Elite Sports reached out to me, a while back, and was kind enough to send me one of their Bulgarian Bags, for free, to test out and review. This is a hojo undo kigu (supplementary training tool) that I have been interested in trying out for quite some time–and I even have a tire inner tube stashed away specifically for […]
Drills are a hallmark of martial arts training, the world over, regardless of art or style, and they come in many different forms, with different intentions. In general, though, how do we define what a “drill” is, and how do we know if they are any good?
At 2:04am Pacific Standard Time, on Wednesday, December 27th, 2017, the world lost an amazing martial artist, a fantastic role model, and a great man who impacted more lives than I can count. Richard Michael Poage was my Sensei, but he was also my friend, and the older brother I never had. He was truly the embodiment of “sensei,” which […]
For those who may have missed it, we put together an April Fools’ Day video for our dojo. It went live, yesterday, but I’ve been ill, so I didn’t get around to posting it here until today. I hope you enjoy it! For best results, you’ll want to have the sound turned on by around the 2:15 mark in the […]
Greetings! In 2008, I started a blog called “My Budo-Geek Life,” and that later become the blog called “Budo no Kaizen.” That blog started as a way of talking about what kind of training I was doing at the dojo, as well as occasionally share some of my thoughts about what we were working on. Over time, my blog has […]
Moxie-Up is a women’s self defense program, which was put together by a female martial artist here in the Phoenix area. I only became aware of it at the tail end of 2012, but this program has been advertised and promoted by the local news for a few years before that. They have taught the program to hundreds (if not […]
One of the students at our dojo, Jason, is a metalworker at tbailey.com/construction/ by trade and a brilliant engineer, and he built us a custom piece of dojo equipment. This is a picture of it I took on my phone today (the only camera I had available at the time) but the makiwara weren’t attached at the moment. This kind […]
Last Wednesday during our Self Defense class for the kids, Sensei went into the other room while I warmed up the class and he set up a maze using big folding room dividers. Around blind corners he set Wavemasters (free-standing punching bags) like these: Sensei led the kids, one-by-one, through this maze to have them work on their awareness and […]
Most practitioners of Okinawan Karate know that it is generally a mix of Shuri-Te/Naha-Te/Tomari-Te (collectively Ryukyu-Te or Okinawa-Te) and White Crane Kung Fu from Southern China. If you look at most modern Kung Fu or Kung Fu from Northern China you would not believe this could be the case, but if you ever get the chance to see a good […]
To all martial artists, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, something else or nothing at all: have a great holiday season and a happy new year! I’d like to take a moment to let you that I’m starting to take CBD oil to help me after the training with the pain, and sometimes with the anxiety that comes from organizing […]
Matt over at Ikigai Way has posted a contest that is sponsored by Karate Depot, and I wanted to share it. If you know a Sensei who goes out of their way to help and make an impact in the community, please check out Matt’s “Selfless Sensei” Giveaway post on his blog and enter them in the contest!
