If you ever reach a point where you think there is nothing left to learn in your chosen field, you are only fooling yourself. I have spent decades in the study of self-defense/self-protection and this week I had an eye-opening moment during a presentation from a young instructor named Mike Pana, an instructor from the…
Tag: 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…
Review: Martial Arts and Your Life
The following is a review of Martial Arts and Your Life, a new book by Lawrence A. Kane and Kris Wilder. Condensed version: I loved and believe you will too. Longer version: Last summer I got an email asking if I would be interested in participating in a survey for a Martial Arts book. I…
What Unites Us
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking. Stressing too! I managed to get my blood pressure all out of whack again, so there’s that. I don’t intend to get political here, no matter what I say in that realm, I will lose half of my audience. And people are on edge these days too. But…
Do You Have a Reason to Train?
There is a stark contrast between people who have a clear purpose for training and people who are thinking about training. I see it time and again. People say they would like to get in shape, or think it would be good to be able to protect themselves. But these people never have that follow-through….
Train in What?
The question comes up often, and I am sure I am not the only instructor who gets this question over and over. You say I should train to protect myself, train in what style? When I urge people to train, I am not suggesting that I am the only one who should teach them. I…
What is the best way to stop bullies?
Questions kept popping up after my video on bullying: Why do the anti-bullying programs seem to be ineffective, and sometimes even exacerbate the problem? Is there a good way to stop bullies? There is a simple reason, at least in my opinion, of why so many of the anti-bullying programs fail: these programs do not…
The Free Course is almost here!
I have long promised a free online self-defense course, and the wait is almost over. The biggest issue was in finding the right platform, and once that was solved, the work began. After a lot of back and forth on the issues of what should be covered and what could be left out, I have…
Teaching Martial Arts: A Positive Classroom
We all have to be mindful of our interactions with our students. As I have said in the past, it is easy to catch people, kids especially, doing things wrong. There is no special skill or training needed to do this. The real challenge lies in catching them doing things right, and finding ways to…
An Interview with Pavel Macek, Sifu
In the continuing series, I present to you today an interview with Pavel Macek Sifu. He currently lives and teaches in the Czech Republic, in addition to teaching seminars in many different countries. I really appreciate the mindset that traditional training IS practical. Very knowledgeable and personable as well, he brings a lot to the…
Wallace Smedley 