Talent or Dedication?
Which is more important, dedication or talent? From an instructor’s perspective, dedication wins hands down. Like many instructors, I have students who are talented and “natural.” I also have students who are not “natural” in martial arts. Oddly enough, and generally speaking, the less talented…
Taking Advantage of Technology
A year ago, my MacBook needed to be repaired at the local Best Buy. To keep my social media efforts going, I ordered a Chromebook from Amazon. This was delivered within a couple of days. The purchase came with one terabyte of free memory on…
“Can’t” Gets You Fifty Pushups
Guest Blogger Cathy Chapaty is the author of No Pouting in the Dojo: The Imperfect Journey of Teaching Children Character through Martial Arts. A veteran martial artist, Chapaty has been respected as an empowering, positive teacher with a knack for helping children of all ages and abilities…
How to Fix The Wet Noodle
The “wet noodle” version of feeding a training partner is a fairly common problem encountered by martial arts instructors. I have seen variations of this problem among children and adults. In this post, I discuss the causes behind poor feeding and offer solutions on how…
3 Great Reasons For One Step Sparring
Many martial arts, such as karate and tae kwon do, employ a training method called “one-step sparring.” This training method has been the subject of a fair bit of debate. Some advocate it, while others deride it as impractical and unsuited to the realities of…
How Hard Do You Really Train?
I taught the inaugural class at the Harmony Martial Arts Center in Pickering on Friday night. For a Friday night time slot of 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm, I had a turnout of 7. Not bad at all. After getting some housekeeping out of the way,…
6 Reasons To Go Slow
You must go slow! Slow is the mother of skill!- Professor Remy Presas. The professor used to admonish us who rushed into new techniques. He wanted us to have good form and structure before worrying about speed—wise words. I often train slowly for smoothness and…
7 Benefits of Changing Martial Arts Partners
Often, I’ll tell my students, “Change partners!” during class. Why? Because it’s good for all of us. This article lists seven benefits of changing and working with different partners. I’ve meant to post about the importance of changing and working with different martial arts partners in…
Martial Arts Training and Learning
Recently, I came across a quote from Rickson Gracie that nicely sums up my training and learning philosophy: “When you train you should put more emphasis on learning than competing with your partner.” In other words, Rickson is emphasizing the technical side of the art…
I Already Know That
Recently, I had a conversation with Master Chuck regarding martial artists who say, “I already know that” when training. Sometimes, it means they don’t want to lose face and not admit they don’t know the material. Often, it means something else. It means that the…
