You will often associate Bruce Lee with the phrases “Be like water” and “Wu Shein” or “Moo Shim” if you are a Korean Stylist. The latter two references allude to the idea of having an empty mind, and not thinking of anything. He always notes how important these things are Continue Reading
David Paprocki
Teaching People Wrong As a Joke
When you look at two karate pioneers, Anko Itosu and Gichin Funakoshi, there is one thing in their pedagogy that sticks out to me. Unlike today’s martial arts culture where at most schools (The good schools are the exception here) you will be admitted to the class if you pay Continue Reading
De-Escalate the Situation
When we start training in martial arts it is easy for us to believe that the main goal of any self defense situation is to dominate your attacker making them regret that they attacked you! After all, why do we learn how to block, punch, choke, or throw? What we Continue Reading
Anybody Can Train
When you look at the history of Anko Itosu, one thing that stuck out to me was that his instructors doubted his ability to succeed based on his sickly appearance. Itosu was born very small and did not have a good prognosis for life let alone for martial arts. Itosu Continue Reading
The Important Difference Between Being “Busy” and “Responsible”
Busy and Responsible When we look at these two words they seem to be pretty much synonymous with each other. In reality, though, there is one key difference between the two that can affect your mentality and your lifestyle. Busy means that you are spending or dedicating time because you Continue Reading
Never Stagnate! Is It a Journey If You’re Not Moving?
In Semper-Fi, Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way, Dan Carrison points out an effective strategy that the armed forces use in order to keep servicemembers continually focused on progression! On their uniforms, there are markings for both time in the service as well as their pay grade (Carrison and Walsh Continue Reading
Plane Crashes
What do commercial plane crashes between different countries’ airlines have to do with our attitude for how we train in the martial arts? In Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, he points out that in the 1980’s Korean Air had a crash to flight ratio that was 10 times that of any other Continue Reading
What is Expert?
What is an expert? We were having a review for this blog a couple weeks ago, and something Ana said bothered me. It bothered me not because she said anything against my view of technique, philosophy or values of martial arts. It bothered me because she was selling herself short. Continue Reading
You Can’t Carry Two Watermelons
When Ronda Rousey reached the peak of her fame, she became interested in starting an acting career which she successfully started. Her acting ambitions were met with certain hesitancy from her boxing coach Edmond Taverdyan who said, “You cannot carry two watermelons in your hands!” After Rousey began to join Continue Reading
Religious Overtones in the Martial Arts
When you look at virtually every martial art, there is always some sort of moral code. These moral codes come from different religions. Many different religions are represented in different different martial arts. In a lot of the Eastern Asian martial arts you see a great deal of either Zen Continue Reading