Every so often people ask me how I manage to do so many things in my life. People often find it hard to make time for things like martial arts, writing, and other hobbies while balancing their jobs and personal relationships. My ability to live life efficiently and effectively is about knowing my roles and setting goals.

Knowing Your Roles

We all have roles in our lives. Some we choose. Some are chosen for us. To live life efficiently and effectively, it’s important not to let other people define our roles for us. You have to choose your own path. You’re more likely to stay focused and motivated if you’ve chosen your roles based on your own personal values.

Here are my roles for example (in no particular order):

1) martial artist
2) teacher
3) writer
4) wife
5) daughter/sister
6) friend

These are the roles that I define myself by. Knowing these roles is fundamental to setting personal goals. Of course, I do other things with my life. I do marketing contract work as a sort of “day job”, but notice that I didn’t put “marketing consultant” on the list. It is not one of my life roles that define me. Though the work I do as a marketing consultant does play a factor is my role as “wife” in terms of providing in my family, and for my role as “teacher” as I use the skills to bring in more students.

Setting Your Goals

Without setting goals, people often end up spinning their wheels, or working very hard to end up in a place they don’t want to be. This is not the way to live life efficiently. Once you’ve set your roles, you should set goals related to them, long term, medium term, short term and daily. This sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but it’s fun work.

Long-Term Goals
Long term goals are about what you want most in life. Ask yourself this: what do you want to have accomplished by the end of your life? Let yourself dream big. One of my long term goals is to be a martial arts master who truly understands the inner workings of the arts and has an international reputation as a teacher. I also want to be an internationally renowned author, with several dozen books under my belt.

Medium Term Goals
Medium term goals are ones that you’re working toward over the next 1-3 years or so. These should be related to your long term goals. Following my long term goals listed above, I have the following medium term goals; I want to earn my purple belt in Shorinji Kan Jiu-jitsu (by March 2011). I want to promote at least 5 students to purple or blue belt (by July 2011). I want to establish of base of 40 students (by January 2012). I want to move to a larger dojo location that would allow me to use all my mats (by April 2012). I want to publish a martial arts book (by January 2012).

Short Term Goals
Short term goals are your weekly and/or monthly goals. Depending on the scope of your work, you may prefer to use one or the other, or a combination of the two. For example, following my medium term goal of wanting to earn my purple belt, here are a couple of examples of monthly goals: Train in Shorinji Kan curriculum at least 8 times. Memorize the Japanese terms for each technique. Weekly goals are simply an extension of these, for example: Train in Shorinji Kan curriculum twice. Memorize the Japanese terms for 4 techniques.

Daily Goals
Daily goals are probably the most important part of the whole goal setting process. Personally, I set 6 goals for myself each day that all pertain to my life roles. Here is an example of a typical set of daily goals:

1) Write a blog post for Jiu-jitsuSensei.com. (roles: martial artist, teacher, writer)
2) Plan belt gradings for the next month and email students about dates (roles: martial artist, teacher).
3) Do 3 hours of marketing contract work (roles: wife).
4) Finish writing wedding thank you cards (roles: daughter, sister, friend, wife).
5) Do visualization practice and work on memorizing 4 Japanese terms for Shorinji Kan techniques (roles: martial artist).
6) Run a great class at the dojo tonight (roles: martial artist, teacher).

There may be other tasks I need to do in a day that appear on a separate list, but these ones are ones that pertain to my life roles and ultimately, my long term goals. If something on this list doesn’t get done in a day, it gets bumped to the top of the list the next day. By always adhering to your daily goals, you ensure that every day you’re doing something that contributes to what you want to be and achieve in life.

I will continue on with this theme further in my next blog post about reducing or eliminating time wasters.

Tags: goals | success

Many people eschew the use of the coloured belt system (or ‘kyu’ ranks) as not being traditional to the Japanese roots, claiming that they are simply a carrot dangled to keep impatient westerners interested. Mikonosuke Kawaishi is generally regarded as the first to introduce various colored belts in Europe in 1935 when he started to teach Judo in Paris. He felt that western students would show greater progress if they had a visible system of many colored belts recognizing achievement and providing regular incentives who felt that it would help westerners learn and stay.

