How do you prepare to face the day? Do you have a morning routine to be at your best?

Whether you rely on exercise, meditation, red light therapy, or coffee, once the day starts, most of us feel our power being sucked away… or given away. The insults and threats of daily life are relentless in their attack on our optimism, good will, and best intentions.

But wait! Isn’t that what training in self-defense is all about? To defend our health, safety, and good vibes? Yes! We must become masters in managing our minds and emotions to maximize our power and optimize our chances at success in every realm.

In this episode, I’ll share three simple actions you can take right now (and keep taking all day) to boost your fighting spirit. I’ll also discuss the advantages of facing threats with a smile and why laughing in the face of death is a smart strategy.

Of course, I’ll be interested in what you have to say, too! If you’ve got a trick to optimizing your attitude and defending your heart, let me know!

To LISTEN to “Laugh in the Face of Death,” just hit play below.

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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!

Laugh in the Face of Death

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, Laugh in the Face of Death.

Howdy, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode number 129 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better. Let me ask you something…

How are you feeling? Are you feeling 100%? You probably don’t, and you’re probably at the age where you’ve realized you’ll never feel perfect again.

There is no such thing as 100% anymore. Maybe you woke up with a fever today. Maybe you’ve been getting punched in the mouth a lot lately.

Maybe you wanted to record a podcast and your wife can’t stand the sound of your voice droning on and on, so you’ve come out to the car instead.

Whatever your circumstances, please know we must optimize ourselves to get the most out of what we’ve got.

If you want a happy life, achieve your goals, feel fulfilled, we must try to come at it with everything we’ve got if we’re going to have any chance at all at success.

It’s also true in the realm of self-defense that if you’re being attacked, we can’t focus on what we don’t have. We’ve got to make the most of what we do have to survive. Now optimizing sounds fancy, but really how can you optimize yourself?

Let’s make this very simple. First fix your posture. Whatever you’re doing right now.

Can you sit up a little straighter? Can you stand up a little straighter? Can you make yourself a little more aligned and comfortable?

Two, can you take a big deep breath? Just take it. Everyone knows they should, but when was the last time today you took one?

So take a big breath. Number three, add a little smile to your face, even if it’s half your face. Add a little smile.

Find something you can be grateful for, something that makes you feel good, or, heck, if you have to fake it, just fake it. Make a smile.

Now those three little things, if you just sat up, you took a breath, and you added a smile, I’ll bet you felt some percentage of improvement in your state of being. True?

That little boost, it’s fascinating to me how little it takes to head us in the direction toward success instead of failure. Optimizing is not fancy. It doesn’t have to be. So, give yourself that quick little boost, feel a little bit better, and know that you just increased your chances at success and survival.

It makes me think of an interview I saw once with Tom Brady, the NFL quarterback. And the Patriots, I believe, were getting blown out in the first half of the game. They came up for the second half, however, they rallied and came back to win the game.

So, in the post-game interview, the interviewer asked Tom Brady, what was the conversation like during half time? How did you change the plan? What was said?

And Tom Brady said, nothing changed. There was no new game plan drawn. What they needed to do was execute better.

And I thought that was a fantastic concept, which is why I’m sharing it with you. Sometimes we doubt our systems, we doubt the mode, we doubt the information, when really it’s just, we have to be better.

We have to just do the, execute the plan better. You already know the answers. You already know how to get what you want.

You just have to double down on doing it the best you can. This also calls to mind to me the phrase, Laugh in the Face of Death. I don’t think that means you’re crazy.

If death comes, the threat comes. It doesn’t mean you’re happy to see it. I would like to avoid threats whenever possible. However, if you have this choice of facing death, of facing a threat, tense and fearful, and then trying to react from that state of being, or laughing, relaxing, letting go of the stress and the fear, and then being able to face the threat in that state of mind, I think your chances are much better at surviving, don’t you? That’s the idea here.

I think for self-defense, for succeeding at your goals, and for laughing in the grim reaper’s face, we need to just make this a habit, that we optimize ourselves, that we don’t allow ourselves to curl up, tense up, and give up.

The good news is, none of this is very difficult. Our quick little boost at the top here, that’s free, and it’s easy to do, and you can do it anywhere without even drawing in any attention to yourself. Just sit up, take a breath, and smile.

Yet, how often do you do that? How often do you actually polish yourself up a little bit? I don’t think it’s that common.

I think we get caught up in the day’s activities, we get caught up in the dramas, and we just get pulled down that river, and then we’re treading water for most of the day. Doesn’t start off that way. I think we wake up in a very different state.

I think we wake up full. I think we wake up with an opportunity to plug into a routine. Maybe you have, you take a shower, maybe you exercise, maybe you meditate, maybe you pray, maybe you have a cup of coffee, maybe you have a few minutes to yourself, and you tune up, you say, okay, this is me, I’m in my full state right now.

And then life begins. And piece by piece, you get pulled apart. Just as I think it’s crazy at how little things can make you better suited for success, the flip side is true too.

Daily Power Drain

It’s absolutely nuts how quickly you can give your power away or see it taken away. So quickly, you can go from feeling great to feeling lousy. You can go from feeling confident to feeling helpless. You can go from feeling very clever and capable to feeling like you’re an idiot.

I don’t think it takes much to slip down that slope. So we have to be on guard.

We wake up. We create a routine. We feel full. We feel powerful. We feel ready to face the world. Here it comes. Life pains. Just life. Family pains. Friend pains. Stranger pains. Pains from yourself. All of these stimuli now are going to start coming at you.

And each one is like a little punch. Each one landing. Some you can slip. Some hit deep. Some graze you. But you’re in this fight to maintain your optimal state for as long as you can.

What else takes away from your power? Competing. Comparing yourself to other people. That can rob you of your joy and rob you of your feeling of worth. Legacy pains. That’s a whole chapter.

Things that you’ve been holding on to your whole life. Something your family did to you when you were a kid. Something a friend said to you when you were in high school. Something a teacher did to you that wasn’t fair. There are so many things.

Some things that you failed at in the past. Things that you did in the past that you can’t forgive yourself for. All of these things are sitting there in your head, in your bones, in your muscles. But these aren’t the only beliefs that can be holding you back.

In addition to feeling that maybe you’re not that attractive, maybe you’re not that athletic, maybe you’re not that smart, maybe you’ve got the belief that you’re just not that good at mathematics, maybe you believe you don’t have a head for money.

You have all of these beliefs that could be just sitting there chipping away at your capability to do something good for yourself. You may have just an operating system belief that life is supposed to be fair and yet you keep finding that it’s not.

You may have a belief that justice should prevail and that it will prevail and yet you’re flabbergasted when you see bad guys winning and good guys losing every day.

You might have a belief that your pain and your suffering is a personal experience that no one else is going through and therefore you have a belief that you’re alone, that you’re isolated, that there is no one to help you.

All of these beliefs are crippling to your future. How can you succeed? How can you survive if you’re burdening yourself with all of these negative beliefs?

Stop Wallowing

The worst of all, perhaps, I think, the worst possible human tendency, and maybe it’s just me, is giving up even the desire to feel optimal. When you actually allow yourself to wallow, you don’t mind it.

At some point, you’re tired, you’re grumpy, or you’re angry, you’re upset, and you kind of like it. You just want to feed on it. You just want to sit with it for a while, and you give yourself permission to just be grumpy and angry.

And you know you could probably change that state. You know you could go for a walk. You know you could watch something funny on TV. You know you could make yourself a cup of tea. You know you could sing. You know there are things you could do to feel better.

You just don’t want to anymore. I think that is the most dangerous human tendency of all. Our ability to be able to keep moving and thinking positively and finding hope in our next step is paramount to a happy life.

Every moment we spend wallowing is a moment lost. It’s an opportunity opportunity lost. Anyway, you woke up in a full state.

You put yourself in a great state. Now you’re getting punched. You’re getting pieces of you pulled away.

Some of this power you’re giving away. Maybe by two or three in the afternoon, your neck is tighter. Your breathing is shallower. You’re less optimistic. You’re starting to go down the hill of negativity. And by the time you do get to the end of the day, perhaps it’s a relief.

You slide into a couch, you slide into bed, and you’re just happy that it’s over. Tomorrow maybe fight again, but today you’re writing off as a loss.

By the end of the day, you might have a routine as well to try to regain some of what you’ve lost. Maybe now that shower, maybe now some exercise, maybe now the prayers or meditation, maybe now a stiff drink.

We all have different routines, but there’s usually some type of self-medicating that’s going to come in here to try to restore what has been lost. It’s a big job, okay? All of this is a big job to try to stay optimal in a world that is not ideal.

It’s a big job. How do you do it? The way we started. Small adjustments, little things done continuously.

If the threats are coming in non-stop, then our restoration has to be non-stop.

We can’t let it get ahead of us and start tipping the scales so much so that you can’t get it back. All these little things don’t matter anymore. We have to be vigilant. We can’t let the bad stuff accrue.

This is about prevention. The earlier in a fight that you fight back, usually the easier it is to get out of it. As soon as a hand is coming for your throat, that’s the easiest time to knock that hand away.

By the time hands are on your throat and you’re pinned to the ground, it’s more difficult. You have to do more to get out of that situation. Prevention is everything.

During the day, little things that you can do, in addition to sitting up, taking a breath and smiling, come in the form of either external tools or internal tools. External tools, an energy drink, taking supplements.

Maybe you do a cold plunge or a sauna, maybe red light therapy. There’s so many trendy cool things you can do nowadays. Go stare at the sun.

All of that stuff is great, but they’re all not always available. You’re not always able to access all of them, and the results that you’re going to get from any of them are temporary, of course.

So I tend not to rely on external tools to make me happy or to restore my sanity. I do rely more on internal tools because they’re within me. The posture, the breathing, the smiling and focusing.

Being very clear in my head about what I want out of the next moment, out of the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year.

Trying to keep my focus on where I want to go, not on all the things that I don’t want and all the places I don’t want to go. Your brain can only handle so much input at any given time.

So if you’re not feeding it what you want, it’s going to fill itself with things you don’t want. You have to manage your own mind. That is huge.

