Here is your invitation to join me in the year 2010 for a great year of training on many levels.  The following is a description of the Student Membership written by my instructor and BJ Penn Team member, Tom Callos.  As you read this picture yourself having the best year of your life.     Mr. Joe

Benefits of The Live Like a Champion’s Student Membership

This page is written for the student who is interested in participating in The Live Like a Champion Student Program.

The LIVE Project Student Program allows you to be involved with your martial arts instructor in what is certainly a modern revolution in thinking and methodology in the international martial arts community.

The mission of this project is to facilitate change and transformation; in you; your teacher; your school; everyone in your sphere of influence; in your community; in the martial arts community; and if we're lucky, we might even make some change in the world.

In 2008, in just 5 days, 4,000,000 people visited BJ Penn's website for information. Every year millions of others follow BJ's career on television, on-line, and in print. By joining The LIVE Project, you have the chance to reach, through your activities and commitment to the philosophy and intent of the project, enough people to, well...make a difference.

How do we want to make a difference? By living in a way that inspires others - by making our practice of the martial arts (whatever the style) mean something beyond what takes place on the mat and/or in the ring.

Ms. Rosa Parks was a diminutive 42-year-old African-American seamstress. On a now famous day, she stood for something, some change, that needed to happen --and helped transform history. If you become a part of The Live Project and join 300 teachers in this process, we stand to collect a workforce, conservatively, of 3000 people. Could 3000 people, martial arts people, equal the power of one Rosa Parks? It is possible.

BJ Penn has stood for unparalleled skill and brutal accomplishment on the mat and in the ring. He has reached the pinnacle of his sport --and now he is ready to stand for the idea that the martial arts are about far more than fighting and technique. The Live Project is about gathering a team of 300 dedicated, committed martial arts teachers, each one with a support team of students like you, and PROVING this point to the world.

If the martial arts are about more than technique, then how does this idea manifest itself?

That's our job. That's what we're going to do in The LIVE Project. For 365 days we're going to train, eat, engage our families, engage our communities, think, take action, and use the martial arts to make change, like champions. BJ Penn is supplying the best martial arts instruction, in a field he might know as well as any person on the planet --and he's supplying exposure to people and opportunities that wouldn't otherwise be available to us.

Oh, and he's collecting Team Penn - which includes his first teacher, the fellow that introduced him to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Tom Callos.

Tom Callos is someone you'll want to meet.

More

Since 1994, Penn Team Member Tom Callos has run a yearly program for professional martial arts teachers called The Ultimate Black Belt Test (UBBT). The UBBT has introduced the martial arts world to some of this decades most important, innovative, and radically different training and testing curriculum.

By the way, The BJ Penn Live Like a Champion Project is part of The UBBT 7.

Here are 10 examples of methodology, curriculum, and programs that have come about through the UBBT Project:

1. 356 Days of Black Belt Testing

To look at a test as a daily activity over an extended period of time, allows the teacher to add any number of requirements to the test that work both on the student's behalf --and the schools. Never before has a teacher or student been able to describe his or her black belt test as being made up of requirements such as 1000 rounds of sparring, 1000 acts of kindness, a 1000 mile walk, swim, bike, or run, the profiling of 10 Living Heroes, the achievement of 10 personal victories, a day in a wheelchair, the mending of three relationships gone bad, and so on. This idea greatly expands the scope and scale of one's black belt test, making the process more practical, more difficult, and more genuinely focused on aspects of the training that are non-physical.

2. The "Out of the Dojo and into the World" Concept

The idea that 20% to 50% of a tester's requirements would take place in the world -instead of on the mat, originated with the UBBT project. The UBBT initiated community activism, acts of kindness, empathy training, mending relationships, fxing "wrongs" done in one's life, and public performance requirements making what the student does outside of the school as important to testing as how he or she performs, technically, in the school.

3. Test Journaling

The UBBT pioneered weekly tester journaling during the one-year test process. Prior to this idea, most black belt tests -and testers -were hidden from view. The UBBT's journals opened up the process by asking members to write, weekly, about what they are going through and learning during the training.

