How to Train More Every Day
The only way to go from average martial artists to outstanding is to train more. You may be limited in how many classes you can attend on a weekly basis or how many seminars you can attend on a monthly basis, but you are not limited in how much solo training you can do on…
How Natural is Your Shizen No Kamae?
This may come as a shock, but I believe many people training in the martial arts today are doing shizen no kamae (natural posture) wrong. How can this be? After all, aren’t you supposed to be just standing there naturally? Well, yes and no. The problem stems from the fact that even though this is…
The Secret to Becoming a Great Martial Artist
There is one very special, not so secret, secret to becoming a great martial artist. Want to know what it is? Do the work. Train every day. Yes, every day. Great martial artists train all the time. Not once a week. Not every other day, not just during class. Every day. Multiple times a day.…
Fitness Dangers for Bujinkan Students
Martial artists need to be extremely cautious when choosing a fitness program to compliment their training. While the right program can support, enhance, and protect budo practice, the wrong one can just as easily derail it. Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu relies on relaxed, whole-body power devoid of excess muscular tension to properly execute its techniques. …
Traditional Martial Artists of the World – UNITE!
Traditional martial arts all have a long history of intense, sometimes downright brutal, physical training to forge the warrior’s combative body, mindset, and spirit. This training has, up until very recently in history, never been optional. If you did not have the strength of will to endure it and push through then you simply did not…
4 Principles For Punching Power
Principles of Striking Power 1. Whole Body Power All movement happens in real life happens in three dimensions, so why train exercises that only incorporate one or two? Training muscles in isolation, unless it is used to rehab a specific injury, range of motion, or strengthen a particular muscle to add to the whole, does…
Intelligent Tension For Striking
How intelligent is your usage of tension in striking? All too often in training our punching and kicking techniques, we find what I’ve come to label as “dumb tension”. This is used by martial artists across the board either accidentally through lack of understanding of how the body should work, or taught and passed down from…
Preparing Ninja for a Mission
My name is Ichiro Watanabe. I am a chunin, a middle level ninja of the Togakure clan. Our small village is secluded deep in the mountains near Mt. Togakushi, otherwise known as Togakure Mountain. I could tell you exactly where, but I’d have to kill you. No joke, it’s a matter of survival for my…
Lost Empire Herbs
