Two Ways To Win
Movie fights and drunken brawls seem to go on and on. For self-defense your preferred tactic will be ikken hissatsu. It’s simple. A devastating full-commitment strike that ends the threat. It echoes the famous advice of Carl von Clausewitz, the 19thcentury Prussian general, now studied in military academies throughout the world, who advised using massed force […]
Podcast – Dope and Freedom
… …”You want to blame the cartels, the companies, the poison factories which take advantage of people like that boy… they can’t make you buy their poison… or join them in the extraction of the wealth and freedom of a whole world. Not even if they put a gun to your head”… “The Good Fight” […]
Kata and Dominance
To prevail in a combative encounter you need to take the initiative and dominate the opponent. It is not enough to select a good target, to do a good technique, to move from the center, to have power, speed, conditioned body weapons, or any of the other components of skillful combatives that we practice day […]
What do you mean “Know Yourself?”
Serious practitioners use ideas – our own and from our traditions – to deepen our understanding and improve our practice. Some ideas work. Some get in the way. You want to know an idea that has confused people for generations? “Know yourself.” It is an important idea. Everyone talks about it. But by drawing on […]
Three Things Every Fighter Needs
When the moment comes, and you face an opponent, things get real simple. You do what you need to do. That is something all fighters know. But what you bring to bear on that moment is not so simple – things change suddenly and dramatically. All your experience, your training, the sharpness of your […]
Yoi for Bunkai
A “ready stance” has an important place in practice. But in bunkai it can yield good results when it is understood as a pass-through point in ongoing movement. Not as a static position. People sometimes try to interpret the first move of their kata as if they were standing still in their “yoi” position when […]
Perfect Balance
The well-trained person keeps to the center in action; the poorly trained person moves away from the center in action. The center, for the well-trained person, is such that he is always exact in his timeliness; the departure from the center for the poorly trained person is such that he will notice nothing.” – […]
Karate and Subject Control
Many grappling arts are designed for subject control: the opponent’s ability to threaten you ceases when he is under your control. That means your objective in the encounter is to restrain his ability to move, and you do it by using a pin or lock. Wrestling, east Asian grappling arts, as well as defensive tactics’ […]
War and Peace
“The civil is the inner principal and the martial arts is the outer principle. Outer technique without inner principle is simply the brute courage of physical strength. However, when one is no longer in his prime, bullying an opponent will not work. Those who possess inner principle without outer technique, who think only of the […]
Zen Confusion and Martial Arts
D.T. Suzuki, who introduced Zen to the west, blamed the devotion of Zen priests to militant Japanese imperialism in the years leading up to World War II, on the fact that the priests were uneducated. Zen priests, he said “…have no knowledge or learning and therefore are unable to think… independently…” (Cited by Brian Victoria, […]
Fearless Asymmetry
Your body is biased. One side of you is stronger than the other. That is not a defect. We become more effective fighters when we see that our “one-side stronger” design – our “asymmetry” – is not a weakness. It is a key feature of our design. It is a survival advantage. […]
Evidence of Old Karate in Modern Kata
Some people say that the technical range of karate is limited to kicks, punches and blocks. Seeing kumite matches in many styles – Japanese, Okinawan and Korean – would make that conclusion seem reasonable. As karate was modernized and popularized some styles did narrow the technical range and made it more suitable for matches and […]
The Place of Honor
For about a million years people used only one tool. A rock, chipped into a long oval, with sharp edges and a point. A hand ax. It was handy. If you lost it, broke it or gave it as a gift you could make a new one. You could find plenty of blanks in the […]
Strength Stone
We made chishi at the dojo today. Chishi are training tools. The name translates as ‘strength stone.’ They are used in Okinawan karate to develop our arms and shoulders. They pour concrete into a mold and make the handle from a dowel. We use them the same way and we make them the same way. […]
The Point of Contact
One skill we do not usually train in the dojo is self-defense decision-making: When does an encounter become a conflict, and when does a conflict become a fight? Discretion and Valor Under some circumstances we want to avoid threat situations. Tactical trainer John Farnam describes basic self-defense this way: “Don’t go stupid places. Don’t […]
First Kata
In our first kata we learn to project power in eight directions. This kata, Shoshin Nagamine’s “Fukyugata Ichi”, has some very advanced elements. “Blocking” in Two Dimensions If you look at the s-curve at the center of the yin yang symbol you will see a map of our blocking system. Follow the progression of […]
Personal Safety Seminars
Personal safety and self-defense are everyone’s responsibility. Our seminars for families, individuals, government departments and professional organizations are custom-designed to empower participants to be more aware, more effective and to stay safe – at work, at home and on the road. “Random” criminal activity is not random. There are lots of things we all […]
Having a Practice
Having a practice is not the same as doing an activity or learning a skill set. An ‘activity’ is interesting or pleasant or distracting or edifying or fun. We enjoy it. It might make a lasting impression, but it probably won’t. Go to dinner or a movie, play a game or go for a walk. […]
