Rejoining the Tao (retired)

Trump and Putin, 2018 How does a high-ranking judoka handle President Trump's handshake?  Introduction Trump and Gorsuch, 2017 I'm fascinated by how world leaders and other officials deal with President Trump's handshake. Today I saw footage from a press conference hosted by Presidents Trump and Putin in Helsinki from 2018, and I got to see how a high-ranking judoka reacts. Background Warning:  this is not a political post.  It's a post about movement, balance, and technique. If you're not familiar with President Trump's handshake style, the story Donald Trump's strange handshake style and how Justin Trudeau beat it  is a good overview. A jiu-jitsu school's technique for defeating the Trump handshake also caught the attention of Vice News . I'm going to concentrate on the standing handshake in this post.  A so-called "movement expert" claims in this  video  that Trump is showing "affection" via his handshake style. I think Mr Trum...

I have good news. In my 2019 Martial Arts Year in Review post, I mentioned that I had a goal to attend roughly "17 classes per month, which is 204 classes per year." I marked the achievement of my BJJ blue belt in late October as the start of tracking this goal. In general, my goal is to attend at least 50 classes every 3 months, as a minimum. I'm happy to report that as of today I have met that first 50 class block. I plan to attend a few more classes this week, prior to the end of January, so long as my health holds up. (I've been having some issues with my left knee recently that caused me to miss two classes in January already.) I'm sharing this with the world as a way to motivate myself and anyone else who might have similar goals. This 50 classes every 3 months goal is about double the previous class attendance schedule I had prior to blue belt. I was not sure how my body was going to hold up, but I decided to set the goal and see what I could do. ...

In this post I would like to share a few thoughts on self-publishing a book , in case anyone is considering that option. As I mentioned in my post on  burnout , one of my goals was to publish a book on a subject other than cyber security. A friend from my Krav Maga school, Anna Wonsley , learned that I had  published several books , and asked if we might collaborate on a book about stretching. The timing was right, so I agreed. I published my first book with Pearson and Addison-Wesley in 2004, and my last with No Starch in 2013. 14 years is an eternity in the publishing world, and even in the last 5 years the economics and structure of book publishing have changed quite a bit. To better understand the changes, I had dinner with one of the finest technical authors around,  Michael W. Lucas . We met prior to my interest in this book, because I had wondered about publishing books on my own. MWL started in traditional publishing like me, but has since become a full...

Have you seen this chart, or have you heard about the topic it describes? (Scroll to the very bottom of the post for TL;DR if you like!) From "On Combat", as rendered by Amazon.com. Not for commercial use. In brief, as I have heard it taught and as this chart explains, the higher your heart rate, the worse your physical performance. This idea has implications for anyone in a physical confrontation, where an increased heart rate seems to mean an inability to perform self defense actions. When I first encountered this concept, it did not make sense to me. In my teens I was a high school cross country and track runner, and I frequently elevated my heart rate over 200 bpm. I did not encounter these symptoms. In my twenties and thirties I played men's league ice hockey and managed to perform complex motor skills such as skating, puck handling, and shooting, all while my heart was racing.  Now, encountering this chart and its ideas as a martial artist, I'm ...

Do sore wrists and fingers interfere with your martial arts training? I stopped training martial arts training in 2001 after I broke my wrist in American Kenpo class. I didn't know I had broken it until several weeks later, when a doctor took an X-ray and saw the wrist was healing. I had "protected" it using the sort of wrist brace you use for carpal tunnel syndrome. The doctor said "that's going to hurt again in 10 or 15 years." Here we are in 2017, and I don't want this old injury to hold me back! My family also has a history of developing arthritis in the fingers, so I am doing what I can to avoid that situation as well. Earlier this year I felt wrist pain when doing Krav Maga striking drills, and finger pain doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I decided to fight back with a multi-pronged approach. Let me share the drills I do to relieve martial arts wrist and finger pain! 1. Wrist strength. I was inspired by my StrongFirst training to focus first on...

How long can we train in the martial arts? As a 45-year-old who returned to practice in January 2016, I've been pondering this question for the past few weeks, in three separate ways. First, in episode 161 of the Whistlekick podcast , a practitioner of the Chinese martial arts said that as a younger man he focused on the so-called "hard" or "external" styles, and as he aged he transitioned to the "soft" or "internal" styles. For example, you might begin learning Wing Chun or Kung Fu, then migrate to Tai Chi, or spend more time on Kung Fu forms instead of sparring. I have done some Wing Chun and Tai Chi, but the majority of my Chinese practice involves Kung Fu forms. Second, I participated in Professor Pedro Sauer's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu spring camp in Herndon, VA. Professor is in his late 50s and he talked about the importance of learning technique rather than relying on strength. He said it is good to have strength, but you should ...

