My dad had a couple of sayings as we were growing up that I remember disagreeing with, one was “guys and girls can’t be friends without one of them catching feelings!” Reflecting on it now he might’ve said this to keep me from having a lot of male friends, he’s Continue Reading
Philosophy
Mean What You Say
My mom used to tell us as we were growing up, “never say anything that you wouldn’t want on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper”. Obviously this is a bit of an exaggeration, and also now outdated as many people don’t read the newspaper anymore! But the meaning behind it Continue Reading
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
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
Seguida and Contra
In the style of Filipino martial arts I practice, the Defensor Method, they categorize most blocks into two different energies: Seguida and Contra. Contra means “against”, and Seguida means “to follow”. A lot of the time, our first instinct when we think of a block is something that meets the Continue Reading
Whole Body is a Weapon
A concept we have in martial arts is to utilize your whole body in a technique to maximize power. For example when we do a kick it’s not just our leg muscles activating, we use our abs to lift, our hips to thrust, and the strength of your leg and Continue Reading
Transferrable Martial Arts Skills
A lot of times when we think about our martial art skills, we only think about them in terms of self defense or tournaments. Yet, our martial arts skills can help us in other situations as well. The skills we develop in training such as break falls, rolling, reaction time, 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
Manifestation
Something I’ve heard of a lot in mainstream alternative culture lately is the concept of “manifesting”. Manifesting is essentially something theoretical becoming real, so basically meditating/focusing on something to make it become your reality. It has been used in many memes, such as someone manifesting some Burger King and having 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