Try to see yourself as you truly are and try to adopt what is meritorious in the work of others. As a [martial artist] you will of course often watch others practice. When you do and you see strong points in the performance of others, try to incorporate them into your own technique. At the same time, if the trainee you are watching seems to be doing less than his best, ask yourself whether you too may not be failing [in that same area]. Each of us has good qualities and bad; the wise man seeks to emulate the good he precieves in others and avoid the bad.
- Gichin Funakoshi, founder of Shotokan Karate,
There is a lot of wisdom in this quote. One part in particular has been enlightening for me – when you see a fighter make a mistake it is easy to criticize instead of checking yourself to see if you too have the same malady. I’ve been told that the faults we possess are easy to see when they are exhibited in others, but elusive in ourselves.
Know yourself. See what is being proven effective. Evolve.
Tags: advice, karate, tips, wisdom
For those who tweet, SLCMMA is there. Hiding like a ninja.
Tags: avoiding work, twitter, waste of time
(Image courtesy of icantcu )
I’ve published over 150 posts here at SLCMMA, and I appreciate you reading some of them. You’ve brought traffic to my blog, maybe even clicked on my adsense ads to help me out – now I want to do something for you.
Tell me what you’d like to see – more pictures, videos, interviews … request away. As my blog grows, I want to give you what you want. So tell me what that is!
For example, in my personal life, I’ve had a number of requests to write something about flexibility, so I’m putting together a free Ebook that will be available later this year. It’s a pretty big project for me, but since I know it will be appreciated I’m going to do it.
Of course, I may know nothing about what you want to know. In that case, what a cool opportunity for me to learn it, right?
In the comments, request something you’d like me to write about, and I’ll do my best to cover it in the future.
Tags: requests
I know it sounds like Sesame Street when I say it, but I do think Paulo looks a little bit like Oscar the grouch mixed with Bert – its probably his thick eyebrows and huge ears. See evidence about that below.
Back to the point, Paulo’s head and arm choke put Mike Swick to sleep in seconds. We practiced this choke in class today and Thiago shows us a textbook example. He gets the deep underhook on the top arm, passes his wrist on the far side of the neck, shoves the head down, locks the hand in the elbow crease and finishes Mikes’s trip to dream land with a twist of his forearm into the jugular. All of this and he doesn’t even have to leave the opponents half guard. Made me a Paulo fan.
Since I’m a light hearted mood, I’ve chosen an instructional to match. Here’s a link to MMA prankster Mayhem Miller teaching the Darce choke.
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This post brought to you by the letter P and the number 109.
Tags: barabo, darce choke, paulo thiago, ufc 109
