The Absurd Ban on Outdoor Recreational Activities
One of the absurdities of the current “stay at home” order in Ontario is a ban on outdoor recreational activities. This flies in the face of the current COVID-19 science. The risk of being infected with COVID-19 is much lower outdoors than indoors. Ontario’s medical…
What Now?
What now? 2020 has been quite the year. Ontario went on a months-long lockdown from March through the end of August. At that time, the province started to relax COVID-19 restrictions in various regions, based on case numbers. Unfortunately and this was foreseeable, cases started…
Changes in Private Lessons
As previously mentioned, I have transitioned from teaching group classes to private lessons due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the last few months, the tenor and format of the private lessons have changed quite a bit compared to the pre-pandemic private lessons. Before the pandemic,…
Old School Garage Testing
As readers of this blog know, I have switched from group classes to private lessons during these unprecedented times. One consequence of this move concerns testing my students for rank. In the past, I have tested my students in a group setting. However, in these…
Martial Arts Zoom Classes
Over the last few months, I’ve been teaching five Zoom classes per week. The attendees consist mostly of students from the 6Tigers Academy and occasionally Bamboo Spirit students. The seeds of my Zoom class experiences are due to a group of siblings, originally from Ottawa…
COVID-19 Transition
I know that it’s been a while since I posted. I don’t have much in the way of excuses. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I have transitioned from group classes to private lessons in the past couple of months. As we all know, we are…
Attacking Combinations
The story of how I came up with the “Attacking Combinations” video! While I miss teaching classes and private lessons, one of the upsides of the lockdown is that I have had mucho time on my hands to figure out variations of solo workouts. Hence,…
Lockdown Routine
To my martial arts friends, how have you kept your martial arts training since the lockdowns started? Here is a list of what I’ve done: How about you? What kind of training are you doing? Is anything different from my list? Now, some of my…
Post Lockdown Thoughts
During these unprecedented times, martial arts instructors have to think about their short term futures, after the lockdowns are gradually eased, and we return to teaching. But, first, what is the definition of “short term future” in the context of these times? For me, the…
Under Lockdown, Part 2
Earlier this month, I published a post entitled “Under Lockdown.” I have to confess that it was a thought exercise and I honestly did not think we would be in the situation we are in today. Since that post, Ontario has imposed social distancing and…