That’s right. It took me 16 years to receive my black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. That’s a long time getting tapped, smashed, and crushed!

Am I bitter about it taking so long? Not at all! That’s the road I chose to walk.

You see, the truth is I love Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but it’s never been my main priority. My #1 martial art is Kung Fu San Soo. Everything else I pursue is intended to enhance that. And BJJ has definitely enhanced my Kung Fu!

So, do I recommend that you train in BJJ, too? Yes, I do! I’ve talked about its benefits before in podcast #34: Facing Death and in this video about sparring. But, of course, that’s just my opinion. You do whatever you need to do to be your best.

Still, check out this podcast anyway. Whether you’re a black belt now or on the road to one, the advice I share in this episode will help you, too.

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16 Years to Black Belt

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TRANSCRIPT

Today, on Fight for a Happy Life, “16 Years to Black Belt”.

Howdy, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode number 130 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

If you watched last episode, you know that my wife works at home, and she requested that I record these things in my car. Well, today, I’m gonna stay inside, but I am gonna try to keep it down.

But if you see a foot enter the frame here, or a frying pan, that would be her. Who knows, maybe you’ll witness a murder today. Although I don’t think she would publish that. Hard to say.

Anyway, today, I want to make an announcement.

I earned my Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Yay for me. Or what’s wrong with you? I say that because it took me 16 years to earn that Black Belt.

I received it from Rigan Machado, the living legend at his Beverly Hills Academy. And yeah, it took me 16 years. Normally, in case you don’t know, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is an art where it could typically take 10 or 11 years. Most of the people I know, it took them about that long.

If you’re a hot shot on the tournament scene, if you’ve had some wrestling or judo in your background, maybe you could do it faster. If you’ve been injured along the way, maybe it takes a little longer.

In my case, sure, I could say that COVID was one of the reasons for slowing me down. The lockdown definitely put a bump in the road.

It’s also true that I moved to Raleigh. But I did join a Jiu Jitsu school when I was in Raleigh. Shout out to Alliance Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Cary, a fine school if you’re in the area.

So I kept training anyway I could through that downtime. And once things were completely back to normal, I went back at it. Still took 16 years.

So, again, yay for me and what’s wrong with you? The big question is, was it worth it after 16 years? Are you still going to go?

Yes and yes. Absolutely it’s been worth it. And yes, I went right back to class. Just got back a couple hours ago. I got some people, they got me, we’re back in the cycle.

I’ve talked about the benefits of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu before, back in Episode #24. We talked about the facing death and acceptance of death.

I’ve also made a video on how Brazilian Jiu Jitsu actually helped my striking and takedown games, oddly enough. So you might want to check that one out too.

But today I wanted to try to share four new lessons that I haven’t talked about before, which may or may not help you on your journey in the martial arts or outside the martial arts. Starting with number one, what was number one?

Sign up anyway

Let me be clear. I did not want to take Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Like everyone else, I saw MMA when it debuted in the UFC, and sure, I was impressed.

I saw a skill set that I didn’t really have. I felt the vulnerabilities of being taken to the ground and doing stupid things and getting choked out or my arm broken. But still, I put it off for a long time.

I was training in other arts. We did train on the ground sometimes, so I thought maybe that’s enough. But it really wasn’t.

And over time, I knew it, and that voice in my head kept saying, do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. By the time I was 39, that’s when I started to get serious about it. I went to some seminars with some big names.

I had some coworkers who were already into BJJ, and I rolled with them. I flew out to train with my brother even, who was already into this stuff. I also found Stephan Kesting on YouTube. Shout out to Stephan. He has some great videos and online courses.

And for a full year, I immersed myself in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, without actually having to commit to it. And over that year, I learned a lot, and I definitely picked up some skills, but I couldn’t stop that nagging voice in my head saying, you really should make this official and go study.

That nagging voice also belonged to one of my friends, Sensei Dorene. Shout out to Sensei Dorene, who was training at Rigan Machado’s Academy. And she just kept saying for months, you should just come join, come join, come join.

And eventually I did. Now, at the age of 40, tying on a white belt and being the bottom of the pile, that’s a big shot to the ego. I didn’t have to go there. I was already making a living as a martial arts teacher. But still, I chose that as an elective to start over in something new. And it was great.

No regrets, of course. Even at 40 years old, thankfully, I was already in shape. I had learned a lot of lessons, I could take some bumps and bruises.

So I found that the process wasn’t as bad as I thought. By the age of 50, I started to notice a bit of a difference, though, between the young, strong, aggressive guys and what I was able to do.

And that’s when the misgivings would start to come in, like, how long do you want to keep doing this? Why are you doing this? Certainly, my wife was always that voice in my head, saying, why do you keep driving over there?

Why do you keep coming home limping? What’s the matter with you? What are you trying to achieve? But I answered all those questions. There was value in what I was doing. I was improving, and so I kept going.

And really, the bigger question is, what’s the alternative? Whatever it is you want to do, what’s the choice? To never do it? To never try? To give it up? I don’t think that’s a great choice.

I think life’s too short. And the sooner you get into something, the sooner it’s either going to start improving your life, or the sooner you’ll know that was the wrong choice and to get the heck out of it.

But at least you won’t wonder about it anymore. Sadly, I have many peers who I’ve come up the ranks with in various arts who’ve dropped out, who have given up, and they can blame their kids or their jobs or their time or feeling older or injuries.

The list of excuses is never ending. But the bottom line is they all dropped out. And honestly, I don’t think they made a great choice.

I don’t see that they’ve replaced the value of martial arts with any other activity. I don’t know what they’re sitting on the couch, as far as I can tell. I think they made a bad choice.

And I’m saying it right to their face, not that they’re watching. But don’t let that happen to you.

My advice, whatever it is that you’re curious about, whatever it is that’s nagging you in the back of your head that you must do, or should at least try, sign up. Are you too old? Do you have the money?

Do you have the time? Will people judge you? Sign up anyway.

That’s the advice. Sign up anyway. Be a grinder. Be relentless. Just keep pushing forward and get in there. If you quit, quit.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to do is quit. The hardest thing is just to sign up. So don’t overthink it. Just go sign up. If it helps, the way I think about it nowadays is–

You don’t have to be the best person in the room to be your best, but you do have to be in the room to be your best. So get in the room.

Sign up. And don’t quit.

Lesson number two.

Focus on skills, not belts

In the beginning, when I started BJJ, I didn’t understand the belt system.

I didn’t care. I was literally going because I felt that vacuum of skill that I wanted to fill. The bottom line was I did not want to do stupid things if I hit the ground. Standing up, I thought I was pretty smart.

When I hit the ground, sure, I could scramble and do my best being a savage, but I knew that somewhere in there I was doing stupid things that would get me caught by someone who actually knew what they were doing.

So my goal going in, literally, in my head I was thinking stop the stupid stuff. Don’t get caught doing stupid stuff. If you beat me in a fight fair and square, so be it.

If you kill me fair and square, so be it. But I don’t want to die doing something stupid. Once I got into the class, I kind of noticed that the blue belts were pretty solid. They were pretty solid. They didn’t seem to be doing stupid stuff. They were beating me.

So I put that in my head like, look, if I could just get to blue belt, however long that takes, let me get to blue belt, and then I feel I will have stopped doing stupid stuff. Let that be my marker. Of course, what happens?

I got to my blue belt, and I was still doing stupid stuff and still getting caught. The vacuum was not full at all. I had not filled anything.

So I said, okay, well, I’ll just keep going. Let me just, I don’t know what the end of this is, but let me just keep going. Years pass. I think I’m getting better, but then again, I think I’m not. By the time I’m awarded a purple belt, I’m still doing stupid stuff and getting caught. All right, I’ll just keep going.

Maybe brown belt is the answer. No, no, it wasn’t. Brown belt, stupid stuff, getting caught. And now, a week old, I’ve received my black belt. Am I overdoing stupid stuff? Absolutely not. I just tapped today. I don’t think that ever ends, at least for me. I’ll be stupid forever.

Degrees of stupid, perhaps I’m less stupid, and certainly I’ve learned how to make new stupid mistakes as opposed to the old stupid mistakes. But there’s always something to learn, which is why, if you’re focused on skills, you’ll always have a good time. You’ll always feel that it was worth going to class.

It’s easy to get distracted by belt drama, or title drama. Why did that guy get a belt and not me? I’m better than him. Didn’t you see me beat him? How did that guy just get a belt? He hasn’t been here as long as I have. He doesn’t care as much as I do. That guy’s a jerk.

It’s so easy to get caught up in that kind of thinking, and it ruins the whole experience. So remember why you signed up. You signed up anyway, right? What did you want? You’ve got to keep that in the front of your head at all times so you don’t get pulled into the life’s not fair routine.

Focus on the skills, and I think you’ll always be happy. Let me ask it this way.

Whatever martial art you may be in right now, if there were no belts, if there were no titles, would you still show up to class?

No uniforms, no belts, would you still train? In my opinion, if your answer to that is, maybe not. No, I don’t think I would. Then you should do something else. This martial arts is just not for you. You’re there for the wrong reasons.

That’s judgmental, I know. Hey, if you just want to get out of the house and do your thing, have some fun, you made some friends, you know, please go. I’d rather that you train than you don’t train, honestly.

But at least be honest about why you’re training and what your goals are. Don’t pretend like you want to be a really good teacher someday or you want to be the best you can be at martial arts.

Just say you have a good time hanging out with your friends. Just say you like having a workout that’s a little different than a treadmill. Nothing wrong with that.

Do your thing, of course. But just be honest about it. If you’re not, then I don’t think you’ll ever actually be the best version of you.

If you really think that you’re there for the skills, but you’re not, you’re there for the drama, you’re there for the fun, you’re there for the workout, you’ll never be the best version of you. Because you’re not, your goals don’t match your effort.

So you’re asking the wrong questions, you’re looking at the wrong things. It’ll be a muddled experience. So be honest.

Number three, third lesson.

Go to class anyway

Go to class anyway. Nothing is easy. There have been a lot of ups and downs on this over these 16 years. Okay, some days you love it. I loved it. Some days I hated it. Some days I couldn’t wait to get to class to try something.

Some days I absolutely did not want to go, see that guy again, have to put up with that person again. Sometimes I was hurt. Sometimes I was healthy. Sometimes I had a lot of enthusiasm. Sometimes I was full of defeatism. I’ll never get this. I’m terrible. I’m too old. I’m too slow. I don’t have the time to practice all these things. Sometimes walking in with confidence. Sometimes plagued by insecurity.

I think this is the nature of all learning. I think that’s just the way it goes. It’s a roller coaster. You gain a little. You hit a plateau. You drop a little. You gain a little bit more. You plateau for longer. You drop a little.

It’s just this roller coaster. But you should know by now that that’s it. That’s for everybody. It’s not just you. It’s not personal. The universe isn’t against you. This is the learning process. And the fact that most people start dropping out on the downs, on the injuries, on the defeated feeling days, that’s what makes rewards so much more fulfilling. Because you stuck it out through the dark times, through the times when there was no motivation other than your drive, your routine, your discipline, to just keep going.

That reminds me of that quote from Woody Allen. “80% of success is just showing up.” Just show up. I don’t care what mood you’re in. I don’t care what state you’re in. I don’t care what’s going on in your life. Just show up.

When you hate it, just show up. You’re out of money, you’re out of time. You’re out of enthusiasm. Just show up. When you show up, good things happen. Surprises happen. Breakthroughs happen.

Sitting on the couch, not a lot of breakthroughs there. Not a lot of rewards sitting on the couch. So, go. Go to class anyway. Whatever excuse you have in your head, whatever. Go to class anyway. And be patient with yourself. You have to give this time.

I gave myself 16 years. I didn’t know it was going to take 16 years to get this part, get this far, but it did. And I’m glad I gave myself this time. I’m glad I was patient with myself. I’m glad I didn’t let the dark times kick me out of the game. Go anyway.

I promise. If you keep going, good things happen.

Number three. What are we on? Three? Four? What are we on? Four? I guess there are five, actually I have five. Fourth lesson.

Count your blessings

This one really hit me late in the game. I’m 56. So this last six months to a year, it’s become increasingly clear to me how blessed I am to even pursue this goal in the first place.

You may not have time. I had time. You may not have the money. I had just enough money. You may not have had a teacher. I had a teacher. And the teacher kept the school open and kept showing up. So I had consistency. What a blessing.

I’ve had good health, more important than anything. I’ve had good health. I haven’t been taken up by an injury, knock on wood. I’ve been able to keep showing up and keep trying. I didn’t really think about that in martial arts in teenager, 20s, 30s. You know, as I started getting my 40s, once in a while it occurred to me.

But definitely right now, I’m just feeling more blessed than ever that I’ve had this opportunity to pursue this. I have to presume that you have some blessings too.

If you have the time to be listening to this, presumably you have some time that you can work on yourself as well. You can train a little bit. You can watch a video. You can wrestle around with a pillow on the floor. You can maybe get to a class. Even if it’s once every couple of weeks, that’s better than nothing.

Chip away. Count your blessings. Really be grateful for what you have. And use every bit of it while you can. Life may change. It may change for me.

I may not have the time, the health, or the money, or the opportunity. So I’m just so happy that I stuck with it this far. Whatever you have right now, milk the hell out of it.

Use everything you’ve got. The bottom line is–

There’s probably someone with less than you who’s doing more than you.

That thought haunts me all the time. Someone who’s not as blessed as I am is being far more prolific and productive than I am. So get in there. Use what you got.

Alright, I think this is the fifth lesson. My math is all screwy. This is the fifth lesson. The fifth lesson is–

Write your own adventure

You know, I probably could have gotten the Black Belt faster in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu if I had made it more of a priority. I may have joined a different school where maybe the standards weren’t as high. I could have attended more classes at the school that I do go to, for sure. I could have competed. I could have gotten a tattoo that says “BJJ for life” to show how serious I was.

There are a lot of things I could have done to speed up that timeline. But you know what? For me, BJJ, like I said, has never been my main art. It’s never been my number one priority. It’s always been a supplement to the other arts that I love and the other arts that I’m already training in. So I was happy just to make some time for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

So in a way, part time art, part time rank. I’m totally fine with that. Someone said that to me back when I was in Aikido classes. I did Aikido for three years when I was younger. And I felt a little bitter at that time because there were people who had started at the same time I did, went to the same camps.

But they might have gone to a couple more classes than I did on the regular. And the teacher told me, he said, well, part time art, part time rank. Because at the time I was also in Taekwondo, which had my full attention. Aikido was something on the side, my supplement, which I enjoyed very much. But to be fair to the art, I was not 100% in. So same here.

I have no bitterness about it. Fact is I was already a Black Belt. I’ve already got Black Belts in Taekwondo and Shotokan and Kung Fu San Soo. So coming in, that’s why I didn’t care about belts so much in BJJ. I was literally there for the skills that I felt I was lacking.

For me, the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was an attribute builder. It made me more comfortable with proximity, pressure, breathing under pressure, stress, being able to manage stress, pain of a different kind than just getting hit, but being squeezed and being crushed, being able to solve physical puzzles on the fly.

For me, I treated, and still do treat Brazilian Jiu Jitsu like lifting weights or going for a run. When you go for a run to work on your cardio, that’s not martial arts in and of itself, but it enhances my training in martial arts. I lift weights nowadays, made that part of my life again. And that is not martial arts, but it enhances my ability to train in martial arts.

