Another Question Answered

I talk about it all the time – in a fight all fighters get to a point where they have to answer the question. The question is that point where you consciously ask yourself if you want to keep fighting and try to win, coast and see what happens, or quit. One of my fighters answered the question recently in a fight and was amazed at what a difference it makes to say to your self “I want to win so I am going for it!”

Nick is a guy who has been training with me for a few years now. He had some training previously somewhere else and a fight or 2 before his run with us. He never was able to win a bout and struggled with personal demons because he just couldn’t drop the hammer in a competitive situation.

Nick’s personal struggle got him beat soundly in 2 bouts under our team. In both cases he had everything he needed to win but couldn’t answer the question positively under pressure. His battle has been more mental, borderline spiritual, instead of the usual physical one fighters go thru.

For about 6 weeks Nick trained everyday but Sunday at least once and at least 2 times a day 3 days a week. This was a tough schedule when you consider that he has a full time job on top of this. Day in and day out I pushed Nick to his limit. In all honesty I was trying to break him. If I could break him in training he would break in competition. He never fully broke in training and he stayed tough in his fight.

I can be pretty hard on you when a fight is coming. With Nick I was at my sadistic best. I needed to get Nick out of his own head and have him put some pressure on his opponent instead of himself for a change. In the dojo he had trouble doing this. I rode him relentlessly. I pushed him around, beat him up, and tried to get in his head. He never really let it go in the dojo, which scared me a bit going into the bout.

Come fight time we warmed up nice and long. We broke everything down thru the warmup, starting with footwork, then punches, then punches to kick, clinching, takedowns, positions, submissions, etc…. As the night progressed you could see Nick transforming into a fighter. Nick’s best strikes to date were backstage. He hit the pads and moved better then I have ever seen him before. It was nice to see the work paying off.

Fight time came and Nick had to stand up start a new path for himself or continue to let his past haunt him. Happily I can say he stepped in the cage and fought like a new man. Nick put it all out there. He held nothing back. He took shots and gave shots right back. In the end he got caught in an armbar but he fought as long as he could before he had to tap to save his shoulder.

Walking back to the locker room Nick said something I have heard from all my guys. “I wanted to quit so bad a few times but I said no way I am gonna keep going!” He said 2 or 3 times he looked at the easy way out but refused to give in. He proved to himself that he can fight when he has to and he proved to all of us that he can do this.

I admit that I had major doubts about Nick and his abilities. After his last bout I look at it as a new beginning. He was truly born again as a fighter and on a much better path. He lost by submission but he never quit, never stopped trying, and simply got caught.

Competition gave Nick the opportunity to test himself. In this case it helped him put it all together. He now understands more about training and himself then before this bout. This is what competition is really about. Winning and losing are not always defined by what the scorecard says. Get wrapped up with your record and you will lose the true value of what you are doing.

I don’t care what has happened before. If you put in the work and are honest with yourself you can set a new course of action and get the results that you want. This is why most of us come in to train and why some of us continue to fight. Nick will never be a UFC champ but he will be a more productive and positive person because he knows what he is capable of pushing to achieve.

This is what REAL is all about.

Let it go

The last class before I wrote this I had some frustrated students on the mat. This brought up some questions and answers I thought to be valuable.

One of my students can’t train that often. He at best can train 2 times a week but usually it is once with times away of a week or more on a bad month. After training an hour of Karate he expressed that he felt like he wasn’t improving?! When you take into account the amount of actual training time it is no miracle that his training has not progressed that far. BUT the truth is that he has progressed, maybe not at the same speed of those training 3 and 4 times a week but he is improving.

Whenever I get the “I am not getting any better at this” statement I have to laugh a little. It isn’t that one isn’t getting any better. It is that they are not improving quick enough for themselves and that is making what is already hard that much harder.

We had a little chat in between Karate and Ju Jitsu. I keyed him in to the above concepts. My best advice here is to relax. Don’t stress about where youa re coming from and where you want to go. Chill out and just enjoy right now. Let the progress come on its’ own. You can’t force improvement.

This particular person doesn’t even like Ju Jitsu but wants to be well rounded in their training. Karate was in their mind the real focus for training with Ju Jitsu as an aside. Tonight Ju Jitsu became the main focus and was actual fun for him because he dropped the pressure and the predisposition against grappling. I am pretty sure that besides fun it was a bit of an eye opener to the fact that he may actually be able to get the art of Ju Jitsu at some point.

Training isn’t easy. Life isn’t easy. If we stress about our stress we are making things that much worse. To give ourselves the freedom we need to act we must let go to a point where we are enjoying the moment and not stressing about its outcome. What is going to happen is going to happen. We just have to be open enough to deal with the results.

