When dealing with difficult people with altering views, interests, or values than your own, it is important to understand how these people came to believe what they believe. This is defined as epistemology, the study of how someone formed their beliefs and differentiates their beliefs from opinions. What’s the difference? Continue Reading
David Paprocki
How Photography Changed Martial Arts
Chances are, if you train in a traditional form of Karate or Tang Soo Do, you have heard the Bubishi and the Moo Yae Dobo Tonji referenced a couple times by the instructors teaching you, and how it contains artifacts of what you are training in. This is all true, Continue Reading
Polarize Your Students
There are times when you are teaching or training that you will need to polarize your self or polarize your student. Mr. Miyagi is known for saying, “Karate yes or karate no, karate so so…. squish just like grape.” The Bible kind of disgustingly says, “Since you are lukewarm and Continue Reading
Taking a Collaborative Approach to Sparring
I’m going to be honest with you. When I was younger, I absolutely hated sparring. I think a solid part of that had to do with the fact that I was a 9 year old novice among a class of adult black belts. I was terrified, and Physics certainly was Continue Reading
Do You Know as Much as You Think? Stay Humble
In Peter Boghossian’s How to Have Impossible Conversations, he talks about a social observation called the “Toilet Effect”. Several people were approached on the street and asked,”Do you know how a toilet works?” (Boghossian 36) I know, what a strange question. Who doesn’t know how a toilet works? Literally every Continue Reading
Reasons: Why Do You Train? Are You Dedicated and Responsible?
In what is widely known as the first Autobiography ever written in Western Literature, Confessions, Augustine of Hippo or St. Augustine, depending on what your religious beliefs are or lack thereof, Asserts, “I did not sin for the sake of sinning or because I had anything to gain from it. Continue Reading
Improving Your Footwork: A Step in the Right Direction
“If you can move efficiently and effectively, your basic techniques will take you the rest of the way!”
Misconceptions About Humility
As a teenage martial artist, I always heard about the importance of staying humble. We all hear about the importance of not thinking we are the greatest. We are told not to be arrogant and not to be cocky about our abilities. For a teenage student these concepts are very Continue Reading
One Kanji, Different Meanings
When we look at this kanji, what does it mean to you? 唐手道 For some, it means the way of the Chinese hand, karate do, Tang Soo Do, or Tang Shou Tao! Yes, all of those translate to the same thing. Depending on where you live though or the art Continue Reading
My Side Kick – Then And Now
Martial arts is, or should be about constant polishing and reflection. In doing so we must make ourselves vulnerable, and if there is one person we must make ourselves vulnerable to, we need be vulnerable to our own self. I will do that just now with you. Let’s take a Continue Reading