The Fish Rots from the Head
By Haydn Ellis

It would come as no surprise that I am now in regular contact with Master Raoul. For those of you that have read the articles written about him you’d be familiar with his healing of AFL football legend Jim Stynes. Well Raoul was telling me that the Melbourne Football Club, for which Stynes played, had banned him (Raoul) from entering the club.

Naturally Raoul couldn’t give a shit. He’d never been there nor did he follow AFL football. This however, was for me a bit of a final straw when it comes to tolerating the behaviour of institutions such as clubs or sporting institutes. You see they banned Raoul from their club ‘because he was healing Stynes’ and they couldn’t. Even worse was the fact that Raoul offered for the clubs’ various official Doctors (physios, chiros etc.) to come and see him and he ‘would teach them how to do what he was doing’.

You can’t get more honourable than that. But no, these bunch of useless wankers were so intimidated by what Raoul was doing they had to perform the Medieval practise of ‘witch creation’. I’m sure if it was the 13th century they would have tried to have Raoul burnt at the stake; tried…

But they couldn’t, so instead they went for the modern day tried and true method of attempting to ostracise him. I had had a similar experience when training the golfer Richard Moir. He was part of the Australian Institute of Sports’ golf program that involved considerable funding for his tournament golf as an amateur. To cut a long story short, he trained with me, had some amazing success early and the AIS wanted to take his scholarship away from him for training with me.

Here’s how we resolved it. I wasn’t to go behind the ropes at tournaments or ‘appear’ to be training him. The AIS was to get full credit for his performance. I also pandered to their fragile egos by saying that I was teaching Moir the same things they were but as I was younger he was tending to listen to me more. Protect their egos and their legitimacy, which is founded on nothing but hot air and you won’t have a problem. I did not give anything away however when it comes to my training methods.

This leads me to the AIS again. This time it is in beach volleyball. I train guys and girls that, with 3 sessions a week under their belts are beating full time professional teams on tour that train twice a day up to 3 hours at a time with all of the modern sporting facilities money can buy. The AIS brags about securing millions of dollars from the Australian Sports Commission for beach volleyball, when, it is only going to be spent on its ‘program’. They stack events with AIS players, people that play as though they’ve never seen beach volleyball, just to get the statistics weighing in their favour. ‘So and so percent of players at the Aus champs were from the AIS.’

So what’s the problem here? Where’s the difference in training? Not in method but principle? These institutions exist for the benefit of the administration and coaching staff, not the players. They don’t give a shit about the athletes. I recently watched a Fox Sports show on the K1 Max kickboxing. The Japanese champion and his trainer were talking.

Champion: “I only listen to my coach. Somebody else could tell me the same thing and I wouldn’t hear it. I only hear what my coach has to say. I feel it in my heart when he speaks.”

Coach: “You have to coach with love. Sometimes you have to be hard but you still teach with love in your heart. This is how they will learn best.”

This is the fundamental principle involved. Institutions are run on fear; fear of failure and loss of funding being he primary consideration. Great teachers teach with love in their hearts. Love for what they do, love for their students and for the love of learning itself. This in itself breeds success. And no, for those institute tossers reading this, writing love = success on your white board won’t work. Until you learn about life, love and sincerity your fear and misery will continue.

Successful athletes from clubs or programs are successful ‘in spite’ of the program or institute they’re in!

I think I just burst my spleen…