Blog

Good morning! Depending on where you are we are 3-4 weeks into social distancing/shelter-in-place due to Covid 19.

How are you doing? How are you managing the changes?

I’m still working from home, coaching and counseling folks with online video and phone sessions. Things have slowed down in some ways and in some ways it’s been busy and exhausting. My wife is a science teacher for two schools and is also teaching online. My son’s back home from college and my youngest daughter’s in high school and they are doing school online. My eldest daughter is still settling into her new house with my son-in-law, she teaches kindergarten and he is a police officer.

This morning I started my day with exercise. I decided to make exercise part of my daily routine in early Dec. Today was 134 of my daily streak. I did 30 minutes of shadow boxing, stretching, I even did a few karate katas I haven’t done in several years. I used to teach kenpo karate 20 years ago.

I also wrote a book, Black Belt Parenting, a few years ago. It hasn’t been edited or published yet. I opened it up for the first time in 2.5 years and edited a couple pages.

I’m going to put a few pages on here to download soon, so in the meantime subscribe to receive a copy of my ebook, “Bridging The Gap Between Where You Are And Where You Want To Be”.

Here’s a preview:

Start with Success

When working with kids, with others, set them up for success. Start with positive interactions so that it empowers them. Don’t let them get discouraged. Don’t let their insecurities and self-doubt creep in. Don’t make them develop bad habits with flinching and turning away and being defensive. One of my favorite things to do is to teach beginners and introduce people to Jiu-Jitsu & Mixed Martial Arts,  Muay  Thai, Boxing and Wrestling. A technique I like to teach from the very start, after teaching people how to defend themselves against punches, is their first takedown. It’s fun to have the privilege of teaching people their first takedown and submission.  Most people their eyes light up, they feel empowered, they feel like a ninja!   

Now when you’re fighting, a double-leg takedown or a single leg takedown are probably the most common takedowns that you’ll see in the ring but what I like to teach for self-defense or in the gym is a front headlock.  One reason is my first week at Team Quest gym I learn the front headlock from Dan Henderson. The front headlock teaches you a lot of the principles and concepts of good wrestling and jiu-jitsu. You learn the front headlock and it can be a foundation for many other techniques you need to learn and know.    

     To get a front headlock you can start out by defending your opponent’s jab or cross and closing the gap, closing the distance, to get in range to be able to get to a single collar tie on them.  You put your forearm against their chest or collarbone and grab their neck with one arm while you check their shoulder, their bicep or the wrist by placing your hand or grabbing them to monitor their movement, to preventing them from punching you.   

Once you’ve established control and prevented them from punching you, you drive into them. and when they resist or stop you use a hand behind their neck to snap the top of their head down and catch their chin.  You bend them over, close your elbow and you have them in a headlock. You work isn’t done there because they could escape, they could change or levels and get a single or a double leg takedown on you so you need to put your shoulder in the back of their neck and you sprawl hips down to the mat.  You throw your legs back while throw your hips to the ground and make them fall forward, ideally face-planting or at the very least putting their hands and knees on the ground. You can then do a whole bunch of things from there. You could connect your hands and lock up a guillotine choke or a 10 finger choke. If they defend, you might have to switch to an arm-in guillotine or an anaconda choke. Or you could spin onto their back. You could also punch and knee from there.   

The main thing is not getting hit and snapping them down, getting the takedown, getting on top quickly and efficiently. If you clinch up with someone who is not used to working in the clinch it’s very easy to snap them down. Start with the basics, start simple start with success. When you are working with beginners, starting this way helps them develop skill in a fun and safe way 

On science and art

Martial arts and parenting are both a science and an art. There are principles that hold true for martial arts, communication, and relationships. The application, the variations are what create art. Both involve discipline and hard work. They also involve the soul and heart. Things unseen like courage and love. We can learn a lot through study through exploration and through verbal and written communication about both.   

We can have teachers explain theory or principles but in order to grow, you have to get on the mat. And do the work. You have to do the repetitions. You have to do what is  rudimentary. You have to learn and drill the fundamentals. You have to do the basics.   

Just like any other sport or art you use the fundamental elements, whether it’s letters musical notes or movement to create. And every time you create it to become something new. Even though with some martial art practice the goal is to do something perfectly correct, in the same way, every time like with forms or kata, the very act of being precise, every performance or expression of the can be unique.   

