One of my favorite parts about martial arts is how individualized it is; many other physical activities are team-based. While we do utilize partner work in martial arts, a majority of our training and progression in skill comes from working on your own. Everyday you train you are aiming to Continue Reading
Inspiration
Rock What You Got: Your Martial Arts, Your Do
In simple terms, training in martial arts is essentially being in a constant state of comparing your skills to your instructor and your peers, and eventually your students. You are constantly striving to match your instructor, be better than your fellow students (or at least their equal) and stay one Continue Reading
Bad or Just “Not for Me”?
If you don’t like something, it isn’t necessarily “bad”. I recently finished watching a movie on Netflix, and at the end of the film, it asked me to review it. I was presented with three options: “Like it”, “Love it” and “Not for Me”. This struck me as the word Continue Reading
Tips For Avoiding Burnout… From Someone Who Just Burnt Themselves Out
Wow, life has been absolutely crazy as of late my friends. And in the spirit of transparency, I have personally been burning the candle at both ends and in the middle. I started a new job 2 months ago, and that has come with a larger-than-expected learning curve. Along with Continue Reading
Dealing with Injury and Setbacks
If you’re old enough to understand anything in this sentence, then it is very likely that you have been injured at some point in your life. It’s an unavoidable part of life: we all make mistakes, we can’t control everything around us, and entropy exists, so inevitably something will fall Continue Reading
Take a Page Out of a Dancer’s Playbook: Mark It!
There is never an excuse not to train. Practice methods used in dance can help us take advantage and make the most of any small opportunity we can get during even the shortest amount of free time on a busy day. When we look at some terminology used in the Continue Reading
Different Seasons in Life and Training
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
How Do You React to Adversity/Discouragement?
Just like the ups and downs of life, there will always be a balance in how people treat you. The reality is, you could be the nicest person in the world and there will still be someone out there who doesn’t like you. Therefore it’s important to not live your 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
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