So I see Brazilian Jiu Jitsu the same way. It is not my A-game. It’s not my first plan in a self-defense situation. But the skills and the qualities that I’ve developed training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu absolutely have enhanced my self-defense skills. Which is why I would recommend it to anybody in the martial arts.

Point is, I did it my way. Paul Anka, Frank Sinatra, I did it my way. It may have been a slower path. It may have at times been a frustrating path if I let myself get caught up in drama. But the fact is, I never left a class of BJJ unhappy.

I was always glad to make that drive. Even if I was tired, even if I was hurt, even if I was being a baby, I was always happy. So, march to the beat of your own drummer.

Write your own adventure. The real trick here is to play your game. Whatever martial arts means to you, however it fits into your life, whatever skills it’s giving you, that is your story.

No one else is a duplicate of you. So you cannot possibly completely relate to anyone else in that class. Someone else wants to be a champion, they’re going to have a lifestyle that’s suited for that.

Someone else is there to be a teacher someday, that’s going to be their path. Someone else is just trying to get away from their kids a couple of times a week. Let them do that.

You just focus on your adventure. Write your own adventure. Listen to your own drummer.

I say again, the trick is to play your game, not someone else’s. If you’re still alive, you still have goals, you still have some fire in your belly, then get back in that game. Play the game as hard as you can.

Just play your game. That’s not just the secret to winning. That’s the secret to a happy life.

Okay, that’s all for now. I hope that sharing some of these thoughts for my journey will help you on yours. That’s why I record these things, you know.

If you’ve got something to share, hey, maybe you can help me. Please leave me a comment, or shoot me an email over at ando at senseiando.com. I would really appreciate the help.

Until next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.

The post #130: 16 Years to Black Belt [Podcast] appeared first on Sensei Ando.

Will your martial arts techniques hold up under pressure… or will your skills break apart and leave you lying in a pool of tears?

Here’s the thing—it’s easy to get the BIG things right in the martial arts, but what about the SMALL things? You know…those little details that actually make or break your success? (Is it possible that you don’t even know some of those small things exist?)

The devil is in the details, my friend.

If you want to be effective on offense or defense, you have to look deeper and deeper into the mechanics of your art. Figuring out how all the nuts and bolts are put together takes time. It also requires asking questions, observing others, practicing, and experimenting.

The good news is that if you keep an open mind and stay curious, you will slowly collect the subtleties and nuances that will lead you to your best chance at success.

Join me for a discussion on how to solidify your martial arts training. To LISTEN to “The Nuts and Bolts of Martial Arts,” just hit play below.

• Play the audio podcast below… or download to your device.
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Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!

The Nuts and Bolts of Martial Arts

Here’s a video of the podcast. If the player doesn’t work, you can click this direct link.

As always, if you’d like to comment (or complain!), feel free to leave a message here or through my Contact Page.

TRANSCRIPT

Today on Fight for a Happy Life, The Nuts and Bolts of Martial Arts.

Howdy, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode number 128 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better. It’s been a little while, it’s great to see you again.

Today, I want to talk about the nuts and bolts of martial arts, the nuts and bolts of self-defense. And, no, I’m not talking about kicking someone in the nuts and bolts. I’m talking about your training, your techniques, your habits.

Are the components of your training, the assembly of what you do, strong and solid, will they hold up under pressure, offensively, defensively, or will it all break apart?

The reason I want to talk about this is because of an incident that occurred to me a few years ago now. You might notice that in the background of some of my older videos, there’s a big red wall and four black heavy bags hanging up.

Now I will tell you that that project made me very proud of myself. I’m not a mechanical guy, but I figured out how to get those bags put up on that wall, so it was a big deal.

With the help of another Sensei, we drilled those boards into the brick wall. I found some wall mounts. We installed those. I had custom bags made, black leather, specific weight, and they came out great. They looked wonderful. And we hung them up.

Kids of all ages loved hitting them. I loved hitting them. Other teachers loved hitting them. Adult students loved hitting them. It was a big success. That is until a couple of weeks went by.

In the middle of a class, I’ve got some kids running a relay race, and a precious little girl went running down one of the rows, and she kicked the bag, she turns around, she starts leaving, and to my horror, the bag detached and just fell. BOOM!

Thankfully, she was not hit, but I was in shock. Shut down the drill, got the kids away from the bags, finished the class, and then afterward, had to come over and face my failure, grabbed a step stool, and got up and took a look at the mechanism.

Just like most heavy bags, the bag had a carabiner on it, the carabiner attached to a metal ring, the ring was attached to the wall mount with a bolt and a nut. Somehow, the nut had worked its way to the end of the threading and fallen off and let the whole bag go. So I figured, being not a super mechanical guy, Oh, I just didn’t tighten them enough when I first installed them.

So cranked, cranked, cranked as much as I could, made them as tight as I possibly could, and thought, there, done deal, we’re okay now.

Nope, nope. Couple weeks later, the same thing happened. A bag fell off. Again, thankfully, no one got hurt. But this time, I was really upset because I couldn’t figure out the problem. I hate that.

So this time, I figured, well, it’s taken about two weeks for this to happen. This just needs to be a regular maintenance task. When you come in for the day, check the bags and see where the nuts are and tighten them up every day. I guess it’s just a design flaw in the wall mounts. That’s what I thought.

But of course, this was always a stress. If I’m sick or if I was working at a different location, I didn’t want to depend on everybody trying to always check for those things because there’s always something that falls through the cracks. And I didn’t want that to fall on someone and crack their head.

So I happened to mention this problem to my brother, who is more mechanical minded and has some background in construction. And he didn’t think twice. He just said, Oh, you need a spring washer. What? A spring washer or a split lock washer. Different names.

So all it is, it’s just like a regular washer, right? A little flat circle, but it’s got a cut in it and it’s got a little twist. So it looks like the first coil of a spring. Now, when you put that spring washer next to a nut, it pushes the nut and tilts it a little bit. So it creates some friction on the bolt.

So now, when the bag is shaking and the mount is shaking, the nut doesn’t start spinning and moving down the threads. What? It’s that simple? A tiny little piece of metal? It didn’t even cost me a dollar to get four of them. Super cheap, super easy to install.

And would you believe it? We never had that problem again. That simple.

But what a lesson. You hear about how the devil is in the details. And boy, if this wasn’t a great example of that. All the money and time that I spent putting those bags up on that wall, all of the drilling and pounding and all to be undone by just this little omission of a spring washer. Of course, now I know.

Engines and washers and dryers and blenders, all these things that vibrate and shake, have some type of anti-vibration technology in them. So, in case you didn’t know, now you know. But this brings the question back to my martial arts training.

Because I realize how little it takes for your techniques to transform into something very successful or to fail completely.

On the offensive side, you may have a really strong punch, but if the pressure’s a little off, your alignment’s a little off, you can break your wrist when you hit something, right?

If you’re actually fighting with someone, these small adjustments in your footwork or your distance can make your punch completely miss. And of course, it works on the defensive side too.

If somebody grabs you and you can shimmy or wiggle just so, you can get away. If you don’t, you’re getting caught. So these little tiny details, these nuances, the subtlety is really what makes or breaks your technique.

So what about your technique? This is what we’re talking about. How would you judge your technique?

I can tell you that when I work with kids, for instance, they get cocky really fast. They don’t seem to understand nuance in any way. And of course, how could they?

The other day, I was working with a student and he’s been a little behind on earning his next belt. He just hasn’t been putting in the work and it shows. So after class, he was whining a little bit like, why can’t I be signed off?

And I started a couple of little things I needed him to fix. Amongst them, very simple, when he makes a fist, his thumb is sticking out.

And I said, look, you know, you’ve been here almost two years and this is not a secret that, you know, I want you to make a strong fist. I don’t want your thumb sticking out. And right in front of me, he fixed it.

Okay. I said, good. I said, now open your hand, show me another fist. He made a fist. I said, good. Now that’s what I want to see. And he replied, Can I get my belt now? No appreciation for the time to build a habit.

Of course, I said, Well, no. Now you have to come back and show me you can do that on your own, that you’ve done the work to make it automatic. I shouldn’t have to tell you this.

So from a kid’s standpoint, there’s probably a large gap between hearing information, copying the information and actually embodying it, making it part of you. Of course, I hope that’s not part of my training.

I presume there are some blind spots, things that I think I’ve got down, when actually there are some details that I’m probably missing.That’s the addiction to constantly seeking out new teachers and new videos and new practice, because there’s always some new little angle that I haven’t considered before. I presume the same is true for you.

I think most students were all pretty good at the big stuff. You see a teacher throw a punch, a kick, do a takedown, do a submission, and you think, oh, I see what you just did there. And it’s only over time of years of going back to that technique, and it fails, and it fails if you’re honest with yourself, if you have honest training, where you’re forced to finally figure this out and say, how are you making this work, but I can’t?

And I think that’s a wonderful process of these tiny little nuances. Just today, I was working with my own teacher. It was a private lesson. And we spent an hour and a half on the subtleties of gripping cloth and where the pressure in the fist is, and how to weaken it, and how to strengthen it, and what angles are the best for holding something.

And that might sound like absolute geek nerd talk, but if you’re a real martial artist, you understand the importance of that kind of study.

So, on the learning side of things, I hope that you never stop asking questions, you never stop observing other people performing the techniques that you want to perform, and I hope that you never stop experimenting in practice.

Just keep that open mind. Don’t be like a child who sees it once or twice, does it once or twice, then just stops and says, yeah, I got it. It’s rampant.

Adult students, I see that all the time. You show a technique, they do it once or twice, then they sit back and wait for something new to come up. They don’t want to drill it, they don’t want to repeat it.

They just figure, yeah, I know that already, I got it. Fools. Let’s not be one of them.

Now on the defensive side, you might find it interesting that back in the day, when I first started my martial arts training, of course I was quite taken with Bruce Lee, the Tao of Jeet Kune Do, and when I learned that that meant the art of the intercepting fist, I kept thinking about that word of intercepting.

I thought that was interesting, how a technique, a punch might already be coming your way, a choke is already being set in, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be finished. There’s some wiggle room in there. There’s a gap in time.

There may be a gap in distance or pressure that allows you to reverse it, escape it, which then should become the main point of your study. I don’t want to get punched. I don’t want to get locked up.

So as I kept practicing with that idea in my head that you could intercept a technique, it occurred to me how easy it is to thwart or stop someone from finishing what they want to do. And I knew that for sure, not in a cocky way, but because I knew how hard it was for me to do it.

I saw a hip throw very early on in my training, but in sparring, very hard to find a hip throw. Getting punched and kicked, trying to get close, get grips, get the angle to make that hip throw happen seemed impossible to me.

So it became sort of my confidence, my shield, that if I could just thwart what you need, then there’s no way you can ever get me. So that meant my learning, I didn’t have to be great at throwing punches, I just needed to know how a punch is thrown, what you’re targeting, and then screw up your distance or screw up your angle and take that away from you.

I don’t have to be great at judo throws, I just need to know what grips are you looking for, how close do you need to be, and how do I either break that grip or drop my weight or change my angle to take that throw away from you.

So there was a couple years there where I thought if I ever named my own martial art, I would call it the art of the thwarting fist. Just a variation I guess on the intercepting fist idea, that there was always wiggle room to stop someone from hurting you. I would like to think that’s still true today. I think that strategy works great.

This is kind of old school thinking when I first heard about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It wasn’t that you were trying to win or beat the other person. I just needed to stop them from beating me. That was another way to define a victory. I don’t need you to be bloody and unconscious. I just need to be able to go home and not be bloody or unconscious.

So that type of thinking was definitely worth meditating on. Now, I do think there are situations where you need to end things and someone needs to be stopped definitively. I don’t think you can always run out the clock or wait for help. I don’t think that’s a great strategy. I think it should be an option in your training, but it can’t be the only option. You do need to know how to finish a fight.

So that’s the only little extra bit of wisdom on that. So the bottom line here is that the devil is in the details. And whenever you think you know what you’re doing, back up a moment and take another look at it.

Increase the pressure, increase the challenge. If no one person can beat you in sparring, then spar two people. If no two people can spar you successfully, then give them a knife in their hand. Keep increasing the pressure until you figure out where that little nut is slowly shaking off and then you fall apart. It’s better that you find those things out in your training than in the real world.

And speaking of the real world, of course this thinking is going to apply to every part of your life. It’s always amazing to me how the little things make the biggest difference in every part of your life.

You could have the greatest car, but if you’re not checking the air pressure in those tires, your braking is going to be off, your steering is going to be off, your gas mileage is going to be off. It’s a small thing, and yet it’s a huge thing.

The way you treat your spouse or your partner, if you’re unkind, if you’re quick-tempered, if you’re impatient, if you can just stifle those things a little bit, it makes a big difference.

How much time you make to exercise, how much time you make for self-care, how much time you can just add for a little recovery before you work out again, how you eat, when you eat, how much you eat.

Every little thing you do adds up to this big, big result. And I just hope, as you get older, as I get older, we never stop looking for the little things. Especially as we get older and you have maybe less energy or less ambition.

It’s nice to know that little things can still change your trajectory towards success. I know right now in my sparring or my wrestling, I don’t have to be faster and stronger all the time. Bigger guys, younger guys, trying to impose their will on me.

I’m very happy to be in a place now where I know the power of small adjustments, of taking a little breath, of staying calm. All of these little things that when I was younger, I didn’t think made much of a difference. But taken together, a bunch of little things add up to one big thing.

You’re 50 pounds heavier than I am. You’re 20 years younger than I am. But I make better decisions. I can feel more. I’m more sensitive. I’m more creative. I follow up sooner. I don’t freeze up as much.

All of these little things add up to something that can equate to your muscular superiority. If you don’t believe that, I want you to believe that. Because otherwise, your training is going to always be depressing.

If you’re still trying to kick and punch as hard and as high as you did in your 20s, and now you’re in your 50s or 60s, you’ll always be disappointed. Because you’re not working on the skills that can still be developed. If anything, they’re getting worse, right? That’s just nature. I’ve accepted that. I hope you have too.

I’ve accepted the pain in my joints, arthritis. I’ve accepted some limitations and the stiffening up. I still work out, but the way I work out is to focus on the little things that allow me to handle weights a little bit better, that allow me to breathe a little bit smoother, that allow me to see a little bit more.

And I’ve been very happy on that path. So I invite you to follow me or lead me or get alongside of me on that same path. The path of the details, the path of the little things. This is where the spring washer lives. This is where you fill the air in your tires. You wash the dishes right as you use them. You don’t let them pile up.

You make those little investments in the equipment that you need to make your life and your jobs easier. It’s worth it. You’re worth it.

So that’s all I wanted to get off my chest today. I’ll be back with a lot more later. But for now, keep learning, keep moving. Don’t be undone by some small oversight, by some small piece of information that you could have had, but you didn’t get, because you didn’t ask, you didn’t try, you didn’t see it.

There’s so much that you can add to your repertoire. There’s so much that you can still add to your skill set. But only if you’re just humble enough to say, yeah, I don’t know everything.

Yes, there’s so much more room for me to learn. Keep learning, keep moving, and that’s going to make you solid. That’s going to hold up under pressure. And that’s what’s going to lead to a happy life.

