Breaking Down Cobra Kai Season 1-With Spoilers! It is no secret that I really enjoyed the first season of Cobra Kai. I was thrilled to see that they not only brought the original characters back but also made a flat-out fantastic show! You can listen to a spoiler-free discussion I had with [Read More]
Health in the Martial Art World Martial arts, as a whole, is a very deep and amazing practice. For us to continue our beloved art to the next generation, we must know its past, present, and future. The past is full of war, philosophy, duels, religion, and spirituality. Current martial [Read More]
The year is 1981 and I’m sixteen years old. My aunt Annette is cutting my hair in her kitchen in Saugus, Massachusetts. Suddenly she stops and addresses me in a tone only children with Sicilian relatives can understand. “David, what have you been doing to your head?” Clueless I reach [Read More]
Don’t Be A Crab I recently read an article on Fatherly entitled “Everything You Need to Know About Martial Arts Before Signing Your Kid Up”. I came away in a very conflicted mindset after reading the article. Overall, I think the article itself is actually fairly decent. It relays some [Read More]
If you’ve been training in the martial arts for more than a little while, you have probably had awkward interactions with other people when they found out about your martial arts “habit.” I’ve been practicing a variety of fighting arts for forty seven years, and I can tell you that [Read More]
Violence – My Perspective I’ve come to believe two things about violence: it is fluid in nature and it is morally neutral. I don’t think I’ll get much pushback about violence being fluid. After all, almost all of us train in dealing with any number of unpredictable scenarios. There’s a [Read More]
By Jonathan Bluestein The modern era has seen a significant rise in the popularity of sports-oriented martial arts, and eventually Mixed Martial Arts. The philosophical roots of these martial arts are strongly linked with American Capitalism. That is to say, that there exists a belief in sports martial arts, whereby [Read More]
The Reality Of Perception I consider myself a fan of British comedy. I adore Monty Python, and I’m also a big fan of Eddie Izzard. Find his HBO Special “Dressed to Kill” sometime; he has a way of talking about language that is quite similar to George Carlin. The example [Read More]
As I have mentioned before in other reviews, one of the (numerous) martial arts podcasts that I listen to is “Martial Arts and Life,” hosted by Lawrence Kane and Kris Wilder. Because I enjoy listening to their podcast, I have also read a number of their books. I even reviewed one [Read More]
A Tough Week For Civility Last week, I watched the horrible state of American politics unfold over a five day period. A crazy person sent bombs to political figures and government officials all over the country. Luckily, no one was hurt. Then, Saturday morning, a gunman entered a synagogue near [Read More]
Martial Art’s Hot Button Issue Competition. The litmus test in modern martial arts. A simple dividing line that we use to put a martial artist in one of two buckets. People who train for competition and everyone else. It seems a silly and arbitrary reason to cause such a huge divide in [Read More]
Thousands of parents enroll their children into martial arts programs across the country every year. Maybe it’s your unruly 4-year-old who needs to learn self-discipline before kindergarten, a high schooler who should learn self-defense before going off to college, or any age in between. No matter why, you are helping [Read More]
Add A Teaspoon of Positivity To Your Morning Cup Of Coffee This weekly post highlights positivity in the martial arts from around the world. Unfortunately, it is far too easy to find negative stories on the internet. Positive ones, however, are harder to find. Let’s recognize and celebrate those martial artists [Read More]
The McDojo and Bringing Back McDojoLife McDojoLife is a… I’m not really sure how to define it. To call it a “website” doesn’t even come close to covering what it is. Maybe we should call it a movement. That certainly seems, to me at least, what it’s quickly becoming. Regardless [Read More]
Are Forms Still Relevant? Forms. Let’s face it, they have gotten a bad name. Whether you call them forms, kata, shapes, or one of the many names given to them, it’s true. Most modern martial arts and self-defense systems not only question them but completely put them down and often [Read More]
Keep Radiating Positivity! This weekly post highlights positivity in the martial arts from around the world. Unfortunately, it is far too easy to find negative stories on the internet. Positive ones, however, are harder to find. Let’s recognize and celebrate those martial artists and schools who are doing good things in [Read More]
Train For Your Environment By Adapting All martial arts were developed to serve a specific function from a specific time period. Many of the older martial arts have tried adapting to modern-day environments with varying degrees of success. However, some are more suited to our modern environment than others. Japanese [Read More]
Age Happens I literally caught myself mid screenshot. Click. Please tell me I didn’t just do that. *peer in horror through my fingers at the phone screen. “AGE IS JUST A NUMBER” I just took a screenshot of that quote. *gulp. Don’t know about you, but I’m thinking this is [Read More]
Robert Talks About McDojoLife Before McDojoLife, there was the McDojo. In the 1970’s martial arts exploded into the United States and subsequently fueled the industry of McDojos, or belt factories. They stemmed from the use of the art providing lower ranked artists colored belts to establish their rank and to [Read More]
Last night my brother-in-arms, Hylton Silver, and I were running a Krav Maga class. We focused on an interesting topic – pressure. I recently wrote on pressure in self-defense training, and you can read more about this here. We were working on defending against punches and tackles/takedowns, and asked our [Read More]
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