Another great edition of Mike Mahler’s Aggressive Strength Magazine

The latest issue of Mike Mahler’s “Aggressive Strength Magazine” has a lot of great information on fat loss, the importance of good nutrition,  exercise, and adrenal health.  Check it out!

http://www.mikemahler.com/magazine/173.html

Newsletter from Master Joe Schaefer

This is the latest newsletter from my teacher, Master Joe Schaefer of Austin, TX.  This weekend Master Joe is hosting a rare visit by one of the most senior teachers in our lineage, Elder Master Eric Smith.

Information & Registration for Elder Master Smith Seminar

If you are not interested in getting better at Kung Fu then this doesn’t apply.

Four examples to help shape our thinking

1.         There are many reports of cops surviving a shootout and then finding their empty shell casings in their pockets. In other words, they took the time, while being shot at, to pick up shell casings from the ground and put them into their pockets. This has great significance for our Kung Fu training. It turns out the cops did this because they were re-enacting their behaviors at the shooting range. So whatever they repeated on the shooting range they did unconsciously in the shootout.  Whatever they repeat a lot, becomes an unconscious skill.

2            Recently while reviewing short stick for black belts, I noticed that several of them pulled to cat stance when they turned after basic swings. Rather than being a product of being told it’s that way, they felt it was right to retreat to cat stance when turning to face a new direction. This was not a rule they memorized because that rule has NEVER been told to them. However, in the 3 birds and many other forms, this is precisely what happens when you turn to face a new direction. Pretty cool huh? They have internalized a core principle without being told it. Whatever they repeat a lot, becomes an unconscious skill.

3.            Anecdotally I can tell you that in the past several sparring sessions I have grabbed people by the head and repeatedly hit to the body while chasing them. Tonight at class I realized that it was the precise black tiger drill that we had been practicing at least 100 reps each and every Tuesday night. I further realized that whenever I did that move, I found myself performing it and then noticing it afterward; unconsciously. Whatever I repeated became an unconscious skill (and pretty quickly).

4          Final proof. Try any kata on the opposite side you’re accustomed to. You body cannot perform it with the same fluidity or thoughtlessness. If you can’t even do the movement well on the other side, it might be a clue that you haven’t internalized it yet. Repetition increases performance.

We could go into the whole cellular mechanisms of learning by repetition (NMDA receptors and the like), but take my word for it…repetition works. It may not be trendy or new, but it works every time and is the method the monks used to pass their knowledge across the centuries.

There is no mystery here. Piano players play piano to get better at playing piano. They play songs and scales and drills. Whatever they practice becomes second nature. If they really want to be good, they practice hours a day on the same songs. That is why they stand on a stage and we watch them play from the audience. They have paid the price for mastery.

Whatever we surround ourselves with is what we will become. Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the Polish virtuoso from the 1800’s, once said: “If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.”

I am sure that Ignacy got pretty tired of practicing the same songs and drills, but boredom is not the sign that you’ve reach the promise land. This is the difference between process and outcome goals. Outcome goals are “I want to master this martial art” That is pretty obscure and hard to measure, but you can say that if I practice this tiger form 25 times a day  I will certainly move more like a Tiger master, then that is a process goal and can be easily measured.

Maybe we get too easily bored and distracted to reach the high country of mastery. Which is why there are so few people on stage in the world and so many watching them. But I put this final thought to you all. When that pianist becomes the best in the world, after 20 years of practice, and they look in the mirror, they still have to say “what now?”

So in the long run, do what makes you happy, because no matter how awesome you can become at anything, it will not fill the void if you are not happy inside your own skin.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski

Take few moments and learn about the amazing person pictured above. You will see that while being one of the greatest pianist of all times, he was many other things. I am sure that he used the mastery of the piano to create a mastery of life. A path I think we’re all trying to walk.

Elder Master Eric Smith

When we have a chance to meet a person who has trained hard and “paid a price” for unique skill and understanding, it is a rare fortunate opportunity to hear what they have to say. You have that chance with Elder Master Eric Smith this Saturday at 5PM and Sunday at 10AM. Speaking with Master Bill today on the phone he said “you know Master Eric and I really went through this stuff since the beginning and we actually know some things.” This if course was an understatement.

