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
167 The Cost of Doubt Doubt costs repetitions. The time you spend thinking about how to do something, or what you have done wrong, or even if there is a better way to do something,
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
77 Valkyrie Women The Valkyrie ladies are getting tired of beating up men in class. They have decided we needed to recruit more women, and our current method of reaching students doesn’
Blog Posts An Introduction This is my first-ever attempt at a blog post, so bear with me. A couple of days ago, it was suggested that we add the voices of one or more
22 Post Assessment First run of assessments done. Rapier sparring took up our entire night on the previous Monday, and the wrestling assessments completely destroyed the whole class and left us exhausted enough
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
167 Painting Death Ditch all the drama of martial arts, and you are left with a reality that doesn’t jive with our spoken or even understood reasons for training. Mostly we
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&
40 Power To The Stars In the midst of a few hefty bits of writing at the moment, including writing a short article with my wife. That’s the only bit that might soon
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.
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
167 Essentially Geeky There aren’t a lot of natural athletes locally who gravitate to the study of the sword. That’s not unusual, as people with the gift or inclination
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
