We all go through different phases of life, and with each different phase of life comes different priorities. In David Brooks’ How to Know a Person, he describes these as different “Life Tasks”. One of the key things to really seeing and understanding someone is to understand where they are Continue Reading
David Paprocki
Make the Effort to Understand Those That are Different From You
For the entirety of my career as a chief instructor, I have mainly worked with college aged students at a university. As I am currently only 25 years old as of the writing of this article. That means I have always worked with those of a similar age demographic and Continue Reading
Why You Should Start a Podcast Too: Benefits to the Martial Arts
About a year and a half ago I wrote an article on why martial artists should create a blog and write publicly along with all of the direct and indirect benefits it will give them. You can find that article hear. https://urbanmartialartists.com/2022/06/09/why-you-should-start-a-blog-too/ Today’s article is going to be very similar Continue Reading
Revisit Your Work and Technique
In May 2021, I picked up photography as a new hobby. After taking pictures while hiking with my phone, I decided that I wanted something that would give me slightly better quality pictures and bought an advanced point and shoot camera. Shortly thereafter I took a trip to the Henry Continue Reading
A Secret to Improving Your Hand Techniques
One thing that I have been emphasizing with my Tang Soo Do students that train with me at the university is the importance of rotating their wrists while they are doing their hand techniques. This applies to all hand techniques. When doing techniques in the air, it can be very Continue Reading
In the Face of Change, Don’t Let Familiarity Blind You
Change can be a scary thing. This past Spring, I bought a townhouse and began to live on my own for the first time in my life. Admittedly, I was intimidated initially by this life change, but despite this change, not much else in my life was different. I still Continue Reading
Teach Like Your Training Depends on It
We constantly hear the importance of teaching as we become more advanced in our martial arts journey. Some may struggle to grasp the importance of this and may even have some resistance to this thinking that if they are spending so much of their time teaching, how will they have Continue Reading
Applying Hip Motion to Kicks
One thing that is certain when it comes to any type of technique in any style of martial art, is the importance of hip rotation. This hip rotation can apply to different axes. We can rotate our hip forward and backward as well as side to side. When it comes Continue Reading
Opportunities: Rise to the Occasion
When I was in high school band, a few members of the wind ensembles were borrowed to play with the string ensembles to make a full orchestra. If there was a certain member that was playing in the full orchestra was absent, someone else would need to step in for Continue Reading
Is Insecurity Holding You Back?
This past weekend, I had the privilege of sharing some knowledge of jump kicking with some youth black belts at our regional black belt camp. It was a great time; I really enjoy the opportunity to dive deep into certain martial arts topics and proverbially, Preach to the Choir sharing Continue Reading