2136 Rutland Dr #D-1, Austin, TX 78758, USA

Don’t Strain for Power

Refine your techniques.  If your technique is good, the power will be there.  If you strain to add more force, more power to your technique, you will create extraneous body movements that make it easier for your sparring partners to “read” your moves.

Strength as a lack of weakness

There is an interesting article in the lastest edition of Mike Mahler’s Aggressive Strength Magazine by kettlebell and biomechanics expert Denis Kanygin.

Kanygin’s point is that when training for strength, many people will overlook an important strategy:  rooting out weakness.  He says:

“Think about your body as an empty glass – there is only so much space. You can fill it with weakness or strength. The more weakness you have in you ‘glass’, the less space there is for strength.”

I think this makes a nice followup to my previous post about why I avoid bodybuilding-style, isolative exercises.

Full-body strength training such as the kind I advocate for martial artists focuses on developing strength across multiple muscle groups.  When you are doing Turkish Get Ups with a heavy weight pressed over your head, there is nowhere for weakness to hide: you need to recruit strength from every part of the body.

Isolating muscles and focusing on bulking up one muscle per exercise leaves lots of little nooks and crannies for weakness to take root and create imbalances that make for poor functional performance and a high potential for injury.

Tanning Beds, Bodybuilding and Poison

The World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer published a report in the latest issue of medical journal The Lancet Oncology that places tanning beds as likely carcinogens on the same level as arsenic or tobacco smoke.

My fitness ethos is always to work from the inside-out.  It is a potentially dangerous disordering of priorities to treat your body like an object to be manipulated into a certain “look”.  This divides the body/mind/soul and can generate a cycle of imbalances through the whole organism. The focus on “isolation” exercises in bodybuilding, geared to bulking up particular “beach muscles” tears the body into little pieces (both psychologically and in terms of motor skills) and objectifies it as a piece of meat foreign to the inner Self.

Fitness training should work to integrate the organism, not divide it.  In my opinion, fitness goals should be directed at affecting the outside world,  at accomplishing difficult tasks, not at beating the body into a certain “shape”.

A tan came to be seen as a sign of health because it was a side-effect of spending time working, moving, and playing outdoors.  Bulging biceps became a symbol of strength, I hypothesize, because they are one of the more useless muscles. In the old days, if your biceps bulged, that meant that your really useful muscles in your back, shoulders, legs and torso must be REALLY strong!

When you shoot for the resulting appearance instead of letting it be a byproduct of real-world work and accomplishment, you cheat yourself and hide your feelings of fear and inadequacy behind a puffed-up shield.

I think that bodybuilding can grow into a kind of body dismorphic syndrome comparable to anorexia.  It can be fine in moderation, but keep a perspective on it.  Realize that nobody really cares all that much what you look like.  It’s what you do in the world that draws people to you.

Summer Seminars start this Saturday

This summer I’ll be holding a series of optional seminars on higher level forms, open to Shaolin-Do students of all levels.  They’ll take place after the Saturday class, from 1:45-3pm.

I’ll teach each form twice in case people have scheduling difficulties making one of the times.  If you can make both times, then you can come twice without having to pay any more for the seminar.

This Saturday 6/6 I’ll teach Pan Lung Pang, Entwining Dragon Staff, one of the two highest level staff forms Grandmaster Sin has taught since coming to the U.S. in 1964.  This is a fun and exciting form with lots of elegant, entwining moves.

The cost for the seminar will be $25, or $10 if you’ve taken the form with me before and want a review.  You can also volunteer 1 (for review) or 2 hours (for first-timers) of your time to help me clean up or work in the garden in exchange for taking the seminar.

We’ll do this seminar again on Sat 6/26 if you miss the first one or want a free review.

Next Saturday 6/13 I’ll teach Tang Lang Chuan, Praying Mantis Fist.  This is a high level mantis form with lots and lots of challenging kicks, a real workout!  We’ll do the replay on this seminar on 7/11.  The cost for this will be the same as above.

Saturdays August 1 and 8 I’ll teach 7 Section Chain Whip, one of the most challenging flexible weapons to learn.  The chain whip is a chain with a dart attached to the end that you can throw and swing.  The cost of this seminar will be $50 which includes the cost of the whip, or $10 for a review.