Hey, if you’re still here, thanks for hanging out till the end. Let me know what you think down in the comments, or shoot me an email, or hey, we can always get together on Zoom sometime. That’d be cool. Until next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword.

Keep fighting for a happy life.

The post #128: The Nuts and Bolts of Martial Arts [Podcast] appeared first on Sensei Ando.

You might know Stephan Kesting from his impressive work as an online BJJ instructor. You may also remember him from our first interview together back in episode #62. But he’s far more than just an internet hotshot.

Stephan is also a professional firefighter, founder of Grapplearts.com, host of the Strenuous Life podcast, outdoor adventurer, and now—with the publication of Perseverance: Life and Death in the Subarctic—an author.

In this interview, I talk to Stephan about his grueling experience taking a 1,000 mile canoe trip through the great white north… ALONE! Our conversation touches on crucial topics for living a happy life, such as:

• Setting priorities
• Grit
• Organization
• Time Management
• Solitude
• Meditation

Oh—and did I mention that Stephan’s survival tips have also been challenged by family tragedies, a kidney transplant, and a hip replacement? Believe me, the tips shared in this episode are the key components for survival on the mats, online, on a river, or in a fire.

If you’d like to read the full account of Stephan’s solo adventure in the wild, here’s my Amazon affiliate link to buy the book: Perseverance: Life and Death in the Subarctic. Of course, supporting your local bookstores is cool, too!

To LISTEN to “Survival with Stephan Kesting,” just hit play below.

• Play the audio podcast below… or download to your device.
• Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or Spotify.

To WATCH the video version, scroll down below.

If you’d like to support this show, share the link with a friend or leave a quick review over on iTunes. Thank you!

Oh—and don’t forget to sign up for free email updates so you can get new shows sent to your inbox the minute they’re released.

Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!

Survival with Stephan Kesting

Here’s a video of the podcast. If the player doesn’t work, you can click this direct link.

As always, if you’d like to comment (or complain!), feel free to leave a message here or through my Contact Page.

The post #127: Survival with Stephan Kesting [Video Podcast] appeared first on Sensei Ando.

In case you didn’t notice, I’ve been wearing glasses for several years… but not anymore! I recently underwent eye surgery and am happy to report that I can now see better than ever!

However, even with perfect vision, the fact is we can all have blind spots. We often see only what we WANT to see or only what we already know. Or maybe that’s just me?

In this episode, I’d like to share what I’ve learned about vision and blind spots—both physical and psychological—and how they affect our success and happiness on the mats and off.

To LISTEN to “Blind Spots,” just hit play below.

• Play the audio podcast below… or download to your device.
• Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or Spotify.

To WATCH the video version or READ the transcript, scroll down below.

If you’d like to support this show, share the link with a friend or leave a quick review over on iTunes. Thank you!

Oh—and don’t forget to sign up for free email updates so you can get new shows sent to your inbox the minute they’re released.

Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!

Blind Spots in Martial Arts

Here’s a video of the podcast. If the player doesn’t work, you can click this direct link.

As always, if you’d like to comment (or complain!), feel free to leave a message here or through my Contact Page.

TRANSCRIPT

Howdy, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

Today, if you’re watching the video, you might notice—no more glasses! That’s right, for the first show in maybe six years, I am not wearing glasses.

That’s because I am one month out from having a vision correction surgery. I’d like to tell you what I did and more importantly, what I’ve learned about vision and blind spots.

So, backing up, I was born and raised with perfect vision, 20/20. In fact, most of my life, I’ve had perfect vision. But then somewhere around the age of 47 or 48, I noticed, as is natural, that I was having trouble reading. And then a couple years later, I was having some trouble driving.

I even failed the DMV test, which was really embarrassing for me. I’d never had something in print, on the license, saying, “restricted license, must wear eyeglasses”. That hurt.

So, at first, of course, I accepted it. I realized this is normal, right? The eyes start to go as you get older. But it didn’t take long before I hated it. Absolutely hated it.

If you wear glasses, I’m sure you’re aware of this. My glasses were always lost or I was breaking them. Had to buy new ones all the time. I was walking around with two pairs of glasses, one for reading and one for distance. And I was always switching in between the two.

And if I’m trying to just duck down, do little fix-it projects, they’re always falling off my head. It just got to be a nightmare. I hated it.

Now, of course, if you’ve been wearing glasses your whole life, you’re probably more patient and more accustomed to it. But I was weak. I admit I was weak. It really got to me.

So, a couple years ago, I started looking into LASIK because I had some friends and they got tired of hearing me whine about my eyes. And they said, “Well, why don’t you just get LASIK?”

At first, that actually frightened me. Lasers in the eyes—I’m old school, that seemed crazy. But then, three months ago, I finally got the guts to go see a doctor for LASIK.

He sat me down and he said, “Hey man, listen—I could give you the LASIK, but at your age, what you should get is cataract surgery.”

Do I have cataracts? No, I don’t have cataracts. But if you get this surgery, you never will.

So it’s something called RLE, refractive lens exchange. And that was the promise: If you get this surgery, within 24 hours, you’ll be able to drive back for your first follow-up appointment, and you won’t need glasses again. You’ll have close vision, intermediate vision, and far vision.

Sounded too good to be true. But I did it.

So a month ago, had the surgery, and sure enough, 24 hours later, drove myself to the follow-up appointment. I don’t like necessarily using the word miracle, but it’s a miracle. I have not worn glasses now in a month, for reading or for driving.

So, if you’re interested in this kind of procedure, hit me up on email or in the comments, I’m more than happy to share some information on it. If you’re living in Los Angeles, I’m happy to refer you to the doctor who took care of me. It was definitely worth it.

What lessons have I taken from this experience?

Well, number one, don’t take anything for granted. I absolutely took my eyes for granted. I took my vision for granted for many, many years. And that was a crutch because I relied on them too much.

I think it’s natural that we’re wired as human beings to be very hands and eyes focused, especially nowadays when you have a device in your hands, and you’re texting all the time, and you’re driving, and you’re sitting at a computer, watching TV. It’s a lot of your eyes and your hands.

Then you lose touch with the rest of your body. So, I feel that that is its own blind spot of a sort. Because you’re living in this tunnel. You’re so reliant on your eyes that you don’t feel around you, you don’t widen out your awareness, you just focus on what’s in your hands and what’s right in front of you.

In short, if I can’t see it, it’s not there. That’s, to me, a blind spot.

Now, you can talk about physical blind spots, which is what I’ve been doing, but worse were the psychological blind spots. Not only couldn’t I literally see the horizon physically, psychologically, I could not see the future. I couldn’t set clear goals for myself.

I was asking myself, where are you going? Where do you think you’re going? And I couldn’t get a clear vision of it. It was as if my entire imagination was tied to my eyes. That might sound crazy, and that’s okay.

That frustration at first, feeling boxed in and somewhat limited, eventually got depressing. And then I just tied it into just getting old in general. I thought, well, you’ve been dealing with arthritis for several years. My shoulders, my feet, I’ve talked about these things. I lose my voice very easily nowadays. Lower energy. In short, I’m dying.

I’ve peaked and now I’m down that shady side of the hill, the cold side of that hill. And here we go. Now your eyes are going. You’re going blind.

So it’s hard to wake up and be enthusiastic when you can’t see the future.

Okay. It got worse. Am I being dramatic? Maybe.

I’ll tell you when it got really bad. The lockdowns, the COVID lockdowns, were five years ago now. Almost exactly five years ago. And of course, during the lockdown—I live in a very small apartment— couldn’t go outside. Couldn’t go to work, right?

At one point, couldn’t go to the parks. We had fires here in Los Angeles. Couldn’t go anywhere. So I was locked into a physical space, and then locked within the rims of my glasses or just blurred vision. And that was really suffocating.

But it gets worse because during the lockdowns, since I lost my business, I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. Now listen, there are nice people in Raleigh, a lot of positives about Raleigh, so I’m not bashing Raleigh.

However, I live in Los Angeles, had been living in Los Angeles for decades, and it’s not Los Angeles. I’m used to sunshine. I’m used to mountains, vistas, ocean, wide expanses. There’s a freedom that comes with a large view. And in LA, that’s something else I just took for granted.

When I got to Raleigh—have you been there? It’s quite the opposite. There are no mountains. It’s flat. It’s not sunny all the time. Clouds, rain, overcast.

Trees. So many trees. I joked at some point, half-kiddingly, that it felt when you’re driving down these straight streets that—you couldn’t see the horizon, because they’re all curving around, flat land, just surrounded by trees. All you have are tree trunks, tree trunks, tree trunks, all around you. Which then felt like bars of a jail cell.

So, I felt like I was in a jail cell with a ceiling of clouds inside the frames of my glasses and with humidity in Raleigh, also your glasses fog up often. So, talk about suffocating. I really felt like I was just being crammed into my coffin when I lived there.

Couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. My freedom was just crushed.

So, two years it took for my wife and I to decide, let’s go back to Los Angeles. I can’t breathe, I can’t move. And we did. And that brought some relief. Absolutely. Nurtured my soul. But I still felt limited. I still was right back to the original restrictions of I can’t see.

So, that brings us to getting the surgery. I signed up. I showed up on time early, in fact. Got the surgery. And what’s funny is, the day after the surgery, my wife says to me, “It seems like you have more energy.”

What?

She said, “You know, it seems like you’re in a better mood.” She even said, “You know, you look a little bigger.”

All of that was a shock. She was saying, “Hey, it’s the old Ando, the one from seven or eight years ago. Old Ando is back.”

I was stunned, shocked, mostly because I thought I had learned this lesson. Not once, but many times. Several years ago, a doctor told me I was probably going to need a hip replacement. That was a downer, but I found a way to work around it, kept moving forward. With the arthritis, found a way around it. Herniated discs in my back, found a way around it.

So I’ve always been optimistic and found ways to adapt. And these are the messages that I usually share with you. Because I’ve done these things. But for some reason, this one, I couldn’t get past. It was as if it was the first challenge in my life.

The lesson there is that these things add up if you let them. We can all slide down that shady, cold slope, whichever one you find yourself on—whether it’s aging, whether it’s pain, whether it’s financial loss, relationship loss—we can all slide down into a pit of despair.

But we must remember over and over, and I’m talking to myself too, those limitations are false. It’s like you are purposely covering one of your eyes and not seeing what else is available out there. What else can you do?

So you can see when you feel limited, when you feel beaten down, you’ve got to differentiate between what is happening to you and what are you allowing to happen to you.

Take another look.

This is the big lesson. Take another look. You may not be as blind as you think. When you let one setback pull down the hole, then all is lost.

What you need to do, what I need to do, is still see the possibilities of what you can gain, not focus on what you’ve lost.

There’s always something else you can work on. There’s always another target to focus on. You can’t let the blind spot beat you down.

What about in self-defense? The equivalency here would be, you’re in a fight, you get punched one time, and you give up. You just say, that’s all right. That’s enough for me. You win. Take what you want.

You wouldn’t do that. Of course not. You wouldn’t teach that. Of course not. But sometimes that’s what happens.

You lose some money on an investment, and then that’s it. You’re done investing. You’re done trying new things. It’s over. We can’t let this happen.

Limitations in one area should not lead us to be limited in all areas.

Don’t be partialized. Don’t be shrunken down. Don’t be limited. Always look for what’s next. What else is out there? Because there’s always something.

Consider this…

In a way, limitations—the things that life throws at you that you don’t want, things that are taken away from you—they’re helpful.

Limitations are helpful in two ways.

The first way is, it gives you a chance to switch your focus. Maybe you’re pursuing one goal, and for whatever reason, that goal gets taken away. Rather than stall out and then do nothing, you have to go in a different direction, if you want to keep moving. So that limitation closes one door and directs you to another door.

If the other door that you originally were focused on wasn’t meant to be, for whatever reason, great, don’t take it personally. Take all that energy and enthusiasm, resources, and shoot them towards a new goal. So, limitations give you that opportunity. Switch to a more appropriate goal, something you can achieve.

The other way that limitations can help you is that it can narrow your focus. Maybe it doesn’t change it, but you can narrow down on one aspect of what you’re doing and start specializing in it. That means go deeper instead of going wider.

If you’re not great with kicks anymore because you had to have some type of knee surgery and you’re always going to be careful with that leg, okay, now you can go deeper in your hand techniques.

Or maybe now you pick up a knife for the first time in your training, and you really start appreciating what a weapon can do to equalize a bad situation. Great. Your limitation led you to a specialty and a new power. We should be open to that.

Now, of course, when we got close to the surgery, I wasn’t exactly that optimistic about limitations. I was still in a pretty dark place, I would say. And so I started to think, a couple of days before that surgery, when I realized, “Oh my god, they’re going to do what?”

They’re going to cut into my eyeball, take out the lens, put in an artificial lens, and just fingers crossed hope that fixes things. I got a little nervous, so I started convincing myself, of exactly what I just told you, that maybe limitations are good for me. Maybe this is better this way, to have blurry vision.

For instance, from a self-defense standpoint, what if you get punched in the nose, and your eyes water? Shouldn’t you be able to still operate when you can’t see clearly? Well, of course.

What if you’re wearing a hoodie, and it gets pulled over your head? Shouldn’t you still be able to fight back? Well, of course. I don’t wear hoodies, but theoretically, absolutely, of course.

Certainly, in wrestling and BJJ, early on, people were smothering me, grinding their chest in my face, or the gi—a wet gi—is hanging over your face, or they’re holding it over your face. So you have to get used to being smothered.

All of that helped me to trust my body. The limitation of having blurred vision close up really helped my grappling quite a bit, helped my takedowns quite a bit, helped close-in fighting quite a bit.

I had to learn to feel more because I could see less. I had to learn to trust my body more and not just my visual acuity.

So those are positives. Maybe I don’t want to lose those.

It also helped me slow down. When I had my perfect vision, I was pretty cocky. I could drive fast, I could run fast, make decisions quickly. When I couldn’t see very well, I had to slow down.

It’s just a matter of survival. I didn’t want to kill anybody either. I had to be more careful. I was more purposeful, more deliberate. And that helped me not waste energy.

So having the blurred vision, having these limitations, helped me change focus, narrow focus, helped me to feel more, trust my body more, trust my intuition more, and slowed me down so I didn’t waste energy, made me more deliberate in all my actions.

So that’s a pretty good argument, huh? I don’t need that eye surgery after all.

Nah! I went and got it anyway. I talked myself into it. I said, this is crazy, I can’t do this anymore. So I did get the surgery.

My hope being that I can keep the positive benefits that I’ve learned these last few years with having blurred vision and move forward with the benefits of having clear vision.

For me, self-defense, it’s a no-brainer. I like seeing who’s walking in the room, seeing where their hands are, seeing what they’re wearing. Any clue I can get to judge the safety of my situation.

I like being able to see down the road, see who’s coming down this aisle. I like getting an early warning system of what’s in my environment. I like reading someone’s face in micro detail. I like reading micro expressions when possible.

I need every clue I can get. I value perception. This is how I feel we all need to prevent danger by getting as much information from that environment as possible.

So I feel very blessed that I met this doctor, that I had the resources to pay for this surgery, and that I’ve been healthy enough to heal from it. So far so good, no glasses. So it’s been a blessing, a miracle.

Now, I’m going to give you a warning.

