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

Maple Pecans

This week Helen tried a new recipe from the Nourishing Traditions cookbook, “Holiday Pecans.”

This are raw, soaked, and dehydated pecan halves coated with whipped egg whites and delicately flavored with maple syrup and vanilla. Here is the recipe as she modified it:

1 cup crispy pecan halves
1 egg white
2 pinches sea salt
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix pecans with 1 pinch of salt and filtered water and leave in a warm place overnight. Drain in colander. Spread pecans on stainless steel baking pan and place in a warm oven (no more than 150 degrees) 12 to 24 hours, turning occasionally, until completely dry and crisp.

Beat egg whites with salt until stiff. Slowly beat in maple syrup and vanilla. Fold in pecans until well coated. Spread on two buttered, stainless steel baking pans and place in a warm oven (no more than 150 degrees) for several hours until egg white coating hardens. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Instead of using the oven, Helen used the more energy efficient and labor-saving option of a food dehydrator. This is a great appliance to have for healthy cooking and food storage.

I’ve posted before about how healthful nuts and seeds are as a snack. Check out that post here. The upshot of it is, that seeds and nuts contain chemicals known as phytates that inhibit digestion and assimilation. Soaking or sprouting them in water overnight denatures most of these phytic acids, making the nutrients easier to break down and assimilate in your body. Once they’ve been soaked, they’ll need to be dehydrated in order to store them. I store them in the fridge in our warm, damp New Orleans climate if I don’t plan on eating them all within a few days.

Here’s what fitness and anti-aging guru Mike Mahler posted the other day in relation to the benefits of nuts and seeds in your diet:

“Plant sterols are found in food such as Avocado’s, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, pecans, almonds, pistachios, Maca, rice germ, and wheat germ.

“Many think that these foods help increase T levels as people often notice an increase in sex drive, better workout recovery, and increased muscle mass from adding such foods. However, these foods do not directly increase T or any other hormone. Indirectly as fats they help increase hormones as the body needs fat to create hormones via cholesterol.

“Yet the plant sterols are used like testosterone and progesterone and are thus hormone supporting nutrients. When you eat these foods your body can metabolize them and use them like they would use T and other hormones (not GH though). Thus, your body does not have to burn through stored hormone reserves which go down with age, stress, over training, you name it. These foods will thus help support what you have and help avoid depleting your reserves further. Also they will not shut down natural production of hormones. They also help clear out bad chemical estrogens.

“Take home message, add some plant sterols to every meal. Add maca to protein shakes, add rice germ to a shake, add an avocado to a salad, add nuts and seeds to your dinner, you get it.

“Have spice and plant sterols at every meal without fail and you will notice a difference.”

Front Yard Farmers

I’ve posted before about the many health benefits of home vegetable gardening. Here’s an overview of why growing some of your own food can be beneficial to your physical, mental and spiritual health, the health of the natural world, and of society overall:

1. Gardening is an inexpensive source of fresh, organic, seasonal vegetables.
This not only benefits your health, but the health of the ecosystem. Listen to this fascinating radio interview with Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma

We need to change our food economy from one that is based on distant, centralized, petroleum-intensive production (growing vast areas of single, government-subsidized, low-nutrition  commodity crops like corn, soybeans, and wheat) to a decentralized, local system of high-nutrient local and organic fruits & vegetables.

The food economy is related to social justice and even national security. The Farm Bill passed by congress every five years creates huge subsidies to agribusinesses like ADM that sends your tax money and the money of future generations into the pockets of large corporations. The result is too-cheap prices for the kinds of commodity crops that food processing companies love. They make high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated soybean oil, soy flour, etc. into high-margin processed junk foods that have led to the proliferation of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease in this country.

The national security angle is twofold: one, our current food economy uses massive petroleum inputs, much of which comes from the Middle East, which drains American wealth, enriches some terrorists like Bin Laden and leads to massive defense expenditures and more importantly loss of life.

Secondly, by having a very centralized food system, we are vulnerable to disruptions by terrorist attack, contamination, crop loss, etc. A decentralized, locally-based system is far more efficient (less petroleum input), sustainable, and stable (able to respond and adapt to disruption).

So gardening is good for your physical health, the health of the ecosystem, and positive political change!

