The Way You Practice: A Martial Arts Blog

First off-- thank you to everyone for their well wishes regarding my hand. My surgery for tendon and nerve repair is set for TOMORROW, with three months of therapy thereafter. There's no guarantee that I'll ever regain full function or sensation, but we have to play the hand we're dealt (or the hand that remains after you try to cut the other one off). Additionally, while I intend to keep up my writing, a lot more of it will be edited voice-to-text, so for the next few months I'll beg forgiveness regarding any strange grammar or syntax errors. But my story tonight is only partially about my hand, and I'll try (inasmuch as I'm able to typing at 50% capacity) continue to try to finish the articles I've roughed out and continue to bring insights besides the joy of recovering from trauma surgery. To that end, tonight I'd like to talk to you about how, even with a jacked up hand, I was still able to successfully utilize self defense. In his excellent bo

Since my hand is still goofed up , my writing volume will decrease a bit over the coming weeks after surgery. I'll still be writing (and dictating, and maybe God-help-us-all making some YouTube videos) but will also be reaching out to folks for guest articles. We're gonna start off big with a guest article from a friend, Josephine Fan, continuing the discussion about Aikido and its place within the greater martial arts community. Josephine Fan owns and operates the Long Island Aikikai (www.liaikikai.com) with her husband Adam Pilipshen. LI Aikikai is the home dojo of chief instructor Edward Hagihara, 8th dan Shihan and one of the founding members of the NY Aikikai, is located in Bay Shore, NY. Her first love is cooking and hospitality, so visitors, regardless of affiliation, are always welcome. In her spare time, she writes about her adventures in garden-to-table recipes (www.dearjuneberry.com) For the Aikido world, the overall velocity of new students joining has been r

I walked up to the counter and signed in at the surgeon's office. My hand, still bandaged tight from the night before, was able to scrawl out a signature on the HIPAA privacy act notification. The secretary took that, with my insurance card and ID, and handed me some paperwork. "Fill this out and then bring the clipboard back to me," she said, rather absentmindedly. I looked over the form for a moment. "Ma'am?" I said as she made her way back to her other duties. She turned around. "This form says 'For Breast Reduction patients only'." She looked at it a moment and squinted. "Huh, I guess that's probably the wrong one?" she said without humor in her voice, and handed me the correct new patient form. I made my way to a seat next to my mother, and had her get started on the paperwork. I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's back up a few years. My new katana had just come in the mail. A "beater", it was pla

Part One of this series is available here . There is a thread on the old Aikiweb forums called "Aikido does not work at all in a fight". It was posted over 18 years ago, on 10/17/2000. At the time of this writing, it is still the top post on Aikiweb and has 2034 replies.  I know about this thread because, in my True Believer days, I commented on it often, defending Aikido and its martial efficacy. This debate has been going on online for decades. What my research has shown, however, is that this debate has existed since the art's inception. It's never stopped, and never been resolved. Honestly, it never will, but it's at the heart of the identity crisis that, even now, is turning Aikido in a niche art and crippling its continued growth. My thought had always been that there had to be something to Aikido back in the day that, perhaps, had been lost. Jigoro Kano was a huge fan of Ueshiba's, and sent many of his students to train with him. Martial a

The theme of the white belt is survival, nothing more and nothing less. After all, this is what the white belt has to do from the first day of class. He is not going to arrive in class and beat the best. He has no one to whom he can compare himself because he is still an empty vessel. Ribeiro, Saul. Jiu-Jitsu University (p. 16).  Technique: Kimura from deep half guard Thoughts: Deep Half Guard/Reverse Half Guard is almost above my pay grade, so this was tough, but we all have to start somewhere. Honestly, I felt like I got more out of learning how to transition into Deep Half than I did from the Kimura top training simply because I'm so weak with Deep/Reverse Half Guard escapes/defenses/sweeps. Rolls: 4x5 minutes, regular competition rolls. A bonus 3 minute round with another white belt after class ended. What went well: I survived, goddammit. What Could Improve: I need more five minute rounds. I need to learn to transition to more defenses/sweeps from bott

And I'm confirmed. I'm 10% nervous, 100% excited, and 14% bad at math. It's been over a dozen years since I competed in a combat sport. I'm a completely different person in a completely different sport. I have no idea how it'll go, but I'm excited to represent my team and my coach and hazard some Jiu-Jitsu through the adrenaline dump. Really, I'm not expecting a lot. I want to do my best and leave everything I have on the mat, but I've read how first BJJ comps tend to go for people. It's a strange dichotomy of trying to meter my expectations versus that faux-fighters' confidence where you (have to) believe that you'll beat literally anyone that's put in front of you; otherwise you've already lost. I've got about a month to sharpen up as much as I can. It's time to get to work.