Teaching Krav Maga with the Master

Helping Chief Master Ken Church, one of the baddest men on the planet, demonstrate a technique to disarm a gun assault from a compromised position on the ground. It's always helpful learning the process from both the position of the assailant as well as the defender to fully comprehend each step of any disarm technique or attack defense.

Krav Maga Gun Disarm Demo 1

Krav Maga gun disarm technique demonstrated from a frontal assault. It is recommended that both men and women get comfortable with the feelings and thoughts that arise when feeling threatened. Practicing what you need to do in these situations help you not have to think about it when assaulted so the muscle memory can take over if the mind and body are starting to panic.

Krav Maga Gun Disarm 2

Krav Maga Gun Disarm demonstration from being assaulted by someone on top of you. It's important to know weapon disarms and self-defense from every position because you never know for sure where the threat will come from or where the fight will wind up.

Krav Maga Gun Disarm 3

This is a Krav Maga gun disarm demo of what to do when being assaulted from behind. Attacks most often occur at a blind spot in your vision and/or your awareness so always be aware of your environments and who you are sharing them with. Blackbelt testing for Krav Maga requires one to receive an attack blindly from every angle, then disarm knives, guns and prevent choking submissions positioned threateningly at various vulnerable points all over the body starting with your eyes completely closed.

Fencing Foil Sparring with Mo

Fencing Foil Bout Timelapse

This was my first fencing sparring bout in years after a quick refresher from a client who has competed in multiple styles and is looking to return to competition soon. She helped me dust the cobwebs off so keep an eye out for more videos of the varied styles of Fencing and hand positions I plan to share by year's end. Be "en garde"!

"La Belle" Fencing Foil Bout

Bout to 5 hit points which only count if landed on the chest in Foil. This was only my second sparring bout (right after the previous timelapse) against a formidable and well experienced opponent. We got to what is called "La Belle", meaning the beauty of both opponents reaching a tie at 4 - 4, after I earned a very hard fought point coming back from 3 - 4. Watch the video to see who prevails. More to come!

Advanced Archery Practice/Fun

Inspired my Dad to get his own recurve bow after teaching him how to use one years ago. He has upgraded his outdoor shooting range to include a swinging target hanging from a tree. This was my first attempt to play with a moving target last year. Not too shabby.

Archery Practice with Dadio's Bow

Inspired Dadio to get his own archery set after only a few times of shooting with me

Zombie Apocalypse Group Weapons Training

Training a client in archery, shuriken throwing and beyond

Archery Training Vids

Initial Draw

This is one of Brandon's initial draws after my preliminary instruction as there are a lot of moving pieces to remember and integrate into the body and mind. Overall he took the instructions well but the arrow goes up and to the right off of the main center target he was aiming for. You can hear it hit the wood behind the hay bail.

Corrected Draw

After observing his initial draws, I gave him some input on what I was seeing him and gave him some simple correction to improve his accuracy. I shared that once he gets set to just let the band slide off of his fingers smoothly without moving any other part of his body similar to but the reverse of pulling a gun trigger. Any slight movement more forcibly releasing the arrow has a similar reaction to the kickback of a gun being fired where the aim is not higher than the target and off center. On this one, he focuses in on that and hits the center paper target he is aiming for which you can hear and see in the video.

Improved Draw

One of John's initial draws went into the fence behind the target as you can see in the picture gallery below. This is his improved draw and targeting after giving him feedback as to what adjustments to make. You can see and hear him hit the paper target which is a major correction from missing the hay bails entirely and hitting the fence above it! I share his second attempt target which is much improved just left of my target results next to it at the bottom corner.

Solid From Start to Finish

Dan is a natural at most things if you can't tell by the wild mane and bare feet ;)

Archery and ShurikenTraining

Ninja Star Throwing

John's Shuriken Throw Training

John prefaced before we got started that he is notoriously bad at throwing baseballs, footballs and sports of that nature so it made for an interesting challenge. On his first throw, somehow he hit a stone on the ground near the target area which broke one of the shuriken to give you an idea of where we were starting :D However, within a short period of time, we got him to successfully hit the target and get the shuriken to stick in 2 out of 3 tries by the end of our shuriken sheshion ;P

Shuriken Miss

We start with the proper stance just like with most motor skills. As an Occupational Therapist, I am experienced with breaking down the various mental and motor components of many skills (visual motor, gross motor and fine motor individual and combined). So first I taught him how to throw a baseball throw properly which he demonstrated well here. His visual motor skills improved from holding onto it too long to hit the ground to release and hit the actual target in the red which is huge progress! But then we had to move from the gross motor movements of the larger muscle groups down to the fine motor components to get him to have the shuriken stick when it hit the target.

The Play is the Way!

