Why Body Skills are Critical to Martial Arts
Body skills are the foundation of ALL martial and athletic movement. In fact, in my mind, they are the foundation of all good, powerful, pain-free human movement! What are body skills? They are the qualities that connect, support, mobilize, and strengthen the body from the inside out. They create a highly resilient, dynamically stable body…
Musashi on Posture in Strategy
In his classic work on the art of strategy, Go Rin No Sho, Musashi gives the following instructions on Posture in his art. “Keep your neck straight, putting some force in the hollow of the nape; lower your shoulders, with the sensation that the torso from the shoulders down forms a unity; keep the back straight,…
5.5 Principles for More Effective Striking in ANY Martial Art
Part 1 of this series, Conditioning the Fists for Striking can be found HERE. Being able to strike with power and precision involves a lot more than merely knowing the technique. Practice must include these principles of effective striking techniques for all martial arts… 1. Whole Body Power All movement in real life happens in…
The Top 3.5 Reasons Training is Hard
The other day a student said to me during training: “This is hard.” My reply was, “Well of course it’s hard. You don’t come to me to learn how to do things you’re already good at, do you?” But why is this difficult? In my experience,training is hard for approximately 3.5 main reasons… 1. You are…
Form Begets Function
A new guest blog post by my friend, Jarell Lindsey owner of Lean Functional Muscle. Form Begets Function I was scanning the posts of a fitness forum the other day, and I came across something that confused me a bit. The post was regarding the physique of one Sig Klein, you may have heard of him,…
Like Paul Freakin’ Bunyan!
I was recently asked how one should train their psyche for martial arts. It seems like a weird question… Train your psyche?? Upon further reflection though, it’s actually a very astute question. Psyche is defined as the totality of the human mind, conscious and unconscious. So training it must be essential. How then do we…
Martial Software or Martial Hardware?
Remember in The Matrix when Morpheus downloaded those dozens of different martial arts programs (software) into Neo’s brain and he instantly could perform all the techniques from those arts? That is a perfect example of a software upgrade. Techniques instantly available at your fingertips – literally!
Internal Power and Bujinkan Training
When I first began talking about internal power in the context of Bujinkan training, I realized that many people might be skeptical of this type of training at the very least, or have many preconceived misconceptions that would not allow them to even consider the method as a viable form of training for budo. Therefore…
Time to Reorganize Priorities
I spent all morning today running around with my 4 year old doing a bunch of errands. We went to Story Time at Barnes & Noble (she loves that!), then to the bank, to the post office (where I shipped out one of the last paperback copies of Warrior Fitness: Conditioning for Martial Arts!), then…
Top 10 Warrior Blog Posts of 2012
Who doesn’t love Top 10 Lists? Earlier in the week when I began looking back over the Warrior Blog 2012 to put together my Year in Review post, it occurred to me that I should also do my very own top 10 list. Why not? It’s a great way to review and recap the most…
Lost Empire Herbs