Also, in the School of Internal Tools, yeah– mantras, war cries, some little saying that you can repeat to yourself to keep you focused on your goals. What do you need to stay in the zone, to be in your beast mode? What do you need? What would you like to hear?

I’ve changed mine so many times over the years depending on what’s going on. But one that’s been very powerful as of late is, I’m still here.

I’m still here.

If you’re still here, then you’re still alive. You’re still functioning. You still have a chance. You can still take action. You can still change things.

So I think that’s a really good one. Particularly when I’m on the ground underneath someone much bigger and they’re pinned down on top of me. I’m pinned down and they’re digging in for a choke or whatever they’re doing.

It’s so easy to not want to be there. It’s so easy to let your mind disappear, to close and just pray it all goes away. But if you can say, yeah, I’m still here. Yeah, I feel you up there trying to get that choke, but I’m still here. I’m gonna make that hard for you. Yeah, I feel you up there trying to crush me. I can’t breathe, but I’m still here.

I find that one to be very, very inspiring. You’re not dead yet. It’s coming, but you’re not dead yet. And while you’re still here, you can still fight.

By the way, about this smiling business, I should go back to that for a second. We talked about wallowing, wallowing in your sorrow as well. Yeah, it’s all well and good to say, put a little smile on your face. Or I would even extend that to put a little smile in your heart. Put a little smile in your belly. You can put a little smile, that sensation of a smile, anywhere you need it.

Particularly if you have a pain in your body. Put a little smile there. If you know, you know.

But what if you really don’t have any reason to smile? You’re just having a terrible day or you’re in a horrible circumstance. I’m going to tell you that you should fake it.

You should absolutely fake it. The longer you wallow, as we already said, the more opportunity is going by. And I would suggest to you that those periods of time when you don’t want to be optimal and you like wallowing, you’re kind of being a spoiled brat. Me too.

When you’re wallowing, please remember that that’s a luxury, that you have the time and the space to wallow. You want to just wrap yourself up in a robe and pout in the corner. That’s because you’re able to do that.

You apparently are, you have a lifestyle that allows you to do that. In an emergency situation, you wouldn’t have that luxury. If a shark is eating you, you can’t say, oh, well that bite really hurts.

I want to just sit with that for a second. Well, too late, you’re being thrashed and eaten. So, please recognize that when you give in to the wallowing, you should minimize that, because it really is an abuse.

It’s a horrible way to treat a gift. You have the gift of time and space where you could do anything you want, and you’re choosing to do nothing but feel sorry for yourself or wallow. What a luxury, what a waste of a luxury. The luxury is the time and the space. You should use that for something better.

Yeah, I’m judging. Yeah, I’m judging myself. And if you see a bit of you and me in that, then you know what I’m saying. So just recognize that if you’re blessed with the time to wallow, that’s the very reason you shouldn’t.

Laugh Before You Feel Happy

Okay, let me wrap up this episode with a quote. In preparing for this episode, a long-time listener, a long-time friend of the show, Ingrid. Hi, Ingrid. She sent me a quote that is just wonderful and worth sharing.

Here’s the quote. This is from 1688, from a philosopher, a writer named– pardon the accent– Jean De la Bruyere. He wrote something called The Characters. And in that work, he wrote,

One should laugh before being happy for fear of dying without having laughed.

That’s everything I’m trying to say here today, folks. Laugh in the face of death. Laugh before you have a reason. Smile, even if you have to fake it. Because, the reward is, you change how you feel. You change how you move, you change how you think, you give yourself the most power you could possibly have. What’s the alternative?

Frowning, being neutral, being detached. I don’t think those states of being will get you as far, in any context. So, smile for no reason.

Laugh before being happy. These are ways that you can optimize yourself for full performance. If you’re tense, you’re going to act tense. You’re going to make decisions from a tense place. If you’re fearful, you’re going to be acting fearfully. You’re going to be making decisions from a place of fear.

That is not going to help you in life, and it’s not going to help you in a fight. But if you follow Jean De la Bruyere’s advice, then I believe we’re optimal. The trick is not to wait for death, to laugh. Make it part of your routine, to laugh because that’s who you are. Smile because that’s who you are. That’s the fight, fight for a happy life.

I’m not saying any of this is easy. I’m not saying there aren’t times when wallowing feels natural. But we have to fight that because smiling is natural too. Laughing at life is natural too. So don’t limit yourself to just the negative naturalisms. Go to the positive naturalisms.

Give yourself a smile, give yourself a laugh. If you can stay optimal before life comes, while life is coming at you, and after life came at you, I think that is perfect. I think that is as perfect as we can be. And whatever we get out of that, certainly not a guarantee of winning, certainly not a guarantee of succeeding or even surviving. But it’s our best chance, and that feels pretty good. That makes me smile all on its own.

So sit up, take a breath, add a little smile, and then focus on what you want. If you do all that, I think you’ve got a good chance of getting it.

Alright, it’s really hot in this car, and I’ve said what I wanted to say.

So thank you from the bottom of my heart for dropping by, and I’ll see you next time. Until then, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword.

Keep fighting for a happy life.

The post #129: Laugh in the Face of Death [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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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!

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 can watch the video below or scroll down for the transcript. Keep fighting, my friend!

Keep the Martial Arts MARTIAL!

Howdy! Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Look—there are many paths that you can take in the martial arts—modern or traditional, competitive sport or spiritual journey.

It’s also true that people start out with different motivations: maybe self-defense, fitness, or just fun. So, whatever interest brings you to the mats, or the park, or garage, I say good for you! But whichever path you choose, I do hope at some point we all end up in the same place. Where is that?

Conflict resolution. Overcoming resistance. In other words, fighting.

Fighting is the only way to build self-protection skills, which is what makes martial arts special. Learning how to stand up for yourself and manage threats is what makes martial arts different from yoga, dancing, or climbing rocks.

In recent years, with the rise of MMA, many martial artists have criticized traditional martial arts training programs that offered limited or zero training against resistance—and that’s a fair point! But then a funny thing happened…

The foundation arts of MMA, like Boxing, Muay Thai, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, discovered the same business reality that Karate, Kung Fu, and Tae Kwon Do discovered decades ago—most people don’t want to get punched in the face or choked out. Which means nowadays, you might find a boxing class with no sparring or a BJJ class with limited or structured rolling. 

That makes sense—give your customers what they want… but the customer isn’t always right! As teachers, we should be leading students to new challenges. As students, we should be looking for new challenges. Specifically, facing fears and making the uncomfortable more comfortable.

So, good news: Today, it seems there are more martial art schools than ever. Bad news: If we’re not careful, there may be fewer schools offering the full benefits of martial arts, the benefits that go along with the practice of fighting, than ever.

To fix that, traditional schools need to keep it real and MMA schools need to keep it safe. If we all do that, then more people will get the full benefits that only martial arts can offer. If we don’t do that, then we might as well go play pickleball.

Of course, how a program incorporates fighting into its training can look many different ways. And I’m certainly not suggesting that anyone should be getting contusion and concussions on a regular basis. But I do hope that however you’re teaching or however you’re learning that you’re heading in the right direction—towards conflict resolution. That means verbal deescalation, shoving and running, breaking an arm, or knocking someone out—all of it. 

The way I see it, the whole point of martial arts is to arm as many good people with the tools they need to fight for themselves, their family, their friends, and the common good as possible. When we toughen up the good guys, that doesn’t just make their lives better, it makes the world better. And that’s a goal I hope we can all agree on.

So, let’s keep the martial arts as martial as we can… and keep fighting for a happy life!

The post Keep the Martial Arts MARTIAL! appeared first on Sensei Ando.

You can watch the video below or scroll down for the transcript. Either way, don’t give up!

Don’t Quit Working Out! How to Stay Motivated

Tip # 1: Work out early.

If you wait till the end of the day, life will get in the way. Almost every fit person I admire works out first thing in the morning. If that means you have to get up a little earlier, then do it.

Make being healthy your number one priority and make working out the first thing you do.

Tip #2: Sleep in your workout clothes.

That might sound crazy, but if you do it, the second you open your eyes up in the morning, you’re ready to get started. You could even do some sit-ups or hold a plank under the blankets if you want to.

Tip #3: Leave equipment where you can see it.

You know the saying—out of sight, out of mind. If you keep putting your equipment away, you’ll probably never use it. So, put a pair of dumbbells by the refrigerator. Leave some bands next to your bed. Keep a jumprope in the front seat of your car.

Put equipment IN your way so you can add mini-workouts all day.

For some cool exercises you can do with a towel in your bedroom or bathroom, click here:
Towel Workout for Martial Arts.

Tip #4: Drink more water.

No, I don’t mean those wacky energy drinks… I mean, just plain, old water. Water keeps your brain, joints, and muscles functioning properly. That means more energy, fewer injuries, and quicker recoveries, and a clear head.

So, no more feeling tired or tight, drink water before, during, and after your workout.

Tip #5: Don’t measure anything.

This is a tough one. Look—it took you years to get into the shape that you’re in right now, so it’s not really fair to expect to see big changes in just two weeks. Thinking like that leads to disappointment, which then leads to quitting. So, give yourself a month, maybe two, with no scale, no mirror, and no measuring tape. Just do the work.

Tip #6: Keep a journal.

Get a notebook, a daily calendar, a note-taking app—whatever works for you—and instead of writing down what you’re going to do, make it a habit after every workout to write down what you’ve DONE. This does two things…

First, it gives you a record to analyze when you start tracking results down the road. Second, it will help build mental momentum. When you see the proof that you’ve been working out hard day after day, that will fire you up to keep going.

Tip #7: Work out anyway.

Sick? Tired? Busy? Hey—so is everyone else! But that doesn’t mean you can’t do something. Take a walk. Push on a wall. Stand on one leg. Something!

Remember—doing something is always better than doing nothing. Even on your worst day, if you can force yourself to do one push up, you’ll give yourself a reason to be proud.

Plus, movement builds momentum. Force yourself to do one pushup, and I bet you’ll do more. So, no excuses—work out anyway.

Tip #8: Know WHY you’re working out.

Ask yourself—why do you want to be in shape? To defend your family? To see your kids grow up? To hold on to your independence?

If you don’t know WHY you’re working out, you probably won’t. So, get clear—very clear—on what you want. Write it down. Get it tattooed on your forehead. Just don’t forget it! Because if your reason is good enough, you’ll never skip a workout again.

