What Crashing a Remote Control Helicopter into your Wife's Head Can Teach you about Life and Success

Recently I bought a toy helicopter for $20 bucks and it is the most fascinating time waster I have had in a long time. I can't wait to fly it all around the house. It is only the size of my palm, but it is fully functional and just super fun!

As I fly it around the house, I usually keep it pretty low to the ground, realizing that the higher I go the longer the fall if I fail as a pilot. As I get the hang of it though, I definitely fly a bit higher now and then. I have had a few crashes but nothing too bad. My wife even saved the helicopter once by using the hair on her head as a soft landing. (Actually I crashed it into her head).

So, this little toy really got me thinking about life, I know it is hard to imagine, but it did. How many times in life are we scared to fly higher than we are right now? We have such a fear of the fall from greater heights.  I think the key to it all, is learning to pilot at the lower levels, and once we take our lives to a higher level, we are much more confident in our abilities. Why rush and just take the helicopter, our lives, as high as we can in an instant without learning to navigate first? 

Truly if there is any downfall for successful people, it is the quick rise to the top, or being promoted beyond one’s abilities. Make the choice to maximize at your current level, and a mentor or leader, or even life’s situations will pull you to higher grounds.

Thank you for reading and please share with anyone you think could apply this to their life, or may have had a similiar life altering event (crashing a helicopter into your spouse).

~ Benjamin "Sensei"  Moriniere
www.capoeira-okinawa.com
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10 Quotes that Will Make You a Better Martial Artist!

Here are 10 quotes that will make you a better martial artist. Please share this post and at the bottom of the post add your thoughts if you like on what each one of these means to you.

1.     He who is taught only by himself has a fool for a master. ~ Ben Jonson

2.     The weakest of all weak things is a virtue that has not been tested in the fire. ~ Mark Twain

3.     Everyone has a plan until they’ve been hit. ~ Joe Lewis

4.     I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. ~ Bruce Lee

5.     We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. ~ Aristotle

6.     Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit softly.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

7.     Turn the other cheek, but after the second cheek I am going to knock you out. ~ Anonymous

8.     There are two rules for being successful in martial arts. Rule 1: Never tell others everything you know. ~ Author unspecified

9.     When your strength is strong, defend; when your strength is great, attack. ~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War

10. Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It is courage that counts. ~ Winston Churchill

Benjamin Moriniere "Sensei" @CapoeiraOkinawa

Please share this post and your thoughts below. Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.

Zach The Hitman Hayden Yudansha Black Belt Test

Presenting the newest Yudansha Black Belt, Zach The Hitman Hayden. Today all of the students had a chance to ask questions about techniques anywhere on the curriculum whether Judo, Jiu-jitsu, Kickboxing, or Arnis.  Then after another grueling hour of thrashing, errh, practical application, Zach was still standing and ready to tell the Yudansha Family Worldwide that he can handle such a heavy responsibility. Welcome to the League of Extraordinary Martial Artist well-rounded in a variety of combat arts. OSU.

WE ROLLED HARD at King of the Island BJJ Tournament, April 13 - 14, 2013

We had a great tournament this weekend here on Okinawa, Japan. King of the Island saw our kids go to war on Saturday with the adults diving in on Sunday. We came away with quite a few medals for the kids and two medals by two guys in the adult divisions.

We ended up as a team in 3rd place.

I rolled with Ivan for a grueling 10 minute round. It was a great experience though, especially since it was the first time we ever rolled together.

Then Nick Lipton and Jared Bland would both take 2nd in their tough divisions.

For the youth we had Dylan take first, ousting Troy, who got second place. Dylan fought some tough matches, especially against Troy, who has not lost for 3 years. Then we had Colin take 2nd place in his division as well for the kids. 

Coley took 2nd place in his division with a tough fought match. Then Julian took gold in his divison with Jace taking 3rd in the same division. Great job!