You have to find the fun in the process otherwise we will usually not return to the work of improving on a skill. If we take ourselves too seriously then we stress ourselves out in the process, kill the joy of the experience and can also let the inner critic get too loud for us to defeat us before we even get anywhere, leaving us worse off than when we started and discouraged from trying something new.

Kudos to John for finding the humor with me and trying to get better and something he knew would be difficult for him and succeeding quickly with the right support as I specialize in working with and around people's challenges to get them where they want to go.

In this video, he threw it well gross motor wise and visual motor wise to hit the target but still needed refinement fine motor wise with how he was holding the shuriken, how he released it to spin at the proper angle. Here he released it too flat to the side so it did not continue spinning directly forward enough to have one of the points stick as the side of the shuriken hit the board.

Great follow through

I had him point with his left hand to guide where he is throwing it. He misses the target entirely but then adjusts to get it to stick for the first time. You can see him focusing on following my specific recommendations for the proper fine motor grip before he throws the second time and it sticks. He gets it to stick to the target itself but still misses the red person outline. Still progress.

Direct Hit and Stick!

Here John hits the target directly in the center and it sticks to it's mark! Bam!!! Once you have initial success, the next question is ... Is that success repeatable, how often is it repeatable and how can you improve upon where you are? Did your brain and body mechanics embed the learning into your muscle memory so that you have to think about it less, not try as hard while having fun with successful effort and progress. John hit his mark again ... Eureka, he's got it!

Ninja Star Training

Here you can see the proper techniques for grip, aim, throw and follow through from me with adjustments made when I hit the target dead center but too high or right off the shoulder. Then you can see two examples of a male and a female who have different throw styles to work with improve their form to hit and stick them with only a few comments and directions from me. Note the jokes and laughter learning through play ;)

Hired by my amazing Chiropractor Emily Mayo to run a Ninja Themed Character Development and Team Building Training Workshop for her and her employees!

Mr. Miyagi Dojo

"Balance is key. Balance good, karate good."

Mr. Miyagi's character in the Karate Kid movies inspired this Karate kid as a child. His methods are legit. Take the mundane & make it intentionally focused as a meditation. Take the chores & use them to refine some technique that is meaningful. Meaningfulness is key to contentment as finding purpose in life gives us something to ground ourselves in & a future direction to reach towards. It is actually where the title of Occupational Therapy came from, occupying yourself meaningfully is healthy.

"Axe on, Axe off"

When a job needs to get done, go to work! Find things that need doing around your residence and turn them into a workout if they aren't just naturally already. Swinging an axe is a great workout and is a lot of fun. If it's not fun enough for you already, use your imagination and pretend you are training to fight a dragon.

Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-san inspired play

Who needs a break room?

Who needs a break room when you have a Demolition Property?!

Have some anger bubbling up to the surface? Have some destructive energy that needs to be expressed? Who ya gonna call? Chair-busters! Watch the master at work, who can show you how to express as well as release these frequencies in a healthy way and process whatever comes up before, during and after the process.

Not as easy as it looks huh?

Chris contacted me the night before letting me know she needed to work out some frustrations and I had just the thing ready to go for her.

Some more support

After getting a chance to see what she did with my initial instructions with how to use it. I gave her some more personalized feedback on how to prepare and aim to break it which she then did for the first time on her next swing.

Demonstrating to her how to safely break parts of the chair with your body

Showed how to break parts of the chair with the body to help get out the aggressive, destructive energy out without a weapon or tool too. I wanted to do another axe trick in the middle but gave up on the third attempt to go back to hacking it up and finishing with slamming it which is what I wanted her to do, sans axe trick throw ;)

It's good to also just use your body to break things

Started out with targeting the parts of it that she could break with her foot safely and then the axe to finish the job.

Victory!

No longer needing any guidance, just working it all out on her own.

Wrecking crew

I set up the remnants into a nice burn pile to chop up instead.

Work-Out vs. Play Within and Play Outside

Too often we can make working out more like a chore, bore or work. I struggle with the monotony of this approach and continue to find life hacks to try to motivate me to get the "work" in. But the easiest hack is to make exercise and activity less about work and more about play. Here are a few short clips of trying to make working out more playful and fun. The last clip was during covid where a friend challenged me to do the push ups challenge so I upped the ante by doing more difficult push ups

Trigger Warning: Shooting Gallery

This video is a quick series of shots of me shooting non-live targets with various guns during different seasons out in the rural part of the country in Pennsylvania where my family many generations ago first settled the lands after the Native Americans were no longer in the area :( My great great grandfather built the first home and church out there both of which are still used to this dMy family still has multiple properties out there and are tied into to keeping the community alive and well.

XMA Background Track

Eric is a Jaxson Gamble fan as his lyrics tend to be inspiring. This song was edited by Eric and used as a background track for his choreographed Extreme Martial Arts Form competition in the blackbelt division where he medaled with bronze against higher ranked blackbelts at Las Vegas Nationals 2020.