263 Heavy to Light It can get a little confusing for students when I lay out the prescription for the day’s class. I’ll explain what’s behind that. The
263 Warming Up for Class I’m an old fat man, so I have to put in a lot of extra to work to get myself ready for class. I’m the teacher,
263 Growing Power Probably the number one reason people don’t come to our classes is fear of our workout. The language we use to talk about what we do at the
263 Movement and Flexibility Not good. Good. Really bad. In my opinion, anyway. Martial artists always talk about one another. It’s somewhat essential…we train in combat arts, we’d
263 Hot in the Cold: Late Season Workouts The Saturday class is a special one for us. We don’t do any martial arts training. It’s pure conditioning. It’s a bonus class for
263 Integration and the Silly Dance Sipping my coffee in our chilly library this morning, bleary eyed and reading facebook while I slowly came awake, I read a post by Ido Portal talking about his day&
263 Daily Workouts One of the more scary moments as a teacher is the one where you realize your students will more frequently imitate you, than perform the way you teach them to.
24 Iron and Speed The Valkyrie workout took a long time to develop, with a lot of stumbles on the way. Until I had a recent discussion with someone online about the relative value
263 Fit School Let’s suppose for a minute that you run a study group for WMA…Western Martial Arts. And by the way, I’d don’t follow
263 Building a Workout Plan It’s Thursday morning, which means I have a little over ten hours until I’m back in class. I’m already getting excited. It’s
167 Sticks and Stony Hands My hands seem to be more callous that anything else. I suppose it’s a side effect of so much weapons work, and all the movement work. My hands
24 Monkeys to Masters We started with our usual sprints, to get the blood rushing. Followed up with some pre-hab work to prep our bodies for a summer of full out sprints. If you
263 Movement and Movers I get these odd moments sometimes when talking to people. Moments when I realize I’ve made an assumption of not just knowledge, but of shared experience. I go
263 Busted but not Broken I’m on a an actual vacation this week. Actual as in not working, as opposed to just taking a break from posting. I’ll try to keep
263 Grind Grind Grind Moving to three days a week training just might be the death of me. Judging from how I feel this morning, anyway. It’s not muscle soreness that’
263 Marathon Training One of my oldest friends is running her first marathon this weekend. It’s one hell of an achievement. She put her foot on the path some time ago,
24 Movement and Building the Coiled Spring Class before last I was without a partner, and watching the rest of the students go through a drill. I couldn’t stop bouncing. I was full of energy&
263 Athleticism and the comfy couch Martial arts is an athletic pursuit, but few of us are athletes. At least, we don’t have the work ethic of a serious athlete. Two or three workouts
22 Lessons About Lessons I’m a little sore this morning. Moving seems to take a little more effort than expected. My joints feel tender on the inside. We had a great class
263 Sprint, Box, Fence... Ramped up the training in class last night, just a little. Since our December start, most students have made it to every class, which means they are starting to really
24 Move, break, run...stand You ask someone to work on posture, and the first thing they do is stand still. They try to freeze in place. Tell that to a martial artist, and they
24 Monkeys and Tigers I was watching one of the newer students work on his cartwheels last night. Like most of the students, he was new (at least as an adult) to doing cartwheels.
263 Spider in the chest Making monsters clicked last night, like I was waiting for it to. The first sprint drill was alright, but in the second…the subtle fire kicked in. That tiny
263 Weakness and Strength Lying on my back, completely relaxed, and trying to starfish myself. It’s been a personal test of mine for years. Back in my powerlifting days I did some