Okay, hope that helps! Try one or two (or all!) of these tips, then let me know how it goes. And start now—right now! Get off the screen and get on the floor for a push up… or 100.

Until next time, keep sweating, my friend and fighting for a happy life!

The post Don’t Quit Working Out! How to Stay Motivated appeared first on Sensei Ando.

We all need teachers and role models in the martial arts… but can following a leader become harmful at some point? Is it possible to show a teacher too much respect?

YES! If we’re not careful, our humility as a student can be transformed into hero worship. Once that happens, it becomes impossible to maximize our skills and build true confidence. And without true confidence, your ability to defend yourself is greatly diminished.

Be careful! It’s happened to me… don’t let it happen to you!

In this episode, I’ll share a couple of stories that not only showed me the dangers of constantly seeking a teacher’s approval, but also helped me figure out how to train with a balance of humility and confidence. As a result, as you may know, I created and awarded myself my own black and white belt! 🙂

Here’s to healthy training habits and learning to become your own hero!

To LISTEN to “Hero Worship,” here’s a link.

• 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!

Hero Worship in the 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

Welcome, my friend. Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. This is episode #121 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

Today, heroes, mentors, role models, teachers, we all have them in the martial arts and beyond. But when does following a leader become harmful?

When does admiration transform into adulation? And when does adulation transform into idolization?

Can you show too much respect for a teacher? When does respect transform into hero worship?

Now, yes, I still have teachers. I still seek guidance. That’s what teachers are for.

Teachers can inspire us to get started. Teachers can encourage us to keep going. And teachers can guide us to make sure we’re heading in the directions of our goals.

That’s all good. But I find in the martial arts that oftentimes teachers are elevated into gods. They’re glorified. They’re deified.

And I know this, of course, from my own personal feelings towards some teachers, particularly early on in my martial arts career. I also know this from listening and reading many interviews with martial artists, some famous, some not.

And I also know it from different martial artists that I’ve spoken to in person. You’ll hear people make comments like, oh, I’ll never be as good as my teacher. Or they will describe their teacher in legendary terms.

The stories that you hear are just incredible, unbelievable, often. They’ll say, oh, their skills. I still don’t understand how they could do what they did. It was almost magical.

And very simply, it puts yourself, these stories, in a place of being nothing. Oh, compared to my teacher, I’m nothing.

Now to all of that, I say stop it. Stop. Respect your teachers, of course. That’s not what I’m talking about. If a teacher changed your life, then of course you’re always going to have respect for them. Even a bad teacher.

A bad teacher meaning maybe they cheated you in some way. Maybe you had a difference of opinion and it broke up the relationship. Maybe politics got in the way. There are lots of stories of people falling out with their teacher. But you still respect them. Because if they changed your life, you still carry that lesson with you.

So, this isn’t about respect only. Respect is its own category. There’s a different topic to talk about though. And that’s just knowledge and skill.

I’m asking today, can you be better than your teacher? Are you better right now than your teacher?

Does that question come off as disrespectful right off the bat? I would say no. I would say no because learning is not a competition. Your teacher is on his or her own journey. They have their own stories to tell.

You’re on your own journey. You have your own goals that may be different from your teacher’s goals.

You certainly have different histories. You certainly have different training methodologies perhaps, or the amount of time that you can put into it.

So you’re not on the same exact journey. So it’s not fair to compare them. So I ask again, are you right now better than your teacher at something? It doesn’t have to be everything. But can you find some qualities, some attribute that you have that maybe your teacher does not?

Quick example just for myself, simple. When I was younger, I practiced a lot of high kicks. So I still have a lot of knowledge and some muscle memory of high kicking. And many of my teachers were in styles that didn’t practice high kicks.

So right off the bat, I can tell you, I am better and know more about kicking high than several of my teachers. It wasn’t worth talking about at the time. And they certainly never pointed it out, because that’s not why I was there learning from them. It was not the appropriate topic to discuss, and it wasn’t a competition. So it didn’t matter, irrelevant.

But what about you?

The reason I’m asking is because in your training, if our goal is to be the best we can be and to have a happy life, to be fulfilled, to get the most out of your training and your life, we have to reveal any self-limiting beliefs. I cannot walk around always thinking that I’m not as good as someone else.

Maybe, yes, of course, if there’s someone who is a professional martial artist and they’re training full-time and they’ve been doing it for decades, and maybe you’re a hobbyist and you only train for a couple of hours on a couple of things, well then sure, there will always be a long list of skills and attributes that you can say, yeah, my teacher is better than me at a lot of these things, all of these things.

But that doesn’t mean there’s not room for you to still be great or to achieve a higher level of skill than your teacher at at least one thing, something. That’s of course up to you to figure out what that would be. But I just want you to have the possibility in your head that as you train, that you’re not always lesser than, you’re not always a weaker, watered down version of your teacher.

And the reason for that is because self-defense is rooted in confidence. How can you possibly defend yourself if you don’t believe in what you can do, if you don’t believe that you have some skill? That’s not healthy.

There is ego that we need, healthy ego that says, I can do this, I can beat that guy, I am good enough.

Quick little story, I remember training with a guy and at that point we were both senior students in a style. And at one point we were doing pretty well, we had a good flow going, we felt pretty competent, you could feel good momentum coming on.

And he broke it. He broke the momentum by saying, I don’t know, he was saying, man, you know, that was good, but can you imagine how this would never work against our teacher?

And I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, like, what are you talking about?

He said, well, you know, I mean, that’s a really good move and, you know, we did it well, but if you imagine, can you imagine trying that against our teacher? He’d kill us.

And I just remember thinking, are you crazy? How ridiculous. What a crazy thing to say.

So you’re telling me if you went home right now and your teacher, the teacher, was beating your wife or beating your child, you wouldn’t be able to overcome him. You can’t even imagine a reality where you would destroy him and take him down.

Now maybe that sounds disrespectful to create that scenario in your head, but I don’t care. This is important.

You have to believe in your head that you could take out anybody who means you harm. You have to believe that. The opposite is damaging to you.

How can you walk around thinking that right off the bat, the people that you know in your own small circle, you can’t even beat them in a life and death situation?

No. I don’t care if it’s my teacher. I don’t care if my teacher’s got a knife. I don’t care if my teacher’s swinging a sword. If they mean me harm or the people that I love harm, I can visualize taking them down and taking them out with respect.

Now my friend, when I came back with that attitude, snorted. He didn’t accept that thought at all. He’s like, you’re crazy.

And I thought, what? Call me crazy if you want to. Call me delusional. But I would rather be delusional in my training than limited, self-limiting, believing that there’s no possibility of beating someone that I know, let alone some phantom that I don’t know, some future bad guy.

How do you feel about that? Who is the martial artist that you hold in the highest esteem? Whose skills do you have the most respect for? Can you visualize a scenario where you beat them?

If this guy broke into your home, if this guy was hurting someone you love, could you take them out? I hope that you can imagine, yes. Yes you could.

So limitations are dangerous to me if you’re training for self-defense. It opens the door to cult-like thinking.

The very idea that someone is better than you and you are always going to be lesser than them, that there is no possibility ever that you will be better than they are, is the most damaging belief system I can think of as a self-defense student. We’ve got to weed that out.

If you need a leader, need a leader, not just respect a leader and say, oh, I’d like to follow this leader and see what they’re doing, learn from them, copy them in some ways until I can find my own way, that’s healthy. But if you find yourself always needing a leader, needing validation, needing them to see you and say, you’re good at this, you’ve got skill.

If you can’t stand on your own, that’s a problem.

If you need to be connected to someone higher than you at all times, someone to always refer to or defer to and say, well, oh, I’m not that good, but he’s great and I’m part of their organization, his organization, therefore I have some abilities, but only because it’s his school, not because of my own work, not because of my own practice.

That scares me. It scares me that people put on a patch or wear a logo and think that’s the source of their skill, that’s the source of their confidence, that’s what makes them feel good about themselves as opposed to wearing their own patch, their own logo, carrying their own flag.

And again, I mean no disrespect to an organization or a teacher that you’re part of, but it should be balanced. It would be fantastic if you could be proud of your teacher, proud of your school, proud of your affiliation, but equally proud of yourself, if not more so.

Because that’s what this is all about. It’s your life. I cannot put the power in someone else’s hands to make me happy, to make me proud. It’s got to be on my own terms.

We’re talking about confidence here. Where does confidence come from?

Every martial arts, I think, has that somewhere in their marketing materials that you’re going to build confidence, come to the art, do this training, and you’re going to build confidence. But where does it come from?

Do you have confidence? Real confidence.

To me, that’s an uncomfortable question, because I’ve met so many nice people, good people, hard working people, loyal people, showing up, doing work, practicing, and yet when push comes to shove, maybe literally, they don’t have confidence in what they’re doing. Or they’re waiting for someone to tell them that they should have confidence in what they’re doing.

If you wait around, if you’re not careful, and you’re waiting around to get a teacher’s approval, if you are seeking validation, if you’re waiting for a teacher to tell you that you’re good, you may be in big trouble, because you may never get those words.

You may never hear the testimony from a teacher or that senior student that you look up to that you’re doing a great job. So, don’t set yourself up for that feeling that you’re not good enough, that you didn’t work hard enough. That’s not fair.

And, furthermore, there’s an ugly fact that we need to admit. Particularly in the martial arts, you may find some teachers who don’t want you to think that you are better than they are.

They don’t want you to think or believe that you could ever be better than they are. There are many teachers in the martial arts who enjoy creating a mystique around them. They enjoy being a little mysterious.

They enjoy being a little set off from the crowd. They like being held in the regard of being like a legend or almost godlike. That status is what feeds their confidence and feeds their ego.

But that does nothing for you. This creates a paradox, by the way. I’ve always wondered about this.

I call it the humility paradox. If I say, oh, my teacher, they’re amazing. I’ll never be as good as my teacher. And if your teacher then says the same thing about their teacher, oh, I could never be as good as my teacher. My teacher was perfect, I am imperfect. That means that your art is getting weaker and more watered down every generation.

