Although we teach martial arts are main focus is to make sure that our students are developing confidence, discipline, and focus as well as getting in fantastic shape, but today I mostly want to share with you some concepts we use to develop confidence in our students so they can speak up for themselves, be less susceptible to bullying and they can learn to make bigger steps out of their comfort zones so they can achieve more academically, athletically, and in all other areas of life as well.

Parents often bring their kids in for this trial because their little ones are lacking confidence in themselves. This makes it difficult for them to try new things, meet new people, and set goals for themselves. Although parents recognize that confidence is a important trait for their kids to have, they get frustrated that this trait isn’t always developed in school by default.

They feel their kids would get better results if they would stop saying things like “I...

 Today I want to talk about the importance of building up speed in your reflexes while at the same time learning to greatly reduce stress in your life. They’re actually greatly linked, and if you work on one you can work on the other at the same time.
People often ask me about Tai Chi, if we teach tai chi, and we of course we do in our higher level programs. When other martial artist, especially the MMA guys, they say, well why? It’s a waste of time unless you’re old, right? It’s not really good for fighting, to which I have to disagree. Not necessarily because the moves in the system, but because it teaches you how to breathe and relax, which is one thing we all need more of, much more of. The ability to breathe and relax on command is important for so many reasons. On a combative level for 1, if you can relax during physical combat we will save a ton of strength, so you can fight much longer. When we’re tense we have muscles firing that we...

Last week I spoke about developing confidence in terms of personal achievement, but the other part of that that I mentioned was developing confidence in more of a social context. This is what we work on with our students on the very first day. The first thing we teach them is the importance of eye focus, as we say. “Focus your Eyes”. Hugely important today more than ever, especially since society as a whole is losing this ability. As much as this makes sense on a basic common or not so common sense level, there is a much deeper layer to this.

About 20 years ago, a Kung Fu master taught me a lesson that greatly shifted my perception and led me to where I am today, and without it I’d probably be miserable at job that I hate instead of the job that I love. That lesson was that the mind follows the body, and the body follows the mind. You see a common idea is that the mind body connection as a linear path. You have a thought, feeling, frame of mind, and if you’re...

A lot of times martial arts enthusiasts just shout confidence without having a clear understanding as to how to achieving that. If we don’t have a clear system of achieving it then we’re just kind of hoping that we put our kids in and a confident kid will be spat out, well that’s not always the case if we don’t have the right systems in place.

Confidence comes from the experience of genuine success. Now note that I said genuine success. False success will lead to false confidence. What I mean by false success is that if we do something for our kids without giving them the risk of failure then they won’t experience true success in something. Likewise if we just lie to our kids and keep telling them they’re fantastic and great at everything even when they’re not, that’s false success. If everyone gets a trophy that’s false success.

It’s ok if not everyone gets a trophy because life is filled with abundant opportunities to...

Put principles like this into action in a way that will improve your fitness, focus, confidence, and discipline in an environment of awesome friendly people...

...Sign in Below for a FREE 2 Week Trial

I wanted to write about something amazingly simple but very useful that with your overall physical health as well as your mental health and your confidence.

It’s kind of funny how simple it is, but as my teacher Grand Master Philipman Chow says simple; useful.

I’m talking about Chambering; a very basic position in martial arts that often gets overlooked because there’s nothing too glamorous or fancy about it.

I was reminded about this whole lesson actually by one of my students, who’s a great massage therapist and they were teaching some of their clients to chamber their hands like we do in Kung Fu to help with their posture and it helped them a lot because they’re typically hunched over all the time like a lot of us are. Our shoulders are getting rounded out and our neck is arching forward from sitting at a desk so much. Now, this obviously has negative physical effects, but one thing we don’t think about enough is the effect it has on us...

Rule #1

 Being nice is about showing respect. We teach young students that respect is treating others the way you would like to be treated. How do we earn respect? By first showing others respect. People fear that people don’t listen or don’t understand them, so they yell louder, or speak more harshly, but that doesn’t fix anything. The reason people don’t hear you, regardless of your argument and how true it is, is because they don’t respect you. You can speak the absolute truest truth ever, but if the receiver doesn’t respect you it will likely be met with resistance or fall on deaf ears. How does one earn respect? By acting respectfully, by first showing respect; starting with being nice. This is sometimes misinterpreted as putting on a fake smile. I didn’t say that; I didn’t say fake nice. The rule is be nice. Lying to pretend your nice is not the same as being nice. How can you separate the two? Simple; think back to what you...

First of all, WHAT IS A VALUE?
When an action reaps a desired consequence, a value is born. For instance, you notice that telling the truth causes people to trust you and has a positive effect on your friendships. This value of “honesty” then becomes important to you, because it carries “value” for you. That is why values are called values.
Values are different than morals. Morals tell us WHAT to do. Our morals are our standards of behavior, or what we perceive to be right or wrong. Values on the other hand, are tools to see HOW our actions can have positive or
negative consequences. Our values can help us shape our moral codes, and constantly evaluate them to see if they are causing more harm or more good.

Take honesty for example, a common value. If you value honesty, you use it, whether it is easy or difficult. But what about a situation where honesty can put someone’s life in danger? Say an enraged serial killer asks where to find someone. Will...