Intensity: Reclaiming the Lost Standard

Step into many dojos today and you’ll see students moving through kata and floor drills with a kind of casual rhythm. Their stances are loose, their strikes lack conviction, and their eyes drift as if the mind is somewhere else. The movements are performed, but the spirit is absent.  This is not how martial arts…

When Injury Takes a Toll

Through the years I have had many setbacks in training. I suffered some pretty serious damage to my knee in my early teens. This single injury resulted in several more injuries through the course of my life, and today I have what I call a bad knee, and a worse knee. Of course, the knee…

A Better Approach to Teaching Martial Arts

This post is in response to an email from an instructor wishing to know more about how teachers teach. Working in a public school, I have had the chance to study up close the methods used by some very effective teachers, and apply what I learn from them in my own classes. This is just…