Super Kai would take 3rd in his division and Lady Jade and Kevin would tie for 3rd in their division.

The Rooster, little Isaiah, took Gold in his division.

Way to go to all of the competitors. Looking forward to the next tournament. Let's do it!

Japan vs USA: Do Japanese Competitors Really Train that Hard?

The work ethic in Japan is world famous. From the shiny cobble stones at Tokyo Disney to flower arranging, to praticing martial arts, most Japanese people are focused, perfectionist. It is a part of their society.

Here in Japan the martial arts training is second to none. Kids, even grade school level, train for 3 or 4 hours a day whether Karate, Judo, Ken-do, etc. It is an amazing feat to watch and the coaches show no mercy in dealing out time-honed techniques.

The Japanese martial artist follow the saying, train a move 20,000 times so that you can get it right once when it counts. When you train that much and that hard it tends to lend itself to winning A LOT. They train so hard and win so much in fact, and not just in martial arts, but every other sport too, that the American teams on the military bases don't even invite the Japanese teams anymore. Why, because they take every medal in every division, or completely shut down the American team in group sports.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Japanese work ethic is that the coach or sensei can give the kids a workout and then leave for a few minutes or an hour and the kids, without a coach, will give 110%. They will put in maximum effort continuously and perpetually.  This is the essence of the warrior spirit in Japan.

Pictured here is my little brother in law on his 17th birthday. He is one of the top 10 Judo youth in Japan. He is about 220lbs solid muscle. He has a scholarship to the most prestigious high school in Okinawa, Japan where they train 2 or 3 times a day. They train in the morning, the afternoon, and sometimes at night if their coach is mad at them. They kids stay in the Judo dorm at the high school and only return home to their families on the weekends.

The only bad thing about the how hard the Japanese train is burnout. They win a lot, but I think the over the top training leads to a lot of would be world renown athletes from Japan calling it quits too early.

In America, martial arts train hard no doubt, and we have a lot of the best athletes coming out of the US. At the youth level, the US training regime for most sports does not even compare to the Japanese system, because our 45 minute to an 1.5 hour classes 2 or 3 times a week does not compare to their 4 hours a day 6 days a week. I think the same goes for competitors through high school. Collegiate athletes train a bit harder than their younger counterparts and then at the professional level anything is possible. All athletes are training at peek performance and pretty much 5-7 days a week month after month, year after year.  Moreover, the Japanese tend to find the sport they like by junior high school and stick with that only sport indefinitely. Most American kids jump from one sport to another year round, usually never reaching their full potential in one, unless they find the sport they truly excel at and then focus on that singular sport more.

I can honestly say, after living in Japan for almost a decade, my view of what training is and what training is not has significantly changed. I encourage every martial artist to visit Japan at least once, and visit a few martial arts classes. You will not only change your view of training, but you will remain inspired for the rest of your life.

Please comment below, I would love to hear your take and please share with your fellow martial artists.

Guide to Practicing Martial Arts at Home Alone or with your Child

Sometimes you miss your training at the dojo, gym or academy due to work, emergencies or a busy life. So what do you do on those days when you really want to get a workout in no matter what? Here is a short guide to training at home!

Suggested Equipment

Fortunately, you don't need much equipment to get a great workout at home. A couple of kicking pads or a heavy bag will do the trick. Then you just need a couple items like a jump rope, some dumbbell sets up to 30 pounds, maybe an AirFit, a BOSU ball, 10lbs medicine ball, stability ball and a long, thick resistance band. With just a great imagination you can literally have millions of combinations of workouts for any martial art or sport.

What to Train

When you are training at home the first thing to realize is that you want to train the techniques you actually know. It would be counterproductive to train a move on your 10,000 times just to find out it is completely wrong. Please don't spend hours on youtube trying to become a master. There are a lot of nuisances to training which an instructor can share with you in class, that they won't and usually can't through a video. Also, an instructor can make on the spot corrections to help you progress faster. As a teacher I encounter a lot of people who do improper home training, so they spend the a lot of time unlearning bad habits once they join our academy.