What is the point of studying that art if you can’t maintain it or improve it? Your humility is actually an insult. Because what you’re saying is either you’re a terrible student because your teacher showed you what to do and I guess you failed.

You dropped the ball. You didn’t maintain the art. But that also is an insult to your teacher because apparently, since they’re the teacher, they didn’t do a good enough job with you. They didn’t share the right stuff, their timing was off, whatever.

However, if you are worse than your teacher, that’s an insult to your teacher and it’s an insult to you. You’ve both failed. So nobody wins when you have that level of humility.

On the other hand, if you say, oh yeah, I am as good as my teacher and your teacher says I am as good as my teacher, then that art might be worth studying because you are passing down something that’s staying strong. You are a strong student and you have a strong teacher and your art is also strong.

Everybody wins with a little less humility and a little more confidence, self generated confidence.

Now backing up a second, let me tell you the big story that brought all this into my head and compelled me to share. I have a story about the mystique factor and a younger student, me, who bought into that for a while, bought into the legendary stuff. Here’s how it went.

When I started in a particular art, I wasn’t training with the top guy. I was training with a senior student of the top guy. The top guy lived out of town, which was fine.

My senior student, my teacher, my direct teacher, was highly skilled and I thought a lot of him. Now my teacher spoke in hushed tones about his teacher, the top guy. That guy was a killer. That guy was a pioneer. Nobody can touch that guy.

So of course, as a young student, respecting my own teacher, who I can see has a bunch of skills, if he’s talking like that about his teacher, the top guy, I’m sold. I’m terrified of this guy. Wow, what a legend. And I get to meet him? I’m part of his organization? I get to wear his patch?

Ooh, I’m very excited. I’m proud to be there.

Now the only time I would see the top guy would be at belt tests. On a schedule, the teacher would come around and preside over belt tests. And those first couple of times, I couldn’t wait to be in the same room with this guy, this killer. And I was always disappointed because this top guy wouldn’t say anything. Wouldn’t do anything.

He would literally just watch the test. And then as soon as it was over, take off. That was it.

Now on the one hand, it was disappointing because I’m looking for wisdom. I’m looking for information. I’m looking for a demonstration of what this is supposed to look like beyond what my teacher is showing me.

But I never got that. But it did keep feeding the mystique. Oh, he didn’t say anything this time. Oh, he didn’t show anything this time, but maybe next time. Maybe if I just hang around a little longer, maybe if I build his trust a little more, maybe if I prove myself a little more.

Now, a big excitement came up, arose, when I got my hands on a video. It was a bootleg copy of a seminar from the top guy from a couple of years ago. I couldn’t wait to get that thing in my VCR at the time. Put that tape in, I was only allowed to have it for a week.

The person who gave it to me said, look, I got to have this back. Don’t tell anybody you have this. This was like top secret stuff. You weren’t supposed to see this. Here’s this seminar tape.

I popped this thing in and I watched it several times. Always looking for the magic. What does he say? What does he do? How does he move?

And I couldn’t find anything. I was very disappointed in the tape. He did say a couple of things and he did do a couple of things. So it was valuable for that. I’d never seen him say or hear him say anything or do anything. So it was something, but it wasn’t much.

So when I gave the tape back, I was a little disappointed until I found out there was a real seminar, a new seminar coming up, and I could attend it. I was at a rank where I was allowed to attend. Oh boy, inner circle stuff.

So I go to that seminar. I can’t wait. Turns out the top guy gave the exact same seminar that I’d seen on the tape. Made the same couple of talking points, showed the exact same couple of techniques that were on the tape. Nothing new.

But it’s worse than that because there was also no special moment, an off-video moment. There was no walking around and coming over to put his hand on my elbow to say, here, not there, or to say, that’s great, or to say, that’s terrible.

There was no any personalized commentary to let me know that he could see what I was doing. In other words, no praise, no correction, no validation, no nothing. And like before, like every belt test, when the seminar was done, he was gone.

Finally, and this is years in now, a black belt test. My black belt test. Now, I’ve got to drive out of town. This is at the main school.

Drive out of town, pay the big bucks, all the excitement and preparation that you can imagine and you’ve done yourself for a black belt test. Here we go.

Get up to the test. This is the last chance. What’s going to be different? Maybe something now is going to spill forth from this fellow.

No. Black belt tests, just longer tests, lots of work.

I did my part, but once again, the legend sat there, watched, only said a word or two at the end, didn’t demonstrate anything. There was nothing extra. Same old, same old.

And when it was all over, I had done my part, right? I sweated, I gritted my teeth, I got through all the requirements. And when it was over, he was lingering for a moment, because there were plenty of other students there and senior students.

So he wasn’t able perhaps to just bolt out the back door, because he had so many people from his affiliation there. And I saw him taking a picture with someone, a photo. And I thought, what the heck, I’ve kind of had enough of all this. This might be the last time I’m here. I would at least like to get a photo with the guy, the top guy.

And so I went over, waited my turn, and I just simply said, may I take a photo, sir? He didn’t answer with words, he just gave me a quick little nod. I stepped up next to him, stood there, and here’s how this goes.

The camera flashed, and while my eye was adjusting back to the normal light, he had already turned and was gone. Literally gone in a flash.

I was standing there, no handshake, no pat on the back, no look in the eye, nothing. Gone.

And I stood there thinking, what kind of teacher is this? Bigger question. What kind of person is this?

I just paid you money. I drove up here to pay you this honor, to support this school. I’ve been loyal for years. I’m wearing your patch, not even a handshake.

But wait, there is still the biggest question coming, the point of this whole episode. The question really wasn’t, what kind of teacher was he? The biggest question was, what kind of student am I?

What kind of person am I? Why did I need this person’s approval so badly?

Why am I seeking this person’s validation? I don’t even know him.

I have had no special memories with this person. I’ve only ever heard about him or seen him from afar. I’ve literally never touched the man.

So what am I looking for here? Why do I need this affirmation?

I don’t like the answers that I’m coming up with at the time on my drive back. So now I have to take a bigger view.

Why did I sign up in the first place? Why am I interested in martial arts? Why am I paying people for tests?

Why am I seeking teachers? Why am I practicing?

Was I looking for self-defense? Yes.

Self-control? Yes.

Get in shape? Yes.

Confidence? Kind of.

The thing is, I got everything I wanted. Self-defense, self-control, getting in shape. I got all that stuff. But the confidence was not really there.

Somehow I had been either because of my own personality that I came in with, or because of the culture of that type of training, that I was led to believe that I needed someone’s approval, someone’s validation. I needed someone to tell me, good job, that’s correct, you’re doing it right.

Or in short, yes, I see you. Yikes.

What a strange another paradox here. Wearing a black belt, seeing my name on a certificate, with the words confidence on it. Integrity and confidence and strength. And yet I don’t feel like that. I feel like I’m missing something.

That’s a huge problem. And I’m thankful to that whole system to have revealed it to me. This was the opposite of self-defense.

Because again, if self-defense is rooted in confidence, this didn’t actually give me confidence. Because my confidence at that time was hinged or linked to someone else’s opinion of my work, instead of my own opinion of my own work.

And that’s my big message for you today…

I’m hoping that you can validate yourself, that you have your own system of measurements that will prove to you that you’re doing good work and that you are on the right path and that you have this possibility of being great at what you do, whether or not anyone else ever sees it or tells you.

Maybe that’s a lot to ask. I really, when I think about this topic, I can’t help but think about the Wizard of Oz and how similar the Wizard of Oz can be to some martial arts teachers.

In the Wizard of Oz, if you recall, spoiler alert, at the end, they find the wizard and the wizard gives the scarecrow a diploma to prove that he has a brain. He gives the tin man a heart, a plastic heart clock, it ticks, to prove that the tin man has a heart. He gives the lion a medal to prove that he has courage.

And of course, the punchline is that those three characters demonstrated all of those traits in the adventure to come see the wizard. They already had all those attributes. The wizard was just there to affirm it, to validate it, to say, yes, you’re right, you have these things.

Which then brings us to Dorothy. If I recall correctly, Glinda, the good witch, tells Dorothy, Oh, you want to go home? You had the power to go home all along. All you had to do is click your heels three times and say there’s no place like home.

You had the power all along. You have the power.

You don’t have to wait for anyone to give you the power, certify the power, tell you about the power. It’s already within you.

So don’t wait for a sensei, for an idol, for a hero, for a good witch, to tell you that you’re doing great work. You should know.

You should know because you are getting results from your work. You have feedback from your practice. All you need to do is be honest about it, reflect it, reflect on it, and see if you’re getting what you expected.

When you are getting good results, keep doing that stuff. When you’re not, don’t.

But end the confusion of doing work, getting some results, but not judging them until someone else comes to help you to judge them. You know whether it’s working or not, either you’re getting punched in the face or you’re not.

That’s what I love about martial arts. Either you have a cut lip or you don’t. Either you just tapped out to a choke or you didn’t.

So that’s why you need your own measurement system to know how to judge your teacher. If you only rely on your teacher’s judgments about your progress, then that means you’re also allowing them to tell you how you should feel about them.

I need to have an independent inquiry into my own results. So I know if the teacher’s guidance is on point or not.

So again, self-defense, self-reliance, self-confidence. They all go together. And I hope that sounded respectful. Because I am still respectful to even the teacher who enrobed himself with mystique and didn’t shake my hand at the black belt test. I still have respect for that teacher.

And I still believe that they were very solid in what they can do. And that they deserve their legendary status. I’m not taking anything away from that person. I still respect them.

But I’ve learned to respect myself with or without them. And that’s the point. As a matter of fact, that’s why I gave myself a belt.

Where is it? Maybe you’ve seen me wear this. This is my own black and white belt. Half black, half white. My yin yang belt. And I made this myself. Because I wanted to represent that on the one hand, the white side says, I’m still a student. I’m still seeking teachers. I’m still seeking information. I’m still learning.

But on the other hand, on the other side, there’s black, which represents, I do have some skills. I do know some things. I have not been wasting my time.

By my own measurements, I’m not that bad at a few things. I’ve got some real skill. And so when I tie this on, I think that puts me in a very balanced place. I think that’s a healthy spot to be in.

And I hope you are too. So let me wrap this up.

I hope that you are training right now with no limiting beliefs. I hope that you are training with the possibility of greatness in what you can do.

