Sad Tidings, and New Developments

There have been a few recent developments in my martial arts life; man, things are always interesting and challenging. After the euphoria of getting to pursue Judo again (alongside BJJ) on my lunch hours, it was quite a blow when my Corporate Overlords (good call, Pat) decided to tighten up our lunch schedules at work.

For the past 6 years, as long as everyone got their work done, it didn't matter how long we took for lunch. No one cared. Last week, all that changed. Doing several BJJ classes, and Judo study sessions per week, was taking 2+ hours for lunch (driving time, class, showering, etc). So my work friend and I had to cancel our gym memberships at the BJJ place, which is also the space we used to practice Judo a couple times a week. In a nutshell, my throwing and grappling studies sadly ground to a halt.

I'm not complaining, I know I still have it better than most people do, with the job I have, and they had every right to tweak their expectations. I take SOME comfort in the fact I'll still be able to pursue karate, but that progress has been slow.

The powers that be aren't completely locking down lunches to one hour - we can get a little more, we just have to make up the time elsewhere. But they still don't want us gone for 2 hours.

It was crushing me to have to halt lunchtime martial arts, but there is a possible solution.  There is a Krav Maga school 6 minutes from where I work. The schedule is good, they have lunch classes, and the classes are only an hour, so I can do a few classes per week, and just work 30 minutes late on those days. They also have some classes that start 15 minutes after I get off work so those are possibilities too. The lineage is good too; it's in the "Fit to Fight" organization, which split off from KM Worldwide. The head of the organization was a high ranking guy under Darrin Levine of KMWW.

I've always had some interest in Krav / Combatives / "Reality Based" arts. The only thing I really don't care for about them, is how *in general* a lot of their practitioners pooh-pooh the value of traditional martial arts (some of which is justified, but they paint with too broad a brush for my taste). When it comes to martial arts, I don't get into the exclusivity, the "my art is better than all others" mentality. Of course I had to deal with that in BJJ as well. I learned from Pat, "all martial arts are the same". ;-)    There's something to be learned from all of them.

I'll continue to study karate, but I'm going to a trial Krav class today, to see how it goes. I'll report back here!

Good Article Regarding Knives for Self-Defense

Deadly force better be justified if you pull a knife! Check out this post for some good thoughts on knives for self-defense:   http://tgace.com/2015/08/18/cut-to-kill/

Certified!

I'm proud to report that after 22 hours of training this past weekend, I passed my NRA Basic Pistol Instructor course. That means after the paperwork with NRA and Louisiana State Police is all taken care of, I'll be able to teach the class for concealed carry permit applicants!

I learned a lot during the course. Much of the training can be applied to the aikido lessons I teach as well, since they're just good didactic methodology.  Met some great folks, and had a good time shooting. I was originally planning to use the certification to teach family and friends, but the more I learn about it, the more I think I may be able to make a legitimate side business out of it. I'll also use the opportunity to advertise my aikido lessons to my shooting students as well. Devious, I know.

Stay tuned for developments!

Happy and Humbled

I got a great feeling this week, and thought I'd post about it.


I've written about my buddy Josh, who I work with and train BJJ with. We've been friends since we were kids, and our families remain friends to this day. Josh has always been into martial arts. In fact, he was mostly responsible for me even giving grappling a second thought (I never really intended to train in judo until the last year or two). Way back in the day, Josh trained judo at the dojo at which I would eventually come to begin training in aikido. His only exposure to aikido was what he saw on the mats while warming up for judo classes.


For as long as I can remember, Josh has had a familiar mantra: "BJJ is superior to all other martial arts. Period." For the past couple of years as I've practiced aikido, Josh has always sort of made fun of it, "attacking" me with his "zombie arm" out in front of him, walking like Frankenstein. I never really try to convince people otherwise - I can understand what aikido looks like from the outside. I can see how it's so often misunderstood.


A couple of months ago, I got a job with the company Josh works for. In fact, my cubicle is right next to his. During occasional down times, we'll goof around and pretend to fight; everything from "Jim Carey stiff-arm knife attacks" to old-school karate kata and one-steps we remember from childhood. Just goofing off. Inevitably, Josh attacks me "aikido-style", and I usually do something from 1-9 of junana hon kata (such as I can). We just mess around and have fun.


