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Ryszard Chadwick - Director of High Performance, Northeast Academy and Founder, The Rugby Advantage

What is Personal Excellence?

It means striving to become the best possible expression of who we are on a core level. 

Personal excellence begins on the inside

The first step toward relative personal excellence starts with self-examination. We need to understand our own strengths and weaknesses.  Do our personal beliefs empower us to reach our goals or do they sabotage us right from the beginning? Do we really understand our own deeply held values and standards? Are we certain that our motives are in harmony with our values?

Personal excellence involves motives, values and standards

The quality of our life today is a reflection of our past motives and values. Moving toward personal excellence requires that we be willing to raise the bar on our standards.  The only legitimate way to expect more from life is to be willing to give more. Living by higher standards means more is required; it demands that we become more in order to achieve more. Relative personal excellence is not about becoming perfect. It’s about becoming the best possible version of ourselves. Learning to be honest with our self is the beginning of progress.  When we clearly see who we are and take responsibility for our own values and beliefs, we come to recognize that we actually live in a world of our own making. Because our personal version of reality is an accurate reflection of who we are, we know that change begins internally.  To change our world we must start by changing ourselves.

Being an outperformer of personal excellence

This speaks for it’s self. This is taking your personal excellence and out performing it every day or situation, even by 1%. If every staff member, coach, player buys in to this the academy excellence & success will shoot up.

Four stages to Coach effective Game Based Practice

Ryszard Chadwick - Director of High Performance, Northeast Academy and Founder, The Rugby Advantage

A Game-Based approach to coaching is a method which provides the promotion of understanding and development of sport by focusing on development of thinking through problem solving under pressure. Coaches should incorporate the use of a variety of games and activities thereby deliberately creating a chaotic environment rather than a planned/structured one. This allows players to learn through discovery, experimentation, experiencing failure and also how to deal with dislocated expectations, providing players with the confidence to take ownership of their decisions leading to creativity and innovation and ultimately success as a more innovative player. There are four levels to the game sense approach that coaches should try to follow:

1.       Design, create and implement the learning environment

This is a critical element in the employment of game sense coaching. As a coach you are a teacher. If a student/player is presented with an environment that they do not like, or one in which they feel uncomfortable, the  learning experience will become tedious and hence more difficult. The student needs to be ‘fungaged’ (Having fun whilst being fully engaged in the activity). The more fungaged the learner is, the more they are likely to invest in their learning, and hence the easier it is to teach.

2.       Questioning

-          to support learning

-          for understanding

-          for problem solving

-          for engagement

-          for action

Players should be challenged and questioned in order to allow them to start thinking. The more a player thinks the more he/she will understand the game. Even if players don’t immediately know the answer to a specific question, the experience is not lost. There is a part of the brain that never switches off. Have you ever been lying in bed or standing in the shower and the answer to a previously posed question or challenge seems to appear from nowhere; or you get an idea and say to yourself ‘Wow where did that come from?’ This “unconscious” problem solving part of your brain never switches off, thus the more effective or penetrating questions asked, or challenges presented, the more you can stimulate the student’s brain.

3.       Provide tests, challenges and hardships for problem solving and                 independence

It’s no good just thinking, talking and understanding how something works if you never put this new found knowledge into practice. The more players ‘DO’ the greater their chance of success will be, and they will also get a greater sense of fulfillment, pride and motivation if  encouraged to solve a problem themselves rather than being presented with the answer or solution. It is important however to balance the amount of success and failure in the experience since each player is different, and failure tolerance levels will inevitably vary. 

4.       Provide internal supportive system

Players have to be able to trust players and coaches around them, and be absolutely confident in the knowledge that they “have their back”. Failure in some form is inevitable in a training/coaching environment, and is also valuable as part of the learning cycle. It requires players to speak, question and challenge, but it is important that this opportunity is presented without the fear of players getting “shut down”. The player has to be comfortable enough with the support system that they can take calculated risk without fear.

Coaches that provide players with game based practice that are often chaotic are on their way to being an effective coach.  This approach allows players to learn implicitly whist also having fun. Much of everyone’s lives is dictated by someone else’s actions or instructions, whether at home, in school in the work place.  Putting players through drill based sessions with explicit instructions will slow down learning and minimize motivation of players.

Welcome to the USA!

John McGeachy - Director, Northeast Academy

The Northeast Academy is honored to be the first Samurai Sportswear US sponsored team in the US, and we’re excited to continue to work with Samurai US in year two of our sponsorship.