2. Gardening is a good way to get some moderate physical activity.
In our modern American world, we’ve gotten away doing the kind of daily physical labor our bodies were made for. Once again, cheap and abundant petroleum energy (which won’t last forever) has made us change the way we design and build our cities and our dwellings. In most places in this country, it is no longer possible to travel on foot and by mass transit.

It is easy to see when you travel the way daily lifestyles affect people’s body composition. In most European cities and in the older American cities like New York, Boston, and San Francisco, people walk several miles everyday in the course of going about their business. You see far fewer obese people in these cities than you see in more modern American car-based cities.

3. Regular contact with healthy, organic soil is good for your immune system and your mental health.
I’ve posted about this before here.  In over-sanitized modern environments, we do not come into contact with enough beneficial flora (mircobial life) that is essential for healthy immune systems, digestion and elimination. Auto-immune disorders such as asthma and arthritis are far more common where people are removed from the land. This is all old news. What new research is showing is that contact with living organic soil positively affects brain chemistry, leading to lower incidences of depression.

4. There is a spiritual reward to closing the nutrient cycle and living closer to the cyle of life, death, and rebirth.
I have posted before about why I am not a vegetarian (part 1, part 2) Here’s my view in a nutshell:

As modern humans, I think it is too easy to become unbalanced and misled by the rational mind.  One of the big lies we tell ourselves is that we stand above Nature and are immune to its laws. We can overlay our own thoroughly reasoned false reality over the true reality of Nature and lose touch with the truth– that we, too are bound up in the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

At every level, life is a never-ending process of creation and destruction.  From the chemical level, the cellular level, from micro-organisms to tissues to ecosystems to galaxies, things are torn apart so that new things can be created and established systems can be sustained.  No one entity lives forever, but all are linked in the give-and-take cycle of life, death, and rebirth.   I think that trying to distance one’s self from that cycle leads to frustration and anger.

We are not better than other animals. We do not trancend natural law. In order for something to live, something else will die. Unnecessary slaughter (such as factory farming techniques) is almost purely a human thing, is wasteful and destructive to the overall cycle of life. However, there is nothing wrong with killing without waste.

I believe that the imposition of simple, linear, human rules over a complex universe leads to frustration, anger, and needless violence.

Here is an interesting local blog Front Yard Farmer that was recently featured in The Gambit Weekly’s new green living section. It recounts a New Orleans woman’s home vegetable garden and her locally raised honeybees, ducks and meat rabbits.

Brain Foods

Health & fitness expert Mike Mahler has been writing lately about how to eat and train to create an optimal balance of hormone levels.  Here is some of the information he recently posted in a note on facebook:

Thought I would share my latest research on brain health and athletic performance.

There are 4 neurotransmitters that must be optimized for brain health and natural hormone optimization:

Dopamine
aceytlcholine
GABA
Serotonin

Dopamine (morning food for energy and focus)
Dopamine creates brain energy, enhances testosterone production, and keeps you mentally and physically energized throughout the day. Controls metabolism, which is your body’s ability to turn food into fuel. Controls food cravings and addictions. Pleasure seeking addicts are often dopamine deficient.

Foods:
Eggs
Animal proteins
protein powder such as Sun Warrior Rice Protein and pea protein isolate
Yogurt
Mangoes
Tomatoes
Red peppers
Raspberries
Strawberries
Watermelon (add this in morning shakes)
Carrots
Walnuts
Bell Pepper
Golden zucchini
Grapefruit
Tofu
Spinach
Green peppers
Zucchini
Avocado
Kiwis
Pears
Blueberries
Blackberries

Spices:
Basil
Bay leaves
Cayenne
Fennel
Cumin
Ginger
Rosemary
Turmeric

Beverages:
Black tea
Green tea
Rooibos tea
White tea
Coffee

Supplements:
Tyrosine
Phenylalanine
Mucuna Pruneins (l-dopa)

Acetylcholine (Controls reaction time and memory)
When acetylcholine levels are low you are in a brain fog state. You become forgetful and have declined mental and physical quickness. Acetylcholine also provides the lubrication and insulation for muscles, bones, and other internal systems. People with low acetylcholine levels often crave fat fried foods in a desperate attempt to ramp up acetylcholine levels.