4. Custom Designed Belt Tests

Most schools promote a kind of black belt testing where every student follows the same curriculum. With the UBBT Project, each tester has the option to customize his or her test to make it more challenging -and challenging in a way that is specific to his or her strengths and weaknesses.

5. Non-Style Specific Tests -that Deal Less with Technique -and More with the Mental, Spiritual, and Social Aspects of Being a Black Belt

In the UBBT it doesn't matter what "form" you practice or how talented you are at specific skills-sets, what matters is the discipline and consistency you apply to your practice and your accomplishments outside of the physical aspect of your art. It is a given that all successful graduates be in the best shape of their life and have martial arts skills proportionate to experience.

6. The Anger Management Teacher Training Program

The UBBT developed the first anger management teacher training program in the international martial arts community. Prior to the UBBT, formal anger management training, specifically relevant to self-defense and for teachers and students was not available. www.angercoachonline.com

7. Project Based Leadership Training (PBLT) was developed through the UBBT

PBLT is an experiential leadership training program for young people that asks students to engage in community project that require them to apply the skills they practice on the mat to project that benefit someone or something in their community. A UBBT alumni has developed a comprehensive leadership program based on PBLT at www.nationalleadershipteam.com

8. Diabetes Teacher Teacher

The Martial Arts MADDCAP^TM (Martial Arts Defeat Diabetes® Community Action Project) IS a diabetes community education project developed through the UBBT. This is a historical juncture for the martial arts community, because for the first time a health based curriculum component will be introduced and offered into martial arts schools. Visit www.defeatdiabetes.com for more information. www.defeatdiabetes.org

9.The Environmental Self Defense Initiutive

The Environmental Self-Defense Intuitive started with the UBBT; it asks members to require 10 acts of "environmental self-defense" for every school-age student passing to green belt.

10. Peace is More Important than Punches

The UBBT initiated the Peace is More Important Than Punches Flash Card Project. Since the original design, the cards have been translated into Swahili, Spanish, German, and Korean. The cards represent a movement asking all 2nd degree black belts and above to produce a usable tool for the martial arts community with every rank test.
To see other examples of what the UBBT has been -and still is -up to, visit the project's website at www.ultimateblackbelttest.com.

Even More

So, you have the opportunity to Live Like a Champion, in a very public way, for 365 days beginning January 1, 2010.  The Live Project will be in constant contact with you, as you'll recieve dozens of interesting and informative videos from top martial artists, fitness teachers, nutritionists, self-defense experts, and world champions (like BJ Penn, for example). You'll also get almost daily correspondence and mentoring from BJ and members of the Penn Team, including Tom Callos.

We have a member's only website where tons of resources will be made available to members --and members instantly become part of a very large community of like-minded people.

As a Student Member you get to define your own journey, participate with The 300 in experimenting with martial arts mastery concepts (Like the acts of kindness program, community activism, diabetes education, the reduction of plastic disposals, and all sorts of cutting-edge concepts. You'll get a daily workout you have the option of following with the team --and you'll be asked to journal about your adventure each week of the project.

Your coach/instructor will be planning activities for your team -and you'll even have the opportunity to train with some of the champions you meet here.

If you're ready to make more progress in your life in one year than you have in the last 10; if you're ready to join forces with an extraordinary group of people; if you're ready to look deeply at the way you train, eat, consume, and live; if you're ready   Like a Champion with one of the most amazing athletes and martial artists of our time; you're ready to join.

Warning: Once you commit yourself, there is no turning back. Whatever hardships you might suffer during 2010, your goal is to persevere, to work on yourself on a daily basis, and to stay connected to the objectives of the program. We'll be tackling some major issues around diet and community and consumption and the environment -and we will all be working on being in the best shape of our lives by December of 2010. There's enough time, you'll have support, and if you're willing to play full out, you'll find that we're doing the same.

For information on the cost of the program with Mr. Joe, Mr. Callos and Team Penn please click here.