Trip to Nashville, TN, and my seminar!

Training has been going great lately. I’ve been succeeding at techniques I’ve been learning and practicing, which is so cool. Every day is exciting – what awesome ninja attacks are the coaches going to teach me next?

On Thursday, I headed to Nashville, TN, to teach a seminar at KSA Martial Arts academy. Unfortunately, a huge Nor’easter snowstorm struck and messed up a lot of my plans. We had to cancel my Friday night portion of the seminar, but I gave a private lesson to my hosts, Liz and Cat. They are such excellent, good people. I love them so much. In the morning, I worked out in the hotel gym, and in the afternoon, they drove me through Centennial Park where I saw the recreation of the Parthenon.

I didn’t get to go in since like 5 or so inches of snow had fallen and I didn’t have boots. I hate the snow now. 🙁 I didn’t used to, but living in Massachusetts ruined it. Snow means discomfort and misery, basically. I’m sensitive to the cold and I always had to clean off my car and shovel etc.

But it was warm and toasty in the loving environment of my hosts. They took great care of me. After driving around for literally an hour (on roads that had barely been plowed because Nashville can’t handle the snow), coming upon restaurant after restaurant that was closed, we ended up at Ihop. I had gone there for breakfast. There was a sign on the door saying that they were closed due to weather, but people were still inside eating. The waiter saw me looking in sadly, and, shaking his head at his own compassion, waved for another customer to open the door for me, which was locked from the inside. Yay! My smile wins. 🙂

It took like an hour to get our food, but I was fine with that. 🙂

Then we went to the school, watched my fight, rebooked my cancelled plane ticket, and trained some. We geeked out with lightsabers.

They cooked me a delicious dinner of fish and I went to bed early.

Saturday I was supposed to teach a kid’s class, but only one family came with two kids, a 5 year old boy and 7 year old girl. They had fun, though. I was so happy they said Judo was their background because I used to teach Judo as a senior belt at my Judo dojo! That was my first experience ever teaching. I taught them jiu-jitsu stuff like rolls, shrimps, mount, escape from the mount, etc.

Lunch was a rushed turkey burger and then I taught my seminar from 1:30 to 4:30ish. It was scheduled to be 1-5:30 but that’s so long! Especially with the way I was driving them. I’m used to doing and teaching a fast-paced class full of drilling and positional sparring.
I guess other seminar styles are different where there’s a lot of explanations and talking, but I basically made them drill techniques and do situation sparring the whole time. They were so tired. lol I was tired. I think everybody had fun. I was REALLY impressed with that group! They all picked up what I taught them and had various successes! I’m glad. 😀

Shaine came! (An assistant coach on Miesha’s team on The Ultimate Fighter Season 18 who I made friends with friends after the show.) 😀 After the seminar we sparred MMA for two rounds.

http://outlawmmagear.com/ rash guard 😀 (sponsor) and https://meilifighting.com/ shorts (sponsor)

At the seminar, I met so many different kids of people with interesting backgrounds. I hope they keep in touch on social media. I want to go back when the weather is nicer.

I’ll never do another winter seminar in a place where snowfall is possible. Oh well.

On Friday morning, I got inspired about what to write for my next book! I had an idea but wasn’t sure how to structure it, so I was thinking and thinking and kind of frustrated. It just came to me suddenly, and I foudn myself on the hotel computer typing emails to myself of the beginning of my story. My second book should be coming out very very soon, so I’m glad to have another project to work on 😀

My new friend Kerry from the UK is coming to train this coming week for two weeks! I’m excited!…