Foods:
Eggs
Fish
Lecithin
Kidney beans
Pineapple
Chick peas
Soybeans
Asparagus
Fava beans
Black beans
Passion fruit

Spices:
Allspice
Basil
Cumin
Sage
Thyme

Supplements:
Choline

GABA (post workout and evening to lower stress and anxiety)
Gaba determines the pace at which your brain and body function. When gaba is low we feel anxiety and do not handle stress well. Too much gaba can create lethargy so it must be kept in balance. It is best to focus on gaba rich foods after training and in the evening.

Foods:
Peaches
Okra
Papayas
Green snap beans
Celery

Spices:
Cardamom
Cinnamon
Cloves
Lemongrass
Oregano

Supplements:
GABA
Piracetam

Serotonin (anti-depressant feel good neurotransmitter)
Acts as an off switch for the brain and the body. Tells the body when to shut down and when to reset. Important for mood, restoration, and quality sleep. Serotonin induces relaxation and is thus best increased after workouts and in the evening.

Foods:
Red Apples
Golden Apples
Green Apples
Raspberries
Strawberries
Red Cherries
Kale

With regards to the working out: Two hours before  each workout make sure to have a dopamine/aceytlcholine rich meal.

Afterwards (wait an hour as the post workout window of opportunity is a myth and eating too soon will lower GH levels) have a GABA/serotonin rich meal. You still want protein each time which is a dopamine focused food just make it 1/4 of your meal and load up the rest with gaba/serotonin foods. This will help bring you down after competing so you rest well and are ready to go again the next day. Basically you get a re-boot.

For more info on brain health as it relates to fat loss and overall health, get Dr Eric Braverman’s book: “Younger thinner you diet”

For more information, you can sign up for Mike Mahler’s  Aggressive Strength Magazine.

Spring Renewal, Austin Festival

Carnival time is here, and classes are on hold until Ash Wednesday. Even though the standard calendar doesn’t acknowledge it, Spring has arrived in New Orleans.

Spring is the time of rebirth, renewal, new beginnings, so it is the perfect time to recommit, reevaluate, and renew your kung fu practice. That means coming back and attending regularly again if you’ve let your practice slip, or taking some time to reflect on what you want to get out of your training, and setting some goals to guide your development over the coming season.

I tailor every class to the people in attendance that night, doing my best to give you the experience you want and/or need, but eventually you need to start taking more responsibilty for your own path and learning how to transform yourself into the martial artist and person you want to be. The student manual has some very motivational essays and sample workouts that can help guide you. If you haven’t gotten the manual, contact me and I’ll send it to you.

My blog  has articles about my take on training, diet, and other topics (it might be helpful to go back in the archives and start from the oldest posts and move forward).

If you’ve never done the goal-setting exercise I wrote on my blog, here is the link

If you have done it, it’s probably been several months or more, and your ideas about yourself and your goals may have changed since then.

One way to really kick-start your training and draw inspiration from fellow students, senior black belts, and masters, is to make the trip to Austin next weekend for my teacher’s tournament. This is Master Joe Schaefer’s 10th year hosting this tournament that draws students of Grandmaster Sin from all over the country.

http://austinkungfu.com/tournament_guide.asp

A few years ago, Master Joe had an epiphany that made him rework the whole tournament format. He stopped calling it a tournament and called it the “Spring Festival” because competition has never been the big emphasis. It is more a celebration of learning. There is always some kind of seminar component built into the day’s events. The overall atmosphere in the form and sparring divisions is not one of cockiness but one of mutual respect. You can learn something from watching anyone put him or herself on the line and show you the limits of their abilities, whether they are a complete beginner with no natural aptitude for sports (as I was when I started 13 years ago), or a gifted athlete with years of training.

Unlike many martial arts schools, our tournaments are not required for advancement. They are also (like our test fees) much, much cheaper because a) we have a great martial arts system and don’t have to use hidden fees and intimidation to keep our schools running and b) we love what we do and want to make it accessible to as many people as possible.

So contact me if you’re interested in making the trip.

Here’s what Master Joe has to say in today’s email newsletter:

What Are You Made Of? by Master Joe

Here it is, my yearly rant about why you need to get involved in the tournament. I will give you 4 different reasons that will get you into motion.