While that was the original reason for the introduction of the coloured belt system, and not an altogether complimentary one towards westerners at that, there are a number of other reasons why the system makes sense, even if it’s not used as a dangling carrot.

In our dojo, we use the various ranks to break up our students’ learning into logical blocks. This is to provide the best platform for learning for our students, to ensure that the proper foundation is being built so that people don’t focus always on learning new stuff when they don’t have the skills they need to move ahead. The kyu system is also designed to help keep people safe. If people don’t learn the proper skills before doing live training like sparring or grappling, the chances of injury are greatly increased.

Belt/kyu gradings give us teachers a system whereby we periodically take a focused look at our students’ progress to ensure they have learned what they need to know before moving on to more advanced curriculum. In our dojo, a new belt is not a trophy to be coveted or lorded over other students, nor would we ever put up with such behaviour. It is meant to indicate what level of curriculum the student knows, serving as a guide for us teachers. It also helps newer students understand who can help them best when they need it.

This may not necessarily be the way it is done in dojos throughout Japan, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t equally valid in a western context. It is not necessarily a reflection of “the impatience of westerners.” Different cultures learn in different ways. In the west, people are more accustomed to systematized learning systems and tend to do best when knowledge is broken up into stepping stones.

At our dojo, you’re only invited to grade for the next belt level when you’re ready, as evaluated by the instructors. If a student takes twice as long as the average to move to the next level, so be it. I’ve had students wear the same belt for over a year, even two years without progressing. And I’m not talking about senior belts, I’m talking about lower levels here. If they haven’t learned what they need to learn to move on to the next level, they simply stay where they are. Many dojos would consider this practice bad for business, but in the kind of dojo I’m running, it is much worse for business to let people move up a level or learn curriculum they’re not ready for as it produces poor martial artists and can lead to injury (their own or others’).

This is not to say that I have anything against the traditional Japanese way, I just think that each way has its place and is relevant in different contexts both inter-culturally and even within one culture. Neither way should be looked down upon unless it is being improperly used (i.e. people are not learning what they need to learn) or with cynical motivations (just to make more money without care for quality).

Tags: colored belt system

As part of his Shodan requirements, Chris was expected to submit an essay. The topic I gave him was to answer the following question: “What is the most important thing you’ve gained as a martial artist from cross-training in Can-ryu Jiu-jitsu?”. His essay response was very interesting, served with a healthy dose of humble pie. It was as follows:

How I Learned to Be a Student

By Chris Olson

Training in a martial art can be a very fulfilling and enriching experience. It can also be very insular and lead to a very narrow view of the martial arts.

When a new student to the martial arts begins their training, it’s important they receive regular and consistent training to ensure a solid learning of basic and fundamental techniques. Organizations with a well-developed and standard curriculum offer stability, and opportunity for students to grow, and over time take more responsibility for their own training.

They begin to fulfil a necessary role in the dojo, becoming role models, assistant instructors and eventually instructors. Much of what students learn, how they learn, and how they eventually teach is influenced by how and who taught them. You can often tell who taught an instructor based on their method of instruction; the analogies they use while demonstrating, their movement in executing a technique, etc.

While this can lead to a consistent level of instruction, (hopefully a good one), it can inhibit the growth of both the style and the instructors.

Cross training can offer more advanced students/instructors several benefits to further personal development.

It provides the chance for instructors to see a similar technique taught with a different focus, providing new angles for understanding the technique. It can also expose them to entirely new techniques and concepts that can enhance their training.

The biggest benefit I have received from training in another style of Jiu jitsu is not what’s been added to my technical repertoire however. It’s the maturation of my training mind-set, and development of a wider perspective.

