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Perception Part Three

The Ever Changing Moment Have you ever noticed while you are training that sometimes your mind is on what you are doing, your kamae, your movement or which hand you are supposed to be using and at these times you lose track of the attacker and get caught off guard. Then there are other times […]

Shu-Toku 習得 Mastery

It might sound self-evident to say we’re training because we want to get better at what we’re doing. That idea applies to not only martial arts, but to most everything else in life we practice as a skill. However, wanting to get better at something, and actively working in each and every class or practice […]

MAIA Lifetime Achievement Award

When I first left for Japan in search of the ninja 40 years ago, it was by no means a happy or triumphant thing. I had a small karate school, and I was not happy with where American karate was headed. It was the early 1970s, and big hair, gold chains, monstrous egos, and cocaine […]

No Mistakes for the Ninja

It was many years ago now. I was training with the 34th generation Ninja Grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi and An-shu Stephen K. Hayes. I was in awe. The grandmaster had just demonstrated a brilliant reversal technique, and with a flippant laugh said, “no mistakes for the ninja.” My young, beginner’s mind interpreted that as a promise […]

Perception Part Two

Goals As it says on the back of the book, “DON’T PANIC”. I’m not talking about the things motivational people say like “Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement”. When I talk about goals I mean your perception of purpose in our training, from a very broad sense in the meaning of ‘Bu’ […]

Boundary Setting

Winning a fighting contest is such a different result than returning home healthy and happy each day. And yet many martial artists confuse this reality, talking on one hand about self-defense, but then on the other hand being drawn into a contest when someone makes a challenge. Our training works on a “continuum” model — […]

On Opinions

The following is an excerpt from chapter five of my book Clearing Away the Crap in my Cap. The work is a rhyming book that explores the complexities and challenges of the human condition. The focus is on issues we all struggle with at times and common traps we may fall in to. I hope […]

Ki-Ai 気合 Spirit

Giving a fierce yell while kicking or punching is one of the most well-known, and most imitated, parts of the martial arts. You can’t have a low budget martial arts film without a high pitched scream accompanying each technique. There are, of course, a lot of good reasons to be making noise in a fight […]

Perception Part One

Feeling Gravity The Ninja are famous for looking at situations from a different perspective then their contemporary warrior counterparts. Where the conventional warrior may boldly charge in, the Ninja uses subterfuge and observation to accomplish their goal. This different perspective or the ability to perceive more is to me the goal of our training. This […]

Brain Involved in Fear

A common mistake regarding the purpose of studying the five elements is to believe that we somehow “choose” a particular element in the middle of a fight. Such a rational decision-making process would be totally impossible for the vast majority of people. Under the effects of cortisol and adrenaline stress chemicals that flood the bloodstream […]

Ma-ai 間合 Gap

The concept for this month is gap, specifically the gap between you and your attacker, but the idea is more complicated than that small word makes it seem. Ma-ai is both timing and distancing combined together. In English it seems as if these are two separate concepts, but if you think about it, especially in […]

Who Are You Teaching For?

I happened on to a martial arts gathering in our area recently, one of the ones where they bring together different martial arts to share with each other. So I went in to watch for a while. There were some martial arts students speaking about an instructor on stage. The comments ranged from how amazing […]

Buckle Up!

NinjaSelfDefense.com is about to undergo three significant improvements, and we couldn’t be more excited. The first will make the site much faster. The second will significantly upgrade our look and feel. And the third will introduce some amazing new features to help you track your progress as you learn. We’ll make more formal announcements at […]

A or F?

What does it take to honorably pass a test and earn a new belt in the martial arts? My view is that there are: Things to know (we are informed – “I know something new!”), and often… Things to be able to perform (“I can do something new!”) And then on the other hand, there […]