I love the week between Christmas and New Year’s! After getting extra time with family for Christmas, we have a week to look back on the past year and plan for the year ahead.
2018 brought many great moments to us at PMA, so I’ll sum up a couple of my favorites here, and then you can take a look at our 2018 Year in Review video if you haven’t seen it yet.
April 2018 - Coming off a 2nd place performance at NAGA TN in 2017, our Youth Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Competition Team stormed into Atlanta and took home 2nd place out of 54 teams!
June 2018 - PMA students gathered at Melton Lake Park for a Stick-Nic (outdoor Filipino Martial Arts class and picnic afterward). We hadn’t done this event since I was a teenager, and it was a blast, so I definitely plan to keep it as an annual thing now.
August 2018 - Father and daughter duo, Sempai Gary and Sempai Gracie Hall completed the instructor training program to become the next two instructors to join the the PMA team.
September 2018 - 5 PMA FILKENJUTSU students tested for and earned their Black Belts. This was our largest group ever, and a really special group of candidates that included an 18 year old, Iain Willborn (our first student to make Junior Black Belt and then advance to his full Black Belt), and a 64 year old, Bill Molony (who, alongside Matt Thomas, became PMA’s first 2 dual black belt students in Kenpo and Jiu Jitsu). They tested alongside Isaac Elliott and Monty Blalock, and we added a strong group of students to the black belt ranks!
October 2018 - PMA’s Youth Competition Team brought home 3rd place at the NAGA Tennessee Grappling Championship out of 38 teams. Four of our competitors (Austin Fox, Eli Fox, Aiden Hemsley, and Alex Torres) were unexpectedly bumped up to the Expert division and came home with championship belts!
December 2018 - We closed out the year with 99 of our Kenpo students earning their next rank, and Maggie Fox earning her Junior Black Belt! In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Phillip Ricks earned his Black Belt at 71 years old and after 14 years of training! We said goodbye (for now!) to one of our beloved instructors, Sempai Madelyn Fowler, but we sent her on her next journey with love and support. Then of course there was the holiday party and last class of the year!
Here are our Top 10 most played songs at PMA from 2018:
My Blood - twenty one pilots
High Hopes - Panic! at the Disco
Better Not - Louis the Child & Wafia
Golden Age - Houndmouth
Jumpsuit - twenty one pilots
The Middle - Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey
Ride or Die (feat. Foster the People) - The Knocks
The City - Louis the Child & Quinn XCII
Natural - Imagine Dragons
Born to Be Yours - Kygo & Imagine Dragons
You can listen to the playlist on Apple Music while working out this week and getting ready for the new year here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/playlist/pmas-top-10-songs-of-2018/pl.u-vvezXuq1B22
Alright, we open back up to kick off 2019 on Monday, January 7! Enjoy this video below if you haven’t seen it already (or just want to watch it again). 😊
Happy New Year!
David Corrigan
Owner/Chief Instructor
Progressive Martial Arts Academy