Even though I have vision again, and they say it’s 20/12 vision now, instead of 20/20, which means my vision is better than it was before. I did not count on that. Even with so-called perfect vision, there is still a risk of having blind spots. For me, for you, for anybody.

Blind spots occur for anyone, either when you’re only looking for what you want to see, or you’re only looking for things that will confirm what you already know.

When you have those attitudes, you are missing out. You are blind. You are not seeing what you don’t want to see, and you are not seeing what you don’t know. That’s how extreme that is.

I can’t live like that. So I am always going to ask myself now, what am I missing? What am I not seeing? What am I taking for granted here? What’s behind that door? What’s in the shadows?

It’s funny just the way the brain works. I remember several years ago getting stuck in side control in BJJ. So I went on YouTube looking for answers, and I found a video from Carlos Machado, and I saw this technique that he performed. I thought, Oh, that’s a really cool technique. Got it in my brain.

I saw it. My eyes saw it. Took it into the dojo. It kind of worked, kind of didn’t. Glad I tried it, but didn’t quite work for me.

I’m blessed again, because a couple years later, Carlos Machado came to the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu School where I take classes. Rigan Machado’s Academy in Beverly Hills. It’s his brother. He happened to be there one day.

He wasn’t on the mats. He was visiting for lunch. He had a sport jacket on, but I took the opportunity to walk over and say, “Excuse me, Professor, I saw this technique you did on YouTube. I just have a question about it because I can’t quite get it to work.”

He’s such a nice guy. If you haven’t met the Machados, I find them all to be very nice guys. He actually took off his sport jacket and said, “Oh, here, let me show you.” He got on the mats with me and talked me through the technique.

Even cooler, he said, “Well, this was in the video, but here’s what’s not in the video.” And he gave me a little extra. I was like, oh my god, this is fantastic. So a blessing.

So excitedly, went back to class, and it definitely worked better. Oh boy, good, I got the secret sauce here. But there was still something missing. It wasn’t working all the time. And as an idealist, I wanted this to work all the time.

A couple more years go by, and he ends up showing that technique on a separate video—ran across it. I was like, Oh, there’s that technique. And I had not noticed something about his leg work. The way he used his legs, I had not seen in the first video. And I had not noticed him doing when he showed me in person.

I was blind to it the first time I saw it. I was blind to it when he did it to me. I was blind to discovering it when I was performing it and practicing it. It was only now, several years later, from when I’d first seen it, that it’s suddenly now made sense. And now it’s a much higher percentage move for me.

But that’s one example of how even with perfect vision, even with a video reference, something I can watch in slow motion, even with someone showing me and talking me through it, helping me hand to hand—blind, blind, blind, not seeing it.

So I have to go back through every lesson I’ve ever gotten. Everything I’ve ever heard or seen or felt from every teacher I’ve ever had and say, what didn’t I see? What was missing? Why isn’t this working as well as when they did it?

These, I think, are healthy questions. Don’t presume that what you’re seeing is all there is to see. Don’t presume that what you know is all there is to know. I think there’s always more. And I think that’s good news.

So the big point of today’s show: if you feel that you’ve lost something, if you feel somehow behind the curve, if you feel disabled, please, don’t give up hope on this. Don’t give up hope on your goals. You might have to switch them, but don’t give up on them.

Focus on what you can do. There’s always something you can do. And even if you can’t, you should die with that attitude anyway.

When someone gets you in a choke, if you have trained yourself to always think about, well, what do I have? What can I do? Then there’s always a chance of escape. There’s always a chance of survival.

If you just accept the loss, you just accept the limitation, you just accept being blind, then there’s no choice. You lose. So don’t let that happen.

Take your self-defense strategy of always seeing a possibility, of never giving up, of always fighting, and apply it to every other part of your life. Always give yourself a chance to fight for what you want. I think that’s the secret for achieving your goals and living a happy life.

Well, they say that you teach what you need to learn. Believe me, my friend, I record these podcasts for you and for me. I hope that sharing my experiences either helps you or at least lets you know that you’re not alone.

Until next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.

The post #126: Blind Spots in Martial Arts [Video Podcast] appeared first on Sensei Ando.

Speed, power, and flexibility are all important, yes… but here’s the truth–

They’re not enough!

When it comes to surviving a real-life attack (or even just winning a tournament), you need killer instinct! You need to release your full fighting spirit! But here’s the problem…

Most of us are “too nice”. Even though the essence of martial arts is a study of death, most of us would rather not train in such an extreme mindset. Unfortunately, that is exactly what makes good people vulnerable!

So, let’s take a stroll back into the jungle and see if we can rekindle some of our primal power… before we get eaten alive!

To LISTEN to “Killer Instinct,” just hit play below.

• Play the audio podcast below… or download to your device.
• Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or Google Podcasts or Spotify.

To WATCH the video version or READ the transcript, scroll down below.

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Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!

How to Train Your Killer Instinct

Here’s a video of the podcast. If the player doesn’t work, you can click this direct link.

As always, if you’d like to keep the conversation going, feel free to leave a comment here or through my Contact Page.

TRANSCRIPT

Howdy! Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode #125 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

Yes, I’m back. After a six-month hiatus–I didn’t plan it, it just happened– I’m back. But I’m even more thrilled that you stopped by to say hello. So welcome back to you too. Let’s go!

What’s that? Oh, the sweater. Do you like that? I’ll explain that in a minute.

But let’s start off today’s show talking about frustration. My frustration. Years and years of frustration. Why?

Because I kept getting beat. No matter how hard I trained, no matter how much I studied, I feel that I was losing to people who trained far less than I did. People who took it far less seriously than I did.

And I would go to my teachers after class in the dark shadows. And I would confess this. I would say, Listen, I’m working really hard here, but I’m getting beat. Everybody’s beating me. New people are beating me. Something’s wrong.

And they were always very supportive. They’d say, No, no, you’re doing great. You’re a good student. But maybe you’re just being too nice.

Too nice.

I would argue with them. I would say, No, no, you don’t understand. In my head, I’m not being nice at all.

Of course, I’m a nice person, so I’m training with safety and respect. But I really am trying to win a lot of the time. I have an ego. I have a temper. I have a competitive spirit. So I’m not giving anybody anything once the action starts.

So, I would come back to the conclusion that I just need to practice harder. And practicing harder meant focusing on technical attributes. And it still wouldn’t be enough.

Another six months would go by. Another year would go by. I would come back to my teacher and say, I’m still getting beat. Something’s wrong.

And again, they would say, Maybe you’re just being too nice. I would say, No, I’m not being nice. And the cycle would continue over and over, for lo, these many years.

So what really is the issue? What has been the problem for me, personally, which perhaps you can relate to? I believe it all came down to one thing.

Killer instinct.

I have figured out– maybe it took way too long– that developing a killer instinct is a skill of its own.

You can focus all you want on speed and power, flexibility and mobility, pain tolerance, sensitivity. You can study as many books as you want, talk to as many teachers as you want to. Flow like water. None of it matters if you don’t have killer instinct to back it up.

If you can’t finish a fight, then you’re finished.

This is what I figured out. Now, that brings us to the sweater. Check out this sweater. This is getting me in the spirit of killer instinct. What do we got here?

It’s a big cat, a panther, a predator, a meat eater. In the wild, clearly, you must have a killer instinct. Either you eat or you die. And that’s whether you eat a plant, kill a plant, or kill a fellow animal. It’s eat or be eaten.

Now, in the last podcast, #124, the topic was to stop pulling your punches. And I argued six months ago that we need to push ourselves in training, to go to 100%. And I’m saying that wasn’t even deep enough. The language there wasn’t deep enough.

In the last six months, I’ve only come to a doubling down on this theme. We must release our fighting spirit in its most primal execution, most primal expression.

To be clear, the martial arts are all about death. You’re either training to stop someone from taking your life or you’re developing the capability to take someone else’s life to survive.

You may not think of every self-defense scenario as a life or death situation, but the point of training is to take it that far.

The bad news is, most of us are nice people, and we can’t, won’t, or don’t want to imagine these extremes. To think about the death aspect of martial arts. And that has revealed to me that the killer instinct is not actually in everyone.

Maybe you were born with a killer instinct, but then you were raised out of it. You were taught to be polite, and patient, and civilized. To play by the rules, to not cause a fuss. And now, even if you were born with it, that instinct is gone.

Or I think more likely, you weren’t even born with an instinct to kill. Some are, but I think many aren’t. I don’t think I was. Yes, we have a primal drive to survive, but that doesn’t mean we have a primal drive to kill to survive.

As a result, violence is shocking. Either violence perpetrated against us or seeing violence come out of us when necessary. A secondary effect of not having a killer instinct is that you may actually judge violence as barbaric. Something beneath you. Something you would never resort to. Even when it’s the only tool left.

So that’s the disadvantage here. Bad guys will do whatever they want. They’ve released their fighting spirit. They still have a killer instinct, or have developed their killer instinct, to take what they want from you, including your life. And if a bad guy is willing to use 100% of the tools available to them, but you’re not, then you’re at a disadvantage. You’ll be too slow to react, or you won’t react when you need to. That’s a problem.

Let’s recognize that having a killer instinct allows you 100% of the tools available to you as a human being. And as a self-defense student, a martial arts student, you should have 100% of all the tools necessary.

Now the good news…

The good news is the killer instinct– and let’s just stop even using that word. Because like I said, either it can be trained out of you, so it’s no longer an instinct, or maybe you weren’t born with it at all. So, perhaps we should talk about this more as a killer mindset.

A killer mindset as a separate skill can be trained.

It’s an odd thing, but the toughest guys I know, and I’ve talked to a couple of them on this podcast, they insist that they were not born with a killer instinct. They’ve said, no, quite the contrary. They had to develop it because they had to, they needed to.

Because of the way they were raised, their neighborhood, their family dynamics, they felt they had to develop a killer mindset to survive. And I would say, so should you. So should I.

And even if right now, you’re not 100% comfortable with it, and even if you never achieve a 100% expression of a killer mindset, I believe every percentage point you can add to your personality will be of benefit to you.

So what’s the big problem here?

Not just civilization, not just your past and how you were raised, not just the fact that you weren’t born with a killer instinct. You were smart enough to seek out martial arts training. But the problem is many martial arts schools– I would never say all of them, I hesitate to say most of them, but let’s just safely say many of them– presume you do have a killer instinct.

So, most of the class time and the curriculum is spent teaching techniques, teaching you drills, teaching you all of the other attributes that are important, but aren’t necessarily the deal breaker, the scales-tipper.

So you will get faster and stronger, you will get tougher, but if you still don’t have the fuel of a killer instinct, a killer mindset, all that’s going to fall apart. I would say it’s almost worthless. That’s been my experience.

You can train for years and be a very sincere student, and hide the fact that you don’t have a killer mindset. You can excel at your drills, be the best student in the class, and still lack a killer mindset.

And it would be tragic if you didn’t reveal that to yourself until a real-life situation that calls for you to be a killer comes up and you fail. That would be tragic.

And by the way, we’re talking about a martial arts class where you are presumably safe. Even if you’re in a hardcore school, and you’re practicing MMA, or boxing, or Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, there are still rules to protect you. It’s still supposed to be a safe training environment. And even in tournaments, they’re supposed to be safe with rules and referees.

So, if you can’t play the part of a killer, even in a safe context, even with rules and supervision, then what makes you think you’re going to have a killer mindset when it’s for real and there are no rules and there are no referees?

The martial arts class is our first chance to really exercise the killer mindset while we can do it safely and then, hopefully, expand upon that to bring it out into our real lives. So we don’t want to miss that opportunity in our training.

Speaking of training, how do you train? Is there a killer mindset at play? I would say there are four modes of training in the martial arts.

Four Modes of Training

The first mode is oblivious. You’re just going through the motions. You don’t have any particular training goals. You show up, you do what they say.

You’re not really learning on purpose. It’s kind of just happening as it happens once in a while.

You’re not in a teaching mindset. You’re not in a learning mindset. You’re not even really in a fighting mindset. You’re just kind of oblivious. You just show up, do what you’re told, and go home, and that’s it.

Second mode you could be in is a teacher mode. That’s when you have some skills and perhaps your training partners are less skilled than you. So you purposely give them some room to work, to play.

You set up positions where little problems for them to solve, to figure out how to survive on their own. And that’s very giving of you, senior student type of stuff.

Third mode you could be in is student mode. That’s when you are purposely trying to learn something. You did come in with a list of goals, micro goals, macro goals, whatever they may be.

You are paying attention to what’s going on. You’re experimenting, you’re playing around, and you are charting your progress.

The fourth mode would be the fighting mode. That’s when– the heck with coaching, the heck with learning– I’m trying to win. Whatever the objective is here right now, for me it’s just I’m winning.

Whether I’m training for self-defense or training for a tournament, I’m just trying to finish this fight on top. So, that will be the fourth mode.

So, oblivious mode, teacher mode, student mode, and fighting mode. Which one are you? Which mindset do you find yourself in most often?

How should you be training? Which mode should you be in?

I’m going to give you a warning. If you are in mode number one, two, or three– oblivious, teacher, or student mode– and your partners are in fighting mode, then you are always at risk of losing or getting hurt.

They’re coming on strong. They’re not focused on safety, maybe, and respect. They’re just trying to beat you. And in that mindset, anything goes. So you have to be very careful with people like that.

My advice to you here would be to always presume that your partner is in fighting mode.

I don’t care how long you’ve known them. I don’t care if it’s a kid. And I don’t care what the scenario is. Always presume that they’re about to lose it, be erratic, be reckless, do something unexpected, and hurt you.

It’s much safer to have that attitude when you approach a partner than any other. I’ve been clocked so many times unexpectedly by people I never thought would hit me, simply because I underestimated what mode they were in.

Oh, I thought we were both in learning mode right now. I didn’t realize you were suddenly going to freak out and try to kill me.

I’m sure that’s happened to you too. Of course, by training in that mode, that also prepares us better for real life.

You’re approached on the street, you’re looking at people and evaluating them in a crowd or in your home, I’m just going to presume that if trouble starts, you’re looking for the worst here. You’re going to accelerate this really fast, and I need to be ahead of that. As a trained martial artist, I need to get there before you do.

Whatever action that may be– leaving, speaking, setting boundaries, pushing away– whatever your action is, I need to be ahead of it.

Now, for you, in your training, if I’m always expecting my partner to be in mode four, fighting mode, does that mean that I should always be in fighting mode? Should I always have my killer mindset turned on?

No. No, and the reason is if you’re always in fighting mode, then you’re not learning. And you’re also not giving your partner a chance to learn anything with you. Not on purpose anyway.

You’re not steering them where you want them. They learn how to take a beating and that’s helpful sometimes, but you get the point, it’s only happening as an aside. It wasn’t on purpose. And as a senior student or teacher, you like to guide your students and lower class people to a safe place to learn things.

3 Tips for Building a Killer Mindset

Number one would be to mix up your modes. Mix it up. Of course, you’re going to have an advantage if you’re sparring and rolling to be looking for that finish and stay in fighting mode. However, that’s a very limited way to practice.

When you do that, you’re more than likely just going to stick to a few moves that always work for you. You’re going to stick to your favorite moves all the time.

That’s okay if it’s self-defense, because maybe the person you’re fighting, you don’t know and you’re only going to fight this person one time. So, whatever your favorite move is, great– deploy it and I hope that worked out for you.