I started training in Can-ryu Jiu jitsu because I was looking for a replacement for my original style, Shorinji Kan. I was looking for exactly what I had before, not something new to learn.
Becoming a white belt again, and starting fresh with an open mind was much harder to do than I thought. In retrospect I did a lousy job of it.

Yes, I put on the white belt, and I said all the right things, but underneath it I was an arrogant, cocky brown belt, not really looking to learn, but looking to practice what I thought I already knew. I was lucky that my quiet arrogance was misconstrued as respect and shyness. I didn’t think I was arrogant, and unwilling to learn, but I was, I just hadn’t realized it yet.

I faked learning long enough to actually start learning, at which point, I realized, that might be a better approach. It turns out that it was better, and I’ve been very fortunate since.

Through my connection with Pacific Wave Jiu Jitsu, I’ve been lucky enough to train with professional boxers, MMA students, a Pan American games gold medallist grappler, a world renown Aikido Sensei, and numerous Jiu jitsu instructors. My wide experiences have taught me more techniques than I can remember, but the one thing I do remember is the great attitude and friendly sharing nature of the martial arts community. It’s created a healthy drive to move outside of my comfort zone and to learn from wherever I can.

After nearly a decade of training, I feel more like a student than ever before. I think I’ve finally figured out how to learn, and I am now as comfortable getting insights from senior instructors as I am from my own students.

Tags: cross-training | shodan essay

Having taught Jiu-jitsu to hundreds of students over the years, I’ve come to realize how fundamentally important self-belief is in a student’s performance. A student’s level of optimism or pessimism about his or her own abilities plays a major role in their development.

Here are a couple of quotes to get you thinking:

“All that we are is a result of what we have thought.” – Buddha

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are right.” – Henry Ford

I’ve dealt with a number of pessimists over the years. They tend to believe that they are in some way at a unique disadvantage over everyone else. They think they could be better in their training if they weren’t so small, so big, so frail, so old, so weak, so lacking in talent, so unfit, etc.

The pessimists with the least self-confidence tend to give up on their training very quickly, thinking that they are so disadvantaged that there’s no point to it. But it’s not necessarily the case that pessimists don’t try in their training. In fact, some pessimists try harder than anyone else on the mats because while they believe strongly in their disadvantages, they train extra hard to make up for it.

To counter their pessimism, they might trick themselves into doing well by working very hard, believing it’s the only way they’ll succeed. And they’re right. Progress comes at a high price for pessimistic students. They work so hard and put themselves under so much pressure that ultimately burn themselves out. The training stops being fun and they end up quitting sooner or later.

Optimists, on the other hand, have strong self-belief. They make the most of their unique bodies and minds, seeing themselves as having unique advantages rather than disadvantages. When they face challenges, they don’t see them as resulting from fundamental problems about themselves. They have faith that most challenges are things they’ll overcome in the moment or over the course of their training. The stronger the belief a student has in their own abilities, the more quickly and effortlessly their progress comes to them.

“I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.” – Winston Churchill

Students best serve themselves by being optimistic about their training. I believe that it is the martial arts teacher’s role to guide students toward a more optimistic approach toward their training. I don’t mean blind optimism here. You can’t just tell students “You can do it!” all the time. Particularly with pessimists, you have to build a case for it. You have to make them believe it and to believe it yourself, so it has to be realistic to both of you. They need to have the positive side of their unique traits emphasized and to be shown how they give them advantages. It also helps for them to hear of the successes of people who share their similar body types.

Teaching a martial art isn’t just about showing people a set of moves and techniques. It’s about teaching self-belief. And that’s why the martial arts can have such a positive impact in people’s lives outside their training. Or so Mr. Miyagi would have us believe ;).

Tags: self-belief

The more years I do hip throws, the more I seem to get out of it. At first it was simply the joy of slamming someone down on the ground effortlessly… Who am I kidding? I still enjoy that. But now I look at the hip throw and see how it has many parallels to life in general. Here are a few examples:

“Break the balance first and the rest is easy.” When throwing someone, you break their balance first otherwise it is much more difficult, sometimes impossible, to throw them. As a metaphor for life, I’ve learned that when trying to accomplish a goal, it’s important to do all the necessary preparations first so that things proceed smoothly.