We all want what we want. But training and life have a funny way of dictating what we are going to actually get.

Leave your bags at the door

We all have personal baggage that we carry with us. When we come to train we need to leave that baggage at the door. In traditional dojo’s people bow and say “Osu!” when they enter and leave the training area. This is a respectful etiquette practice that most do because they are supposed to. The original intention of this practice was to have a physical action that signaled your commitment to training. It was a symbolic action that says “I am here to work and give everything I have to training.”

Thru consistent practice we can develop the ability to act in the moment. To let all of our baggage go and create honest action. I use the word honest because when we strip away baggage we find the truth. Under all the clutter we accumulate during the day we can loose our personal truth.

Action in the dojo creates action out of the dojo and vice versa. If you work on letting go of any issues you are having and focus on the work in front of you in training you will develop the strength and focus needed to do it outside as well.

Most train for 2 hours 3 to 4 days a week. So in these 6 to 8 hours of our 168 hour week what can go so drastically wrong? In most cases, your baggage will be the same after training as it was before. The difference will be in your ability to deal with it. If you use your training time to free yourself of your burdens, to gain some relief, and to strengthen yourself for that struggle we call “Life” you will have a better chance at achieving success.

We all need a place to get away from things and to find some freedom. There are many paths to freedom. A true path is one that empowers you. False paths are those that numb you to reality. Thru positive action we get stronger. In strength we find freedom which in turn creates harmony. This is why www.realfightingdojo.com has Truth - Strength - Freedom scrolling on its front page.

Know Your Place:

Ted Turner said “Lead, Follow, or Get out of my way!” I love this statement. What is being said here? It is saying that you need to know your place or you are useless.

If you are a leader you must lead. If you are a follower you must follow. If you are neither, you are lost.

In a dojo we have Seniors also known as Sempai and Juniors also known as Kohai. The balance of these two is what makes a dojo work or not. Everyone needs to know there place at any given time and act accordingly. We are not always Sempai or Kohai. Depending on who we are working with we can be either. It is important to recognize the knowledge you have and the knowledge others have to offer. This is what lets you know your place as Senior or Junior at the time.

When it is your time to lead you must be the Sempai. You have to appreciate your task as a leader of those who have les experience then you. More experience does not equal privilege. It equals responsibility. To many take a leadership ship role and abuse it.

Coming up thru the ranks I have had good and bad trainers and Seniors. Most took advantage of my enthusiasm and used it for their own game. A few understood that my enthusiasm was something that needed to be developed for both our benefits. In North America, Seniors tend to haze and abuse junior students on the rise. The juniors are put in a position of taking care of their seniors and have the responsibility of most menial tasks.

The big eye opener for me was going to Japan and seeing the Sempai/Kohai relationship in its country of origin. Juniors had a heavy work load and were put on a hard road of learning. But the Seniors cared for the Juniors in a way I had never participated in before. The Senior might make the junior do his wash but he also took the junior out for dinner and put a few dollars in their pockets when they were having a tough time. Seniors tended to be hard men but fair.

In North America I was part of systems that had juniors picking up the tab when out and the chores being piled on by lazy seniors. It was a system of privilege where the “reward” of rank was juniors being subservient. This is far from the eastern origins of the system. Don’t get me wrong. Positive and negative examples exists on both continents. I have seen some horrendous abuse from Eastern and Western Seniors.

After being a part of many systems I chose to create one that fit a more positive model. I am not Japanese and most of my students are not either. I cannot ask an American to be what they are not the same way I cannot ask a Japanese. I have taken from my experience the positive aspects of both ways and worked them into my dojo. The REAL way of doing things is about knowing your place. Knowing when to lead and when to follow.

I believe in leading from the front. This means I will not ask of anyone something I am not willing to do or have never done before. I have to lead from my experience, not someone else’s. I promote this within my students as well. This keeps us all sharp and honest as training partners and leaders within our community.

At no point can we allow ourselves to look at ourselves as better then those with less experience. We were them once. Experience shared earns respect. This is the respect we should strive for. Respect earned over respect demanded. Our actions should be such that respect is naturally given. Respect demanded creates contempt and breads a negative pattern that will be followed.

I have made my mistakes. When I was younger and less experienced I felt that I needed an iron fist to keep people in line. In time I came to realize people will follow more truthfully if given a choice. I put myself out there to let people know what I am about. They can either follow my way or not. We all need the freedom to choose what we want. It is my job to make sure that the choice is educated and informed so the choice is truthful on both of our parts.

In the end I have a student base that honestly wants to participate in my system. They have actually turned it from my system to our system. I feel more honest about what I do and comfortable with my student base. I have the satisfaction of knowing we all believe in a similar ideal and are working together honestly towards a shared goal.