But in training, when you see the same people over and over again, you become very predictable. Everybody knows your favorite moves, and once they know your favorite moves, if they’re any good, they’ll take them away from you. And if you just keep trying over and over again to do that favorite move and force it down their throats, it’s not going to work anymore.

So you’ve got to get out of mode four, fighting mode, and come back to student mode. You’ve got to come back to experimenting, putting yourself in bad positions on purpose to solve different problems different ways.

So that would be my tip. Don’t stay in fighting mode all the time. Go in and out of it.

Try to win. If you get a win, then come back to learning mode. Try to learn something new. If your favorite moves aren’t working, stop. Come back to learning mode, student mode, and find some new tricks. Then try them out in fighting mode again.

Basically, any mode except for oblivious mode is what I would recommend. Just don’t show up and go through the motions and not pay attention and go home with nothing on your mind. There should always be something to mark your progress one way or the other.

So number one tip, mix up your modes.

Tip number two, when you do slip into your killer mindset, fighting mindset, fight to finish. Go all the way. Go for the hit. Go for the choke. Go for the tap. Go for that takedown.

You need to exercise the feeling of finishing. This is the skill that I’m talking about. It’s a separate skill. Speed, power, flexibility, great attributes. New attribute, I think that trumps all the others– can you finish?

Do you feel comfortable finishing? Can you go after them? Can you dominate? Is that a problem for you?

If you can’t dominate your partner in a friendly, safe practice session, why do you think you’re gonna dominate an unfriendly attacker in a real-life, life or death situation?

I’m gonna say you can’t. Use the class as a stepping stone to real life. Go as close as you can without hurting your partners to exercising the feeling of totally dominating the other person. That’s how it’s done.

And by the way, this is good for your partners too. I’ve talked about that before. Nobody comes to class wanting to learn how to defend against a weak kick, a slow punch, or a non-threat. For them to build confidence and for your partners to build skill, you need to bring them a real problem to solve.

That means you bring them your best, which is why slipping into your fighting mode and turning on your killer mindset here and there, is good for them. It’s necessary for you, it’s necessary for them if we’re all gonna be our best.

Just to back up for a second, at no time am I suggesting that we should be bloodthirsty in our martial arts training.

We are not after all wild animals. We are trained animals. Animals still have a killer mindset. We just figure out when to deploy it and when not to deploy it. And I believe with training, we learn that there are situations where other people may deploy it, the killer mindset, where we don’t need to, because we have control.

That’s what the training is for. Control the bad guy. Once you get control, then you have choices. Then you can say, I’m going to let you go. I’m going to talk you down. I’m just going to injure you and get out of here. Or if need be, I’m going to end your life. But you don’t get to make those choices, unless you have controlled your attacker.

So how do you get that control? You’ve got to get the killer mindset, get in there, and make things happen. So this isn’t about being crazy. It’s not about being bloodthirsty. It’s about being smart enough to know that I’ve got to turn on all of my attributes, including a killer mindset, to control you. Then I can protect you.

Tip number three–visualization. This is the tool, more than any other, that you need to exercise. Visualization.

Whether you want to call that meditation time, whether you want to do this in a waterfall, or sitting on the couch, or whenever. You want to stand in a forest, do it. I don’t care. But set aside time when you can visualize the absolute worst-case scenarios, the most frightening and horrifying things that could be done to you, and the most horrifying things that you could do against someone else. You’ve got to get into that mindset, otherwise you won’t be prepared for it.

It’s a funny thing. Martial arts is a very peculiar activity. Let’s say weird. Martial arts is one of the only activities I can think of where you’re not allowed to do the actual thing you’re training to do!

Imagine if you’re trying to teach someone how to drive a car, and you walk them to the car, you seat them in the car, but you never turn on that engine, you never put it into drive, and you never let them out on the road. But you spend years putting their hands on the wheel, talking to them about the pressure in the gas pedal, when to switch to the brake pedal, how to shift gears, how to use the mirrors, you explain what it’s like to be on the freeway.

Does any of that add up to driving skill? Of course not. Whether you’re playing piano, painting, cooking, playing soccer, driving, every other activity, you get to do the actual thing that you’re training to do. But martial arts, you can’t do that.

You can’t go around breaking necks, breaking backs, killing people. You can’t. We’re not alone.

Military exercises, police academies, people who are in the business of restraint and control and death have to simulate. And we can simulate many different creative ways, the military, the police, martial artists. We all find different drills and exercises. We can argue about methodology. But at the end of the day, it’s simulations. And only real is real.

So we have to get as close as we can to real without being real. It’s just the way it is in martial arts. And if we can’t physically be real, then we have to at least make the effort to be emotionally and psychologically real.

The only way to do that is imagination. Play-acting. Go through those worst cases in your head.

I find it to be a very intense experience. Just sitting down and really imagining a home invasion. Imagining what’s being done to my loved ones. What’s being attempted against me. And seeing how that would play out. Then imagining me intervening, taking action. And what would I have to do in the most extreme circumstances?

I break a sweat thinking about this stuff. I can feel my heart beating faster. I can feel the adrenaline starting to go. That’s the power of imagination. And I highly suggest that you do this. Because again, if you can’t even imagine it, if you can’t even think about it, how are you going to do it if you need to?

How can you face real life if you can’t even face it in your imagination? Give yourself that gift.

Then, after you’ve sat down with these thoughts, take it into your solo practice. In your solo practice, if you’re going to hit a bag, don’t hit that bag until you give yourself a context.

What’s happening? What’s really happening? Why are you punching and kneeing and elbowing?

What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Use your imagination, create a context, and you will get way more out of your practice, because it’s no longer physical. It’s psychological. It’s emotional.

Same thing if you’re doing kata. Same thing if you’re shadow boxing. Bring your imagination into that, and you will get more out of your training than ever.

Wrapping up.

Okay, just to be clear– martial arts should be a special activity, something different from everything else that you do. That’s because martial arts is as extreme as it gets, because it deals with death.

That should not be a downer or gloomy. It’s exciting. It should stimulate your life force, your primal drive to survive. And yes, that can lead you into a killer mindset.

Awaken it.If it’s an instinct that’s been long lost, bring it back to life. If you weren’t born with a killer instinct, then this is the next best thing.

Inject yourself through hard training with the mindset of a predator, of a big cat. We must train to dominate the bad guys. Otherwise, they win. And that’s not fair to the world, and that’s not fair to you.

Okay, big cat, time to get out there and strut your stuff. Maybe buy yourself a cool sweater or get a tattoo. Maybe just go roar into a mirror. Do what you gotta do to remind yourself how powerful you really are.

Until next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.

The post #125: How to Train Your Killer Instinct [Video Podcast] appeared first on Sensei Ando.

It might sound harsh, but most people are holding back… not just on the mats, but in every aspect of life. They’re NOT maximizing their efforts and, therefore, NOT maximizing their successes. (Yes, including me!)

The question is WHY?

Or is it? Maybe before asking why, I should ask if you even agree? Perhaps you believe you ARE giving 100%… even if you’re not. It’s a common misimpression.

How does this happen?

In this episode, let’s dig deep to figure out if we’re truly working towards our dreams or just going through the motions. Along the way, I hope you’ll discover there’s more power in you just waiting to be unleashed!

Oh—two videos are mentioned in this episode. If you’d like to check them out, here are the links…

• One Tip for Powerful Punches
• Self-Defense Tip: Finish the Fight

Okay—check out the show, then let’s get out there and start throwing some full power punches!

To LISTEN to “Stop Pulling Your Punches,” just hit play below.

• Play the audio podcast below… or download to your device.
• Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or Google Podcasts or Spotify.

To WATCH the video version or READ the transcript, scroll down below.

If you’d like to support this show, share the link with a friend or leave a quick review over on iTunes. Thank you!

Oh—and don’t forget to sign up for free email updates so you can get new shows sent to your inbox the minute they’re released.

Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!

Stop Pulling Your Punches

Here’s a video of the podcast. If the player doesn’t work, you can click this direct link.

As always, if you’d like to keep the conversation going, feel free to leave a comment here or through my Contact Page.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome to Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better. Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. I’m so glad you could stop by.

Today, Stop Pulling Your Punches. The reason this topic is on my mind…

The other day, I was working with a student, a young man, and we were throwing sidekicks on a bag. And he’s a hardworking student. He was sweating. He was giving it his all. He was pivoting well. He was kicking hard.

But overall, I had to give him like a B+. This is not an A performance. Why?

Well, the fact is that he wasn’t extending his leg all the way. The pivot wasn’t 100%. Sticking out that heel wasn’t 100%. And therefore, it wasn’t a complete kick. It wasn’t his full potential for a strong side kick.

Now, this is not the first time that I’ve addressed this type of issue on the physical front. I have a video, I believe it’s called, One Tip for More Powerful Punches. In that video, I comment on the same phenomenon.

When you see people set up in front of a heavy bag very often, they “short arm” their punches. They just kind of stand there and their hands are very active, but their torso is not. And so the tip very simply was to give yourself a little more space and try to extend that shoulder for a full punch.

Now, of course, I’m not innocent. I am guilty of short arming my punches and kicks over the years. And in particular, when I started grappling, so 15 years ago, I remember I was rolling with my coach, and I was just happy to get good positions, get to a mount, get to his back. But if I got my arm around his neck to set up a choke, I’d let that go. If I got near an arm bar, I wouldn’t fight for it.

When the round was over, I remember my coach being very frustrated. He looked at me and he said, What is this? A nice guy contest? Guilty again. Yes. I absolutely admit that physically, I was not finishing techniques. I was not in the hunt for the tap, for the win.

Psychologically, of course, that’s the problem. I didn’t want to be a jerk. I was new to grappling. I certainly didn’t want to hurt him, because I didn’t know what I was doing necessarily. So I don’t want to hurt somebody. I’m out of control.

I didn’t want to come off as too aggressive, or like I’m trying to win. I’d like to think that my ego is in check and I was just enjoying the learning experience. But at the same time, that doesn’t make me the best of sparring partners, because I am allowing falsity into the workout.

The worst thing you can do for your partners is to give them a false sense of confidence, a false sense of skill, letting them think they earned an escape, when really you just gave up on the attack.

So, yeah, I needed to make some adjustments to make sure I was being a good sparring partner, and to ensure that they would be good sparring partners back to me. I don’t want people short arming their punches or shortening their kicks, just to make me feel good. I need that honest feedback of for what’s working and what’s not.

So overall, in a nutshell, if you have to leave early, the big advice today is stop pulling your punches, because the magic of martial arts is in the finish.

The magic is in that last 10%, 5% of effort, where you do fight to win, where you fight for the success. Of course, that’s the magic in everything in life, going for the finish, not holding back, giving something your full effort and attention.

I think I can prove this, because most of us are very excited when we see something, see a person working at full capacity. As opposed to what we normally see– I think it’s just part of human nature– where people hold back a bit. I think most people are working short of their potential on the mats and off– half-hearted, half-assed.

People seem to have this natural tendency, including me, to do the minimum to get by. Whatever your goal is, they seek the minimum– what do I have to do to get that goal?– and not necessarily looking to do more than that.

My proof for this is that when people go the extra mile– well, let me back up, when people give 100%, you notice. If people give 100% and then do more than that, like extra credit, you really notice. And that can be in any walk of life.

That could be getting a waiter or a waitress who greets you well, gets the order correct, is timely, checks up on you during the meal, makes sure you have everything you have, brings you the check on time. When they tick every box of a professional waiter or waitress, you notice. Why do you notice? Because you’ve had so many lousy waiters and waitresses.

So I’ve had that experience, whether it’s at the dentist’s office or at a car mechanic. You get used to this mediocre level of service, attention, competence, and you just kind of think, well, that’s the way it is. Until you meet that person who’s really good at what they do, and they tick every box of professionalism, and you realize, like, wow, I’m inspired by this. I notice this. I want to be like that.

My other proof that most people aren’t working at full capacity, I think, would be in the sports world. Playoffs. I’m not much of a sports guy for regular season sports, because I’m not always convinced they’re going at 100%. They’re nursing injuries or whatever. The big crowds aren’t as big. They know they have a long season. They can make it up later. But during playoffs, I know that they’re trying hard.

During the Olympics, I know it’s now or never, these people have to put up their best performance right now. We pay money to see people working at 100%. That’s maybe how rare it is to find people not pulling their punches.

So, when you find people, if you went and paid for a ticket at a professional basketball game or at the Olympics, and people weren’t working at 100%, I think that’s when the crowd starts to boo, throw stuff, because you feel cheated. I paid to see you work at 100%. I want that inspiration in my life. And if you don’t get it, boo. So, that’s number two.

My third proof that most people aren’t working at full capacity, I think, is animal attacks. Whether it’s on Instagram or wherever, when you catch these little “caught on tape” type clips of a bear tearing up a campsite, running after somebody, or a shark attack, or any animal– it could be a spider– animal attacks are incredibly gripping entertainment. Why? Why can’t you look away?

I think it’s because of the commitment level. The animal is not in the off season. That animal is either protecting their young or they’re hungry, and they’re fighting for their life. So what you’re seeing there is a primal example of 100% effort. Biting down, holding on, trying to kill somebody. And man, that’s exciting. And perhaps inspiring.

So, overall, I think the rule is simple. If you give a minimal level of effort, you’re going to get minimal results. If you give more, you’re going to get more.

And if you can make a habit of giving your best and going all the way with what you’ve got, then you will figure out what your best really is. You will fulfill your potential. Doesn’t mean you’re always going to be the champ. Doesn’t mean you’re always going to win or survive or get what you want. But your results will be maximized.

Okay, now, this can get tricky because you may feel that you are already doing that. That you’re giving all you’ve got…

You’re exhausted after class. You’ve saved as much money as you can, etc., etc. You may feel like you are already a hard worker. And the reason this is tricky is that’s true! You may be a hard worker. You may know lots about your subject of expertise. You may have the courage to show up and try new things. You may practice a lot. You may be brave enough to ask questions and seek mentors and coaches.

But all of those measurements don’t necessarily equate to success. The problem here is when you reflect on what you’re doing, you’re measuring the wrong qualities. Gee, I’m sweating. So does that mean I worked my best? Maybe not. Did you try new things? Did you ask the right questions? Did you put yourself in uncomfortable situations or are you just repeating the same things that always work for you?

Bottom line is if you’re only measuring what you want to measure and you’re not measuring what you don’t want to measure, you’re going to get bad feedback. So I would suggest the one measurement that you should always include in your reflections is: Am I winning? Is what I’m doing working?

Now, don’t get me wrong, you don’t want to be that person in your martial arts class who’s always trying to win, who can’t drop it down a little bit to learn something. That would come off like maybe you’re a jerk. Like you just treat everything like a competition. Because that leads to only repeating what works for you. You’re never going to learn something. So the measurements can’t just be, am I always winning?

But am I always learning? Now, definitely if you are not winning– if you are losing, failing, not getting the tap, not getting the point, getting knocked down– yes, you are learning. You should be learning from your reflections. But if you’re never including, hey, here’s me winning– here’s me getting the tap, finishing the choke, scoring that knockdown– then you’re not learning from the wins. So your learning experience is very limited.

So I don’t want you just to measure by sweat or by new information. Please measure, are you getting the results that you should be? The tap, the point, the knockdown. Whatever that is in your life, make sure you’re measuring successes. You should have some.

