On The Habit of Excellence
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle Lately I have been thinking about the virtue of excellence. This wasn’t always an important virtue to me. When I was younger (and dumber) I believed that I could get by on just being adequate at things…
The Downfall of Functional Training & How to Fix It
What Functional Training Has Become… The field of functional training has degenerated into seeing who can perform the most meaningless stunt while looking the coolest (ahem… sometimes). These exploits may look impressive to the uninitiated or easily amused, but they have virtually no carry over and zero application to movement in real life, on the…
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…
Bored With Push-Ups? Try These!
Push-ups should build all-around 3 dimensional strength from every conceivable angle and hand position. If you’re bored with your current push-up regimen, give these a try and let me know what you think! Screwing Push-ups Knife Push-ups Wrist to Fist Push-ups How to Train Wrist to Fist Push-ups Multi-Directional Push-ups Whole Body Plyometric Frog…
Musashi’s Rules – “Forge Yourself in the Way”
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing every day. Musashi instinctively knew this. He became the greatest swordsman Japan ever produced by practicing what he preached. The concept of forging oneself through the rigors of daily training was so important to him that he made it a rule for those who would follow his…
How Warriors Train for ENDURANCE
Warriors Need to HIIT! High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is one of the best ways to train for endurance. It will enhance all 3 energy systems in the body, as well as prime the nervous system to recover automatically during lulls in activity. Simply put, HIIT alternates periods of high intensity exercise with periods of…
How to Train for Chaos without Making Training Chaotic
The current rage in conditioning training, especially when talking about combat conditioning, is to completely change up the workout for each and every session. This has the advantage of keeping the training fresh and throwing the body into chaos each time so it never knows what hit it. The hardcore advocates of this type of…
Kata (Alone) Will Never Build Internal Power
Trying to develop Internal Power by training kata (alone) in martial art is problematic. On one hand, you may inadvertently have minor success in creating some internal connection over the course of 20-30 years of training, but you will most likely have no idea how you did it, no idea why it worked (minimally at…
Gyokko Ryu’s Internal Power Training
There is no doubt in my mind that Hatsumi Sensei possesses unusual power in his budo. Anyone who has trained with him can tell you that! But what is it and where does it come from? More importantly, how can YOU develop it as well? Soke’s martial movement displays many of the characteristics associated with Internal…
We Were Once Warriors…
We Were Once Warriors… For centuries the warrior has been the archetypical model of physical fitness and power. This is due to the extreme nature of their training and overwhelming odds that they must have had to go through waging war in the ancient world. The multifaceted development of skills required for the warrior’s brand…
Lost Empire Herbs
