When it comes to being a martial artist, an instructor or a working professional, one thing is certain. We must be comfortable with sharing ideas. One thing that can prevent us at times when we are sharing our ideas, is the big question of doubt that we ask ourselves, “What Continue Reading
David Paprocki
“Be Like Water”
When Bruce Lee spoke about being like water and wu sien, we as martial artists immediately think of the physical application of flowing around your opponent, and being in a state of no thought. This principle goes much deeper though. Our brains are like embedded control systems. Mathematically and systematically Continue Reading
3 Keys to Good Kicking
I enjoy kicking. I also have the advantage of being young and the advantage of beginning my training when I was a child at 6 years old. As I get older, I will definitely need to devote more time and energy to maintaining my level of flexibility and ability to Continue Reading
Misconceptions of Discipline
We were having a blog meeting and while going through all of the articles that we have saved for the future, someone said, “yeah David, you have 10 articles you can take a break!” While the recognition was nice, there was something about the statement that bothered me. You see, Continue Reading
How I Met Anthony
When I began my studies in Electrical Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, I was a rather shy person. I had desired to start a martial arts club on campus, but I thought it would be worthwhile for me to stop in and try out the Jujutsu class and Continue Reading
3 Keys to a Good Test
I had the opportunity to judge a regional black belt pretest recently. In the process of testing for my 4th Dan, this is a new responsibility that I get to take on and as such, I was very excited. I was the first judge on the panel to make it Continue Reading
Moo Shim
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
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