Weird Training Ideas Part 2: Training in your Sleep
"To sleep, perchance to dream..." - Shakespeare (Hamlet, III, i, 65-68)
On average most people spend about 7 hours a night asleep. That's 49 hours a week (one hour over 2 full days) about 196 hours a month (a little over 8 days) and 2,352 hours a year (98 days, 14 weeks or about 3 and a half months). If you live to be 90, and your life expectancy ought to be above average as a martial artist, you'll have spent roughly 211,680 hours asleep. That means you'll have slept for a full 8,820 days. That's over 24 years of your life spent sleeping. When you quantify it like that, it really sounds like a lot of time. I don't know about everyone else, but thinking of spending 24 years just lying there not doing anything productive other than secreting growth hormone and doing general repairs on my body seems kind of like a waste.
So what can we do about it? Sleep deprivation is a nasty thing, and is totally not worth it. So pulling an all-nighter every now and again to get back some of that time for training isn't recommended. It's not like we can train and sleep at the same time though, right?
Weird Training Ideas Part 1: Brainwave Entrainment & Accelerated Meditation
Thinking outside the box?
This article (and subsequent series of articles) is largely inspired by a post made by Chris over at Martial Development on Bleeding, Brainwaves and Biofeedback. The post is an excerpt from the book Beyond Biofeedback talking about the demonstrations made by Jack Schwarz. I won't go into what his demonstrations were, since I've already inundated you with links, but reading about them again started me thinking.
What's in a Name: Jiu - What - tsu?
"The world only goes 'round by misunderstanding." - Charles Baudelaire
Of all the martial arts in the world, there seems to be none out there that have a bigger linguistic identity crisis than jūjutsu. Think about it, I've seen it spelled jūjutsu, jiujutsu, jujutsu, jiujitsu, jujitsu, jyujyutsu, jyuujyutsu, jyujitsu and several other combinations, and that's not even counting differences in the use of hyphens (jiujitsu vs. jiu-jitsu). So what's going on here? Which one is the right spelling?
Well, without getting up on my old linguist's soap box, first off there isn't necessarily any such thing as a right spelling from a linguistic standpoint. I know this gets on a lot of people's nerves, just like how we're all going to have to accept that social pressure will eventually make 'brung' a word and how a lot of people would argue that 'aint' has already made that jump. Instead of assuming the role of spelling dictator and telling you how you need to spell jujutsu, I'm going to teach you a little about Japanese and let you make your own decision.
Are You a Ninja?
Ninja don't believe in the Periodic Table, they only recognize the element of surprise.
"Hey! Hey! Are you a ninja yet!?"
I stopped, with a bit of an internal sigh, knowing before I even looked the kind of person I would find when I turned to greet the person shouting. I was strolling across the parking lot into the To Shin Do school I'm currently attending, already wearing my gi. Signs in front of the school and posters in the window proclaim the school as the place to learn "Authentic Ninja Arts" and things of that nature, accompanied by the ubiquitous images of samurai and ninja in dramatic poses. The heckler had most likely drawn upon his stunning powers of deduction and figured out that was where I was headed.
Turning to look at him I found exactly what I expected. Seated in his car, windows down, was a twenty-something fellow who wouldn't have looked out of place at a frat party doing something grossly irresponsible. Next to him sat a young lady, visibly trying to restrain herself from smirking at her companions obvious excess of wit.
"How much longer until you're a real ninja?" the heckler asked again from his car.
Free Worldwide Gym Membership
The front door to your very own private gym.
Now, for a limited time only, you could receive a lifetime membership to your very own private worldwide gym! Supplies are limited, and time is running out, so call now! Alright, you already know by now I'm not giving away gym memberships or anything. I am, however, going to show you how you can utilize the gym membership you were born with that no one really seems to remember anymore - the outdoors.