And I hope that your heroes, your teachers, I hope that they would be proud of you and tell you that they are proud of you if you ever surpass them in anything or everything.

If your teacher is not the kind of person who would say something like that, that you are better than they are, that you have achieved more than they ever could, then maybe it’s time to choose a new teacher. Maybe it’s time to choose a new hero.

Okay, I wish you happy training, my friend. Trust in the work that you’re doing, be honest about the results that you’re getting, and build confidence in what you’re learning and who you’re becoming.

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

The post #121: Hero Worship in the Martial Arts [Video + Podcast] appeared first on Sensei Ando.

Some people say martial arts is like riding a bike… I don’t! I say use it or lose it!

The fact is that no matter how hard you train, you can’t practice everything all the time, which means some skills will always end up being neglected. But wait—the situation is worse than you think.

Unfortunately, a lack of time is not the only reason you will see your hard-earned skills slipping away… not by a long shot!

So, consider this your wake-up call. In this episode, I’ll break down the three major reasons (and a few minor ones) our capabilities get rusty. But I’m warning you in advance—you can’t always stop the corrosion and rot.

Put simply, life is a losing game! Whoa. That sounds bleak, doesn’t it?

Don’t worry—along with the bad news, I’ve also got a four-step formula to help you hold on to your skills for as long as possible. So, don’t give up yet!

To LISTEN to “Use It or Lose It,” here’s a 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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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!

Use It or Lose It – A Martial Arts Warning

Here’s the video. If the player doesn’t work, 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 #120 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

Happy to be back after a little bit of a break. In case you didn’t know, this is the 10th anniversary of the podcast. I’ve been doing one episode a month for the last 10 years.

So I took a little break just to feel it out and make sure I still felt like yammering on camera. As it turns out, I still love the sound of my own voice, so I’ll be keeping it going for a while.

Also during my time off, I did a little work on an online course, a new course called Martial Arts Over 50. So if you’re getting older and you either took a break from your training or you feel like you’re not getting as much out of your training as you used to, take a look at this course.

It might help as you get into your older years to get the most out of your training as possible. I’ll put a link below. But today, the topic, losing.

I’ve got a warning for you. You are losing skills every day. But do you know which ones?

You work hard, you train hard, you study hard. You may have skills at a world class level. But the fact is, you’re losing something all the time.

If you’re working on this, that means you’re not working on that. No matter how much time and energy you put into one area of your training, that means you’re neglecting a different area of your training.

It’s not always your fault. There are many different factors that go into what you’re gaining and what you’re losing. And that’s what I want to look at today. Let’s figure out how to maximize our capabilities moving forward and stop losing the skills that are the most important to us.

Now let’s start off by breaking down what I think are the three ways that we lose skill. One, life changes. Two, your body changes. And three, your focus changes.

Let’s break these down. Starting off with life. This category is mostly not your fault. Most of these factors you had no responsibility for, it’s just life.

So for instance, maybe money. Maybe you lost your job. Maybe you had to use your money for medical bills or to help out a family member or a friend and suddenly you just don’t have the money to go to class or to take those private lessons or to fly and take that seminar.

Maybe it was time. Maybe you used to have a lot more time when you were back in college or in your 20s, but now you have a family. You have a child and another child. Maybe you have to take on a second job. Time can slip away and now you have less for training.

Maybe it’s the location. Maybe you had to move for your job or to take care of a sick family member and you’re just not in the same town where your old school was. Maybe the school changed locations or the school closed down and now you’re without your training group.

Maybe your teacher passed away. Maybe your favorite training partner moved away or passed away.

All of these things are not your fault. Life happens and hopefully our training has equipped us to do the best we can in these circumstances. But no matter how you cut it, your training changes every time one of those factors is changed.

So most recently, you could probably all relate, the lockdown. I wasn’t responsible for that. But definitely that was a major change to my training routine.

Suddenly only training alone. Solo training only. No partner practice for over a year. That was unthinkable. I had never imagined something like that could happen. And yet there it was.

So in the beginning, it was shocking. And then in a way, it turned into a blessing. Because it forced me to change my perspective on how I was training. It forced me to shake up my priorities and take a good look at how I was spending my time to really figure out if I was using it the best way I could.

We can all fall into a routine that becomes a rut-teen. You’re in a rut. It could be a good rut, but often it’s a bad rut. If you haven’t updated it in several years, I think it’s a great idea to take a look at it. And the lockdown forced me to take a look at it.

I’ve always said that martial arts is really two projects. There’s time spent on developing yourself, and then there’s the time spent developing yourself with another person. Or two or three.

Self-defense is ultimately a relationship. How you manage other people, there’s two sides to that. There’s you and then there’s them and you’re together.

So the lockdown took my focus off of how to control other people and brought it back to how to control myself, my body, my thoughts, my feelings, my strategies. What can I make better? I had to ask.

What have I been neglecting? What skills am I not maximizing? What skills have I lost?

And that led to a whole new training routine. And when it was all done, when the lockdown was over, I found I was in better shape than ever. I also found that my mechanics were better.

I think I had better balance, better weight shifting, my strikes had more impact. I just felt better.

And my breathing, my coordination with my breathing and my mindset, all of it I thought had been polished to a higher degree. So I was grateful for that. But there were losses. Some things I didn’t expect.

I didn’t expect the timing in my sparring to be off because I was visualizing when I’m hitting stuff, I always visualize shadow boxing. But people are different and different people are different.

So there’s always a slightly different space-time continuum to deal with. And so getting back in the groove of reading body language and setting myself in positions where I need to be, that took a little time to sharpen back up. I didn’t expect that as much.

A big surprise was pain tolerance. I’d lost a bit of my pain tolerance. When I wasn’t getting tapped out or choked out or hit all the time.

When I came back and had partners again and felt that pressure and impact, yeah, there was a little bit of an ow factor. Like, ugh, that’s uncomfortable. So I had to catch up on that again, getting back into pain tolerance.

And very specifically, I remember being in a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class and my backward roll for some reason, just not there for me. I had done other conditioning on the ground, but that specific, completely super small backward roll, my back had stiffened up a bit, and I just had a problem with it.

Of course, I wanted it all back. When I realized I’d lost some timing and pain tolerance and a couple of different moves, I wanted them all back. I felt they were all important.

And now I know if I ever have to train alone, if I’m forced to, or just in my own private routine, added a couple of hand-eye coordination drills, like with a ball, playing a little handball against a wall, hitting myself with a stick, poking myself with a stick, just a little bit of impact practice on my own so I don’t lose that.

And animal movements, a little extra time on the ground with a more specific visualization of being stacked up, having all that pressure on my neck, being able to roll that out. So I benefited when I found out what I’d been losing.

How about you?

During the lockdown, whether you honored that for two weeks or a year or you’re still honoring that, what have you lost? Did you notice anything? Did you get it back?

Even without a lockdown, even if you are not forced to just train alone, I think it would be valuable if you just took a minute and reflected on the importance of your school, your teacher, your training partners, and really be specific about what each of those offers you.

What do you get out of those experiences and relationships of being in a school with a teacher, with training partners? Don’t take any of those things for granted.

Whatever situation you’re in with your training right now, get as much out of that as you can while you can before life steps in and closes that school, takes away that teacher, or messes with your time and money and location and you can’t get there anymore. Just be aware of it so you can get more out of it.

Next, after life changes, your body changes. This one, mostly, you can’t do anything about either. It’s expected that your body is going to change as we grow older, but still there are some surprises that come along with that.

Since we’re aging, you’re going to find muscle mass goes down. You start losing muscle mass, no matter how strong you are.

Bone density can change. You might start losing some bone density. Your balance, you might start having some issues with that.

Your eyesight, I don’t take that for granted anymore. Energy level down, recovery time up.

These are just changes from the genetics of being human, apparently.

I’ve even noticed lately, I’m having difficulty swallowing. What the hell is that about? Maybe that’s great because it slows me down eating, but I keep getting caught. I just can’t swallow. I’m looking into it, don’t worry, but that was a surprise.

Of course, I’ve talked before about arthritis. In my late thirties, my shoulders really started bothering me. In my forties, my feet started giving me problems. Now I have to wear orthotics most of the time when I’m training.

And in my fifties, herniated discs became more of an issue. I didn’t plan on any of these things. I certainly didn’t prepare for those things in my twenties and early thirties. But yep, there it is.

To be expected, as we get older, your body changes. But let me tell you what was unexpected. I lost the bounce in my step. The spring in my step. That youthful little spring.

I figured this out crossing the street. You know when you’re crossing the street and the timer is counting down, 5, 4, and so you do a little quick jog just to get across the intersection. You bounce up onto the curb and you’re on your way.

Well, to my horror, I was with my wife a couple of times. We’d be going across the street, see the timer counting down, and I ended up doing the old man jog. I started saying, let me hurry up here.

My hands started moving, but my feet didn’t. So I was basically just still walking, but pretending like I was jogging. My feet felt like they were stuck in cement. No bounce, can’t get going.

And when I got to the curb, forget about bounding up there. No. I found myself stopping and pausing, stepping up safely, and then getting up on the curb.

Who is this guy? What is this? You’re a martial artist? What the heck happened there?

I figured it out. I realized that I used to train in the stadium near where I live. I used to do a lot of stair training. Bounding up, bounding down, jumping down. I realized, oh yeah, you don’t do the steps anymore. You’ve moved into other kinds of training.

I just didn’t do it on purpose. I just stopped going to the stadium. And then I also realized that I had broken my jump rope. I was never a big rope jumper, but I usually always have one. In the trunk of my car, particularly when I was out working out in the park during the lockdown, I was jumping rope. I had a lot of bounce in my step. It felt great.

But then eventually the rope wore out. It broke. And that was one of those things on my list, like, oh yeah, you need a new jump rope. I never got around to it. And there it was.

Without my thinking about it or planning on it, I found myself with no bounce in my step anymore. Horrific!

So this is what I’m talking about. While you’re doing one thing, you’re not doing something else. And if you really want a bounce in your step, you better keep training it. And now I do.

I do appreciate a good bounce in my step. So I’m back to bouncing. I add a little bouncing into my daily routine. And I’ve added some frog jumps. Very simple.

