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
Inspiration
Strongest Muscle
I recently came across a post on Facebook that shared that latissimus dorsi are the strongest muscles in your body. Like everything on Facebook, I took it with a grain of salt, but it got me thinking a little bit about the correlation between this muscle and one of our 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
Positive Self Image
I’ve been on a long journey with self-confidence, it wasn’t always easy for me to believe in myself. Every time I couldn’t get a new skill, whether it be a new guitar riff or advanced kick, I’d beat myself up, say I suck, and think it’s just never going to Continue Reading
Mind Muscle Connection
With the world in quarantine for the past few years, I took it upon myself to find new and interesting ways to work out. Before the pandemic, I was going to the gym to lift weights every few days and just did a handful of exercises I’d learned throughout years Continue Reading
Finding Company
I was an extremely anxious kid growing up, and one of the scariest experiences for me was having to go to middle school and not have the option to come home for lunch. I know it seems silly, but I literally had a stomach ache for months leading up to 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
Don’t Let People Hold You Back
As an outcast throughout my life in middle and high school, I actually surprisingly found it to be quite fortunate looking back on it. At the time it wasn’t great, I was really shy, didn’t have too many friends, and a lot of kids thought I was weird and tried 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