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 way of martial strategy.
But this article isn’t about Musashi, it’s about you and tapping into your own innate greatness.
Forge Yourself in the Way
Forging must be done daily. There is no way to forge body, mind, and spirit into a finely honed blade without constant hammering and firing through the steel tempering process of training.
Half-assed training won’t cut it.
Training only when you feel like it won’t get you there.
Training without a properly focused strategy will not work.
Training the same way over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
So What Works?
The only answer to the question of how does one become a great martial artist (and I’m assuming you want to be great otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog…) is this – TRAIN MORE.
But, like anything else, there’s a caveat.
Train smarter AND Train Harder.
As I always say, there are no secret techniques but there ARE secret (or less well known) training strategies that will improve all aspects of martial performance in much less time.
Training more and training harder are NOT the only variables. Anyone who thinks this way is an amateur.
A few weeks ago I sent a question out to my email list (HINT – if you haven’t signed up yet, subscribe on the right!) asking what topics they had questions about and wanted to see more blog posts on. Several great questions and suggestions came back. One that was repeated often was the question of motivation – “How do I motivate myself to train more? How do you motivate yourself?”
Here’s my answer to both questions.
What are your thoughts? Drop me some comments below!
Recently I was asked about how to use a single kettlebell to train footwork for Bujinkan martial arts. Here is a video I put together showing a couple different exercises to enhance stability and mobility for footwork training using the kettlebell. Enjoy!! Continue reading →
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.
The not so great martial artists are content to train only in class or at seminars. They spend lots of time thinking about training, maybe, but the actual doing, not so much.
For you the process is simple – not easy. Daily training. How do you do this? Figure it out. You don’t have to think about when you’re going to take a shower during the day or brush your teeth, you just do it. Make your training a priority and get it done. While others are busy doing other things, you are training. While others are busy daydreaming about training, you are training. While others are busy running their mouths about training, you are – you guessed it – training.
Soon it will begin to show. The difference may not be too apparent at first, but consistency of training will win out. It may not be so obvious in a year, or even 2. But after 5 years it will be very noticeable. After a decade, you will be miles ahead of the rest of the martial arts landscape.
You will move better.
You will feel different when they touch you.
You will have power in motion and in stillness.
You will stand out, not because of ego or anything like that but because the work you put in day after day, week after week, month after month, and year upon year will cause your skills to grow exponentially. The growth and development created simply by training every day will become self evident.
So ask yourself – do you want to be a mediocre martial hobbyist (not that there’s anything wrong with that), or do you want to be legendary?
The choice is yours. As for me, F__k being mediocre. 🙂
What If All the Stories Surrounding the Incredibly Powerful, Legendary Martial Artists of Old Were True?
What if greatness wasn’t random, but specifically engineered?
What if YOU Had Access to Their Secret Training Strategies for Building Whole-Body Strength & Power for Martial Arts – ANY Martial Art – in Your Hands?
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 teacher to student on purpose through a lack of knowledge.
Dumb tension is defined as either the complete usage of whole body, generalized tension to attempt to deliver extra power to a specific kick or strike, OR the complete lack of any and all tension to attempt to whip a wet noodle-like strike at the opponent or target. Both of these things miss the boat, in my opinion.
Walk the Middle Path
Intelligent Tension (IT) is simply walking the middle path between the two extremes and using the appropriate amount of tension required, and only that amount, to coordinate whole body power into a strike. More tension does not necessarily equal more power in terms of striking. Actually, the more tension recruited for a movement, the more you apply the brakes physiologically since your body is now moving against itself in an attempt to use generalized tension. When both the agonist muscle and antagonist muscle are working against each other the result is less overall power delivery for the strike. Learning to appropriately activate only the muscles necessary to accomplish the task removes the brakes, ups the power wattage, and increases the efficiency since you are no longer using energy you don’t need.
Additionally, the more tension created in a movement, the less mobility you have. If you look at tension and mobility on one line with tension on one side and mobility on the other, the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. When we train the nervous system to fire high tension all the time, we lose mobility and range of motion. While this is perfectly acceptable and absolutely essential for a purely low-gear strength based activity like dead lifting, it is not fine for martial arts.
Get The Warrior Fitness Guide to Striking Power (e-book) and the original book, Warrior Fitness: Conditioning for Martial Arts (e-book) FREE when you pick up my brand new program – WarFit Combat Conditioning!
Remember, striking power is not just about hitting harder; it’s about hitting smarter. Here’s a few reasons why this program is something you should incorporate into your martial training:
New, innovative exercises to push through plateaus in your training and stave off boredom.