It’s taken about three or four months, but I’m happy to report that my body reclaimed its spring. So you can too.

Evaluate what you’ve been missing. Make a little effort to add it back. And I think you can get it back.

All right. So three. Life can happen. Your body can change. And now the one that’s more responsible, you’re more responsible for, your focus can change.

Right off the bat, I can think about high kicking. Kicking head height. When I started martial arts in my teens, in my early 20s, high kicks were very important to me. What other measure is there as a martial artist than being able to spin hook kick someone in the head?

That’s what I wanted to do. That’s what I did. I stretched, I conditioned for it, I practiced it. High kicking. No.

Once I got into my mid 20s, I started realizing, hang on, this is a skill that takes a lot of my training time. And as I get older, as I’ve seen my older teachers struggle with high kicks and complain about their backs and tight hamstrings and hip implants, I kind of made a decision like, I would rather spend this time practicing techniques that I can work into old age more easily.

I can always just pick up a stick. I can always just kind of move my hands around. So let me just focus on that stuff and forget about the high kicks. And so I set high kicks aside for quite a while.

I mean, I’d still throw them here and there, but they weren’t part of my regular training program. But then in my 40s, I think it was my 40s, I changed my mind. I suddenly thought, well, wait a minute, why am I willingly giving up mobility and the coordination, the balance that high kicks demand?

Isn’t it just good for me as a human animal, just as a someone who’s in motion a lot, to be able to lift my leg up, to have the flexibility and that mobility and the confidence to move my body in any way I want?

I wanted that range of motion back, so I said, you know what, I’m going to start throwing some high kicks again. Let me add that into my training routine. To my horror, they were gone.

It wasn’t just as easy as, okay, let me turn that switch back on, toggle on. No, I had lost that skill. Sure, there’s some muscle memory, but the memories were of younger muscles.

If 10, 15 years have gone by and you haven’t thrown many high kicks, you don’t have them anymore. I don’t believe martial arts is like riding a bike. Your body needs updates all the time. I was basically running old software on a new computer, and there were just too many bugs to let that run smoothly.

In my mind, I felt like I know how to do this, but my body did not remember it really. So the upgrade began. I needed to switch out, update, get better software, switch out the processing, whatever. I’m not a computer guy, but you know what I mean.

I needed to update the systems all across the board, and very slowly and painfully, I’ve gotten my high kicks back. Of course, I’m in my 50s now, so I’m constantly updating and getting that groove back, to get that leg up there with some kind of control and some kind of accuracy and get that done.

I don’t regret it at all, but again, it’s another example that my focus changed and I lost a big chunk of my skill.

Weapons would be another category of loss for me. In years past, I went through a stick phase, went through a knife phase, and staff has come and gone.

Long staff. When I’ve lived in a small apartment, which is most of my life, staff is just not convenient. I’ll keep it in my car, if I go to the park, like during lockdown, suddenly staff became far more a bigger part of my training program.

When I moved to North Carolina, the back of our place opened up to a big field. So again, staff. I was working with it all the time.

I’ve moved back to Los Angeles now. I’m back in a small apartment. So, staff? Difficult.

I’ve taken it out to the park. Once I moved back, it broke. I smacked it onto a tree and it broke.

I haven’t gotten another one, and very quickly it just slipped my mind. Like, oh yeah, I got to go get another staff.

What happened to the sticks and the knives? Very simply, I’m sure you’ve done this. You rearrange your training space or you move to a new place. You put some things, your equipment, into a cupboard or in a closet or they’re in a box somewhere, and then you forget you even have them.

Months go by, years go by, and suddenly you think, what happened to my knives? Where did my chucks go?

You haven’t picked them up in years. So what happened to your skill?

The good news is, clearly you’ve had more time to work on something else, so you’ve been developing, but if you really wanted that knife skill or that stick skill or that staff skill, that stuff might be gone. So out of sight, out of mind.

We’ve got to be careful about that, because time goes by so fast, and every day that you’re not doing what you want to do, you’re losing something. That’s the warning today.

All right, so is there a solution to this? What’s the solution to this? How do you stop losing the skills? Is there a way?

Well, yes, and no. The fact is, here’s the hard, cold truth. In the end, we all lose everything. We lose our lives. So let’s start there and move backwards.

In this slow crawl to the moment that you’re dead, you’re going to be losing things, like it or not, because of life, because of your genetics, your body, your focus, your dreams. Things change. Everything changes.

So what are the last things, the last skills that you want to lose? Please take a minute and answer that question for yourself. Pause the video.

What are the last skills that you want to have with you the moment before you die?

What are the most important skills to you? Is it high kicking? Would you like to be able to do a split till the day you die?

Is it your strength? Do you want to have guns? You want to be able to flex your arm and impress people in a tank top?

Do you want just a clear head and a calm soul? Do you need to add more meditation to your life? Should that become your number one training exercise?

Is it your cardio, heart and lungs? Do you think you’ll live longer if that’s your number one priority?

Do you want to maintain your explosiveness? Do you think that’s the most important?

Do you want to be an encyclopedia of forms, of every style? Make that list. The shorter the better, I would think.

As we’re all losing everything, and you know the ending of the story, you’ve got nothing. What are the last skills you want to have in your possession?

This is the formula, my friends. Start with that.

Number one, set your goals. Which skills do you want till the end?

Number two, prioritize your training to make sure that those things on your goals list are practiced first and most. If you love stick fighting and that’s your favorite thing, that should be the first thing you do, and that should take up the most of your training time.

Don’t get distracted. Focus on that.

Number three, after you set your goals and you prioritize your training routine, keep the tools that you need in sight. Like I said, out of sight, out of mind. So, if you want to keep that balance in your step, then you better have a jump rope, or you better live right next door to some stairs if you want to jump on them.

Keep them near you. Keep them in sight. Don’t put them in a closet. Don’t put them in a box. Put them right up in front.

If you want to work on that staff, put the staff right by your door. You want to lift weights, put those dumbbells right by your bed.

Put the tools that you need right in front of you so that they’re always on your mind. It could be as simple as a poster, by the way. If you’re inspired by a certain body type or a certain hero, put that poster up where you can see it all the time.

Maybe get a tattoo. If there’s some icon or some symbol that means something to you that reminds you of what you want from your training as a martial artist, put that tattoo front and center so that you can see it and keep it in your mind. Because life is busy, and you will find other things to focus on. Just an idea.

Keeping things in view, to me, also means being viewed. Being seen. So that means show up to your class.

If you’re part of a class, keep showing up. If you have a teacher, keep seeing the teacher. If you have good training partners, keep that relationship going. Show up. Be seen. Get in there.

Last part of the formula. Set your goals, prioritize your training, keep your tools in sight. Reflection. Before you train, after you train, take that moment to ask if you’re getting what you wanted. Are you meeting the goals that you set out for yourself?

I don’t think you can do enough of this. Figure out what you’re working on and why and keep that list updated.

It’s so easy to drift into an agenda that’s 20 years old, 10 years old, or someone else’s agenda. Peer pressure, what you see in a movie, what you see in a tournament. Come back to basics.

You’re going to die. What do you really want to be known for? What do you really want to have in your possession? Which skills? The clearer you are, the better. And that’s it. That’s the formula, my friend.

And don’t wait for old age. Don’t wait to shock yourself with what you’ve lost to start this process. Do it right now.

I don’t care if you’re 15 years old. I don’t care if you’re 25 years old. Go through this exercise right now.

The clearer you are, the earlier, the earlier you can be clear, the better for your future training. If your focus changes over the years, so be it. But get clear now.

Remember this–life is a losing game.

I don’t care who you are or how hard you train. In the end, the Grim Reaper always wins. He will take everything from you.

So, our job is to fight, fight, to hold on to what we want as long as we can, to not let that stuff go until the very last second. It’s your choice if you want to let something go or just suck it up when something is stripped away from you without your choice.

Either way, when these things happen, when you have to let something go or something is taken from you, we must be strong enough to make peace with that. If you can make peace with what’s lost, that gives you more time and attention on what you still have.

And focusing on what you have and being grateful for it is absolutely the secret to a happy life.

Okay, you’ve been warned. Time is short in getting shorter. Which is why I’m so grateful that we could spend some of that time together.

If you’d like to spend a little more time together, either training online or taking a class here in Los Angeles, let me know. Training together is something I plan to do until the Grim Reaper says otherwise.

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

The post #120: Use It or Lose It [Video + Podcast] appeared first on Sensei Ando.

Here’s my judgment about all that judgment!

You can watch the video below or scroll down for the transcript. Keep it real, my friend!

That Won’t Work in a Real Fight!

Howdy! Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. You know those martial arts moves that make everybody laugh at on the internet? The ones that make people say, “That move would never work in a real fight.”

Well, you can hear those same comments in actual martial arts schools.

One time, I was at a knife defense seminar. The instructor started off by saying, “Hey—this isn’t the movies. You can’t go around kicking knives out of people’s hands.”

Then we started some free sparring defense drills. A guy got up and BOOM… kicked the knife right out of the teacher’s hand. We all had a good laugh.

Then the next round started. Same guy… BOOM… he did it again!

Speaking of knives, I recently saw a video of a woman being robbed at a convenience store by a guy with a large knife. The woman grabbed the blade of the knife, flipped it around, and then chased him out of the store with it.

Now, are you going to hear many self-defense teachers telling their students to grab the blade of a knife? No. But did it work in that instance? Yes.

So, what’s going on? How do you know if a technique is going to work in a real fight or not? The answer is you don’t.

Look—anyone can be killed. Let’s start with that fact. It doesn’t matter what you train or how you train, anyone can be outnumbered, caught off guard, or make a mistake.

There are simply no guarantees in self-defense.

So, you might be thinking, what’s the point of training in the martial arts?

It’s all about playing the odds. The odds are that for most people, most of the time, some training is better than no training. The odds are, for most people, most of the time, keeping your hands up will protect you from getting knocked out.

In the same way, facing your attacker will be safer than turning your back and kicking at the knee will be safer than kicking to the head.

That’s what training is all about—building habits that work for most people, most of the time.

So, if that’s true, then where do all the fancy moves fit in?

Consider MMA. Just when someone says, “That fancy technique would never work in the cage,” somebody does it.