“If you want to break someone’s balance, you have to get lower than their centre of gravity.” When it comes to hip throws, you have to bend your knees and get your hips lower than your uke’s hips. As a metaphor for life, I’ve learned that if you follow sound strategy and put your efforts on the right things you can accomplish much more with a lot less work.

“Once you’ve broken the balance, don’t wait; throw your uke immediately.” When beginners start doing hip throw, they often wait too long before throwing once the balance is broken. This leads to the person getting tired as they support their uke’s weight, particularly if uke is heavier than them. As a metaphor for life, I’ve learned that there’s no point in carrying emotional burdens. It tires you out and makes life seem heavy. Once you’ve dealt with a problem appropriately, “throw” it away and move on.

“Even the very small can throw someone much larger with proper technique.” I’ve taught women the size of a 12-year-old to throw men twice as heavy than them. Many of these women thought it would be impossible, but they were able to do it thanks to good technique. As a metaphor for life, I’ve learned that even when things seem impossible, it’s always worth it to try, armed with the right information. Life can be full of surprises.

In addition to the above, I’ve learned that I’ve been doing Jiu-jitsu for waaaaay too long. 😉

Tags: hip throw | life lessons

Over the years I’ve dealt with many students who wanted to train at my dojo but already had experience in another style, with mixed results. It can be challenging to switch styles and reprogram your body to a different curriculum. And the more experience you have, the more challenging it can be. As a result, most of them either don’t sign up or don’t last long. That being said, the ones that do usually have a great attitude and bring an excellent training ethic to the mats.

If you are martial artist in this situation, here is a list of guidelines for training in a new style that will help you get the most out of your training without being disrespectful or interrupting the dojo’s class structure.

1. Keep an open mind. Try your best to perform the technique as demonstrated. The new style may have similar techniques or even the same technique with slight differences. While it may be easier to just resort to the method you’ve always used, you’re there to learn the new style, not showcase your old one. Look for the advantages that this new method may present. You may be surprised if you give it an honest chance.

2. Be respectful when questioning differences. Because of your prior experience, you may wonder why things are done differently. While it’s ok to ask technical questions specific to a technique in class to make sure you get it right, but it can be disruptive to question the differences openly during class with regards to your prior training. Even if done politely, it can take more time to explain answers to these questions, which can hold up the class’s training time. As for integrating your new learning with your old, this is something that you do yourself outside of class. If you don’t think a particular techniques fits into your martial arts schema, note that in your head, but don’t bring any special attention to the fact in class.

3. Don’t act like an instructor. If you are an instructor in your old style, you may find it difficult to just be a student on someone else’s mats. But that is what is expected of you, unless you have worked out an arrangement with your new Sensei. Don’t try to help other students as you train with them. You may think you know what you’re doing, but you probably don’t know all the nuances of the new style and there is a good chance that by “helping” you’re disrupting the learning process by imparting information in a way that conflicts with the Sensei’s teachings.

4. Be cautious and considerate when integrating your prior training. Some open-minded Senseis might be willing to let you practice your prior training, generally not during class, but perhaps during open mat time. If you’re going to do so, it’s better to restrict this to solo training or working with advanced students or instructors. Lower level students may be confused by the introduction of different concepts, or they may not be equipped to handle a particular techniques safely.

Some students with prior experience go so far as to keep their prior training under wraps, which I can respect. It doesn’t really work with me because I can usually tell, but I like that they have the attitude of wanting to be treated like any other student. As the old zen saying goes, “If you want to fill your cup, first you must empty it.”

Anyone out there in the blogosphere have any interesting stories of dealing with students with prior training, good or bad?

Tags: cross-training

I was recently chatting with a Shorinji Kan friend of mine in Toronto who is preparing to test for brown belt in his style. He was saying that he felt that he was ready for the physical rigors of the test but was somewhat worried about the mental pressure and intensity he was anticipating from his ukes (attackers) during the test. I replied, “It’s all about intention.”