These extra seminars are a way to challenge yourself with higher-level material. Once you have learned an advanced seminar form, you’ll accelerate your ability to learn the forms at your level. You increase your movement “vocabulary” by taking on more intricate techniques and longer sequences.

Let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to seeing you in class!

Upper Ninth Ward Farmers Market at Douglass High School

Farmer’s markets are a great way to get healthy, local, seasonal produce direct from the person who grew it.  The health and environmental benefits of eating fresh and local are profound.  In some cases it is more economical to shop at farmer’s markets, though subsidies to large agri-businessness cut against this natural tendency.

This week, the Upper Ninth Ward Farmer’s Market moves a few blocks down St. Claude to Douglass High School,  3800 St. Claude at Alvar St.  It takes place every Saturday 1-4pm.  There is often a guest chef preparing hot lunches, and other special events.  Supporting sustainable, local food is great for the health of your body, your community and your planet!

What Makes a Happy Life?

This is the fundamental question asked by the Grant Study, a 72-year longitudinal psychological study of 268 men who entered Harvard college in the late 1930’s.  Grant Study researchers have followed these men throughout their entire lives, sending out surveys every two years, conducting physicals every five years, and extensive personal interviews every 15 years.

Study director George Vaillant’s hypothesis is that happiness is determined primarily by how well we cope with challenges and misfortune.  Our “adaptations” or unconscious response mechanisms to personal difficulty can be detrimental or can help us build character, falling along the range from psychotic, the worst kind of adaptation, through immature, neurotic, and finally, mature adaptations like altruism, humor, and sublimation (channelling our anxiety into positive, creative endeavors).

The Grant Study participants were chosen for being seemingly exemplary young men, “well-adjusted” in the psychological parlance of the time.  Many acheived greatness, becoming billionaires, Cabinet members, Senators, and one president, John F. Kennedy.

Some of the observations of the study may seem surprising:

1. Study subjects who were shy or anxious in young adulthood were just as likely as more socially-adjusted subjects to find happiness after mid-life.

2. Subjects who seemed unusually mature in young adulthood were sometimes merely suppressing thier true feelings and motivations and became self-destructive in midlife, while some of those who seemed less mature and disciplined flowered in later adulthood.

3. Cholesterol levels at age 50 have no correlation to health in old age. (Another bit of evidence against the cholesterol hypothesis.  My view is that blood cholesterol is the body’s defense against damage by free-radicals, and not the cause of heart disease.)

4.  Exercise in young adulthood was more predictive of mental health than physical health by midlife, while depression was a great predictor of physical debility or death by age 63.

5. Happiness in no way correlates to success, fame, wealth or social status, but to a web of loving relationships with siblings, spouses, friends, children and grandchildren.

Dr. Vaillant’s Seven Factors of Healthy Aging for Mind and Body

1. Employing mature adaptations to life’s challenges

2. Education

3. Stable marriage / relationships

4. Not smoking

5. Not abusing alchohol

6. Exercise

7. Maintaining a healthy weight

Journalist Joshua Wolf-Shenk, author of Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, is the first journalist given access to the files of the Grant Study.  You can read his story in the June issue of the Atlantic Magazine.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness

For another illuminating longitudinal study, I also highly recommend director Michael Apted’s documentary series starting with “Seven Up!”  It tracks the lives of 14 children from age 7 in 1964 through the present day, with new installments every seven years.

Reasons to stay off the treadmill

Granted, walking or running on a treadmill is better than not exercising at all, but you can spend less time and get more mind-body benefits out of just about any other form of exercise.

1. How much sense does it make to burn coal or natural gas or split atoms  a hundred miles away, convert that energy to electricity (with the ensuing loss to heat), transport it over wires (losing some of it to resistance) and convert it to kinetic energy (losing much of it to heat), in order to be able to move your body which you could do anyway?

2. Treadmills are synonymous with boring. People listen to music, watch tv, and read while on them. You have a relationship with your body. Actually, you ARE your body but you start to forget that when you treat your body like a machine that you can check in for routine maintenance while you check out and go do something else. Exercise is your chance to truly inhabit your body, to integrate your body, mind and spirit. You are eroding that relationship when you set your body to one task and your mind to something else entirely.

