I don’t want to say “pressure” because I believe that particular word has a few negative connotations. However, I think I may have hit upon something the other day in one of my sparring classes which happened to have a mostly younger population (8-10) Generally while teaching a sparring class, there’s a lot of drills …
The other day I was walking into the school and starting to get various things ready for the day. I had a few phone calls to make, a few contracts to enter, and some general upkeep that needed to be done. There was also the generally unglamorous task of cleaning all the bathrooms and giving …
The US Open is Big. Like, really big. They seemed to have rented out the entire Coranado Plaza Hotel at Disney. Everywhere I walked, there were martial artists huddled in corners sleeping on bags, and meandering around with preocupied expressions on their faces. But, no one is running through form in the middle of the …
Continue reading U.S. Open Adventures: Disappointments and Realizations
The past few weeks there has been quite the secret that I've been sitting on. It was something that I thought about writing on indirectly. In fact, there were edits on many posts made right before publishing. A type of last minute, frantic, realization of what I was doing. As you may be able to …
Just last night I was at the dojo wrapping up an adult class. One of the members came up to me and jokingly accused me of only talking about the karate kids. Every one was getting shoes on and wrangling the last few children who always seemed to be wandering around. "We aren't all kids!" …
Two years ago I moved from Ashland, WI to Milwaukee. Over that summer I had been doing some contract work for the DNR. I was removing invasive species and planting native trees along the shoreline of Lake Superior. It was good work. I was outside all the time, and usually got to see some pretty …
Continue reading How to Own a Dojo: Step 1 – Burning Need for Change
The day after I got back from my drive to Gary, Indiana I managed to throw my back out while putting my shoes on. After pulling myself into the standing position using the assistance of a table and a fair amount of swearing. I hobbled to work and got to tell my story of …
Tournament day! I was up at 4:50am and on the road by 5:15. There was an early morning drama of spilling a cup of water all over my laptop, followed by a very quiet, very intense, 8 minutes of hitting the power button and wishing REALLY hard. It did eventually boot up, and everything seems …
Memorial Day weekend has come and gone. We were able to honor the men and women of the armed forces and, if we were lucky, spend some time with family or good friends. I was helping some friends move. They are the types of friends who became family a long, long time ago. When I …
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