If your intention to defend yourself is stronger than your attacker’s intention to see his or her attack through, more than likely, you will prevail. My favourite analogy to explain this is that of the alley cat vs. the doberman.

A doberman is a big dog that could easily rip a cat to shreds in terms of a physical contest. But have you ever seen an alley cat fight? In comics or cartoons, an alley cat fighting is usually portrayed as a whirling mass with sharp claws sticking out violently. This is a pretty accurate depiction. An alley cat also hisses and squeals an awful high-pitched noise while it fights. So sure, the doberman could make short work of the cat, if it wanted to. But the doberman isn’t stupid. It realizes that if it did go in for the kill, it would take many scratches in the process. It could lose an eye or it could take one on the nose, damaging its sense of smell that it relies on for survival. Seeing the risk, the doberman shies away, because it simply isn’t worth it.

Another good analogy is the human vs. the wasp. Many people when encountering a wasp will uselessly flail their arms and run away to avoid a wasp. But why? Humans are massive compared to a wasp. Even if it did try to sting us, we could destroy it with one swift smack of our hand. As with the previous analogy, it simply isn’t worth being stung. So we choose to run away in a comical fashion.

So let’s apply this to our mentality when defending ourselves.

When I teach women’s self-defense classes, I tell the students, it’s not about being stronger than your attacker – that’s not likely to be the case. It’s about being an unappealing target. This starts before an attacker even makes a move. For example, I tell women that if they’re taking money out of an ATM and they feel like they’re being watched and sized up as a target, immediate hit cancel then yell and swear, maybe even kick something saying, “I TOLD HIM TO PUT MONEY IN OUR ACCOUNT! THAT &@#$* IDIOT!!!” This accomplishes 2 things at once. It communicates that the woman has no money to be stolen, plus it shows that she’s no pushover and might fight back or yell enough to bring attention to the situation if he makes a move on her. The woman has successfully made her potential intention stronger than that of her attacker’s.

But then if an assailant decides that the woman is worth attacking in a different kind of context (it certainly isn’t worth taking any risk just for money or material possessions) the woman has to become an alley cat. I teach women to yell loudly and aggressively, using words that communicate that she is in trouble, like “STOP!” or “NO! LET ME GO!”, while combining it with strikes to vulnerable targets.

This plays on the psychology of the attacker. Most attackers who physically prey on women are not looking for a challenge. They look for easy victims that reinforce the perception they are trying to create that they themselves are stronger and more powerful. They also don’t want to get caught. This naturally limits the risk he is willing to take and the defending force he is willing to face in the assault.

A woman can make further increase her intention by raising the stakes in her own mind. She can do this by thinking about the situation like she is not simply defending herself. She can imagine that the man will attack and rape her daughter, mother, sister, anyone she cares deeply about, when he is done with her. Alternatively, she could imagine that this man will take away her ability to do the one thing she loves most in life. If she is an athlete, he could paralyze her. If she is a writer or another kind of academic, he could cause her brain damage. By thinking in these terms, women can increase their intention to fight back to a degree they couldn’t normally summon up in their day-to-day lives. And when a woman fights back with that much intention, you better believe that the attacker would think twice.

Now to bring this into a grading context like my friend is anticipating.

Your ukes who will attack you during your grading will definitely be putting pressure on you as that is what they have been commanded to do to test your skills and intensity. When you’re facing intense circles or V’s or multiple attacker situations, make your intention stronger with a loud kiai. It may not psychologically affect your attackers in your particular situation because they’ll all be fairly experienced martial artists that are used to hearing kiais (though it does have a greater affect on students from the lower ranks). A kiai does, however, put more intention into your weakeners, the strikes you use to soften up your ukes, so you can take them down. When they feel a solid weakener, they’ll loosen up because they know if they don’t, they’ll get it twice as hard the next time. As a result, your intention to defend becomes stronger than theirs to attack you.

