Tag: martial arts

What’s Missing From Most Western Training Methods

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I’m generally not someone who automatically assumes we in the West have gotten it all wrong. I’ve known people through the year who are convinced that anything that comes from India, or the East in general, is somehow superior, more “right” than anything we do in this part of the world.

Again, I’m not one of them.

Hell, part of what I liked about DDP Yoga was that it was all the exercise without the mumbo jumbo.

But what if some mumbo jumbo is something we all need to add to our training, particularly our combat training?

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Martial Arts As An Approach To Bullying

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There are a lot of people in this world who have had to deal with bullying. I won’t speculate as to which ways of dealing with it are more positive and which ones aren’t. I’m not remotely qualified to do so.

However, I came across a story earlier about an Australian study that looked at how martial arts training was beneficial to the victims of bullying. That got my gear turning just a bit.

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Be Terrifying

 

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Years ago, my wife and I associated with a group of people based on a common interest. It doesn’t matter what it was. What matters, though, is that despite sharing this one interest, we also socialized in general.

Well, until one day when my wife and I got an email asking us to meet up with a couple of the crowd at a local park.

I was deemed a threat. They were scared of me. Why? I liked guns and to shoot. I competed in matches. No one ever expressed a desire to do anything dangerous or anything, but the only real explanation was because I was too scary.

This morning, I woke up with a reminder of just why I want to be scary.

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The Ideal Person

For the last while now, I’ve been working toward something. I’ve been working toward making myself into something. I’ve written about my thoughts and a bit about why I’m not the only one who should work toward this something, even.

But I haven’t even really defined precisely what this something is. I’ve touched on it, but I haven’t really defined what it is that this Modern Barbarian really is.

Today, I’m going to try and do that. I may add to some of this at a later date, but this is where the entire concept stands as of this moment.

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A World Gone Crazy

The world has clearly lost its mind.

As I’m sure you’re aware, we had a jackass sending bombs to people he disagreed with politically. Then yesterday, we had a jackass talk into a synagogue and start shooting people simply because they were Jewish.

This comes after months and months of low-level violence in the form of riots and assaults against people because they supported a certain politician and just a year and a half or so ago when a man tried to exterminate members of Congress for being part of the wrong party.

We are living in interesting times, in the Chinese curse sense.

And honestly, no one is ready for this. None of us are. You don’t get “ready” for stuff like this. Not completely.

What we’re looking at is little more than the start of an internal civil war. If something doesn’t give, we’re going to watch our nation torn apart, so it’s time to dig in and get as ready for this kind of thing as possible.

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Why Learning To Fight May Matter More Than Learning To Shoot

At my heart, I’m a gun guy. I’ve been fascinated by the things for decades now. Every since I first pulled the trigger on my dad’s Smith & Wesson .38, I’ve been a gun guy, even if I didn’t actually know anything about them.

However, while studying conflict through the years and trying to figure out the best way for a person to train to stay alive and safe, I came to the conclusion that they’re just not as important in many ways as some of us like to think. Don’t get me wrong, if you need a gun, you need a gun. There’s no real substitute for a gun in many circumstances.

That said, the truth is that shooting is actually way down on the list of priorities. Continue reading “Why Learning To Fight May Matter More Than Learning To Shoot”