Hey everybody this is Dan Heath, most of you know me as “Redâ€, I thought I’d write a little bit about my story in the martial arts world.
I started training under Coach Danny in April of 2008; I was 19 and pretty fresh out of high school. Before I even showed up I knew I was going to join. I had just saw Bj Penn knock Caol Uno out and thought to myself ‘I can do this.’ So I showed up to my first class with a friend and fell in love with training, specifically Muay Thai kickboxing. For some reason kicking and punching came naturally to me but I just didn’t understand BJJ.
Almost three years later I’m back to training and more serious than ever. I moved away for about 8 months to attend college but with the lack of training in the area I just couldn’t take it anymore and decided to come back home to train at Ivey League Mixed Martial Arts again. When I came home I decided I needed to learn how to grapple, to really understand it, so it became my focus. It wasn’t until I received my first gi that I really started to like jiu jitsu.
It’s been a rocky road but through trial and error I’ve been able to improve drastically. I’m very far from being a gifted individual so I thought I’d tell you guys what helped me get to where I am. The number one thing that helped me advance was my ability to listen and follow directions. When coach Danny would tell me to do something a certain way I did it, when he told me to stop doing something I stopped, this is a very important skill to have as a beginner. The second thing that has helped me is my ability stay calm and collected. I get tapped every night and every time it happens I jump up smiling ready to start again. If you get mad when you get tapped or your only goal while rolling is to not get tapped you’ll still improve but only to a certain point. Save that for the tournaments. The third thing may be the most important; I LOVE IT more than anything. I’m a 21 year old; instead of going out drinking like every other 21 year old I’m in the gym training. Everything started falling into place the more I trained.
I hope what I’ve written will help you guys who are just starting out, remember just have fun with it.
