(Excerpt from our October 2011 Newsletter)

Never give up on your training and never let excuses get in your way.

Thanks to Jim Hager for sharing this video with me.

No one ever said earning your black belt was going to be easy. Some days everything is easy while on other day’s you wonder if you’re making progress at all. Remember, life is always there ready to hold you back and give you plenty of excuses in your training. You have to overcome.

“Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory.” — Gandhi

Ask Mr. Miller and Mr. Ford who were promoted to 1st degree black belt last month after years of training if it was worth it. It wasn’t easy for either one of them and if you asked them if it was worth the time, sacrifice and dedication, you’ll see a smile before they answer you.

A while back I posted my 21 favorite quotes from Ed Parker and I’ve been meaning to post some additional quotes by others that I find inspiring. So, here are some quotes by martial artists and non martial artists alike I thought you might enjoy.

“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”
- Navy SEAL’s

“He who is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.”
- Ben Jonson

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
- Confucius

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
- Bruce Lee

“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
- Vince Lombardi

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
- Aristotle

“Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit softly.”
- Theodore Roosevelt

“Courage is being afraid, but then doing what you have to do anyway.”
- Rudy Giuliani

“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
- Winston Churchill

“Its better to have tried and failed then to not have tried at all.”
- Unknown

“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it: If you can dream it, you can become it.”
- William Arthur Ward

“Remember… you are expressing the technique, not doing the technique.”
- Bruce Lee

“The obstacle is the path.”
- Zen Proverb

“Everyone has a plan until they’ve been hit.”
- Joe Lewis

Which one was your favorite? Do you have any favorites you’d add to this list?

In today’s fast paced world sometimes you need to take a break and distance yourself from the stresses of everyday life. It is important to take a moment to breathe and center yourself. For this purpose, Martial Arts practice works well as a form of stress relief.

Martial Arts practice can prove to be a much needed personal sanctuary for stress relief by physically and mentally distancing yourself from the stresses of everyday life for awhile. Whether your practice takes place in the classroom and/or in your spare time during the week at home or work, simply practicing the art itself will force you to clear your mind and focus all your physical and mental attention on it.

In addition to focusing your mind and body, Martial Arts practice forces you to focus your breath. This serves to oxygenate the muscles making them more relaxed. Indeed, the more you advance in the art, the more apparent it becomes that relaxation of the body’s muscles is fundamental to performing well. The more relaxed you are, the more focused you will be.

When done to the fullest of your ability, Martial Arts practice can also be a very physically demanding workout. Though not a primary focus, there are many aspects of Martial Arts that when practiced with vigor can prove to be a great cardiovascular workout. In addition, the strength training incorporated into the art, found in punches, blocks, kicks and grappling, do wonders for relieving stress. Martial Arts practice will also help with flexibility. This, in turn, could also be helpful to other forms of meditation and stress relief you might practice such as yoga.

Practicing Martial Arts can provide many benefits such as improved strength, cardiovascular health, flexibility, relaxation and focus. These are all important parts of meditation and much needed stress relief in today’s world. The most important thing to remember is to practice whenever you get the chance. The more you practice, the more you will be able to work out your daily stress.

Learn more how our martial arts program exclusively for adults can help you reduce your stress.

In the martial arts, you often see someone in a belt test who absolutely owns the floor. They are precise, intense, and commanding with their mastery of the moves they perform.

The seems to exude an intangible quality that transcends their physical ability. Their physical performance has everything to do with how they perceive themselves and the confidence they have in themselves.

Do you wish you had that same confidence in the material?

Here are 5 tips to improve your self confidence so you too can own the floor come test time:

1. Recognize your accomplishments.
You have accomplished a lot in your martial arts training. Think about when you first started and compare that to what you know and can do now. You’ve come a long way! You now have greater balance, reflexes, flexibility, coordination, speed, power, and accuracy. It’s amazing just how far you’ve come!

2. Have faith and and believe in yourself.
This is something that my instructor Mr. Mills shared with me a long time ago that really helped me put things in perspective. Simply put, increasing your self confidence has more to do with what’s going on in your heard than anything. How you perceive yourself has everything to do with how confident a person and martial artist you become.

3. Face your fears.
Becoming a more confident person requires that you begin to overcome your fears. Start slow buy push yourself past your self imposed limits. Seize every opportunity to grow. I had trouble speaking in public until I started teaching martial arts. I went from teaching a handful of people to teaching and demonstrating in front of hundreds of people in a seminar.

4. Eye contact and body posture.
When you make regular eye contact and have an erect, upright carriage, you project confidence. It has long been known that posture can impact your mood which can lead to you feeling more confident. When you demonstrate the traits of a confident person, those around you start to take you more seriously. In a self defense situation, projecting confidence is paramount to projecting a strong, dominant vibe that makes attackers less likely to attack you.

5. Practice a little bit everyday.
To achieve self confidence it takes dedication and regular practice. Like any skill, it doesn’t happen overnight. However, you can chip away at this each and every day. Do you have a technique that you fumble all the time? Practice it at home… study it in your belt manuals… take notes on it … ask questions in class. Every little bit helps improve your confidence in the material.

Each step will bring you closer to having more confidence in the martial arts. And that confidence, in turn, will help you become a more confident martial artist.

Over the years I’ve taught many people and no matter what there always seems to be a few mistakes most everyone seems to make. So, I decided to give you a checklist so you can determine if you’re still making these classic mistakes and learn how you can being to correct them.

The good news is that the majority of these are a direct result of things being new and doesn’t take much to overcome these and do them correctly. And, as we all know, these will be easier to understand than to do, initially.

1. You’re looking at your feet or weapons
This is a tough one, especially in the beginning. Beginners tend to look at their stances… or at their hands… the oncoming punch… everywhere except eye level gazing straight ahead where they should be. If you can’t see a punch coming, how can you block it?

2. You’re holding your breath
Your body needs oxygen to power your muscle. Whenever you hold your breath, you’re robbing your body of the very energy you need to fuel it. Holding your breath also leads you to the next mistake.

3. You’re too tense!
You need to relax! I know that’s easier said that done but it makes responding efficiently and effectively that much more difficult. You also lose a lot of power.

4. You’re only moving your hands
This is where you ignore your stances and just hit using the force your arms and hands and not you’re entire body. This starts to make your motion more slappy than powerful.

5. You’re too high in your stance
Bend your knees more and put more weight on the balls of your feet. This will help you to be spring loaded so you can be quick and nimble.

6. Your stance is too wide
Do you like getting kicked in the groin? Then make sure you aren’t too wide in your stance. Be sure to work on your “Toe/Heel alignment.” This basically means that if you were to draw a line down the middle of your stance from the big toe of your lead foot and the heel of your rear foot would align right down your centerline.

7. You’re too shallow in your stance
By not stepping back far enough, you’re too top heavy. You only need to step where when you kneel down that your lead knee is aligned with the toes of your rear foot (Heel/Toe alignment).

8. You use too big of circles
As Mr. Parker said, “big circles lead to big problems.” As a beginner, you want to exaggerate your moves which means you will use larger circles than you really want to get the motion down. However, later in your training, you should begin to compress your circles and always keep within your “outer rim.”

9. You’re moving too fast
In an effort to really rip things, students often try to go too fast when they should be moving slower to get the moves and body mechanics down. By going slow, many of the above stated mistakes could be avoided.

10. Your elbows are too far out
If your elbows are out, you are losing power, telegraphing and more. By keeping you elbows anchored you will block and hit with greater effect and not open yourself up to unwanted counter strikes.

Be mindful of these 10 common mistakes and work towards eliminating them.