Fair Winds, Following Seas

Rousimar Palhares is one of my favorite up and coming UFC fighters. The man grew up dirt poor in Brazil and dropped out of school at age seven to work to help provide for his family. Despite being a killer in the cage he also looks to do good deeds and recently visited a children’s [...]

My Uncle recently asked me my thoughts on Aikido as a martial art. Given how important both my Uncle and Martial Arts are to me my response was inevitably long winded but I wanted to share it as I’m writing about something I’m very passionate about. I start out in referring to a comment he [...]

My lengthy conversations with Nick often produce very blogable exchanges and this is one of them I wanted to share. I’ve had a steadily increasing itch to really practice martial arts again. After all, judo and jujitsu were staples in my life for about ten years all said. I’m so busy right now I need [...]

It’s been an exciting week! I slept in a lot, played a boat load of video games, and generally felt like shit because my core is still all ripped up. Each day I feel a little bit better which is good and the pain is a lot more manageable. So manageable in fact that I’ve [...]

So as Tovah can easily verify for you, I’ve been on a big Steven Segal kick lately. Not so much his movies, but other things as I’ll shortly discuss.
It all began with UFC 126 when Anderson Silva knocked out Vitor Belfort with a front kick to the face. Previous to this it had been known [...]

I recently came across a trailer for the upcoming documentary, “Once I was a Champion” and wanted to share it. Evan Tanner was a unique individual and there will never be another like him. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to work with and learn from him at Team Quest.
He taught a tremendous [...]

Nothing I write is going to be as excellent as Tovah’s Christmas letter so I’m not even going to try. Tuesday night I flew to California for several days to visit with Nick. He’s basically a brother to me. It has been awesome spending uninterrupted time with him, getting to know Amy (Nick’s GF) better [...]

Over the last couple of days I’ve spent a lot of time watching old Bruce Lee movies. Return of the Dragon, Game of Death and Enter the Dragon are largely responsible for my lifelong interest in Martial Arts. My recent time back on the mat with Judo got me thinking about these old movies. Heck, [...]

Tonight I did my first Judo class for the first time in over six years. You know what? I miss that stuff so much.
My Japanese is rusty, especially for a lot of the techniques outside of the core basics, but so much technique came flooding back to me. Muscle memory is an amazing thing. The [...]