The right tools for the job – low tech / high yield!
Teach your body how to increase force production through stored elastic energy rather than recruiting more tension.
Efficiency is the key to preserving energy levels. Efficiency is defined as useful work over total work.
Coordinated whole body power in 3 dimensions. Life, sport, and martial art happen in 3D – the same old 2 dimensional exercises are NOT up to task!
Specifically develop angular and rotary strength to augment and assist prime movers.
Target postural and stabilizer muscles to strengthen structure behind the strikes. You can‘t fire a cannon from a canoe!
Thanks to everyone who responded to my I Need Your Help post last week. I received a ton of replies via email, which was really cool!
The Top 5 Responses for new Warrior Fitness products you would like to see:
5. Warrior Warm-up (Warrior Fitness style junan taiso)
4. Sandbag Training for Martial Arts
3. Kettlebell Training for Martial Arts
2. Warrior Bodyweight Workouts
1. Ninja Fitness
If you have any additional suggestions, comments or variations on the above 5 topics that you’d personally like to see, let me know – don’t be shy! Email me here, hit me up on Facebook here, or even drop a Comment below. 🙂
Luckily, I’ve already been hard at work on a couple of these topics and will begin fine tuning based on your responses. It also seems that about 99.9% of you out there prefer an e-book or downloadable video type format, which is great. This is gonna be fun!!
One last thing – I really enjoyed the interaction with you guys over the past week – I hope you did too. Let’s keep it going! The more you guys get involved, the better this blog (and subsequent products produced) becomes!! Thank you!
Historically, ninja were the consummate combination of super spy / super soldier. They possessed outstanding levels of fitness due to their intensely physical training and highly demanding mission requirements.
Their levels of fitness and training have been the subject of many stories and the genesis for many myths surrounding them.
How did they do it?
How did they train?
What type of methodology did they employ since creating this kind of warrior certainly required a very diverse fitness profile?
Ninja fitness needs were much more multi-faceted than most physical pursuits. They had to be as they were at once a combination of Olympic decathlete, Navy Seal, and martial arts master rolled into one. Let’s examine this a little more closely though, what kind of qualities did they possess and what did they need to be able to do?
Ninja Must Possess …
Strength
Agility
Coordination
Excellent balance
Flexibility / Mobility
Whole body power
Endurance
Ninja Must Be Able to….
Move silently
Run fast
Walk far
Leap high
Climb trees, walls, castles fortifications, etc.
Wield weapons
Fight unarmed – striking, kicking, grappling, locking, choking, etc.
Roll / fall / dodge / avoid
Crawl
And more…
As you can see from the 2 lists above, the ninja had a wide range of skills and abilities that had to be supported by a comprehensive fitness program keeping him at the top of his game.
Remember that for a ninja, fitness wasn’t just a nice to have; it was an absolute necessity to accomplishing his mission and getting him home safely. And the kicker is, they did it all with little to no fitness equipment.
Certainly a 16th century ninja did not possess a Gold’s Gym membership. Nor did he own an Olympic weight set or have a stair master at his disposal. And, while kettlebells and dumbbells would have been great, he most likely had never laid eyes on either one.
So here we have one of the most highly trained and fit agents the world has ever seen created without the use of modern training equipment or modern training methods.
What might some of this training looked like?
I’m glad you asked. One of my favorite scenes in Hatsumi Sensei’s early Bujinkan training videos (DVDs now for you younger folks!) comes from Shinden Fudo Ryu. Here’s a short clip I found on Youtube. This stuff is seriously old school!
“One trains using the things of nature to make the body strong” – Hatsumi Sensei
What if we were to take the spirit of historical ninja fitness training and combine it with a little modern sports science and know how?
Modern methods allow us to take advantage of periodization, or programing and organizing training, to create a comprehensive fitness plan which will apply logical sequences to get the most out of each session. Protocols like HIIT, high intensity interval training, will be utilized to maximize both aerobic and anaerobic endurance in the same short, high intensity session.
Advances in recovery work from such sessions will allow us to recover faster thus making gains greater, and increasing our overall general physical preparation (GPP) will allow us to push higher into more sophisticated training. Effectiveness and efficiency will be combined in order to allow for shorter training sessions which maximize the use of one’s time.
As the ancient ninja did, we will create a strong, supple, highly conditioned warrior and accomplish this with little to no fitness equipment. We will, as Hatsumi Sensei says in the video clip above, use the things of nature to make the body strong.
If I were able to point to just one resource for the warrior that combines old school training with modern sports science, I’d look here… Ninja Missions <<==