Spinning head kicks, jumping off the fence, rolling in for a leglock, passing guard with a backflip… you name it, I’ll bet you can find a clip of somebody doing it. Which is why I always say—

No technique works all the time, and any technique might work sometime.

But if you’re playing the odds, then you should practice the rear naked choke. The rear naked choke is statistically the most successful submission in UFC history. Does that mean a front choke or an Ezekiel choke won’t work?

Not at all! It just means they don’t work as often.

For a little more on the topic of “fancy moves”, check out, The Truth About Fancy Kung Fu Moves.

Of course, sports combat is far more predictable than real-life self-defense. In real life, you don’t know when you’ll be attacked, how big the guy will be, if he’s got buddies, if they’re armed, or if their goal is to rob, beat you up, or kill you.

You also don’t know where you’re going to be, how you’ll feel, who you’ll be with, or what you’ll be carrying.

Therefore, we train to build the best habits we can and hope it will all work out. And the best habits are the ones that work for most people, most of the time.

So, when it comes to judging moves, I’ll say again, “No technique works all the time, and any technique might work sometime.”

But hold on—

Is all this talk about what works and what doesn’t really the most important question? No. The most important question is not about the technique, it’s about the person doing the technique.

If you get caught off-guard and freeze up, it doesn’t matter what techniques you know. You’re in trouble!

But if you train to stay calm, trust your training, and trust your instincts, then you’ll have the capability to try just about anything. Maybe you’ll do something you’ve trained a thousand times before… or maybe you’ll do something you’ve never done before. Or a combination of both! Who knows? Life is crazy.

Of course, we’re talking about two separate skills here—1) your ability to execute a trained technique and, 2) your ability to improvise. You need to practice both. And while you do, remember this—

You are the art. Your body. Your mind. Your choices.

So, practice fighting with your favorite techniques… and practice fighting without your favorite techniques.

Along the way, listen to advice, but never let the limitations of others stop you from developing what feels right for you. That crazy move that everyone is laughing at today may become your go-to, signature move that either wins you a tournament or saves your life.

Bottom line—I wouldn’t walk around saying this move or that move won’t work in a real fight, because the truth is we’re all just playing the odds. No two people are exactly the same and no two situations are exactly the same.

That’s what makes life so much fun… and so terrifying. Until next time, embrace the chaos, my friend… and keep fighting for a happy life.

The post Will Your Self-Defense Techniques Work in a Real Fight? appeared first on Sensei Ando.

You train hard… but are you getting everything you can out of your martial arts practice? Probably not!

Don’t worry—in this episode, I share three practice tips that will pay you back with BIG results. At least they did for me!

No, they’re not magic. No, they’re not quick ‘n’ easy. But if you’ve ever felt stuck in a rut, these might just be what you need to hear… and do!

Especially if you’ve ever felt like QUITTING martial arts completely, this episode is for you!

Before you walk away from all that time and effort you’ve invested in training, give these three tips a try. Heck, try even one!

Yes, I believe even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better, but sometimes if you give just a little bit more, you can get a LOT more in return!

To LISTEN to “How to Get More from Your Martial Arts Practice, here’s a link.

• 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 Get More from Your Martial Arts Practice

Here’s the video. If the player doesn’t work, 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, hello. Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode #118 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

And I really believe that, you know, what I just said there. A little martial arts makes life a whole lot better. At least that’s how it’s worked for me so far.

And that’s why I’m shocked, shocked at how many people have not gotten that message. How is it possible?

Martial arts is so mainstream now. People see it everywhere. They know it’s a safe activity, relatively speaking. And they must know that it does so much to transform your life in a positive way, which is why I am shocked.

Don’t tell me, well, there are millions of people participating in martial arts. Yeah, but there are billions of people on the planet. Why isn’t everyone signed up for a self-defense course or doing at least a six-month investment somewhere in some type of training? Answer me that.

Anyway, you know what’s more shocking? More shocking than the number of people who don’t look into martial arts at all is the number of people who start martial arts and then quit. That blows my mind.

What? You did the hardest part. You walked through the door. You signed up someplace. You started and then you stopped.

Now, I’m not talking about, well, I couldn’t afford classes or I got a bad knee. Life happens. I get that. But there’s always a way to keep pushing forward a little bit to make some improvements, even if you’re just training on your own, especially in this day and age with the video.

So what’s with all the quitting?

If you had a business opportunity and every time you put in $1, you got $2 out, would you ever stop investing? No, either would I.

So that’s where I get confused because for me, every investment I make in the martial arts definitely pays me back. Well, at least two-fold, five-fold, ten-fold. I have to make up a number there. But I feel it gives me more than I put into it.

Hence, even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

So if you are in a rut right now in your training, or if you are not training at all, or if you feel bored by your training, or you are thinking about quitting your training, that’s what this episode is for.

Today I want to give you three quick tips on how to get more out of your training so that hopefully you don’t quit. Because I do believe if you are training well, you should be getting a lot of benefits out of it.

Okay, tip number one. Go full time. Go pro.

Now I’m not talking about making this a career, being a professional fighter or a professional teacher. That’s not what I mean. I mean in your mindset.

Stop thinking of yourself as a part timer and start thinking of yourself as a full timer. You’re always a martial artist. Make that part of who you are.

I get it. In the beginning, martial arts may just be an activity, something that you try. And it’s interchangeable. It could be a yoga class you went to try or a swimming group or softball team. You just wanted to do something and you tried martial arts.

But if you stay in that part time interchangeable, it’s just another activity, something to do mindset, well then it will get changed out. Eventually, you’ll get bored with it. Eventually, it’s not something that excites you anymore because you never really committed to the idea that I’m all in. I’m a full time professional martial artist.

So we have to make that shift. Make the shift that it’s not just something you do, it’s who you are.

I think of it a little bit like Superman. Bear with me, old school Superman. If you’re a part timer, at least the way I was when I started, I would have my normal life in my normal clothes and then you get to go to class. And when you go to class, you take off your clothes and then you put on your uniform. And there was a little mini transformation there.

You put on that uniform and you start to transform into the person, maybe, that you want to be. I feel stronger, bolder, I’m getting tougher, I’m working.

But then class is over and you put on your normal clothes, you go back to your normal life, and that class just kind of becomes a memory. You don’t necessarily take it with you.

Now, old school Superman is a little different. Old school Superman always had his Superman uniform on underneath his Clark Kent clothes.

Meaning he was always Superman, but he would play different roles and he would put on a different suit to cover that up sometimes. But make no mistake, he’s always Superman. He’s always on the hunt for when can I be of help? When can I be of service? When can I be a hero?

So we should be the same way. A part time martial artist is someone who only feels great when they’re in class wearing their uniform and then goes back to an ordinary life where they don’t feel as wonderful.

But a full time martial artist, a pro, you’re always a martial artist. And when you feel great in class, you take that outside into the world, you still feel great.

When you feel like you’ve got some courage or some toughness, you bring that into the rest of your life because you’re a full time martial artist.

So that would be my challenge to you. Make this mental shift. Don’t be an amateur martial artist. Just start thinking like a professional martial artist. Once you make that shift, meaning that you stop focusing on your martial arts style and start focusing on your lifestyle.

Do you see that little switch there? It’s not the style of martial arts that you do. It’s your style of living that matters. Once you do that, you have that attitude, everything changes.

The way you eat is going to change because there is no on day, off day, I’m going to go to class later, so I’m going to eat a little bit healthier, so I don’t feel sluggish. No, every day you feel like I want to be at my best, so I’m going to eat pretty clean here, I’m going to be healthy.

The way you sleep, you’re not going to say, well, I worked out hard yesterday, so I’ll give myself a little extra sleep, but then tonight I’ll stay up late. No, I want to be at my best all the time, so I want to get to bed, recover, be ready for the next adventure the next day.

And I’ll tell you, even my wardrobe changed, meaning that I used to have a separate part of my dresser that was just for workout clothes. I wasn’t going to class. I was going to go workout in the park or in the garage or whatever. I would have some old t-shirts, old pants, tattered, stained, ripped up, old, because I figured, well, I don’t want to wreck my good clothes.

But then at some point, when I made that shift, that’s exactly the time, when I went from part time to full time in my mind, I said, why am I treating my practice time with so little respect? Why am I wearing clothes that I don’t want anyone to see me in? I wouldn’t wear these clothes anywhere else into the world.

So now I have this separation in my head between, oh, there’s the training version of me, and then there’s my real me back out in the real world. I wanted to break down that barrier.

And once I made that attitude shift, I threw out all the tattered clothes and realized that I wasn’t paying enough respect to the full time martial artist that I want to be, that I am. And yeah, so I got some workout clothes, nicer clothes to work out in.

And that makes me feel a little bit prouder, might seem superficial, but it gets me into the, it keeps me in the mindset of being at my best.

Caught that. It doesn’t change it, it keeps it going.

So that as great as I feel out during my day, I feel just as great training, then I get boosted by my training, I slip right back into the world. So I highly recommend overall, go full time in your head, go pro and see if that has a trickle down effect on everything you do.

Tip number two, assign yourself homework.

This is very important. If you are a full time professional martial artist, and you are now, right? Did you already flip the switch?

You can’t just rely on class time to reap benefits. That’s not the only place where you should be investing yourself, or pushing your limits, challenging yourself, because just do the math. That’s such a small part of your life.

Let’s say you go to class three times a week, and let’s say each of those classes is an hour and a half long. Okay, so what’s that? I’m not a math guy. Is that four and a half hours? Four and a half hours of training time. That’s not much. That’s almost nothing compared to how many hours there are in a week.

So why do you think there’s some magical carryover that four and a half hours of training, that’s if you’re training three times a week for an hour and a half, is going to influence everything else in your life? The scales are off. It’s very little training.

Yes, I believe even a little makes your life better, but I want you to get more, because if you’re thinking about quitting, it means you’re not getting enough. That’s what we’re talking about.

So I need you to start finding more ways to get more out of your class time and then more out of your out of class time. And you know me, I’m going to tell you that the whole world is your dojo.

Everywhere you go is a classroom. Everyone you meet is a teacher. Everything that happens to you is a lesson.

