Birthday Battle - Get the paramedics on standby!!!

So tomorrow at my regular Saturday breaking session I have to do my birthday battle. This is a tradition we have started where if your birthday falls on a training day, you have to do that many rounds in a battle. That's fine for my students, they range in age from 6 to 20 odd. I am 44 this weekend, so I have to do 44 rounds against my students, so this is a good excuse to share one of the Hip Hop philosophies that everyone can apply to normal life. Just replace the word battle with challenge and it can apply to all the obstacles life throws at us.

WIN, LOSE OR DRAW!

This refers to the Hip Hop approach to battling (competing). The winner is decided by judges at official events, and the crowd when you battle at a jam. Really though, you tend yo know when you've won or not. The ethos applies to all elements of Hop Hop too, not just the dancers. It has two meanings (at least, you may see more). It describes how you should approach a battle. You should always want to win of course, but you should also always challenge yourself to take on a battle that you are not confident of winning, WIN, LOSE OR DRAW, no matter who challenges you, you take it on and give it everything you have. Doing something half-hearted usually has the negative outcome that you expect it to, but take on every challenge and do everything you can to win and it may happen, it's definitely more likely to! It also describes your experience of the battle, more specifically your self-reflection of the battle. WIN, LOSE OR DRAW you should always learn something from every battle, even the easy ones where you are the clear favourite, you can still learn from that and reflect on how you will take it into the next battle.

The link below will take you to a battle from last year between my crew Born to Rock, and a group of professional b-boys sponsored by Monster Energy. My crew has been running for 26 years this year, and as a result we needed to bring in some younger blood. There were about 20 crews trying to qualify at this event, and including our young ones we all wanted to be drawn against the best crew there, the ones that can train all day cause they get paid to do it, the Monster Energy crew. Yes you could get drawn against the weakest crew there and improve your chances of qualifying, but really you want to be involved in the best battle of the day! When you consider my crew is made up of people that either work full time or are at school/college all day, we actually did ok :) Judge for yourself and leave a comment!

I only use this Steemit account to help fund my Hip Hop project for young people. We have had our funding cut this year as my government, as do many, will spend more money on war than anything else. So please up vote, resteem and comment on this. Follow me too, I'll be mostly sharing Hip Hop related stuff, and some useful help with crypto currencies when I get a minute. Take a look at my first few posts to see more of my students. Peace!