Going Into The Martial Arts Hibernation Season
Do you expect to train on the same martial material year-round? That approach will lead to burnout and stagnation. The intelligent approach is to vary your training throughout the year. Changing routines is relatively easy for martial arts competitors. For example, they can spend the…
Taking A Break From Pumping Iron: I’ll Be Back!
As many of you know, I returned to the gym in June after sufficiently recovering from my hip replacement surgery. First, my sessions at the gym from June to August were experimental in the sense that I tried out different lifting routines. I finally settled…
All Your Losses Lead Back To…….You
I’ve long believed that any loss, setback, or problem usually involves you. A quick caveat: I recognize that some losses or setbacks can be traced to external factors. But let’s set that caveat aside. Any time I’ve had a setback, loss or bad experience, I…
The Importance of Grinding!
In this day and age of the McDonald’s drive-through instant gratification culture, I feel the importance of grinding our way through life has been lost in the shuffle. To be clear, I believe in grinding through any problem, obstacle or challenge. To me, it’s the…
Back From the Cottage!
This will be a short post as I returned from our annual cottage week a few days ago. Check out the beautiful scenery in the short video below. As usual, I had a great time there. I read a few books, hung out with family…
Killer Pushing and Pulling Exercises
I recently decided to switch things up and revamp my lifting routine for my 400-day challenge. I wanted to emphasize targeting different muscle groups and improving my martial arts performance. One of the key changes I made was focusing more on pushing and pulling movements….
400 Day Countdown to 60!
The 400-day countdown to my 60th birthday begins on August 7, 2023. Some may ask, “Why on earth are you doing this?” and “What are you doing during this countdown?“ The simple answer is that I am goal-oriented and need a goal RIGHT NOW. The…
A Freaking Lesson Learned
Hard-earned lessons are the ones that stick with us the most. They are often born out of mistakes, failures, or stupidity. These lessons are typically difficult to learn and often require a lot of effort, time, and energy to understand and process. Hard-earned lessons can…
Crappy Hip to Bionic Hip: My FMA Footwork Reboot
Introduction While their stick, knife or machete hypnotizes many students, they often overlook the importance of footwork. In this blog post, I will explore the importance of footwork in FMA. Further, I explain how FMA footwork is my main barrier to returning to teaching. In…
Going Back To The Gym
Let’s start with this Instagram video as I walked inside the gym last night. Before my hip replacement surgery and my mother-in-law’s last few months of her life, I had regularly worked out at the local gym. These workouts were an essential supplement to my…