How Long to Train

One of the most common misconceptions about training time and frequency is that you have to train for a very long time... well that is correct. Actually the misonception is that you have to give 100% muscular and cardio effort to get a great workout. Well, let me tell you, not only do you not need to train all day 7 days a week, but you do not have to try to kill yourself every session.  I work out pretty hard, but I also take breaks in my routines, proportionate to that effort. Futhermore, the difference is training with 100% mental focus. There are so many skills, drills and techniques you can work on with a partner or by yourself. You have to make up in your mind that you want to get better no matter what and train with what equipment and surroundings you have available.


Don't Overdue It


The worst thing that pro athletes do is overtrain. The worst thing that those wishing to be a higher level athlete do is over train. Think of it like a train, since that is the root word for over training. You can load a train up and take it to a destination sure enough. However there will be times along a long voyage where the train worker may have to take a minute to grab more fuel from storage or maybe the Conductor will need to rest and let the Assistant Conductor take over the nexf shift. All I am alluding to is that we all need breaks to refuel and rest our bodies.

I hope I addressed some of the concerns you had about how to train when you absolutely can't make it to class. Remember as well, martial arts is about discipline and the most important part of this is being disciplined in showing up to class when at all possible.

vr/

Benjamin Moriniere "Sensei"
www.capoeira-okinawa.com
www.facebook.com/CapoeiraAcademyOkinawa

3 Reasons Women SHOULD Do MMA

Yudansha MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) is comprised of training in Jiu-jitsu, Judo, Kickboxing and Arnis (Filipino Knife and Blade). It is a well-rounded approach to martial arts, a holistic view if you would. No one style do we call better, but we know that we should strive to become the best we can at each phase of martial combat, e.g. striking, clinching and grappling.

For women, MMA and Jiu-jitsu have not been very popular sports. While there are plenty of women doing the sports, there are far more who shy away from all the bodily contact, the machismo attitudes and the ruffians who don't know their own strength and beat all the would-be, dedicated female students to shreds.

The first thing that women should realize, and teachers for that matter, is that people train for different reasons. Most women train for self defense and only a few train for competition. Don't be afraid to voice your opinion to your instructor, and instructors don't hesitate to ask these important questions. Not everyone determines a great class by how many bruises they have on their body.

Most people want to learn in a safe, de-pressurized environment where they can excel at a steady pace without being thrown to the wolves in any aspect of their training.

So, now that we have prepared the foundation of information, here are the 3 Reasons Why Women SHOULD Do Yudansha MMA.

1. Practical Self Defense

People are crazy out there nowadays. You never know when an emergency might arise and what you will need to do in that situation. Survival mode will kick in and you just hope that all of your preparation will help you and your family members, friends or whomever is involved survive. Yudansha MMA will teach each women practical self defense movements for offense and defense to be used against smaller or larger opponents, and even how to properly wield and defend against weapons.

2. Confidence

Every single woman that I have trained has gotten stronger and stronger every week, every month. Looking back at videos of when they began is like night and day. Confidence and skill come through repetition and constant improvement. Most importantly though, students must have a focused resolve.

3. Stronger Body, Stronger Mind

Yudansha MMA will build supreme levels of muscular and cardiovascular endurance. Keeping your body in tip top shape not only means you may live a happier and healthier life, but your mind will become just as quick and sensitive to danger as your body.  Tough training mixed with a healthy diet and living can make you a well tuned, howbeit lady like,  machine.

Thank you for tuning in and if you have any questions about training, or if you are an instructor with any questions please leave a comment.

v/r
Benjamin Moriniere "Sensei"
www.capoeira-okinawa.com
www.facebook.com/CapoeiraAcademyOkinawa 
www.twitter.com/CapoeiraOkinawa