JOHN WILL @ KDT, APRIL 2008

Entry 1: In roughly 14 hours from now, John Will rolls back into KDT to conduct his second-ever Malaysian BJJ seminar. It's been about a year since he was here last and I'm really pumped up for this. Not trying to oversell him but John is probably the single best BJJ coach I've ever met.

His teaching style is, to me anyway, excellent - he moves along at a good pace and always manages to never leave anyone behind. What's more, right before the seminar starts, there will be a 2-hour open mat session. I'm really looking forward to a thoroughly awesome day of training.

Entry 2: Well, I was right - it was another amazing session by John, focusing on the omoplata. We covered so much it such a short span of time, it was nuts. I have about 4 pages of "rough" notes in my book! There was so much pure gold to be found in his coaching style, his advice for us and even just things that he said offhand. I also snagged a set (2 books) of his new autobiography. I'm told it's pretty good reading so I'll be checking it out when I have time.

What's more, the day was capped off with Sam getting his brown from John! Excellent stuff and well done, coach!

Entry 3: We did a session based around the x-guard, then takedowns. I had seen the x-guard material presented before at one of his Singapore seminars but far from being redundant, I was amazed at how much more sense everything made to me the second time around!

Not to mention the fact that in Singapore, at the exact same time he was showing the x-guard sweep I was overcome by an upset stomach and had to run for the mens room...

The takedown material was pretty eye-opening for me. My experience with them is rather bad, to put it mildly, and this was a great primer on the single-leg. I'd be looking to try some of this stuff on Tuesday if I didn't have to fly off for wedding preparations!

There was also another grading - this time for Vince! Mr. KDT himself was graded to purple by John. A great achievement and much deserved. Way to go!

The whole thing was a really awesome BJJ experience. Besides the gradings and the techniques, it was cool to see Allen Chong and the BJJ Borneo guys in town again. Also cool was to see Laurent back on the mats again, he's been MIA since the CMD seminar, when he hurt his knee during a roll.

And yeah, it wasn't bad meeting John Will again. There are not many people who inspire me as much as this man does - who make me really want to be excellent in what I do...not just to stand out, but to go above and beyond. Whether or not such a fate is in my future remains to be seen, but man, I can't wait to get back on the mats and start working for it.