Learn from others experience:

One thing that really pisses me off is when I am trying to work with someone and they tell me they know something already?! The thing is that if you already knew then I wouldn’t be over correcting them.

After doing the same thing over and over again for long periods of time we forget what it felt like the 1st day. In time we think we know something unlike day 1 when we were hungry for knowledge because we knew we knew nothing and we were excited for something new. This leads to a decline in performance. More times then not we miss the slide from peak performance to maintenance level. This is why it is good to have people with more experience then you around.

We all need a kick in the ass to wake us up to the reality of we don’t know it all. I try to stay as humble as possible in my training and teaching. I have found great success along my way but I know that what got me success today might not work tomorrow. Sound principles are my foundation. What changes is how I train these principles and apply them.

We are not the same person from day to day. Our mental and physical conditions change constantly. This causes us to react differently and changes are ability to deal with situations. When I broke my right hand I had to change my strategy for a while. I had to rely on other tools to deal with the same situations. Some days I don’t have the same mental toughness to deal with heavy contact. This makes me move more then absorb. The adjustments and issues can go on and on.

Our ability to maintain a beginners attitude in training is key to staying fresh in thought and attitude. We can never feel like we have been there and done that. Even if we have we still have a new opportunity to experience in a new time and a new way.

In Karate, people have grown to associate a black belt with mastery. This is not the intended case. In fact the black belt was to signify that one had progressed far enough to now be a student of a way. All the belts before were laying a foundation for learning. The black belt is not an end result but a true beginning for higher learning.

Many fighters I know that are now retired say the same thing. If they only knew what they do now when they were still fighting they would have been so much better then they were. The arrogance of youth has held many of us back. Only in time do we come to realize that there is always something to learn and there is always someone smarter then us out there.

It is the details that separate one experience from another. If we assume we know we will miss the fine points that separate what we did yesterday from today. Coming into each day like it our 1st will keep us open to the changes in life. We all progress as we move forward. We can appreciate the growth but we can’t allow it to stop by being foolish enough to think we know everything.

Only get mad when it’s true:

My dad gave me advice once. He said “Don’t get upset by what people say unless it’s true. And if it is, get mad at you not them cause you did it.” I have to say that that is some pretty sound advice.

I have always kept this advice with me. As a trainer you are in the public eye when you promote your facility and bring fighters to shows. This will bring out quite a few opinions from people you don’t know and most likely never will. You can’t let the chatter get to you. If you are doing your job and living right you don’t have to worry.

I am human. I don’t let chatter fall away all the time. I take what I do personally. Attack me all you want. It is when you attack me in a way that disrespects those around me that I get most upset. I live by my way as true as I can. I am passionate about the positive change that can occur from training right. I do bring criticism upon myself when I fall short of my way just like you will. The key is learning from these short trips off the path so they don’t keep happening.

The great samurai Miyamoto Musashi once said “Live life in a way you won’t regret.” If you are living this way, what can someone say to upset you? We all have to live with our actions and how the are perceived.

It all comes down to belief. If you believe in a way then live by it you have nothing to fear. It is when we stray from our way that we open ourselves up for criticism that can get to us. To critic my way is one thing, criticize me for not following my way is another. If your way is strong and true it will withstand criticism but if we fall off of our way we have nothing to fight with. We are the one who failed to stay the course so we bring upon ourselves anything we get.

If you believe something you should feel the need to live it fully. For some it is as simple as a choice because they possess the personal skills and strength to do this. Others need time to develop the strength and the skills. If you need to grow to fit your beliefs you can start with something more manageable. What it takes to do a small task well is the same as a big one. If your goal is to be a world champion you can’t just step into the ring and take on the top guy. You have to set goals and meet them along the way to the top. Every fighter has a first fight. Your 1st goal is yours. Train for it, get in shape, then go for it. Adjust according to the outcome and keep moving forward towards success then a new goal.

Training and conditioning can encompass many different areas. Physical, mental and even spiritual training may be needed. When a goal is significant you usually need all 3. A fight may be personal battles, mental property, day to day work issues, or an actual fight. To me, fighting can be anything because fighting on a competitive level is the one thing I learned to do the rest of my life well. You may be a businessman, a husband, or a father before you are anything else. You have to strip down to your core and see where your base understanding of things comes from.

We all establish a pattern from experience. Our pattern in most cases can be traced to the 1st thing we ever identified with personally and found great success or great failure thru. It is what we tap into when faced with the opportunity to have success or failure. If our base is negative we will more times then not fail but if our experience pattern is positive we will find success more.

It takes a strong and honest person to see their truth. Many of us have negative foundations that we don’t want to see because they are to painful to acknowledge. We have to bolster our strength so we can be truthful about who and what we are so we can deal with this and continue our patterns freely or create new ones.