In our homes, we can get into a rut. We can get into a routine that looks the same every day: get up, get the kids ready for school, back into the car and go to school. Go to work. Pick up the kids from school, take them to activities. Get dinner. Do homework. Watch some TV, do stuff on the computer. Tuck them into bed, say goodnight. And then do it all over again. Even if we don’t change a thing about the schedule and the things that we need to do – if we change our mindset to be open and hopeful for something new, something amazing to happen in the middle our daily routine, it makes it more likely.  

Outwardly it may look the same but as our intent, our purpose and our focus shifts, it becomes something different. What we find is when we look at our day or our time on the mat in that way, with new, curious open eyes, when we enter into conversation and connection with new curious open hearts towards others we’re able to experience and see so much more. We experience what CS Lewis described as not seeing anyone as an ordinary human. And we realize how true that is. We realize what a gift every moment, every encounter, every day, is.  

On focus or flexibility

There is a tension with MMA and parenting.  

Do I become well-rounded or focus on one thing and make it unstoppable?  

Ronda Rousey and her game plan are a great example:  Close, clinch, throw,  get the armbar.  

Damian Maia: dominate the grappling, get the RNC.  

When we only have one tool, when all we have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  

That works when the only goal is winning.  

It doesn’t work so great in relationships, in parenting and marriage.  

When you run into the times when your A game doesn’t work, it helps to have a backup, a plan B.  

Because there’s one thing about life, there will always be a need to go to plan B, or C or D.    

Thinking and evolving

Early on in the UFC Ultimate Fighting Championship, there was a thin young man, Royce Gracie, a brother of a large family that founded the UFC to showcase their family’s martial arts style Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. Gracie Jiu-Jitsu has been come to be known as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It was a style of fighting new to America.  One of the things that appealed to early UFC fans was that it was No Holds Barred.  It was hand-to-hand combat in its rawest form.  Foul tactics like punching the groin, pulling hair, kicking people in the head were allowed. It allowed elbow strikes and wrestling on the ground with strikes. It was brutal.   

Early on in the UFC, they matched marital art style vs style.  They had people from different martial arts disciplines fight against each other as a way of proving which is the best martial art, who is the best fighter in the world? So there were people from Jiu Jitsu, sumo wrestling, Muay Thai kickboxing. Karate. Boxing.  What that first event showed is that you had to learn how to defend against being taken down to the ground because once you got taken down to the ground Royce Gracie was going to choke you or beat you with a Jiu Jitsu technique, a grappling technique. He was going to make you submit and give up with these finishing holds.   

You signify that you give up and other opponent wins in Jiu-Jitsu by tapping on the map 3 times or tapping on your opponent and the referee steps in to stop the match. If you don’t talk or submit then your arm or leg gets broken or you go unconscious from a choke. In the early days of NHB or MMA fighting one thing that was popular was theorizing and arguing about which style was better on the internet. People on the internet would say I’m a boxer or I’m a wing chun specialist and I wouldn’t get taken down. I would just punch them or I would just have to hurt them before they could take me down.  

Sometimes parenting is like that, without experience or limited experience we can be confident in a way that only the inexperienced can be.   

On proving yourself

Men aren’t the only ones that want to test themselves and find out if they have what it takes. I see this with moms too. They want to show the world and their circle of friends that they are a good mom. That they got the stuff, love, Mom-greatness. But there’s a difference between proving yourself to be trustworthy and proving yourself to be worthy.   

We want to show our kids and prove to our kids that they can trust us, that we’re going to provide, that they can feel safe and secure. That’s a part of being faithful. And being dutiful in the good sense of the word duty. The honorable sense of duty. But the urge to prove yourself worthy gets us as parents into ugly, messy stuff with our kids if it’s based on shame.   

When we are in proving-our-worth mode in the gym and we’re trying way too hard, we can hurt ourselves and we can hurt other people. And it’s the same thing in the family, when we’re trying to prove our worth and fight off shame. We’re not focused and attending to the needs of the moment because we’re trying to meet our own emotional needs. And we manipulate or hide, we play it safe and don’t risk clear communication. We don’t make clear requests. We fall short of getting what we want because we’re not vulnerable enough to acknowledge what we really want and what we really need.   

 It’s  just like the incomplete fighter who only defends himself; you can’t win by just defending yourself. You’ve got to open up, you’ve got to risk swinging for the fences. You have to risk getting countered and being open to return fire. In a fight, we don’t want that, you don’t want to get hit by return fire. We don’t want our opponent to connect with us. But in relationships we want our partner, the person standing in front of us, to connect. That’s the goal and so when everything within you just wants to hole up and wall up and defend yourself. With the right person, or with the right people, safe people, you have let them in in order to connect