Message to the UBBT Teams and Members of the 100, following the MAIA Supershow:

MMA has Landed.

The UBBT concept is, I think, especially vital –now that MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) has permeated everyone’s consciousness. MMA isn’t new, as it’s what all the masters practiced before they did what they did best --and followers wrote those ideas in stone.
MMA is here, now, vital, and it’s the culmination of years of effort from masters of many styles.

The UBBT however, is ULTRA-MMA, and not just in the realm of fighting.

Our curriculum engages boxing, BJJ, fitness training, traditional practices, and reality-based self-defense training, all components of MMA—but, as you know, we go way beyond the physical. We embrace meditation (and if you’ve done as instructed, you have already studied with a master), empathy and kindness training (character development), education (interviewing a master, reading, profiling 10 living heroes, journaling as leadership), and community involvement (environmental clean up, Alabama project, 50,000 acts of kindness project).

The 100 is my attempt to get “clients” and members to focus on Project Based Leadership Training and both environmental and peace activism in a way that enhances the education your school provides, opens up new promotional opportunities, and helps create a truly unique selling proposition for each school.

All of these ideas, for our little “industry,” are terribly (or wonderfully) radical and way, WAY ahead of their time. BUT, in the broadest sense, this is ULTIMATE MMA (if you view the martial arts as more than a sport or method of physical self-defense/combat).

MMA is built upon taking the best-of-the-best martial arts techniques from wherever they happen to come from, and blending them in a way that has nothing to do with politics, country of origin, or style. What works, works, what doesn’t is placed in another catagory. What we’re doing is exactly the same thing, but in a more holistic way.

Definition of Holistic:

ho·lis·tic [ hō lístik ] 1. analyzing whole system of beliefs: characterized by the view that a whole system of beliefs must be analyzed rather than simply its individual components.

Early on, Mike Valentine, the first person to join the UBBT, said that he thought the UBBT would be most effective (as a tool for change and business improvement) if participants took their physical martial arts training to the highest level. Being in top shape, actually being “good”, and being able to show a level of physical mastery would, for the martial arts community, demonstrate that we were striving for a healthy balance.

I agree, but I can’t get you in shape –I can only point the way and encourage you. My suggestion: Practice like this is your Olympics. Do that, and at next year’s Supershow, you will find yourself a part of those leading the pack.