167 Fat There is a current and recurrent thread amongst HEMA and other martial arts disciplines that mocks the fat instructor. It’s one of those things that everyone feels comfortable
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,
40 Mothers Mothers. They’re so … tactful. I was a few days into the visit with my parents in June when my mother asked something that had clearly been on her
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
62 A lesson in exercise and mood. Photo Courtesy John Chan I haven’t been to class for a week, and I’m feeling low. Somehow, it didn’t occur to me until an
40 Why Be Fit? Seems like a stupid question, doesn’t it? Why be fit? Why wouldn’t you want to be fit? Sometimes the answer that if given to that question
40 Learn to Love the Bomb, Or At Least Stop the Hate Two interesting articles popped up in my news feed towards the end of last week, and kind of stuck in my head. The first was a study on obese people,
40 New Year, New Blood Fresh crop of new students showing up tonight. I’m curious as to how the typical New Year Resolution crowd will show up for us this year. Martial arts
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.
40 One Thing Leads To Another Deeper and deeper. Kind of a Fixx sort of morning. It’s coming up on nine months since we started up Valkyrie. I think the biggest change can be
40 Strong Body Strength is everything. It’s the key to real mobility. It’s the key to a balanced and happy body. Real flexibility comes from strength, as does speed.
167 Healthy Body Rough week for a number of friends of mine. A person who spanned a few communities and was friends with my friends passed away suddenly in his sleep. I remotely
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
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
40 Workout for the win Why waste your time working out when you can spend that time drilling on your martial arts techniques? Twenty minutes of calisthenics is twenty minutes of precious class time taken
40 Tone Deaf Going to rant a little bit. It doesn’t take much to get me going, some days. Today it was Twitter’s fault. Or rather a tidbit that
22 A Little More Film Fun The new phone has a handy built-in video highlight feature. Just had to try it out in class last night, and share the results with you guys. A little swordplay:
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,