1. It is the 10 year anniversary of my very first tournament. Therefore, I want to have the best tournament yet. I ask you a favor to show up in force, bring the most friends, invite people on facebook and every other electronic network you have and in general SUPPORT the school and the tournament.

2. You joined the school because you wanted to be different in some way. You were choosing NOT to be the same. This means that things that are outside your comfort zone are things you are supposed to be doing.

You might have convinced yourself that you are growing as a person, but the fears keeping you from getting involved are your real challenge. You thought it was getting in shape, but it is not, it is the process of meeting and moving beyond your fears.

Guess what, if reading this even makes you nervous, then you MUST compete in the tournament or admit to yourself that fear is more powerful in your life than the desire to reach your true potential. Fear is a powerful force to be sure, but don’t give me or yourself excuses; you’re scared plain and simple.

3. There is a quote and I can’t quite remember it, but it goes something like, nobody will follow the general when he doesn’t even wear the uniform. My point is, how can you expect Shaolin-Do to impact your life when you place Shaolin-Do in the back seat of your life. Get involved!

Just the simple act of getting involved will tell your unconscious that Shaolin-Do is important and will make the lesson and transformation mean more than ever. Wear the uniform and patches with pride.

Come to watch your classmates test and cheer them on. Honor your classmates by competing with them at the tournament and cheer them on when they rise to a higher level in their own lives. Take seminars from masters and other teachers and stay in the flow of energy from the top. Bring friends and family to try and join classes.

I think that at times people forget just how much Shaolin-Do has impacted the course of their lives. They become way too casual about something that has CHANGED their lives forever. They should be shouting it in the streets, dragging every friend to our door and should themselves never go a week without some to a couple classes.

The lessons never end, they only get deeper, more painful, and difficult to understand and face. To turn away from those lessons is to turn away from the journey and admit defeat.

4. You have absolutely nothing to lose except your delusions that you are really awesome. The major injuries in the tournament will be the bruised egos of people who have told themselves and others, stories of their greatness. So what is your excuse now?

If you have been telling yourself how awesome you are and therefore things like this scare the #$%^# out of you, then isn’t that a bit silly. Are you really going to support that kind of behavior in yourself?

So to summarize: I would like you to participate in the tournament (just in case you missed my point).

Mental Tricks For Competing

Not really tricks, but ways you can relax, conquer anxiety, etc… if you are afraid to do this.

1. If it’s an open hand or weapon form, practice a lot! Being prepared is over half the battle.

2. Remind yourself now and as you bow to begin, that you are just there to have fun.

3. You spar in class and this is no different. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose – neither is a reflection on who you are. Just have fun.

4. If this is a really big deal for you, keep patting yourself on the back. You are facing a big fear, growing a huge amount and conquering your world – no matter the outcome of the match!

Congratulations to all competitors.

Master Joe

Happy Mardi Gras!

Inspirational Post From Mike Mahler

You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton: I never saved anything for the swim back. – Vincent, from Gattaca (1997)

Mike Mahler is an elite  strength trainer and fitness writer who offers workshops and informational products on strength & conditioning.  I first met him when I took a kettlebell instructor certification course in Sept 2005, where he was a senior instructor.

Mahler publishes the online newsletter “Aggressive Strength Magazine.”  Today’s edition begins with a very inspirational essay about fulfilling your goals to live the life of your dreams.  It’s called “I Never Saved Anything for the Swim Back.”  Here is an excerpt:

“Swimming out without concern for how you will get back to shore is a metaphor for pursuing your dreams without any back-up plans.  Too many people opt out before truly getting started by telling themselves they can do something else when and if their dream career fails to thrive.  Is this your mentality?  If so, don’t bother with your dream career because you’ve already missed.  As the sage warfare strategist Sun Tzu wrote:  the winner and loser of a fight is already determined before the fight starts.  If you’ve already got your fall back job lined up in case your dream career fizzles, your fight is already determined…and you’ve lost!  Instead, you must be so single-mindedly focused on what you want that even the idea of doing anything else is never conceived.  When something isn’t an option, it will never obstruct you.  Excuses are unacceptable:  This is do or die time and those  unprepared to handle such hardcore mentality must fall back and prepare instead to accept a self-created, mediocre experience of life.”

To read the complete post, go to mikemahler.com and click on “Magazine”

You can sign up to receive a free email subscription.