Reflections on my students – Gordon Ryan – stages of skepticism and learning: In the early days of the squad, Eddie Cummings and Garry Tonon would come in every day to train and compete almost every weekend. Mr Tonon told me about a talented teenage student he had named Gordon Ryan. He said he would try to bring Mr Ryan in to begin training with us. Sure enough, a few days later, a tall young man, jumped out on to the mats in the morning class and introduced himself. Mr Tonon immediately announced to myself and Mr Cummings, whilst we were going over some ashi garami movements, that Mr Ryan was deeply skeptical about the value of leg locks and fully believed all leg locks were a useless waste of time and simply did not work on him. Mr Ryan smiled confidently and announced he had never been leg locked by anyone and did not consider them a threat. Of course when drilling was over, a rather offended Mr Cummings immediately went to spar with Mr Ryan and proceeded to leg lock him from one side of the academy to the other! At the end of the class, a rather chastened Mr Ryan agreed that leg locks did indeed work and he would begin studying them immediately. Over the next few months he had great success at entering into leg locks, but struggled to actually finish them. As time passed, a new form of skepticism emerged in Mr Ryan – he came to believe that leg locks worked for other people, but not for him! I immediately showed him some variations in grip that greatly tightened his locks and immediately he started getting good results. A few days later, Mr Cummings returned from a short journey and asked to roll with Mr Ryan. In a stunning reversal, Mr Ryan successfully applied two beautiful heel hooks in one round of sparring- shocking both Mr Cummings and himself. For the first time he came to believe not only that heel hooks work, but that they could work for him against the best in the business. In my experience, THE STRONGEST BELIEFS WE HOLD ARE THOSE WHERE WE BEGAN WITH TOTAL SKEPTICISM BUT WERE PROVEN WRONG IN SOME MEMORABLE AND TANGIBLE WAY UNTIL WE BECAME BELIEVERS DESPITE OURSELVES . THOSE are the beliefs we will rely upon in the stress and fear of competition
