Create Goals, not Dreams

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But not just goals, SMART Goals The difference between a goal and a SMART goal is your goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. SMART goals give you a much better avenue to reach your goals. Your dreams are the fuel that drives the high-performance goal engine. Specific Broad, general terms are not going to help. What, …

Exhibition Drill Injuries

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Before we begin: I am not a medical doctor, nor do I play one in this book (or TV or anywhere else). This article is not a substitute for obtaining professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Now, on to the article. Many exhibition Drillers (you are not an “exhibitionist” unless you remove your clothing while spinning the rifle) have spent some time dealing …

The Terror of the Dropped Rifle

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See these related articles: How Drops Affect Scoring & Learning to Drop. Salute! Imagine this: you are a judge at a JROTC competition assigned to judge one of the exhibition drill categories. During a performance, a cadet drops his rifle, comes to attention, salutes the rifle, picks it up and continues on with the performance. The “Face-Palm” action would be inappropriate in …

How to Teach Exhibition Drill

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You may not “know the drill”… If you have my books, Exhibition Drill for the Military Drill Team, Vols I & II, you probably have an idea of the process of writing drill, (here is a simple “Boxes of Three” method for creating drill) but might not understand the application of taking what has been written on a DrillMaster Routine …

Resistance to Change: Betrayal?

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I felt the need to follow up the article that published last week, Resistance to Change: The Five Monkeys Syndrome. My help is sought out on a consistent basis from high school and college drill teams and also first responder honor guard units. I teach courses and, when asked, also give free advice over the phone, through email or on videos …

Resistance to Change: The Five Monkeys Syndrome

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Even if you are a cadet in high school JROTC or in Sea Cadet, Young Marines, etc. you may have come across this syndrome. If you are an adult, you most definitely have come across this. Please watch this short video before reading on and it will explain. Image courtesy of Sharon Browning and Associates. [embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-PvBo75PDo[/embedyt] Now, we are …

What is “Readability”?

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Readability describes something that we can easily read. We get that. When we pick up a newspaper or look at a magazine article, we find it easy to read and comprehend, in general. We can read a master’s degree thesis and find complex words, phrases and sentence structure. On the other hand, we can look at a child’s first paper …

Physical and Psychological Performance Preparation

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Preserving the pattern of the “P”: for your positive pre-reading program, precluding any possible problems: peruse The Difference Between Practice and Training and The Difference Between Practice and Rehearsal. Please also read, Having a complete Plan for a Performance and, from the Civil Air Patrol angle, How to Plan and Coordinate a Color Guard Event. Now that we have given Ps a chance, …

Outstanding Unarmed Exhibition Drill

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Many JROTC drill teams here in America have yet to consider unarmed drill on this scale. I encourage you to explore drill on this level with your team whether armed or not. The gentleman calling the commands has been doing this for years and has increased the complexity of the program with each new team. [embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba8IH6EfGqU[/embedyt]

Drill Team and Honor Guard Unit Training

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In the military, we train. And we train, and train and train. We have major training scenarios (exercises) that involve multiple services and other countries, we have them for a single military installation, single unit training, all the way down to military specialty and ancillary training for each individual. It’s time consuming, but well worth the effort. After all, lives …