If you’re not getting those successes, those wins, the points that you’ve got to ask, is it because I’m actually not giving 100%? Is there a 10%, 5% margin that I’m just not using? I’m not going to my limits. Why? New reflection…

Why are you stopping short?

Why aren’t you getting that choke and the tap? Why are you pulling your punches? Are you not sure it’s the right move? Are you not sure you have control of it? Are you not sure how you’re going to feel if you’re that guy who can finish things? Do you think people are not going to like you if you’re successful? Do you have a fear of success?

All of these, of course, are mental blocks, not physical blocks. That young man who was throwing sidekicks could extend his leg. And once I made some observations, he did extend his leg. So it was a mental block for some reason that he wasn’t extending his leg, not physical.

So, yes, it’s going to be scary sometimes to suddenly go 100% if you’ve made a habit of going 85% or 90% even. That last 5% of effort may likely change who you are, how you see yourself, how others see you. It’s going to change things.

Right now, you might have a status where you’re pretty good. That’s your identity. That’s how people see you. Like, yeah, you’re pretty good. If you push for that extra 5%, you might find yourself failing more and feeling silly all of a sudden. People may notice like, Hey, you’re failing more. You’re not as good as we thought.

You have to be brave enough to look at that. And accept that and say, Well, that’s okay, but at least I know what my limits are. On the other hand, you might go from, Yeah, I’m pretty good, to, I’m better than I thought. I’m getting more success.

And how is that going to change your identity? How you see yourself and how others see you? Some people may love it that you’re coming into your own and up kicking up to a new level. Others may not. They feel more comfortable with you right where you were.

That’s where they met you. That’s where they like you. And now you’re up a notch. And they’re not going to follow you up there. They can’t or won’t. And they prefer that you came back down to their level. So you may not want to deal with that. And that’s your choice. But at least be aware of what you’re doing.

Now, to be fair, there are a couple of considerations here to not necessarily excuse why you’re not working at 100%, but maybe explain why you’re not working at 100%. Here’s one of them…

Yin and Yang. Every extreme holds the seed of its opposite. If you look at the YinYang, it’s not just the black side and the white side swirling into one another– there’s often the little dots of the opposite color right in the middle of the other. So what does that represent?

Well, for the sake of this discourse, this rant, I would suggest that that is the vulnerability inherent in going to an extreme. So very simple example. If you’re short-arming a punch, you’re also shortening the amount of time that you are vulnerable to a counter. Your elbow is close enough to your body that you can pull that back to a defensive shield pretty quickly.

The longer your arm goes, the longer amount of the time is that that hand is away from your body. The longer your body is open for a counter underneath that arm. And the longer it’s going to take for that hand to come back to being defensive.

So quite literally, on a physical level, the more extreme that you reach out that punch, the longer you are vulnerable. You may already sense that instinctively and pull those punches a little bit back, just so you’re not vulnerable to being countered.

Definitely with kicks, you may feel even more of that fear, because you’re on one leg, you’re sticking your leg out there, your groin is exposed, it just feels more vulnerable. So you just don’t throw it 100%. I get that.

However, I believe the point of practice– these are not real fights yet that we’re talking about– in a practice session, in a martial arts dojo, there’s no reason why you can’t throw that 100%, risk that vulnerability, just to see if it works. To see how big a risk you’re really taking. To see what you can get away with and what you can’t.

So that you can be more wise in when you employ 100%, deploy, and when you decide to pull that a little bit shorter. You want that wisdom.

I believe you can always do less, if it comes to a real fight or some high stakes situation. You can always do less. But we should be training to always do more. So you have the option.

If you only practice at 85%, and then in a real situation you feel even more intimidated, now you’re working back at 65%, you’ve really shrunk your abilities. If however you practice at 100%, and then a real life situation scares you back to 85%, well at least you’re at 85%, not 65%. That’s my logic anyway.

So one, the yin and the yang, the inherent vulnerability of going out to an extreme at 100%. That’s one reason to be fair that you may not be operating fully.

The other reason may be you simply don’t know about it. You didn’t realize that you’re not doing 100%. And that’s usually because your challenge is at too low of a level. You’re in a comfort zone, and you may not even realize it.

Let’s say, for instance, at your school, you’re coasting at your 90%. I mean, 90% is still working hard. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mean to say coasting, but you’re operating at 90% of your potential. And let’s just say all of your partners, they’re working at 80% of here and 85% there, 60% there, and it just happens that your 90% is able to dominate everybody else’s half-hearted efforts.

So you think you’re doing great. That must be good enough. You must be 100% because nobody’s beating you, or at least not enough to take it too seriously. So you build up a false sense of confidence, like me with my grappling coach. Your partners, by not giving you 100%, have allowed you to believe that your 90% is 100%, and you don’t even need to question it. No good.

Think about breaking boards. Let’s say you put up one or two boards. I’m betting you are healthy and strong enough that you don’t need 100% of your power and speed to bust through one or two boards. So if you only set up one or two boards, you’re going to get by for the rest of your life at 80% effort. Because the challenge is just that low.

But if you challenge yourself and put up four or five boards, I’m going to bet that your 80% effort won’t cut it. It might break your hand. You’re going to need to push your limits on speed and power and focus and courage to bust through that four or five boards.

So by raising the challenge, you had to push yourself to a higher limit. So this is what we should be doing on all fronts. Give yourself higher challenges to force yourself to find your failure point. Know what your 100% is. Then you can back up a little bit and strengthen up your resources to maybe come back stronger the next time. And then increase your limitations.

This is what a good martial arts program should be doing. It should be a safe place to raise your level of challenge to force you to work at 100%. To get to the place where you fail, but you know you gave it everything you had.

Alright. Now let’s talk about self-defense. I have addressed this topic a little bit in a video called, Self-Defense TIp: Finish the Fight. And the big takeaway, if you don’t want to go watch it, was this thought: A fight is not over when you say it’s over. The fight’s over when the other guy says it’s over.

Somebody comes running up to you on the street, and you give them a big palm heel to the nose. You may think, That’s good, that’ll stop them, that’s enough. They may not think so, though. The other guy might just walk through it and still be swinging at you.

So the fight’s not over just because you thought it was over. He’s still going. So now you have to do something else, and maybe something else. Hopefully you have that opportunity.

So we should be training to go farther and farther with our techniques, with our combinations, with our power and speed, to go to our limits. Because, like I said, we can always do less, but we should be preparing to do more, to go all the way. And I do believe that how you do one thing is typically how you do everything.

So let’s say at work, maybe you don’t love your job, so you’re doing like 70-75% of your effort there. Maybe you’re bored in your relationships, so you’re kind of pulling back 75-80% there. Maybe you’re diet or saving money, you’ve pulled back on some of your efforts there, you’re like, I don’t know, 80-90%.

So now you’re in martial arts class, and you’re used to that kind of level of effort, that’s who you are. So you’re kind of given 70-90% somewhere in there in martial arts class. That’s not necessarily going to be your best life. If that’s the goal to live your best life, you’re already cheating yourself.

So, at least in the martial arts class, if that’s a safe space for you to push your limits, and to risk vulnerabilities, and risk new identities, and kind of expose who you really are and what you can really do, if you can give 100% in that martial arts class, then maybe you can come back to your diet, relationships, finances, your job, and kick it up a level over there too.

Maybe your martial arts training can inspire everything else that’s going on in your life. That’s why I say that even a little martial arts can make your whole life all better. Let the martial arts influence the rest of your life. Push yourself in martial arts, and then push yourself in the rest of your life. Or back that up…

Reflect and think about where am I not giving 100%?

Where am I showing up and doing all the hard stuff– I signed up for this, I show up for that, seems like I’m working hard, I think I’m still learning. Where do I give myself a pat on the back for not giving up, but I’m still not getting the results that I wanted? I’m not winning.

Are you getting the results that you wanted? Find those areas and figure out why not. Is it because you still have 10%, 5%, 1% that you’re holding back? Are you pulling your punches?

My advice would be to redefine what 100% means to you. Whatever you’ve got in your life right now, that’s the result of the efforts that you’ve made thus far. If you suspect that you’re not heading towards what you really wanted, that you’re not going to get it, the time’s running out, you’re getting tired now.

I’m 54 now. I’m getting tired. So I have to be really honest with myself. When I reflect on, Okay, where am I? What did I want? Am I doing the work? Am I doing the right work? Am I giving 100%?

I got to be honest. Sometimes I think, Nope, you can do more here, you can do more there. So that’s why I’m talking about this, because this is right from my own heart. I know I have to do more in certain categories of my life.

So redefine this for yourself. What is 100% to you? And you can start simply. I’m all about starting simply. Go to a heavy bag. Hit it with 100% of your effort. Don’t say, I already do. I already do hit it really hard. I’m asking you to take another look at it. Is it really as hard as you possibly could? Are you really bringing up every muscle fiber, every bit of your breath, every bit of your imagination, every bit of effort, mind, body, spirit, to slug that bag or kick that bag or knee that bag?

If you don’t trust the safety of your hand or your foot, then give it an elbow, give it a knee. But redefine what 100% feels like, looks like, and own that. Set that new marker for yourself, like, Oh, that’s what 100% is from me. Risk it.

If somebody’s watching you then in class, going after that bag, slamming it harder and faster than you ever have before, I bet they notice. And now we’re back to that thought that you’re either going to feel silly because you’ve never revealed that much power before. They may think you look silly. They may not like this new change, this new you, this new more powerful you.

On the other hand, I’m hoping you’re going to love it. You’re going to feel like a million bucks instead of 900,000 bucks. You are going to own a new identity where you are more powerful than you thought. That’s what you should give yourself.

So don’t give up on your goals quite yet. If you’re not getting what you wanted, if you’re not the toughest guy in your class, if you can’t get that tap, if you’re getting punched more than you’re punching them, if you’re losing at tournaments, if you’re not the belt that you want it to be– go down all the goals that you’re thinking about, those dreams that you have, and it could be anything, and really take a look at it.

If you’re not there yet, don’t give up until you know for sure you gave it 100%. This would be my last challenge here to you. First, redefine what 100% really is. Then ask, is that my 100% for the goal that I want the most? Have I been giving it that 100%?

If it’s yes, you really have been giving it 100% and you still haven’t gotten it, and you want to walk away from that goal, Mazel Tov. That’s totally fine. I think you’ll be able to live with that. There are certainly goals that I’ve had, that I walked away from. I felt that I gave at that time 100% of what I had. And therefore I’m okay with it.

But there are a couple of other goals where I didn’t give 100%. Where I chickened out on making that connection or pushing it or spending whatever it was. And now that I’m older, I look back and think, That was bad. That was stupid. I’m ashamed of that. But I can’t let that linger for long because now what matters is where you are today, where I am today, and how I’m going to use that past, learn from it, and act for the future. And I hope you can do that too.

And last little note, be patient with yourself. Not all goals are meant to be right away. So if you’ve now redefined what 100% is for yourself, that doesn’t mean suddenly you’ve got a huge bank account or that you’re suddenly world champion of your sport. It may take time to get where you want to go.

If you’re trying to play a musical instrument, you haven’t really been giving it 100%, and now you are, give it some time. It takes time to save money, it takes time to build skill, it takes time to build trust, it takes time to nurture a good relationship. But bring 100% to all of those tasks, all of those goals, and maximize what you’re going to get out of them.

Alright, I think I’m going to catch my breath here. Let’s wrap this up…

I definitely would say, as I have gotten older, it is easier and easier to see other people identifying who’s giving 100% and who is not. I think those 100-percenters really stand out. And when you see the people who are giving 100%, who aren’t pulling their punches, I get goosebumps. It makes me tear up. I want to support them. And even if I never see them, it makes me feel like I want to give 100%, that there’s still time, and I can do that too.

On the other hand, you see the B students. You see the people who are at 90% or less. And it hurts. To me, it hurts my heart. It feels like they’re wasting time, and I don’t want to waste my time. It feels like they’re missing opportunities, and I don’t want to miss opportunities, so I just feel empathetic. Or sympathetic.

I don’t want to be disappointed in myself. I don’t want to feel like I’ve wasted my time, that I was fearful. I want to feel that when I’m dead, when I’m dying, I gave it 100%. And I want you to have that same feeling. I don’t want you to have those regrets that you pulled punches, that you didn’t extend that kick. It’s a horrible thing to have to go to the grave with, I believe.

So, give more and then get more. Take the risks and push yourself into those uncomfortable areas. Allow vulnerability in your practice. Seek to redefine who you are and what you can do.

I think if you do this, I believe if you do this, you stop pulling punches, you’re going to find out that you’re faster than you thought, you’re stronger than you thought, you’re tougher than you thought. And all that’s going to add up to living a happier life than you thought.

Okay, that’s it. Take a moment to pick a goal right now that you’ve been thinking about your whole life, working on your whole life, recommit to it at 100%. This is it. Win or lose, whether you get it or you don’t, at least be proud of yourself for fighting for it.

Until next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.

The post #124: Stop Pulling Your Punches [Video Podcast] appeared first on Sensei Ando.

Many people worry that they won’t have the courage to fight back against a real-life attacker… and that includes martial arts students!

It makes sense, really. You can build strong muscles and practice cool moves all day long, but when fear strikes, you might still find yourself curled up in a ball and frozen solid.

Don’t let that happen to you!

In this episode, I’ll share some tips to help you face your fears and build your courage… no matter what threats come your way. (Believe me—you’re not alone. I need these tips, too!)

If you’d like even more advice on overcoming fear—particularly when sparring—check out this video: How to Reduce Fear in Sparring and Fighting.

The good news is that you’re already brave… you’re already a fighter. Believe it! The big trick is simply not allowing anyone or anything to make you forget it.

Okay—let’s get started! Let me know what you think!

To LISTEN to “How to Build Courage in Martial Arts,” here’s the link.

• Play the audio podcast below… or download to your device.
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To WATCH the video version or READ the transcript, scroll down below.

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Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!

How to Build Courage in Martial Arts

Here’s a video of the podcast. If the player doesn’t work, you can click this direct link.

As always, if you’d like to keep the conversation going, feel free to leave a comment here or through my Contact Page.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, again! Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode #123 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

Great to be back on video, I’ve missed you. I’ve been busy training, been busy teaching, but I’m here now. And, if I’m going to be honest, feeling a little old. Let me tell you why.

In the mail, I got this lovely note. Yes, and what does it say? It says, Andrew, because they really know me. Andrew, make a plan that celebrates your life. And who is this from?

Why, it’s a cremation service. Yes, I’ve finally reached the age where there are officially people waiting for me to die. They can’t wait to burn my corpse. So now I’m walking outside every day, looking up, seeing if today’s the day.

Are there any vultures? How bad do I look? Have I lost weight? Anyway, I keep this on my desk. I didn’t throw it out because it reminds me that life is short and life is crazy. Live while you can, my friend.

If you have to leave the episode right now, that’s what you needed to know. So live.

What I’d like to talk about, if you’re still going to hang around though, is courage. It takes courage to live in this world, doesn’t it? It takes courage to go after your goals. And it will certainly take courage to defend your life or to defend your goals if someone tries to stop you.

I bring this up because I get this comment either through video reactions or through email quite often. Someone will write, Dear Sensei Ando, I am afraid that I won’t be brave enough to fight back if I’m ever attacked. I’m afraid that I don’t have the courage to stand up for myself.

