Shock and Awe...Pain Saves Lives

Go and get punched in the face...you heard me! Go get punched, kicked, slammed, choked, smacked, kneed and elbowed. Pain is an important part of martial arts training. Knowing and dealing with pain is even more important than knowing how to dish it out. Without ever experiencing pain you can't learn to fight through it! As your experience with pain increases your sensitivity to it will decrease. The end goal is to be able to turn off the pain, to power through it.

Unexpected pain or the fear of pain can cause a person to freeze. Freezing is what will lead to more pain, to loss, to death. The fear can be paralyzing. Learning to except pain and even relish it, is the only way to overcome the fear of pain. Once you except that pain is inevitable in a physical confrontation, and that pain can't and won't kill you only sub-coming to  it can. Once you realize that pain is learned and can be controlled and over come, then fear and shock can be bypassed. It is important to understand pain and the realization of pain. Think about how many times you cut yourself and don't realize until you see blood, your brain doesn't register the pain until you see the wound. Because pain is something that we learn at a young age it is almost impossible to unlearn but can be put out of the brain, turned off. Turning off the pain, moving past it is something that takes practice and focus, there are many systems, ideas and studies to accomplishing this task  but the first thing is to experience what it is that you need to overcome. So go and get hurt, get beaten, get thrown around it could save your life! Remember if you wanna stay clean you gotta fight dirty.

"Real Violence Needs Real Solutions"

M.U.C.T 

Multiple Choice Martial Arts...Choose Your Weapons

When I was very young I noticed something, that something is that no two people are a like. People come is all sorts of shapes and sizes, tall and short, fat and thin, lanky and stubby etc. So it puzzles me when I see two people of differing dimensions and proportions executing the same technique in exactly the same manner. Further more it boggles my mind why some instructors insist on the rigidity of executing a certain technique a certain way. Are we all the same? Are we all fighting the same person?

I have come to understand that martial arts needs to be tailored  to fit the individuals needs. When an instructor tells you to step forward or back or side to side do they mean my step or their step. I as a man of 5'5" am not going to have nearly as long a stride as a man who is 6'5", so why on earth would we follow that stride with the same strike. Doesn't it make sense that he would be closer to the opponent then I would be, which would naturally imply that he should use a closer range weapon, say an elbow when I would use a punch. But so many stick to doctrine and try to fit the individual into the mold of the system as opposed to tailoring the system to fit the individual. I always tell my students and training partners that while the numbers may change (in this case reach and distance) the equation stays the same, it is just like doing math. Really martial arts and self defense is math, you have a problem that must be solved and you need to employ calculated movements and equations to solve this problem. You have to take into account all the factors and then plug them into the equation to reach a desired outcome which is your solution. So instead of teaching doctrine why don't we teach equations? Instead of set techniques why don't we teach theory and idea's?

The Tactical Short Staff (Jo Staff)...

If you could learn only how to use one weapon, what would that weapon be? Before you answer that question, I want you to think long and hard about a few factors first abundance, second force multiplication ability and thirdly ease of use. Now please take a second and be realistic in your thinking, don't pick the weapon that you like the most or think is the coolest. If you picked the short staff also known as the quarter staff or jo staff then you can pass go and collect your $200.