Good luck to all the Shorinji Kan-ers who are up for gradings this and next month!

Tags: belt tests | intention | self-defense

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
-Samuel Beckett

When training in the martial arts, you will at some point fail to do something. And this is a good thing. One should go so far as to hope to fail throughout their training career. It is failure that makes us stronger, smarter, more technical martial arts. But it’s not just about failing. It’s about failing better, failing in such a way that you learn from it and adapt quickly to address the problem that led to the failure.

In my 16 years in the martial arts, I’ve seen and experienced all sorts of failures, failures to learn quickly, failures to defend one’s self, failures to complete a set of physical exercises, etc. The ones who bounce back the quickest are the ones that fail better.

Here are 7 ways to fail better that came from an article recently published in Psychology Today that I’ve put in perspective for martial artists:

1. Lighten Up

Most people who bounce back from setbacks have a sense of humor. They know when they’re taking things and themselves too seriously. I’ve seen students who were so paralyzed by fear of failure that they handicap themselves, sabotaging themselves by providing reasons for why they fail and will continue to fail at something. There is a certain logic to it, because, hey, if something prevented you from doing your best, you can’t be said to have failed, right? Humour is about stepping back for fresh perspective. Many believe that it’s something you’re born with, but we can become better at seeing the lighter side by sheer exposure to that way of thinking. And it does take the edge off of failure. After all, an embarrassment today makes for an entertaining story tomorrow.

2. Join the Club

Misery loves company. There’s can be value in commiseration. Some students will speak to others who have similar training problems. The positive side to this is that it can give them the impulse and insight to do something about it. They train together to work through their difficulties and try to find the right questions to ask in order to get the best direction from instructors. That being said, any such discussion should be positively oriented, seeking to find solutions, as opposed to pure commiseration of one’s difficulties, which may only serve to build the walls surrounding the problem.

3. Feel Guilt, Not Shame

The difference between guilt and shame is the reason we assign as to why failure occurs, notes Richard Robins, a psychologist at the University of California at Davis. Guilt says it’s “something I did.” But shame means feeling failure occurred because of “something I am” — in which case, you expect failure and don’t act to avoid it.

But the cycle of learned helplessness can be broken. Instead of thinking “I’m a failure,” think “I’m a normal person who made a mistake I can learn from.” If your perpetual explanation for your failures is simply, “I suck,” you might need to practice looking outward and ask yourself, “What other things — things that aren’t about me — might have caused this failure to perform?”

On the other hand, if your story is, “It’s never about me,” you may need to seek out some aspects of the problem you can do something about. Because let’s face it, you do mess up, everyone does. In which case you need to own the failure, see what you can learn from it, and move on.

4. Cultivate Optimism

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,” said Hamlet. Paying attention to the positive infuses you with hope, creating a climate in which your failures lose their sting and a belief that things will get better if you work at it prevails.

5. Scale Down Your Expectations for Yourself

When we succeed, we tend to just ratchet up our expectations for ourselves and not get much of pleasure out of it. But when we fail, it’s much harder to ratchet down our expectations for ourselves. “That might be what failing well is,” says psychologist Jonathan Haidt. “A willingness to lower our sights when that’s realistically required.” If failure is about failing to meet goals you set for yourself, then one way to avoid failing is to revise those now-outdated goals. That way, instead of failing on a stage you once mastered, you’re still succeeding on a more modest stage.

6. Don’t Blame Yourself

Self-blame is corrosive. Blaming yourself for the every training problem you ever encounter makes you metabolize failure badly. This makes you get down on yourself and your training. The more you blame yourself for problems, the worse you feel about your training, the less you’ll grow past those problems. And it’s a vicious circle. By contrast, students who accept their difficulties and believe in their abilities to work through them, usually do so. The stronger that belief, the faster they’ll adapt and learn to fix them.

7. Embrace Failure

Failure is an opportunity to grow. Seize it and appreciate how much it can teach you.