I had a recent experience with a family member dealing with personal pain. The pain comes from their partner having a terminal illness. Their response has not been what they want. The stress of the knowledge has caused a pattern of behavior that they do not like. In looking at their past they are scared that they won’t be able to handle this new situation.

My answer to the fear and depression because of the identity of a personal truth that is uncomfortable is this. We can’t change who we have been in the past but we can work towards a new reality moving forward. We have to draw a line in the sand of time and commit to only judging ourselves from this point on. This point is a point that we know who and what we are. Every moment forward we are working towards positive and progressive change. We can’t carry the burden of past negativity. We must move forward stronger knowing that we are making new positive patterns from our point of demarcation.

Our past and the patterns we have created can dominate us if not dealt with. We must acknowledge them then let them go. Their weight will be to much for us to carry as we forward in a more positive way.

The reason I love teaching Martial Arts is its direct way of dealing with who we are. You can’t hide from yourself when training. You can only do what you are strong enough to do and what you are skilled enough to understand. It is a simple reality check that can bring you in touch with so much in your life. By seeing the truth we can then act to be strong or continue to ignore the truth and hide from our reality in some other self satisfying but meaning less task.

Have you ever heard the saying “Easy isn’t worth doing”? It doesn’t mean we have to kill ourselves with impossible tasks all the time. The main point is that only thru difficult and challenging tasks can we find growth. Only thru solving problems will we expand our physical and mental abilities.

Your body won’t change without a diverse set of challenges. Your mind won’t expand without a broad range of stimulus. We have to open our lives to as much experience as possible to maximize our potential and create positive change.

If you are unhappy with what people are saying or what you are doing, look for the foundation of your patterns of success or failure. If you are continuing a positive pattern of success you need to identify it and learn from it so it will continue. If you are following a negative pattern you need to draw that line and start on a new path with new patterns. Challenge yourself with something new. Something fresh and free of past distractions. Challenge yourself to do something you have never done before and enjoy it.

Look death in the eye:

You ever turn away from something coming at you like it just might stop if you don’t look at it? Chances are you got smashed anyway. This happens all the time literally and figuratively. My attitude about it is if death is gonna come knocking we might as well look it in the eye and see our fate.

In sparring, 1 human being is trying to hit another. This creates a bit of tension. Some seem fearless and others wear their fear on their sleeve. There is no right or wrong here. It is what it is. The key becomes what do we do about this? If we have no fear of getting hit, Great! You are one of the lucky few.

After countless rounds in the ring sparring and fighting I can honestly say that I get a little nervous before every round. It usually settles between a balance of not wanting to look stupid and the other is that I know what can go wrong and how much it could hurt. It is how we all deal with our nerves or fear that will define our success or failure.

I don’t know to many people that like pain or being afraid. Sparring is an exercise in both. It is inevitable that you will feel pain from being hit then you will have to deal with fear of it happening again. In time you will either accept this or you will stop sparring all together.

Life is no different then sparring. You have to accept that in trying to live we will be faced with pain and fear. If we accept this and deal with it we will keep progressing. If we let fear of pain stop us we will be living a limited existence. This is unacceptable to some but the norm for most.

Why do we love action movies? Its because somebody else is being the hero for us. Americans love the guy who takes a beating then comes out on top in the end. Most like this story because it is how they feel but can only imagine living. Our pop culture lives are inundated with images of those that do so we don’t have to. We can let pop culture live for us or we can define our lives thru our own personal culture.

We have created a society of professional spectators. The majority of people will watch or listen before doing. That is why we love our TV’s, Movie Theatres, radios, computers, cell phones, etc…… They are all vehicles of distraction from doing. That is why we pay the money we do to entertainers and their industries. It is easier to give up money then it is effort.

The true purpose driven life is the one that looks death in the eye and says I don’t care. We all know we are going to die but not all of us appreciate the time we have before death comes. We can live in fear as spectators that allow others to take the hits for us or we can get up and get out into the world and live our own lives with our own experiences.

Nothing has been more real for me then getting punched in the face. It is an immediate wake up call. It lets you know that you made a mistake like not to many other mistakes in life. It has made me appreciate everything I have and motivated me to go after the things I want. I also know I won’t be able to spar and compete at a high level forever. I have been forced to accept time and my personal limitations from wear and tear. This has translated into an appreciation for most things in my life. I know that many good things in life are fleeting and I must enjoy them while they are still here.

Not everyone needs a punch n the face to wake them up to reality. We all have our sparring. Mine is in a ring. Yours may be the boardroom. No matter what we all take our shots. We can freak out about them or we can take them and learn to appreciate the fleeting nature of life.