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This weekend as you have already read there was a special training seminar at the home of An-shu Stephen and Rumiko Hayes. It was an amazing event and I wanted to thank everyone who assisted in making it all possible. First and foremost An-shu Stephen and Ruiko Hayes for opening their home, hearts, and heads […]

With the recent death of Muhammad Ali, I have been seeing clips of his historical fights on social media. Something caught my attention. As Ali matured and gained experience in fighting formidable foes, he developed an increasing reliance on what we call “water strategic placement”. Watch and see if you do not agree. No, he […]

For beginning To-Shin Do students, just having an answer to a problem is the goal. We start with twelve fundamental techniques, based on common attacks, so that we have the skills to react to difficult situations. Reacting correctly is the next step. A black stripe on a color belt means it is time to start […]

Go to a mirror and stand close so you can see your eyes. Now move your eyes so you are looking at your left eye then back to your right eye and continue to repeat being aware that you are physically moving your eyes. You will feel your eyes moving but what will you see? […]

Several years ago, when I started participating in triathlons, I discovered I needed to rethink how I set goals for my physical workouts. I’ve lifted weights and been a runner for most of my life, but specific goals in those areas we’re never a concern. My physical fitness goals went something like, “Get in even […]

The martial art of To-Shin Do is about learning how to win. When I explain to new students my view of what it means to earn a black belt, I tell them a black belt is someone who has the tools to be more successful in every area of their life. I have yet to […]

We’ve probably all heard the idea that ‘practice makes perfect’. And it’s true that to get really good at something, you’ll likely need to do it a lot. There is an idea out there that it takes a minimum of ten years of intense practice to reach the elite levels of a sport or other […]

This is one of the most important areas of our training and one of the things that sets our training apart from other martial arts. While training in To-Shin Do you are not working on memorizing a series of movements that can be done by yourself. You are learning to understand the cause and effect […]

We are all training in martial arts because we want to get better. We want to grow. We might have different reasons, different burning desires that keep us coming back to class week after week, year after year. Some are looking for self-defense. Some enjoy the historical techniques. Some want the personal growth and empowerment […]

There’s a Tom Cruise movie that came out in 2014 called Edge of Tomorrow. IMDb describes it as: A military officer is brought into an alien war against an extraterrestrial enemy who can reset the day and know the future. When this officer is enabled with the same power, he teams up with a Special […]

I like to remind students (and myself) of options. More specifically, I like to remind students that we do have options, and how easy it is to lose sight of that. It is an easy habit to practice a technique in a given way so often that it because an automatic reaction. In some cases […]

One of the difficulties that English speaking people have when they try to learn the Japanese language is that it is a situational language. How you speak in Japanese depends on the context of the situation. You can’t just translate word for word back and forth from English to Japanese. For example to simply say […]

A couple of months ago marked the twentieth anniversary of the day I threw all my belongings in the back of a U-Haul trailer and moved to Ohio to be closer to my teacher. I didn’t have a job, or a place to live, or much of a plan at all. I just assumed those […]