Tags: making mistakes | success | training philosopy

The other night, some of my students and I ran through a high-stress sparring drill in which the defender had to defend against multiple attackers. There are a number of different tactics a person can use in a multiple attackers situation depending on their body type and how the situation unfolds, but there are two overarching concepts that are common to everyone are as follows: awareness,positional strategy and heart/aggressiveness.

Awareness. You must stay aware of your surroundings by constantly scanning around you to make up for the effects of adrenaline that can cause you to experience tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, etc, when you’re under the stress of an attack. Read Conditioning the Mind to Look Out for Multiple Attackers for more details.

Positional Strategy. The most important tactical aspect of defending against multiple attackers is to position yourself so that only one person can effectively attack you at a time. Basically, you want to avoid being “monkey in the middle.” You want to avoid moving between your two attackers if it can be avoided.

Heart/Aggressiveness. Being on the receiving end of a multiple person attack, you are at a severe disadvantage. You have to make up for it by engaging the attackers aggressively in the hopes of keeping the fight on your terms. By being aggressive, you might also cause your attackers to hesitate, which can give you an opportunity to exploit them in a weak moment. But it’s not just about being aggressive. It’s about having an abundance of heart, a never-give-up attitude that keeps on fighting in the face of insurmountable odds. You want to have the mindset that no matter how many times you get hit, how hard you get hit, or how disadvantaged things may seem, that you WILL keep fighting and use any and every opportunity you get. Anyone out there a Star Trek fan? Captain Kirk has this idea down.

Beyond the two overarching concepts, there are lots of different types of tactics you can use to survive a multiple person attack: throwing/tripping attackers to the ground, pushing them into each other, holding one while kicking another, attacking unexpected targets, using reach advantage strategically, etc. And this list doesn’t even take weapons attacks into account. But no matter what you do have to, if you should try to be aware of your surroudnings and defend yourself with heart and sound positional strategy,

Tags: multiple attackers

Cross-training in more than one martial art can be a great way to improve skills or to learn new ones. But at what point does it start to interfere with training in your primary martial art (if you indeed have a single art on which you have primary focus)? Since we have a number of students who cross-train or ask to learn skills from other students that are training with us who have significant experience with other arts, this is an important question to consider.

If you’re going to cross-train, pick a martial art that either reinforces skills that are already being taught in your primary style or pick one that covers an entirely different area than your primary.

For example, in my style, Can-ryu Jiu-jitsu, our striking system is based on boxing/ kickboxing principles, but since it is not our sole focus, a student can benefit from taking extra training in them. This is why I have Louis Sargeant (the professional boxer with whom I do extra training) come in and teach a class once a month for my students. It’s a nice change of pace for my students and they get to experience a different teaching style, as well as have the opportunity to get extra focus on their sparring skills.

On the other hand, if you study an art like Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, you might be getting excellent focus on competition ground work, but might be interested in learning skills to improve your stand-up game for MMA. You might consider taking up Muay Thai to work on your striking, or perhaps Judo or wrestling to get more focus on throws and takedowns.

I generally discourage students from learning other styles that are very similar if they are just starting out in the martial arts world. For example, learning two different styles of Karate would be very difficult because they are so similar yet have many differences, some subtle, some major. It would just be confusing to someone who hasn’t already a strong foundation in one.

I myself am currently cross-training in two styles of modern traditional Japanese Jiu-jitsu. But since I’ve been training in Can-ryu for over 15 years, it’s much easier for me. I’m able to compartmentalize my learning in such a way that keeps me from getting confused. I can’t say I could have done this kind of cross-training with the same ease back when I was in the Kyu ranks (coloured belt ranks).

As for my students, I have no issue with them doing cross-training (many schools frown upon it), but try to keep the above in mind when choosing an art. And if you want to ask some of the resident ambassadors from other styles to show you things that are different from the techniques being taught on our mats, please do so during open training times and NOT DURING OUR CLASSES. Can-ryu class is for learning Can-ryu, unless I’ve given over the mats to a guest instructor.

Tags: cross-training