Theodore O.

I currently coach a high school basketball team and have also worked with 3rd graders, middle schoolers, and college graduates who hope to earn a roster spot on an NBA D-League or international team. I am a recent college graduate currently applying for PhD programs in kinesiology to start in the fall of 2017.

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I have always been a multi-sport athlete that enjoyed all sports equally. My passion is movement, and riding the learning curve for new movement patterns (i.e. learning new sports or new skills within a chosen sport) is my specialty. My accolades as an athlete in formal competition come mostly from high school. In those 4 years I earned all-district honors in basketball, football, and track & field, setting school records in long jump and triple jump, as well as captaining our basketball team to its first conference championship in over 30 years. As a senior, I was voted by the athletic department to receive the Most Outstanding Athlete award–the highest athletic honor offered at my school.

With immense pressure from my parents to redirect my passion and proven work ethic for athletics in my studies, I decided to forgo competing in college, turning down basketball offers from Citadel, Alabama State, Occidental, and Trinity college; football offers from Brown, Occidental, Yale, and Trinity; and a track & field offer from San Diego State. My studies and newfound free time allowed me to explore an even wider spectrum of movement as I picked up tennis, muay thai, brazilian jiu jitsu, yoga, weight training, swimming, dance, and long distance running.

Upon graduation I decided to dedicate my life to the mastery of movement–the ultimate umbrella discipline–and to guide athletes, dancers, and ordinary people alike along a path to liberation of mind, body, and spirit through the love of movement.

All of my training sessions will begin with a meditation session to train the athlete's ability to focus and to eliminate extraneous thoughts that hinder reaction speed and high-speed decision-making skills. I believe this is the most important part of motor skill development. As an athlete develops calmness of mind without sacrificing bodily alertness, I will gradually incorporate principles of tai chi in warm-ups. For example, as a shooting form drill I will have a player slowly move through shooting mechanics, focusing intensely on the controlled "flow" of energy that is experienced with proper coordination of ankles, knees, waist, shoulders, shooting elbow, shooting wrist, and fingertips. Above all, I encourage athletes to "feel" their way to excellent execution of technique.

After going through a series of slow-motion training, I will gradually increase the speed of the drills while maintaining the same form and control as in the slow-motion drills. I'll speed the drills up until just slightly above the athlete's ability to maintain control, giving him/her a target for future practice; then I'll reverse the speed of the drills, slowing things down until the athlete has cooled down and has returned to the tai chi-esque slow motion training.

All training sessions end with an anchoring mediation session to catalyze motor learning and solidify improvements in mind-body connection.