Whoa. All right. Let me make this simple, okay? And then maybe if you want to cut the episode short and you want to take off, okay. To me, this question is just missing one thing, context.

There are incidents every day where people with no martial arts training defend themselves successfully. Could be multiple attackers, could be a weapon involved, but people who did not see trouble coming finding a way to survive, finding a way to win. And it’s not just in the world of self-defense.

There are people who have been wiped out one way or the other and rebuilt their lives. Whether it was addiction and drugs, whether it was bankruptcy and financial ruin, whether it’s disease, the pandemic, whether their town was bombed in a war or invaded.

Throughout history, human beings find ways to pull themselves back together and move forward. And if they can do it, I believe I can do it. And if I can do it, I believe you can do it.

So the context here is situations that put us in emergency mode. Code red.

When necessity is strong enough, you will fight. When desperation is high enough, you will find a way to fight back.

That’s what I believe. In those moments of extreme crisis, your strengths will be revealed. And I believe you will overcome fear. I think fear is something we can just imagine when there is no crisis. So of course, it seems like we’re going to be overwhelmed.

But you’re not giving yourself enough credit, my friend. If you were attacked by a shark, I have no training for that. You probably have no training for that. But I’ll bet you’d fight. I’ll bet you’d fight hard.

So tap into that. Believe in that.

You have an emergency mode that, if things are truly, truly bad, you have resilience, you have toughness, you will fight your fight. I’m not guaranteeing you survive. I’m not guaranteeing you win. But I guarantee you’ll fight.

So, moving on again, episode number three within one episode. The fact is most life is not emergency mode. This is where the problem comes in.

So, if we’re not put in extreme crisis, how do I have the courage to go after what I want in life? How do I do it? There are so many things that we want to do, but we don’t have to do. And therefore, we end up floating, just floating in indecision and inaction. And we don’t get what we want.

And we just float. And over time, that starts to build, I think, resentment and bitterness, self-loathing. I don’t think it’s a healthy path.

So the question here today is, how do we build courage to take action in our normal life? Again, presuming that emergencies got that covered. But what about normal life?

Let me give you my theory about courage. I think courage is rooted in safety, a feeling of safety. So, for example, this is a sliding scale, your courage and feelings of safety.

Let’s say I say, hey, I knock on your door, come out here quick, you got to fight this guy. And you look over, and the guy is a hundred pounds less than you. No weapon. Imagine that feeling.

Now, I knock on your door, pull you outside, say, hey, you got to go fight this guy. And this time, the guy is a hundred pounds bigger than you. Two hundred pounds bigger than you. And he’s got a knife.

You probably don’t feel the same. The feeling of courage is going to be different because your feeling of safety in that situation is different.

Same thing if you’re on the street, and you hear a call, like, I’m going to get you. I’m going to kill you. And you look over, and it’s just one thin guy by himself. Versus, we’re going to get you. And you look across the street, and there’s a gang of people with bats and guns.

Now, what’s interesting here to me is that in any of these situations, you are always the same person, same history, same skills, same smarts, same everything. And yet, in a moment, you can be led to feel completely differently.

You project your performance in what’s about to occur. And your prediction of failure or success immediately affects your entire organism and sets off different hormonal responses.

So, as we move through our normal life, we’re assessing threats, we’re assessing possibilities, then we assess our capability to survive that situation or to succeed in that situation, and that immediately provides us a level of courage.

So, I think that’s how this mechanism works. It’s all about the odds. If you think you’ve got great odds, then you’re going to be pretty courageous and take actions.

If you think the odds are totally against you, you might freeze up and do nothing. And that’s why we have to be careful, since my main topic is usually self-defense. This type of dynamic will get you killed.

Fear and doubt are never going to help your performance be its best.

If you allow yourself to believe that you have no chance, if you believe you’re going to die, then you shrink, right? You shrink physically.

I think you want to start curling up and hiding. You shrink psychologically.

You start thinking, I can’t do this. I can’t figure it out. I can’t solve this problem.

You add more tension. You get tunnel vision. You’re less aware. You don’t move as well.

And you hesitate. All of those things are going to get you killed.

So, the bottom line is, if, as you’re moving through life, normal life, if you believe you’re going to lose, if you believe you’re going to die, then you’ve just increased the odds that you’re going to lose or you’re going to die.

But, if you believe you have a chance to win, a good chance, if you believe you have a chance, a good chance to live, then you’ve just increased the odds that you’re going to win or live.

I think it’s that simple. I didn’t say easy, but simple.

These things go together. Your courage and your projection of how safe you are in any given context.

Now, let me immediately throw in a flag here on the topic of delusion. That is a common criticism that you’re going to find in the world of martial arts, right? Including myself.

People put up videos sharing technical tips or ideas for self-defense. Different styles showing off their training methodologies. And immediately, you’re going to see comments under those videos saying, these guys are crazy. This is a cult. They’re engaging in fantasy. None of this stuff is going to work.

Okay, fair enough. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. But I have a question for you. Is it better to believe that you have a chance and then take action on that belief? Or is it better to not believe that you have a chance, that you’re not prepared for this situation, and not take action?

I’m talking about self-defense. When you have no choice but to engage an attacker or a threat, you couldn’t talk your way out of it. You couldn’t run. In that moment, you have this choice.

Would you rather believe that you can handle it and make a move? Or would you rather succumb to fear and doubt and freeze and shrink up?

I think the answer is pretty obvious. I personally would rather be deluded and ensure my maximal performance than to doubt myself and freeze up and do nothing.

So there is a place for delusion even, I think, in training. Now, don’t take that out of context. Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not saying you should train for delusion or you should seek delusion. Of course not. That’s not my first choice in my training.

If you’re training, the goal should be true confidence. A true set of skills. That you are training your body and your mind and your heart, your spirit, to handle situations.

So that’s not just confidence that comes from good, honest training, that comes with feedback. It comes also with making peace with the universe or your God. You believe you have a mission, you believe that your causes are righteous, that you fight for good reasons.

This requires having your morality put together. You know what you’ll fight for, you know what you won’t fight for. So if you are pushed to fight, you know it’s for a good cause. You believe in it.

It requires that you’ve managed your ego. You’ve had enough losses in your training, and you’ve had enough victories, and you’ve had enough injuries or setbacks, that you can face all of it. You’re not afraid of any of those things, because you’ve experienced them over and over again.

So you’ve learned in short to do your best, put up your best performance, no matter what the threat is, even if it’s completely overwhelming.

So these are the choices that we are given, that we’re allowed in life. As we move forward, you have these choices…

First choice, be afraid. Be frozen. Do nothing. Hope for the best. Lay and pray.

Next level up, yeah, I’m going to upgrade to delusion. Believe that you can handle situations. Believe you’ve got those skills, because at least your physical response, your psychological response, will make you relaxed enough, aware enough, creative enough, and confident enough to make that first move and at least try something.

But that is still a far cry from the number one goal, which should be training for true confidence. Training to try no matter what. Training to go down swinging.

It’s not about winning or losing. You just are programmed to try, to fight. Win or lose, live or die.

Now, if it’s true that courage requires safety nets, then the question is how do we build them? How do we construct these safety nets? I’m glad you asked.

I have five quick tips that might help…

Tip number one, seek challenges. Create emergency mode situations in your life.

I’m not talking about being reckless here. I’m talking about seeking challenges that will push you out of your comfort zone to force you to reveal not just your strengths, but also your fears.

Like I said, there’s always goals in our heads that we don’t pursue. So set a goal for yourself, a goal maybe that you’ve been thinking about for years. And now, what is the but? I want to do this, but what?

I would like you to figure out exactly what you’re afraid of. If we can’t identify the fear, we can’t face it.

So whatever it is, you’re afraid of losing money, you’re afraid of ruining your reputation, you’re afraid of failing again, pursuing a particular goal which is just going to confirm that it’s not meant for you and you’re going to feel like a loser.

Whatever that fear is, name it so you can face it.

Tip number two, protect yourself. Now let’s start finding out a way to face that fear and build that safety net. Let me give you an example.

It’s a little embarrassing, but when I was a kid, I played little league, played for several years, pretty good at it, all star, until puberty. Over one summer, it seemed like every other dude my age hit puberty, and I didn’t.

So when we came back for the next season, everyone was taller, bigger, and had stubble. I do believe some of them had aftershave on. I didn’t even know what that was.

Now, the problem there was, when I got into the batter’s box and I’m staring down some pitches, those balls were flying past me beyond anything I’d ever seen before.

And unfortunately, a couple years earlier, I had a friend who I saw right next to me get hit in the face with a baseball, and both of her front teeth got knocked out, fell right on the ground at our feet.

So I have this image of being hit in the face with a baseball and losing my teeth. And now that everyone’s bigger, stronger, faster than I am, every time I went up to that plate, all I could imagine was getting hit in the face with that ball and losing my teeth.

So I quit. I quit. I quit baseball. Now, not a great loss for the sports world, but it hurt me because I knew I had quit out of fear. How could I have protected myself?

Sure. I mean, I guess we didn’t have enough money. If they had a helmet with one of those masks in the front, the iron gate on the front of my teeth, I would have kept playing baseball.

I may have been terrible, but at least I wouldn’t have quit out of fear. It would have been other incompetence athletically. But I didn’t. I didn’t have that equipment, so I left.

Years later, side note, I was dragging around that shame, and I did go to a batting cage, crank up that pitching machine as fast as I could, and stood there until I could stare down those balls and start making contact with some of them, so I feel like I redeemed myself.

But the bigger point here is, how can you face your fear? If you already named it, now what do you have to do? Is it a piece of equipment? Is it consulting a lawyer? Is it doing some research?

Is it saving up a little nest egg and having a little backup money? Is it taking on a partner? Someone who can take that journey with you and accomplish the goal with you?

There are many different ways to approach a problem or to achieve a goal. So get creative and figure out what kind of helmet you need to build to get through that next step.

Martial arts example again, if you were like I was and primarily a stand up martial artist when the UFC started and you saw people being taken to the ground, pinned and unable to get up, well that was frightening. I could name that fear right away.

I don’t want to get pinned on the ground and choked. So what did I do? I faced a smaller fear, sign up for a BJJ class and start learning how to grapple.

So again, figure it out. Name your fear and then build your plan to protect yourself.

Tip number three, attack. Let’s talk about martial arts again, sparring, fighting, wrestling. You don’t know what your attacker or partner, opponent is going to do. You don’t know what move they’re going to do and you don’t know when they’re going to do it, which creates anxiety. This feeds fear, the unknown.

What’s going to happen? I don’t know. When’s it going to happen? I don’t know.

So attack. Win or lose, do it on your timetable.

When’s this going to happen? Right now, I’m attacking. What’s going to happen? This is going to happen. I’m going to lead the dance.

I’m not going to wait around to see your best move when you’re ready for it. I’m going to force the issue, put pressure on you, and perhaps cause you to do something predictable.

If I throw something up at your face in an attack, there’s a good chance you’re going to raise at least one hand to try to stop that. So now you become a little more predictable. Crazy, chaotic life becomes a little more controllable, which makes me feel safer.

So I find because life is so crazy, who knows what’s going on with the economy, culture shifts, diseases, relationships, betrayals, new friends. So much is out of our control, can’t be predicted.

So don’t wait around and hope that the wind is going to blow your way, that trends are going to go your way. Just get out there and start making moves. Attack.

Get clear on what you want, get clear on what you want, and then get moving.

Tip number four. This one might be a little odd at first, but hang with me. Make some noise.

I have another video where I talk about trigger words. And I don’t mean it in the way of being hurt and victimized by something someone says. I mean talking to yourself as like a trigger to fire, to take an action.

Maybe when you’re under stress and you’re freezing up and your mind is spinning, you need to focus by just training yourself to maybe say go, go, go or fight, fight, fight.

Create a mantra for yourself. Create a code word for yourself that says, all right, I recognize that I’m slipping. I’m starting to have a performance that’s going to be subpar. So here we go…

Here’s my keyword, my trigger word to get me back in action, to back on the attack. It may just be as simple as taking a breath and exhaling. One big breath might do it for you.

It might be more guttural, more primal. You may want to grunt, caveman style. I’m all for that.

Yes, even if you’re in the middle of a business meeting and you know you have to get up and contradict the boss or whatever it is, if you have to go, cough, whatever you have to do, make some noise. I mean, think about the concept of kiai. Kiai in karate. A spirit shout.

You are building up the spirit with your voice, with your breath, to engage the rest of your body, to start some movement.

Think about battle cries in general. We are not the first generation to face stress. I would say back in the day, if you had a spear and a shield and a small village and you are being attacked by the neighboring village or some army, you are outnumbered, your family is behind you, your home is behind you, and all you have is this spear or an axe and you have to go running into that battlefield to fight, into this field of butchery.

People have done this, you know, millions. So what do they do? They bang on drums and they scream and they bring up that spirit to go fight.

So in whatever way you find appropriate, I would say, find a word, find a sound, find a mantra, shout it out, do what you got to do to get some noise out of your body. Don’t let the fear freeze you. Free up your heart, free up your muscles by making some noise.

Tip number five, practice.

You know, martial arts, I’ve watched a lot of videos, I’ve listened to a lot of teachers, been to seminars, talked to a lot of people. And almost all of the conversation, all of the content is physical. It’s technique talk, it’s style versus style talk, it’s mechanical. There’s a much smaller percentage of that material that addresses psychology and emotions.

And look, I know a lot of people who have put in the time physically, but if you go slap them in the face, it’s likely they’re going to freeze up and fall apart, as if they have no training. But that’s only because they’ve been focused on the mechanics and the muscle, and not on their mind and their heart.

So I would say it’s very important to practice your psychology of fighting. Practice the emotions, practice your courage. And it can be as simple as just closing your eyes or sitting down somewhere, and use your imagination. Play the what-if game.

Imagine the most terrifying situations you can. Shark attack is a good one. Imagine whenever you want being pulled out of your car at a red light in a mob scene, gone crazy. And just see it, visualize it.

I think even with imagination, you’ll feel your heart race a little bit, you might feel a little clammy. You can trick yourself into actually starting to get a little nervous. And in those moments, practice your trigger word. Practice taking control of your breath. Visualize how you’re going to stand. What expression is on your face. How you want to move. What you’re going to say.

It can be as extreme, of course, as an actual battlefield. Or maybe you’re preparing for a job interview that’s got you nervous. And you want to just bring up a little courage. Great, then just imagine it.

Imagine walking in. Imagine how you’re going to sit. Rehearse it.

Maybe now take your imagination and in a safe space, like a dojo or your living room or in the shower when no one’s around. Whatever you have to do, rehearse the movement.

We have kata and forms and drills for the physical parts of our martial arts, the physical parts of fighting, and we do those ad nauseum over and over and over. But where are your reps for emotional strength? Where are the reps for building courage?

It’s, I would say, not just as important, I’d say it’s more important. Because if you freeze up psychologically, if you have no spirit, doesn’t matter how big your muscles are or how many times you’ve practiced those techniques.

So, rehearse, get the reps in with your mind and your heart.

Alright, let’s wrap this up.

Don’t forget, the first point is probably the most important. In extreme crisis, there is an emergency mode that I believe you will find yourself in. It will click over and you’ll be ready to fight.