Once you take that bigger view of things, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. You’re always improving. You’re always learning. You can always be getting better.

So, okay, but specifically, in class, even if you decide to ignore everything else I’m saying, at least get more out of your actual class time.

Don’t be the person, if you set up a bag and you’re taking turns with someone else, you’re number three in the line, you’re going through, don’t be the person who goes up, hits the bag, and then strolls back to the end of the line, and then waits for your next turn, and then you hit the bag, and then you stroll back, and you don’t do anything.

What are you doing? That will be one example of time that you can fill with extra practice.

When it’s your turn to hit the bag, you hit the bag, then you shuffle back to the end of the line, you practice that combo in your head until you get to the bag. There’s no reason why you still can’t be practicing.

Or don’t be that person who fills class time with small talk about movies and social events. I’m not saying don’t make friends and don’t be friendly, but if you’re going to rely on your class time as your main time for improvement, you need to be on it because you’re a professional martial artist and you came into that class for a very specific reason.

Or at least by now, I hope you have specific goals for yourself. So get after it. Do a little extra practice. Don’t wait for your teacher to come over and tell you to do that. That’s a mistake.

Now, outside of class, of course, I still want more. So absolutely, I would keep a journal. Keep some type of diary, some type of notebook. I’ve recommended this before, and I’m saying it again, because that’s such an easy thing to do.

Before you drive home after class, or first thing you think of in the morning, or after a practice session, anytime something occurs to you, you see something on video, a crime being committed, and someone fighting, and you have a thought about it, journal it. Write it down.

That’s another way to learn. It’s another way to enforce your beliefs. So it’s just a great idea to kind of keep this little running diary. And even if you have nothing to say, go back. Flip through where you’ve been in your life.

Go back through some of your old thoughts. See if they still ring true. See if you have new ideas. You are in development. So keep a record of that development.

I think it’s very encouraging when you may feel a little blue or feel a little unmotivated. It’s great to go back and say, Wow, I used to think that or whoa, I’ve come so far from this note. I’m a big fan of keeping the journal.

I would also recommend in this idea of assigning yourself homework, don’t wait for a teacher to give you a goal. Yeah, you’re a part of a school perhaps, and so they have a curriculum and maybe there’s testing requirements. And if you’re a good student, you follow those.

But don’t rely on those. You should always have a small project that you are working on, on your own. You have to take some responsibility for your development. You are your own teacher.

If you think your class is unchallenging, that’s not the class’s fault. You should be adding challenges to your own practice to make it more challenging. Whatever value you’re getting from the class, great, get that. But that’s not the end of it. That doesn’t define your entire martial arts journey. It’s still up to you to figure out what do you want to get better at?

What do you need to get better at? And write that down. And for me, I think the smaller and more specific goal you can craft for yourself, the better.

If you just say, I want to get better at sparring, I don’t know what that means. How?

I’m talking about very small goals that you can put in that journal or make a separate notebook for just for goals. Things that you can measure and check off when you’ve achieved it.

If you think, you know what, from now on, I’m just going to pay attention and make sure my wrist is a little straighter. Perfect. That’s a very small thing that you can fix.

I’m going to work on that alignment between my knee and my ankle so I don’t keep getting into these wonky positions with my stances and footwork. Wonderful. There are so many things you can do.

I won’t go on with a hundred of them, but think about it. The smaller the better, what is something you can give yourself as a homework assignment that you can measure and monitor and check off and say, I did that.

The reason you want to do that is because that gives you that little boost of happy hormones where you feel, I did that. I accomplished something. I’m getting better. There’s proof that I got better.

That’s the addiction, I think, that keeps me going because I’ve figured out how to give myself assignments that I can achieve, that I feel great about that. I can celebrate that. And then I’m excited to get to the next one. That becomes my drug of choice, improvement.

So give yourself homework. Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you. That’s kindergarten first grade thinking. You’re a professional. You’re a full time martial artist. It’s who you are, which means you are your own teacher. So give yourself homework.

Tip number three, how to get more out of your martial arts training. This one might sound a little odd, but stay with me.

Tip number three: Measure your afterglow.

So afterglow meaning that great feeling you have when you work out.

Have you ever finished a great workout, finished a great class, been proud of yourself, and felt, boy, I wish I could feel like this all the time. This is great. This is what I signed up for. I love this feeling right now.

I’m in my body. I feel centered. I feel balanced. I feel like I know who I am. I like who I am. I like who I’m becoming. Boy, this feels great. That little buzz, that glow.

Well, what happens after, though? After the workout.

When I was younger and I still compartmentalized my training life over here and my other life over there, I was constantly going up and down that satisfaction scale or that glow.

I would work out, feel great, feel like, yes, this is wonderful. I got everything I want, wanted out of this training. And then you take a shower, you change your clothes, go back to your job, back to your relationships, back to your business, whatever.

And your neck starts getting stiffer and your legs are cooling down now. And you forgot what you were working on earlier. And now there’s other stress coming in. You’re starting to not feel as good about yourself and life happens. And your training is nowhere to be found.

And the longer you go, maybe you had this great workout, you peaked optimal state, feeling great. And then maybe you haven’t trained for a day. You’ve just been free falling.

And maybe two days have gone by and you haven’t really worked out. Now you’re feeling bad about yourself. All that feeling in your body and balance and blah, blah, blah. It’s all gone. It’s just, pew, evaporating.

We don’t want that to happen. As full time martial artists, the goal, and this is it, this is what self defense is all about as far as I’m concerned, is first defining our optimal state. Figuring out the exercises, the styles, the whatever you need to do, the workouts to get you into that state where you feel almost invincible at your best.

First figure out what that is. What’s your baseline? What does it take to get you to feel your best? Once you’ve gotten that feeling, now the challenge is to hold on to it.

When life comes after you now, how can you maintain it as long as possible? Don’t get me wrong, life is tricky. So you’re going to take some hits, you’re going to take some falls, but how deep do you go? How deep is that dive off of your optimal platform? And how quickly can you regain it and come back?

That, to me, is what self-defense is all about. You might feel great about yourself and someone slaps you in the face, and if that completely changes you, that’s a problem.

If someone insults you, betrays you, rips you off, and that immediately puts you into a worse version of yourself, they’re winning.

Self-defense means no, I’m going to defend myself, my best self. So to do that, measure how great you feel when you are at your best.

Then second, pay attention to what takes that feeling away. Where are you when you don’t feel great? Who are you with when you don’t feel great? What are you doing when you don’t feel great? And all of your confidence is being chipped away, all of your joy is being chipped away.

What’s happening? Because those are the things you need to change. Get away from those people, move out of that place, change what you’re doing.

Sometimes you can’t, sometimes you’re stuck with this relationship, you’re stuck with this location, or at least for now you are. Okay, so then what can we do? That’s where to me micro workouts come in.

If we presume that you feel great when you have a full workout, it’s time to yourself, time with your partner, boom, boom, and you’re in that zone, you’re feeling good. You’re getting the benefits that you hoped for out of martial arts.

Now, as a full-time martial artist, you leave that workout, something starts to chip away at your happiness. That’s the time to have a micro workout, something that gets you back into that state as quickly as possible.

Maybe it’s 10 squats. I don’t know what it’s going to be for you. Maybe it’s a minute of shadow boxing. Maybe it’s a breathing exercise. Maybe it’s a mantra.

But you have to start experimenting once you realize that your glow is fading to find these little ways to perk it back up, to brighten it back up. And it’s up to you to do that.

No one can tell you how to do that. I wish I could. I could say, hey, all you got to do is say, hokum pokum and you’re done. You’re going to feel great.

No. If that does work, by the way, feel free to try hokum pokum. I don’t know. Probably not.

But the idea is to keep your momentum going. You train hard. You challenge yourself. You reach that high. You’re proud of yourself.

You start to dip. Nope, micro workout. You pull it back up.

You start to dip. Life is hard. Oh, you pull it back up. And you’re just trying to stay up there as long as you can.

And I believe what happens is all that hard work that you’re doing, instead of always trying to come out of the valley and come back up to the peak, the less you dip and then they add on more work, the higher you start to go. So your peak starts to rise. And that’s ultimately what we want.

I don’t want to just gain an optimal state and then just hope to maintain it. I want to keep gaining. That’s idealistic, so be it. I want to keep gaining.

So the only way to do that is to hold on to what you’ve got. You got to take ground, hold that ground, and then move forward. We can’t keep getting pushed back to where we started.

Just as an aside, I’ll tell you, my favorite afterglow test is in the middle of the night. You ever wake up to use the bathroom or get a quick drink of water, and sometimes I’ve trained whatever I did during the day, and I wake up, and I can’t make a fist, and my back hurts, and I just feel wonky, and I bump into the wall.

I have no awareness of anything. And that to me is a big clue that whatever you did during the day, here you are in this night state, and something is not carrying through. My goal is to have the best parts of me carry through all the time as a full-time martial artist, even when I’m sleeping.

And yes, I sleep in clothes. I don’t even sleep in sleepwear. I always want to be at my best, ready for presentation and go.

Or sometimes, when I train, I wake up in the middle of the night and I feel in my body. I feel balanced. I feel I know my place in the universe. I have no problem getting into the bathroom and back. I don’t bump into anything.

It’s a very strange experience to have one great night, one bad night. But it makes me think like, well, what did I do today? Why am I so out of it sometimes and so in it other times?

So, take the wake up challenge. See where your mind is at. What state are you in when you wake up in the middle of the night? It might be a big clue.

All right. I hope that helps. That was three tips. Those were three tips to help you get more out of your training. I really hope that if you’re bored or you feel like you’re in a rut, you feel like you’re stuck, that you’ll heed my words.

Don’t quit. Not yet. Try a couple of these things. Try one of them even. Because martial arts, I still believe, is a great investment.

That dollar in will give you $10 out if you just keep believing in it. It just takes a little work. It’s not magic. So, don’t give up on this. Put a little more in, and I bet you get a whole lot more out.

Okay, hope that helps. I really do believe if more good people are training in the martial arts, the better this world’s gonna be.

So, go pro, give yourself homework, and measure your afterglow. That’s the formula for a successful happy life.

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

The post #118: How to Get More from Your Martial Arts Practice [Video + Podcast] appeared first on Sensei Ando.