Kimura, courtesy of WikiHow "Yes!" This week I learned the power of this simple word, used at the right time and with the right emotional content. Late last month I started training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at One Spirit Martial Arts , headquarters for Professor Pedro Sauer. This week I signed up as a regular student. I've spent most of my time taking the Gracie Combatives classes, where a gentleman named Sebastian is usually the coach. I really enjoy these classes because there is a defined curriculum and class structure. I'll write more about that in a future post on the utility of curriculum and structure! This week I noticed that Sebastian used a simple but effective teaching technique. I'm not sure if the Gracie Instructor Certification Program explicitly teaches it, or if Sebastian picked it up interacting with other instructors, or if he independently arrived at the same place. The technique is this: when a student executes the proper technique,...

Yesterday I spoke with a friend who just moved from Ohio to northern Virginia, where I live. I'll call him Randy. He is a successful business person who sold his tech start-up last year. Randy wears many hats: technical director at the company that bought his start-up; venture capitalist, launching new start-ups; and family man, with a supportive wife and children. He used to compete in triathlons, but the pace of his work life has squeezed exercise out of his routine. Randy and I are about the same age (45), and he knows he needs to exercise to shed unwanted pounds and improve his quality of life. He asked about my time at First Defense Krav Maga . I told him I've been training over a year at the school, and I'd be happy to meet him for a trial class. Randy replied that he didn't feel ready for Krav Maga, because he wanted to drop around 25 pounds before attempting a workout. He said he needed to be ready for class before showing up to train. I understand his...

Is fighting inner demons the way to greatness? This is a question that has bothered me for years. Steve Jobs is one person who may have achieved greatness by battling inner demons. A review of a Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs notes "[f]rom his childhood, Jobs suffered from the emotional wounds inflicted by his unmarried biological parents, who put him up for adoption." Would Jobs have been so successful creating, and then saving, Apple, without inner demons from his childhood? I was reminded of this question when I listened to another great edition of the Whistlekick podcast, featuring Jose Dimacali . In the episode, Kyoshi Dimacali describes how winning tournaments was a way to seek approval from his father. When he won a local tournament, his father didn't say anything. When he won a state tournament, his father didn't say anything. Even when he won a national tournament, his father remained silent. Kyoshi Dimacali went so far as to win a world tit...

Have you ever broken a board? If you practice a Karate or Tae Kwon Do-related system, I assume the answer is yes. So what's the point, especially for kids? In this post, part of my series on martial arts business practices, I will share why board breaking might be a tool for attracting and motivating younger martial artists, and perhaps even their families. Several of the  Martial Arts SuperShow (MASS) speakers talked about the power of board breaking, especially for kids. At the time of the show, I had little experience with the kids version of the exercise. I had only broken boards as an adult during my year in military intelligence school, when I studied Tae Kwon Do. I remembered thinking it was a fun exercise, and that I needed to pay close attention to placement and punching or kicking "past the board." So how could this be useful for kids? The MASS business consultants discussed board breaking in several contexts. First, they offered four benefits for kids...

In Five Tips to Maximize Private Training , I blogged about how I returned to my Kung Fu school near Boston to relearn material I first practiced in the 1990s. I wanted to concentrate on forms, which are sets of techniques and movements performed in a specific manner. Most if not all "traditional" styles practice forms, also called kata, patterns, and the like. In this post I will document the process I have been following to maximize the results of this training. For me, success means I am increasing my capability to execute forms properly. "Perfection" is not the goal -- consistent improvement is my target. 1. Begin with in-person lessons.  It is simply too difficult to begin learning a form in a completely solo manner. You are likely to make mistakes without realizing it. You need an instructor to teach you the form, and then monitor your progress as you learn it. As with any martial arts activity, you are going to need some small, some medium, and perhaps ...

Does your martial arts school run using systems? I was unfamiliar with this approach until I attended the Martial Arts SuperShow earlier this month. I participated in several excellent business-oriented seminars designed to help martial arts school owners and instructors improve the quality of their operation and offerings. I took pages and pages of notes, and here I will begin converting them into coherent posts that I hope you will find valuable, either as a martial arts school owner, instructor, or student. The term "systems" refers to methods of conducting business or offering services to prospects and clients. In my military and corporate lives I've heard the terms "playbooks" or "standard operating procedures" (SOPs) as synonyms. The idea is to define sets of actions that you purposefully implement in order to maximize your chances to accomplishing a desired and explicit goal. For example, your school could establish systems for any or...