The famed chessmaster Capablanca was once asked how many moves ahead he saw when playing a game of chess. His answer? "I see only one move ahead, but it is ALWAYS the right move." Such confidence! How did he get it? Cognitive scientists and neurologists have long been fascinated with the neural component of peak performance. Professional ...more
Kurt Harris, MD, writes about paleolithic nutrition at his highly recommended blog, www.paleonu.com. "Eating like a caveman" has become a bit of a fad, with all the down sides that comes with fads. But behind the fad lies a large amount of research that can be and is used as evidence for the high protein and fat, low carb diet that ...more
Life has always been complex and challenging. The challenges today are just different than what they were in the past. Nowadays instead of hunting and scavaging for food and living in the elements we’re bombarded with suggestions and demands from our highly sophisticated societies. How is it ...more
West LA Seido Karate-do embeds its personal protection program into its on-going classes. Private instruction in this aspect of Seido can also be arranged with Kyoshi on an individual basis. Personal protection, i.e. self-defense, at Seido uses a model of escalating stages of conflict resolution ...more
Competition and cooperation are two modes of interaction that engage us throughout our lives. West LA Seido Karate recognizes the need for being skillful at both. We channel the cooperative instinct in the dojo in a variety of ways, ritual courtesy being the most visible. We also give our ...more
The point of any workout is to stress your body and initiate an adaptive training response. Period. What are appropriate levels of stress necessary to achieve the adaptive response? In terms of the cardiovascular system, studies have shown that it usually takes about two minutes to get the heart ...more
What's your training about? Would any of it matter if your life depended upon it? If not, what is your training providing you with? These are fundamental questions and your answers to them will determine how you train. Above all, your answers will reflect or require a particular mindset to suit your purpose. The mindset is the ...more
A Way Out of the Overload How do we simplify? There's a welter of information, advice, techniques, schools and every imaginable video tape available on the market to answer that question for you. In making a selection from this movable feast you'd want to take into account the background and credentials of the person offering you a way ...more
The Fog of Will Suki = a chink in the armor, a psychological weakness. Doubt. The trainee must believe in his or her ability to win in a life threatening situation. The trainee must begin to believe that he or she can and will survive a violent encounter because they’ll do what’s necessary, come what may. To achieve this strength of ...more
Beauty and The Beast The Japanese word yugen connotes the sense of subtlety as it relates to beauty. According to Donn Draeger, author of many books and articles on the history of Budo, the definition of yugen includes such ideas as “suggestiveness,” “charm,” and “dynamic stillness.” Draeger writes that “the essence of yugen lies in ...more
Take It On Many critics of Traditional Martial Arts (TMA) base their criticisms on the training methodology of the “old school.” Kata and pre-arranged partnered sets, they say, don’t prepare the trainee for anything “real.” The approach of TMA, they continue, is based on assumptions about an attack that just don’t stand up to what ...more
Kizeme This Japanese word, kizeme, means "spirit of attack." It is said of Miyamoto Musashi, the famed Japanese swordsman, that as he grew older he relied more on kizeme to defeat adversaries and, as a result, emerged victorious from challenges without taking the life of his opponent. The willingness to attack is a potent weapon, made ...more
On a Wednesday evening when friends are going to a movie or out to dinner, you’re at the dojo training. On a Sunday night when your show or the game is on the television you’re not home to watch it, you’re at the dojo training. On a Friday night when the town is full of excitement you’re at the dojo training. The physical demands of ...more
We are embarking upon a new year. As usual, some of us will make "resolutions." There isn't anything wrong with setting goals for the year. It's actually a good idea. It may help focus the energy we bring to life. A karateka may be excused if he or she makes only one resolution for the coming year: More training! This is an appropriate ...more
This expression, mitakuye oyasin, comes from the language of the Lakota Sioux, a tribe among the Native Americans. It means "We are all related." It's uttered upon crossing the threshold into the Sweat Lodge, the small, low structure used by the Sioux for their sacred purification ritual, the Sweat. In Seido Karate we have a saying we ...more
How do we really come to the decisions that we make? Is it just flip a coin and hope for the best or is there some underlying procedure that we go through, consciously or unconsciously, that guides our course of action? Gary Klein is the author of "Sources of Power: Real Life Decision Making." The book is somewhat technical, but the ...more
"Life is difficult." That's how Scott Peck's best-selling book, "The Road Less Travelled", begins. That life is difficult is not news. Over two-thousand years ago the Buddha said it too: Life is suffering. The sanskrit word the Buddha used for suffering is dukkha. Dukkha doesn't refer to physical pain, necessarily. It refers to something ...more
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." -Leonardo da VinciLearning a kata requires that you go through several stages. First you have to learn the basic pattern and the techniques. Then you have to perfect what you've learned. Then you have to deconstruct what you've learned and perfected in order to truly understand what the kata is ...more
In the dojo, what ISN’T said is often as important as what IS said. To most of us who’ve been raised in the USA, the reticence we encounter in the dojo can be off-putting. American society is very “content” oriented. Our legal contracts, for instance, run for pages and pages. Everything needs to be spelled out. In “context-oriented” ...more
This Japanese expression has two basic meanings. The literal meaning is to break one’s bone(s), as when falling from a height. The figurative meaning is “to try harder.” That is, to try so hard that one’s bones break. Undertaking bonebreaking work is a core value in a classical Japanesedojo. Passage through such an ordeal presents the ...more
