Objective measures can be compelling. They’re easy to inspect and they can allow you to see progress in a way you can graph. However, often people choose the wrong goals to measure and this has a detrimental effect on their development. For example, when a student gets focused on winning or “getting hits”, a few negative outcomes typically occur: They Read More …
Even if you’re part of a vibrant school or club and have lots of training partners to practice with, keeping a daily rhythm is an essential part of the path of mastery. That means you’re going to have a lot of solo training occasions to fill. Most partner drills don’t effectively translate into a solitary analog, so here’s some guidance Read More …
“Where’s the Fire?” asked Christopher Sommer in the last moments of a podcast I was listening to last week. Sommer is the Head Coach of the USA JR National Gymnastics Team and runs an online strength training program called Gymnastic Bodies (which is absolutely worth checking out). When I started listening, I anticipated hearing from him what you hear from many accomplished motivators. I expected Read More …
A few weeks ago I delivered a talk at TEDx EastVan. The talk focused on something I am passionate about: inspiring others to pursue and master movement. In the talk I delve into why I believe it’s vital to pursue the path of mastery — that it is both vulnerable and empowering. In fact, it is the journey through our Read More …
I have gone from being able to do 100 push-ups in a set to not being able to do one and back again. I spent years developing myself as a fencer only to have to tear down what I’d built and start from scratch. Years ago I could touch my toes without bending my legs, sometime in the future I will again. Read More …
This past week during my polearms class one of my students, who is hard of hearing, asked me to put on a wireless microphone (worn as a necklace). This microphone connects to a receiver in his hearing aids that allows him to hear me more clearly regardless of where I am in class, which way I’m facing, and whether he’s Read More …
“You see first with your mind, then with your eyes, then finally it is in your body.” — Yagyu Munenori. Family Traditions on the Art of War, 17th century. Stuck In Your Head Whether it’s swordplay, dancing, or driving a car, when you first learn a skill it exists within the conscious learning part of the mind. This is the space Read More …
The path to mastery is as little as 25% technical, and 75% psychological. Not to diminish what it takes to learn and apply a martial art physically, but I have met very few students that I didn’t feel were physically capable, with sufficient practice, of mastering their arts. The real barriers to long-term mastery are inside. It is perhaps only through Read More …
The route from learning a new skill to pulling it off in combat is not a simple process. Though you can take many skills immediately into combat and make some progress, it is more effective to follow a formal process that targets the skill in a focused manner at each stage of its development. Stage 1: Mechanical Learning The goal Read More …
One thing I’ve noticed among my Vancouver-based foreign friends is that so many of them have good, workable, English, but not great English. Many of these people have been speaking English for more than 20 years, they’ve put in tons of hours of practice, yet they’re not getting any better — one friend told me that he feels that he’s Read More …