minutes wandering around the YWCA camp. We met a helpful man there who let us look at his detailed topographical map, which was worlds ahead of our free simplistic map. This should have been a sign for us to return to the welcome center and buy a copy of the map, but we continued to fumble around looking for our trail.
We headed back toward the car and quickly noticed the correct turn-off for the trail. I was a little uneasy about our shaky start, and I hoped that this was not a sign for the rest of our excursion. All the signs and trails were easy to see after our first two little mishaps, until we reached about the three mile mark, about half-way into our trip. Somewhere along the way we lost the correct trail, and we found ourselves four miles into the hike, but back near where we had started the trek. We had indeed completed a loop, but it was simply not the loop that we had intended to complete. Fortunately, it was only a mile hike back to the car. Overall, we hiked about five miles as opposed to six, and I suppose that it was a fortunate thing, because the rain became much heavier just as we reached our car.
We headed back to the dome for a quick shower, and we went down the street to a local restaurant for appetizers. We quickly discovered that the loaded nachos and sweet potato fries were enough for dinner for both of us, so we returned to the dome again after our dinner to pack and prepare for our trip to Honolulu in the morning.
This ends the "vacation" phase for Beth, and we will be traveling to the city in the morning for her conference. I hope that she gets some more vacation time before she has to head back to work next week; she works hard and she needs the rest. I am looking forward to the next phase of our trip and the adventures that I will be having with Adrian while Beth is in her conference.