With a globally recognized brand in many different sports, Samurai is a leader in their field supplying high performance, top quality team apparel. With Samurai’s close association with many of the great 7′s teams and players, it couldn’t be a better fit Northeast Academy.

PRESS RELEASE - BHT SPORTS Inc. Appointed as the Exclusive US Distributor for Samurai Sportswear

Charlotte,NC: Today, BHT Sports Inc announces they have been appointed as Samurai Sportswear’s  exclusive US distributor for their extensive range of premium quality, made to order, individually designed, team garments for a wide range of sports including rugby, soccer, field hockey, lacrosse and baseball. Rugby is the fastest growing team sport in the US, creating the perfect opportunity for Samurai to offer its unique manufacturing expertise, built up over twenty years, to deliver teamwear to US rugby and sporting teams.

With full factory ownership, Samurai Sportswear has the ability to deliver custom apparel to US sports teams that is always consistent in sizing, fit, finish, colors and quality. There are many custom made teamwear suppliers, but Samurai is unique in its ability to provide a huge range of products, all with bespoke options.

Samurai Sportswear is an established global rugby brand and Mike Friday, current Men’s Eagles 7s Head Coach comments, “I have been involved with Samurai Sportswear for many years and I am excited to see the brand continue its international expansion into the USA. Samurai will deliver both premium quality custom team apparel and future playing opportunities for American based players.”

BHT Sports and Samurai Sportswear US will also be following in the Samurai tradition by forming a Samurai US 7s team which will compete in major US tournaments. Acting as a development pathway to the Samurai International RFC 7s, one of the world’s leading invitational 7s teams, and the USA Eagles.

Samurai Sportswear CEO Terry Sands comments, “we are delighted that BHT Sports Inc has joined the #SamuraiFamily, as an exclusive distributor. Samurai Sportswear has continued to grow internationally over the last 20 years and we are very excited to see even further expansion into the US market, as Rugby becomes increasingly popular. We can’t wait to see sports teams all over the US benefitting from wearing Samurai’s highest quality custom made teamwear.”

Over the coming months, teams, players and coaches will become endorsed by Samurai Sportswear US providing training, education and insight into all aspects of rugby; grassroots through to high performance. Nate Augspurger, current USA Men’s Eagles 15s captain and Samurai coach notes “I am thankful to have a unique opportunity to introduce Samurai Sportswear to more teams in the US. It is going to be very valuable to US based players to get more elite level opportunities. Super excited!”

For more information on Samurai Sportswear US please visit www.samurai-us.com

To place an order and/or discuss Samurai products please make contact via email [email protected] or phone 704 351 7470 or 844 ICONIXX (844 426 6499)

Please like and share the Samurai Sportswear US Facebook page @SamuraiSportswearUS for news, images and updates,

# WEARTOWIN

About Samurai Sportswear - Samurai Sportswear has remained a market leader in the design and manufacture of unique custom teamwear for over 20 years. The UK based company continues to provide a wide variety of sports teams, universities and schools with bespoke men’s and women’s match kit and leisurewear.

Members of the worldwide #SamuraiFamily have access to a huge number of options in terms of design and performance materials, including fully sublimated match and training kit in exclusive Samurai PerformeX™ technical fabrics. Working with Samurai, clubs are assured that their kit will be of the highest quality, enabling them to perform at their best.

A quick look behind the scenes during the Samurai Sportswear US launch photo shoot. A big Thank You to all the players and staff involved.

Hello and welcome to the Samurai Sportswear US blog page.

Samurai Sportswear US is owned and operated by BHTSports; a premier brands, health, technologies and sports management company. 

We are excited to bring the Samurai Sportswear brand to the US and continue to develop Samurai’s global reach. 

This blog will become a place to read, watch and learn about all things Samurai Sportswear US. Over the next few months athletes, coaches and administrators will begin regular post updates as they note anything from day to day activities, training, nutrition through to goals, plans, preparation and off course, how Samurai Sportswear plays a key role in these events.

Samurai Sportswear products are truly tailored for each individual order, from grassroots amateur through to elite professional. As such you will find a wide variety of content on this blog from HS players and youth coaches through to professional players and world class coaches/administrators. 

An exciting few weeks, months and years ahead for Samurai Sportswear US. We hope you can join the #SamuraiFamily for the journey and make some great memories on the way. 

Stay tuned for new posts, content and articles. 

Check out the website HERE to learn more and/or make an order.