But we don’t have to wait for code red to be at our best. As these fine people at the cremation service have reminded me, life is short. Therefore, consider life to be an emergency.

We’re always in code red. Every moment could be your last.

If you treat life like an emergency, if you accept that it’s just a matter of time before you are dropped in a box or you are slid into a furnace, I think you’ll find the motivation to get out there and do your thing. And do it now.

Attack life before it attacks you.

Alright, enough said. The clock is ticking, my friend. Get out there and make your moves before the Grim Reaper makes his move on you.

Until next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.

The post #123: How to Build Courage in Martial Arts [Video Podcast] appeared first on Sensei Ando.

There are many paths to choose from in the martial arts… but how do you know if you’re on the right one? Wait—there’s actually an even bigger question to think about—

Should you be following in someone’s else’s path at all?

Don’t get me wrong—I’ve been blessed to train under several amazing teachers over the years, but the fact is they all believed in different things! One says do this, one says do that.

As a student, it’s been confusing (and frustrating!) to seek advice from teachers I respect, only to receive concepts and tactics that completely contradict one another. I’ll bet that’s happened to you, too!

So, in this episode, let’s see if there’s a greater wisdom hiding behind all of that well-meaning, but conflicting advice. Is it possible we’re not supposed to choose between Yin or Yang? Is it possible to walk a path that reconciles both?

Check it out and let me know what you think!

To LISTEN to “Yin or Yang: A Tale of Two Black Belts,” here’s a link.

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Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!

Yin or Yang: A Tale of Two Black Belts

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As always, if you’d like to keep the conversation going, feel free to leave a comment here or through my Contact Page.

TRANSCRIPT

Howdy, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode #122 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

Now, last time, episode number 121, the theme was confidence. Self-defense is rooted in self-confidence, that was my claim. But where does confidence come from?

The answer, I say, it should come from you. It shouldn’t come from a teacher. It shouldn’t come from a panel who votes for you. It shouldn’t come from a certificate. It should come from within.

So today, I want to stick to that theme and give you another example of how I’ve come to this way of thinking.

A Tale of Two Black Belts. Let me introduce you to two teachers that I have worked with. They don’t know each other. And I’m not going to share their names because, well, they didn’t ask to be dragged into this.

So let me tell you about these two teachers. I think you’ll be amazed at how many similarities they share. I’m always amazed by it.

First of all, both of these teachers are male. Okay, they’re both smaller gentlemen. They would never be the biggest person in the class. So let’s say they’re both around five foot six. Let’s say they’re always around 130, 135 pounds. No more.

They’re also both about my age, so over 50. So right off the bat, that’s a lot of similarities.

They’re also both good guys. They’re also both intelligent people. They are also both blessed with a good sense of humor.

They’re also lifers. They’ve been training in the martial arts of one kind or another their entire lives. They’re also both grinders. They’re not lazy about it.

They’re in great shape. They work at it. They’re compulsive about it.

They also are teachers of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but that’s not all. They also have instructor level status in multiple arts. They know how to hit and they know how to submit.

Now, they’re also both professionals. I should say that they’re full timers. This isn’t something they used to do in their 20s or 30s. They’re still at it.

So that’s a huge list of similarities. For two guys who have never met, never crossed paths, every time I work with either one of them, I’m always reminded of the other.

The biggest difference between them, yes, there’s a difference, which always strikes me as odd, is that they don’t fight the same at all. And that always blows my mind.

Because I keep thinking, man, you’re just like this other teacher I know, in every way except the reason that I seek you out. The way you fight.

How can that be?

They face the same problems, how to fight and defend themselves against people who are bigger and stronger. They have about the same tools. They have the same experiences. They’ve been on the mats about the same number of hours, let’s say. And yet, they’ve come to completely different solutions.

And that blows my mind.

So at the risk of oversimplifying, let me sum up how they fight in this way. One is Yin and one is Yang. Yin and Yang.

One of them believes in attacking first, taking charge. They believe in getting in your face, coming in hard, creating impact. And I can tell you, when you roll or you spar with them, you know you’re in a fight. Right from the beginning, you know it, you can feel it.

The other one, no. The other one believes in counterattacking. They believe in yielding and flowing. They believe in turning things around. When you spar or you roll with them, you don’t really know you’re in trouble until it’s too late. They’ve been setting a trap for you the whole time.

Completely different.

Now, don’t get me wrong, they’re both well-rounded martial artists, but for sure, if you spar to work with either one of them, I think you’d come to the same conclusions that I have.

Now, I find that really frustrating because if I seek them out as teachers, they’re giving opposite advice, right? I seek smaller teachers. I like working with smaller teachers because to me, that means they must by trial by fire, they have figured out how to deal with larger, stronger attackers, which is the dream, I think, of every martial artist. You want to be outgunned, but still figure out how to survive.

So when I go to either one of them looking for the tricks, the secrets of the martial arts, and to find out that they have different sets of answers, it bothers me. Because that means the answers have to come back from me.

I can’t just take one of their bag of tricks and use it for myself. Because there’s another teacher that I respect that has the complete opposite opinion. Frustrating.

And of course, I’m reducing my entire martial arts career into just these two teachers, but this is true for every teacher I’ve worked with pretty much. Sure there’s things that they have in common, there are some principles that overlap, but overall, my teachers all disagree with one another.

They don’t know each other. They’re all great at what they do, but they give me different advice.

One teacher absolutely believes in forms, in kata. That is the lifeblood of their practice. Other teachers that I respect have zero use for kata, think it’s a waste of time. Why would you ever do that?

Some of the teachers that I respect, not into sparring, don’t like it. Other teachers I respect, absolutely, there’s going to be sparring every time you get with them.

One might be into weights, other teachers not so much, body conditioning. One’s into meditation, visualization, a lot of mental work. Others, no, waste of time, keep moving, use it or lose it.

Some teachers believe in teaching techniques first, and over time you decode the principles behind them. Other teachers say, no, I don’t teach techniques, I will only teach you principles and you’ll have to create your own techniques out of that.

What is going on? How can this be? How can you have such completely opposite opinions and yet still all be really good at what you do?

This reminded me of my experience taking philosophy in college. When I took philosophy in college, I may have talked about this before, at first I was thrilled because the first generation of lessons that I got, the first philosophers that I read, it sounded like they had figured out all the answers to life. So I thought, yay, this is fantastic, I’ve got the answers. Now I know how to live a good life.

Until you read the rebuttals, the next generation of philosophers who came around and said, don’t listen to those guys, here’s an opposite opinion, here’s something completely different. And I thought, oh yeah, you’re right, they were wrong, you guys are right.

And then the next generation of philosophers, and they say, whoa, no, no, don’t listen to either one of those guys, here’s a hybrid of both information sets.

I’m like, what? So at some point, it was the same frustration. One teacher that I respected, being trumped by another teacher I respect, being trumped by another teacher that I respect, until once again, it was put back on me.

This is what I ultimately learned way back in college, and now over and over again in the martial arts. The frustration that you feel when you’re not sure who to listen to should ultimately lead you to freedom.

Frustration should lead to freedom, because you realize you’re free to find your own path.

Since no one agrees on the one right way to do something, that means your way is just as good as theirs. Your experience is just as valid as theirs, as long as you came by it honestly.

So again, all of these great teachers have some things in common. They are all dedicated. They all have a strong work ethic. They all believe in testing what they’re doing.

So I trust all of their information, and each of those teachers, more often than not, now that I’m just reviewing that in my head, they found confidence in themselves in their own way to the point where they don’t really go out looking anymore. They just do what they do, and they do it well, which is its own skill.

That was the point really of not just the last episode, but many episodes of this show, that confidence in what you’re doing, finding your way, your art, your version of martial arts. That is its own skill. That’s the confidence that you need to be effective.

Now I’m bringing this up to you in case you’ve only ever had one teacher or you only trust one teacher. Maybe you’re early in your career or maybe you just stuck with a great teacher right from the beginning and you’re still with them many years later.

It’s very easy in that situation to believe that your teacher’s way is the only way. And that’s where I would just throw up a flag of caution.

As I said, I’ve worked with many teachers who share very different opinions. And today I’m just boiling it down to two specific teachers who you would think would have the same experiences and have reached the same conclusions. But no, it’s Yin and Yang.

Which then becomes confusing because if you, if you’ve only had one teacher and your teacher was Yin, they would tell you, hey, listen to me, as a smaller guy, I can tell you this is how you fight. But if you ran into the other teacher and that’s where you were training, they would say, hey, listen to me, as a smaller guy, I can tell you this is how you fight.

And they’re both right. They both make it work. But it may not fit your personal set of tools or your personality.

So at some point, you have to make it your own. And again, it’s confusing. I’m even confusing myself a little here because if you watch both of these teachers, Yin and Yang, and you watch them grapple, let’s say, you will see both of them get to the same techniques.

They’ll both get a rear naked choke. They will both get the exact same arm bar. But how they got there was completely different. That’s what I’m talking about. The art of fighting.

There’s only so many ways you can punch someone and knock them out or kick them or choke them or break something. So, the end is the same, but the journey was very different for how they got there.

Which brings us to the idea of Bruce Lee, right? Doesn’t it always? When he talks about honestly expressing yourself, what’s he talking about? It’s not just making up moves because again, I think there’s a fixed number of moves. You’re going to end up choking, punching, kicking, breaking, throwing. So, not much difference there.

The honestly expressing yourself doesn’t come in necessarily in which moves you’ve selected, but in how you executed them. Are you just copying someone you saw in a video? Are you just copying your teacher?

That’s where things get tricky. That’s where you’re not an artist. If you’re copying, you are not your own person. And that, I think, is the ultimate challenge. That’s what we need to do.

We have to figure out what really works for us, how to make it work for us. That’s when you become a true, full martial artist. The less you copy and the more you can choose and develop for yourself, the more powerful you will be.

So where do you fall? Where do you fall on the spectrum? Let’s say Yin and Yang, a little reflection for you.

Are you a believer in attacking? Are you a believer in counter-attacking?

Do you believe in mixing it up? What would be your percentage then, if you analyzed your own sparring or rolling?

What percentage of the time are you attacking? What percentage of the time are you setting traps to counter-attack? Do you have a preference?

Do you feel better when you’re on the attack? Or do you feel more clever when you’re letting them fall into traps?

It might be a tricky question, because you’re so into your own head in your own games, you might need an outside opinion.

So I would ask some of your training partners, or your teacher if you haven’t had that kind of talk, to analyze you and say, do I come off to you as Yin or Yang? Am I in your face or am I yielding and letting you come to me?

You might be surprised at what they say about you. Because I can tell you, it’s funny for me, I’ve worked with Yin and I’ve worked with Yang. And again, they don’t know each other. When I’m working with Yang, let’s call him, when I’m working with Yang, he will tell me you need more Yang, you’re too Yin. But when I’m working with Yin, he’ll tell me you need more Yin, you’re too Yang.

Again, that’s where the frustration comes in. Because if I’m trying to copy either one of them, I’m failing in their eyes. If I allow their judgment of my work be my only guiding light, then I’m going to be at odds with my true goal of just being me and doing what I think works best.

So understand that even your teacher will have a bias to what they believe works and what works for them. They’re not trying to harm you. A great teacher, of course, will allow you the freedom to find your own way within whatever they have offered you.

But some teachers may not even realize that they have a bias, which is why sometimes when you go into a martial arts school, you’ll see that there’s a culture that is trickled down from the teacher.

If the teacher is a very hard-nosed, aggressive person, you’ll feel that through a lot of the students there. And in the same way, if you have a school that’s headed by someone who’s very soft and very yielding and flowing, you’ll find that they’ve attracted that type of student and that’s how they perform generally.

But ultimately, you’ve got to be aware of what kind of culture you’re in, figure out how much that fits with your own personal wants and needs, and make some decisions. And if that means you’re at odds sometimes with the culture of your school, so be it.

If that means you have to go seek another school that fits your culture, fits your mindset, so be it. Just don’t forget the same lesson from last episode.

Ultimately, it’s about what works for you.

What satisfies you? Try everything. Be fair.

That’s why I seek out different teachers. Because I’ve realized how much I benefit from seeing different perspectives and experiencing different cultures.

But, as I’ve also remarked in recent episodes, when you get to a certain age, at some point, at some point, you have to make a decision of which path you’re on. Because if you stay in that mode of frustration, where, oh, I’m going to try this for a while. This feels great.

Wait. No, it’s this way to do it. Oh, I’m going to try that for a while.

Wait. This is better. No, wait, that’s better.

Then you’re just chasing. You can’t chase confidence in that way. Confidence comes at some point from saying, this is where I’m standing. This is my spot, and I’m going to make this work now.

So my advice in this Tale of Two Black Belts is to not allow yourself to be two black belts. Don’t carry a division in your thoughts. You should be training for clarity. That means you have to make some choices.

Don’t get caught up with so much respect for other people’s experiences that you devalue your own. Your path is just as valid as anyone else’s, especially if you’re doing the training, if you’re working at it, if you’re honest about it, if you’re reflecting, if you’re looking at your results. I’m going to presume that you do that.

Of course, we’re not all able to turn martial arts into a full-time endeavor. I get that. So you may not be able to train a million different ways and meet a thousand different teachers.

So in that case, I would say, pick what’s working for you. And if that’s Yin, then be Yin. If it’s Yang, then be Yang. And go as deeply into that as you can, as I have seen demonstrated by some teachers that I respect. They have made their choices, and they have gone deep, deep, deep into those choices. And they’re not interested anymore in what other people are doing.

And if that’s your choice, I respect that. But as a closing thought, I would like to point out that in my study of the Yin and Yang, it’s not really Yin and Yang.

Sometimes people talk about the opposites in that way, as separate. It’s Yin over here and, in the middle, Yang over here. But in reality, it’s Yin Yang. There is no and. They are already one.

They are part of the great ultimate, the grand experience of the universe. They are one at the same time. Both the Yin and Yang incorporate the other into them.

So if you are really training to be the best you can be, I would say make it a goal to be Yin Yang. Both simultaneously. Be able to use whatever tool you need to survive, to succeed.

No one’s A game works all the time. Yes, if you are up against people without any training, people who are indecisive, people who aren’t sure what’s happening, what’s going on, and you come in strong with your A game, whatever that is, Yin or Yang, you’re going to have a lot of success because you’re very good at what you’re doing versus someone who’s not very good at anything.

Good. But at the same time, if you’re all Yin, you are vulnerable to Yin. And if you’re all Yang, you are vulnerable to Yin. And I don’t want to be vulnerable.

I don’t want to plant a flag in anybody’s country and say, I’m only here. I want to transcend all of that.

So my advice is to seek balance. Seek combining what seem like opposites and realize that it’s all in service of survival.

I don’t care what you call it or where it comes from. My goal is to live. My goal is to thrive. My goal is to move forward with my dreams. And when possible, to bring the people I care about with me to help them achieve their dreams.

So I don’t care how it’s done. Don’t get caught up too deeply into that. Or I can only do it this way and that’s who I am. No.

Transcend that. Embrace it all and use it all. I think that’s one of the keys to a happy life.

All right, thanks for sticking it out to the end. I hope that gave you something to think about. And if you have a thought you’d like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. I’ll tell you, sitting here talking to myself is kind of weird.

Until next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.

The post #122: Yin or Yang: A Tale of Two Black Belts [Video + Podcast] appeared first on Sensei Ando.