Team tightness: I have a strong preference for teams that work in unison on a daily basis, forging a room of people who share a vision and a program designed to take them towards it. As months become years and years become decades, this tightness creates a group of people who know their team mates better than they know themselves. Training becomes much smoother and more efficient. When I give directions to my students they can generally follow easily just because we spend so much time working together that the moves flow as easily as our conversation. When a stranger comes in to the group, it inevitably slows things down, as we have to explain the many little details and nuances that the regular students have long since absorbed into their thoughts and actions and perform unconsciously. Once the stranger is assimilated to some degree, things speed up again. Nowhere is this tightness of shared thoughts and actions more obvious and more useful than when cornering our athletes in competition. I can often convey large amounts of information in just a word or two that would be meaningless to a stranger, but to someone from our training room, may well be of great use at a critical moment. Having a specialized vocabulary for The many moves and skills we employ is a big help. It makes conveying information much faster and also makes it difficult for an opposing team to understand what we are trying to say. Here, Gordon Ryan is on his way to winning EBI 11 as Garry Tonon and myself observe and call out options that may be of some value should the pressure of the match cause him to overlook them. As we all train together and discuss our methodology together seven days a week, all the students can corner each other with ease.