3. The posterior chain is a group of muscles, tendons and ligaments on the back of your lower body. Examples of these muscles include the glutes, hamstring, lower back, and calves. This is where your explosive forward power comes from, the basis for most athletic movement.

When you run, your posterior chain pushes the ground away and behind you. On a treadmill, the aforementioned coal or natural gas or nuclear energy moves the ground for you, taking the posterior chain largely out of the equation. Now when you really get outside and run, your posterior chain is weak compared to the quads and you are vulnerable to knee injury. This Michigan chiropractor sees running injuries every Spring when his clients start running outdoors again. He advises them to cut their running down by 75% from their treadmill runs to true running to build up the strength of the posterior chain.

You can mitigate this problem by putting the treadmill on an incline.

4. Proprioreception is the complex neural feedback system that lets us know where our body is in space and how it is moving. It has a lot to do with what we call “coordination.”  Naturally, since the human body didn’t evolve running on treadmills, our proprioreceptors don’t quite know what’s going on when our legs are pumping away but the landscape around us isn’t changing. We throw ourselves into a neural confusion, and the body then needs to get its “land legs” back when we return to reality. This is one aspect of reason #2, eroding the mind/body relationship.

So– what can you do for cardiovascular exercise and your posterior chain?

Martial arts and kettlebell swings!

Write you Congressmen and Senators to Oppose H.R. 875 and S. 425 banning Farmer’s Markets

Send a message to your Congressman (see below for my letter)

This is going down in the next week or so. find info and a petition here http://www.naturalnews.com/025824.html

Find your Congressman:

https://forms.house.gov/

Louisiana District 2/ New Orleans Joseph Cao
https://forms.house.gov/josephcao/contact-form.shtml

Senators
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Mary Landrieu
http://landrieu.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm

David Vitter
http://vitter.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm

Sample letter:

Dear Congressman Cao,

I’m writing to you with my deep concerns about H.R. 875 and S. 425 which purports to reform food safety policy. The bill is written by lobbyists for big agri-businesses and I strongly believe that this bill goes in exactly the wrong direction in regard to changing our nation’s food systems.

We face major health and environmental problems due in large part to the Farm Bill and to massive centralization of the farming industry. Massive subsidies for commodity crops such as corn, soybeans, and wheat have led to vast monocultures, farmlands devoted to a single crop that requires large energy inputs (petroleum-intensive farming equipment, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and irrigation) and as a result are environmentally quite damaging, not only due to the chemicals used, but also because of the fertilizer runoff that pollutes our rivers and creates the annual dead zone in the Gulf that is so damaging to Louisiana’s economy.

The health implications of the H.R. 875, S. 425, the Farm Bill, of giant agribusiness, and food system centralization are best summarized by Metabolic Syndrome X which now affects 20-25% of the American public and is characterized by obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. It is the result of consuming most of our calories in nutrient-deficient, highly processed (and therefore high-profit) “food products” such as high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oils, and white flour. Even leaving moral and ethical concerns (compassion) aside and looking at the direct results of federal subsidies in cold economic light, these “food industry” profits are greatly overwhelmed by the health care costs attributable to these junk foods that are so prevalent in the modern American diet.

Far from embracing greater centralization of our national food supply, we need to look for ways to empower small farmers, individual vegetable gardeners, and local farmers markets.

In fact, food security and safety demand it. Centralized systems are not only less efficient (growing crops with large inputs of fossil fuels then delivering them across great distances), but make us more susceptible to crop failure, famine, surges in energy prices, natural disasters, even terrorism (remember the Chilean grapes that were poisoned with cyanide in 1989?).

Decentralization means greater variety of crops, more seasonal produce, better nutrition, and stronger local economies. And it means freedom and self-determination, core American values. As a Vietnamese-American, you can appreciate the value to your community of small-scale, local agriculture. Not only for the physical health of your constituents, but for the psychological and spiritual benefits of living close to the Earth and your own food production.

Don’t create new federal bureaucracies that will be easily manipulated by the giant players in the food industry. We need to put our trust and faith in small local farmers and cut the pipeline of our federal tax dollars to feed these giant agri-businesses that are destroying our health and environment.

Thank you,

Joseph Meissner