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…
Tag: Inspiration
The High Cost of Toughness
There’s a certain reverence in martial arts circles for the old-school mentality; the grit, the grind, the stoic endurance of pain. We’ve all heard it: “Push through.” “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” “Tape it up and keep going.” “Suck it up, buttercup.” “Walk it off.” Injuries, in this mindset, aren’t just inevitable. They’re worn…
What is “Re Tire?”
Recently, I shared that I’m beginning my 24th year with Chuck Norris’ Kickstart Kids. Twenty-four years of character-building, lesson planning, and watching young people grow into their best selves. It’s been a journey filled with grit, grace, and more than a few bruises. After that post, someone asked me a question I hadn’t considered in…
Empowering Teens through the Martial Arts
I had a wonderful student years ago, and for our purposes here, we will call her Lisa, but that isn’t her real name. Lisa was not a bad kid by any stretch of the imagination. She did have some trauma in her life before she became my student. She also had some odd choices in…
A Teacher’s Reward Part 2
This is a repost of something I wrote years ago. Everything said here remains true. I updated where needed for accuracy. I started teaching martial arts a long time ago. When I started, my biggest passion was simply to share something I really love. For me and for many others like me, martial arts are…
Lessons from the Samurai
I was sitting in the emergency room. I had undergone a routine procedure early that morning and gone home. The surgery had caused parts of the outer wall of an artery to be torn off. I managed to tear the rest of it open through the highly dangerous act of eating chicken soup. As time…
Wallace Smedley 