This past couple of weeks, being so near the holidays, have been really slow at work. Wednesday afternoon, we ended up playing around again. I kept doing shomenate, and to my great surprise, Josh asked me to show him what I was doing. I explained that ideally, my reaction to an attacker getting a "certain distance" from me, would be to step off the line and get my hands up. Then I could do whatever the attacker "wanted" me to (once I'm proficient, that is) - get away, knock him down, lock him up, etc.


So while I gave a "lesson" on shomenate (and tried to give a little lesson on aiki in general), I quoted Pat: "In this situation, you might be able to do something to me, but you're going to have to do it while you're flying backwards."


Josh, being practically-minded, wanted to test the validity of what we were doing. So once we did a few reps, he started trying to figure out what he, as an attacker, could do to counter or nullify what I was doing to him. It turns out the harder he tried to press the attack, the worse his condition became, and he could tell that if we were doing this at a "realistic" speed, he would be knocked down easily (even though he's much stronger than I am, and very athletic).


I was happy he showed some interest in aikido. I always like the chance to talk about it. We left it at that. After we left work, I got a text from him: "Man, you've got me interested in aikido now". I texted back: "It really is extremely neat/interesting. And way more practical than it looks on the surface." Josh: "Yeah, I just realized how practical. Changed my whole view just now." Me: "Now you're just teasing me." Josh: "No. I'm being serious. I saw some things when we were practicing."


We had lunch together the next day. I asked him to elaborate on what he saw in our aikido practice. Josh is the kind of guy that was pretty... "adventurous" when he was younger. By that I mean he was in a ton of fights. Bar room brawls, road rage fights, etc (he's much more mature now, and less of a hot-head). He explained how just from shomenate, he could remember so many situations where he could have defended himself more successfully if he'd known aikido. He also said he could see how his wife would be able to use it to defend herself, even though she's just a slip of a girl. I told him the story of how my petite wife was able to drop another one of my friends with aikido when we were both training together (he asked her for a "lesson", haha). He said he could see how aikido might be the most practical art for real self defense.


It really does seem like his attitude toward aikido has turned around 180 degrees. It's pretty thrilling to me - and humbling that my aikido...which is no more than a couple years old, could make such a drastic difference in someone's opinion about the art. It's encouraging.

Synchronicity

Here's another blogger's post regarding the same type of thing I wrote about on the post directly below this one. Check it out here!

Other Forms of Self Defense

I'm practicing martial arts mainly so I'll have the skills I need in the event I ever need to defend myself or my family. Statistically, I'm not very likely to need to use those skills in self-defense. So why do I work on this stuff if I have a low probability of needing it? My primary answer is "Just in case", as it is better to have the skills and not need them, than to need them and not have them.




But martial arts are, for me, only one piece of a more holistic self/family-defense strategy. I was driving around the other day thinking about other things my wife and I are doing that might fall into this more broadly-defined "defense" category:

• We wear our seat belts, and make sure our daughter's car seat is secured properly. When the traffic light changes to green, we don't cross the intersection without making sure someone from the cross street isn't going to run the light for whatever reason.
• We're not OCD about it, but we do try to keep our hands clean, by washing them often. CDC says hand-washing is the #1 way to prevent sickness. I go so far as to try to open public doors by touching parts of them that are probably less-used (push the bar closer to the hinge, push the glass with my elbow, etc). Okay, that may be a little out there, I admit.
• We're trying to get fit (my wife is fit already, but ugh, not me) and improve our diet. I read a GREAT post related to this from "Man of the West" today. Please take a minute to read it by clicking HERE. Kind of a "self-defense against socialist health care" article!
• I'm going to take a basic first aid / CPR / AED course soon.
• We put money and supplies aside when we can.
• We stay out of "bad" areas of town and stay aware of our surroundings when we're in public.
• We keep the exterior of our house well-lit at night, and the doors locked.

You get the idea...are these ground-breaking, innovative tips that will revolutionize your life? Nope. I'm sure most people do this stuff already. I'm just trying to develop a broader view of what it means to take care of myself and my family, and include more likely scenarios in my defensive outlook.