Isolationaphilia
While there are a few exceptions, most of the modern world seeks to isolate us from the world that people inhabited for a vast majority of human history. If we want to travel, we no longer have to pack up and walk there. If we want to eat, we don't have to pick through the woods foraging for a salad or sprint after a rabbit or hurl a spear at a deer we've been stalking, we just pick up a frozen steak from the store or swing by a fast food place on the way home. We don't have to build our own homes. We have strollers to carry our kids around instead of holding them or strapping them to our backs. We've been pretty successful at taking a lot of the physical work out of daily life.
Is Nutrition a Martial Art?
You can defend yourself from a mugger, but can you defend yourself from... cake?
This thought first occurred to me a few weeks ago while working on the Taijiquan vs. Krav Maga article a while back. I had never really thought about it before but, here in America at least, you are significantly more likely to be killed by disease rather than by an assailant. That got me to wondering, if a martial art is something meant to protect us, could proper nutrition be considered a martial art?
The Fitness Continuum - What Constitutes "Fit"?
"Être fort pour être utile" - Georges Hébert
What does it mean to be fit? The dictionary doesn't help much here, offering only "having good health and physical condition." So who's really fit then? If a man who lives to be 93 with very few health problems through his life also weighed 300 lbs and had a body-fat percentage of over 30 could he be considered fit? If a marathon runner had a single digit body-fat percentage a majority of their lives and ran multiple marathons per year but was succumbing to chronic illness and severe arthritis and inflammatory problems by the age of 50, would he be fit? If a bodybuilder could deadlift 500 lbs, but couldn't touch their toes, climb an 8 foot wall or sprint for more than 20 seconds, would they be considered fit?
Improvised Weapons Part 2: Weapons of Mass Distraction
Getting this in your eyes hurts.
Okay, so maybe mass distraction isn't entirely accurate, but I thought it sounded better. Continuing our series on improvised weapons, we now turn our attention to some things that even some people who are familiar with improvised weapons might not normally consider to be weapons. Today, I thought it would be interesting to look at some weapons that don't really do all that much damage at all. These weapons are there entirely to distract.
So what's so great about distracting someone? More than I can count. Sure, most distractions won't in and of themselves do much damage to an aggressor (although I'll touch on a few that do) but they free up valuable seconds for you to act in some way and, possibly more importantly, they focus the aggressor's attention on a singular point opening up other target areas. Additionally, there are countless improvised distraction weapons. Countless to the point where, while I'm going to do my best to give as many examples as possible, this article is going to be based mostly on principles that can be applied to a wide variety of objects.
Heroes Die Young - Something Every Martial Artist Needs to Learn
You are NOT Batman
I want you to read the sentence above one more time. Now, most people probably understand that they aren't a superhero. The problem is there are a lot of people who say that they know they aren't a superhero, but who, deep down, really do think they are or really wish they were. In most instances, it's totally harmless. The problem is in some instances, particularly for martial artists, it can get you killed. To illustrate my point, I'd like to share a story from a newspaper clipping shared with me by one of my instructors about a Muay Thai instructor.
Now, this gentleman had apparently had been training for over a decade, had won several championships and was a fairly distinguished fighter. His school was located in what some people might call a 'transitional' area of the city, it wasn't considered a bad area or known for crime by any means, but it was the kind of place you wouldn't necessarily want to be alone after hours.
Which Is More Likely to Save Your Life - Taijiquan or Krav Maga?
"Health is not valued until sickness comes." - Dr. Thomas Fuller
Now, if I someone told you they wanted to learn a martial art that would be the best for sving their life or keeping them from dying, what would you tell them? Alright, so the ones who agree with our policy of there not being one 'best' art would tell that person either there isn't one, or it depends. However, for argument's sake, how about that person asks you what type of art would be best suited for keeping them alive. I think for most people the initial answer would be a no-holds-barred practical self-defense system. An art which deals in efficient, possibly even military-style ruthless dispatching of an aggressor with no reservations about what kinds of techniques are allowed. That certainly sounds reasonable, right? I mean, if you don't hold back and are using a style focused on efficient combat with survival as the only concern you're going to have an easier time staying alive. Is that really true though?
