Martial Vitality

  I enjoy listening to the Shintaro Higashi podcast, and a recent episode addressed dojo etiquette . Shintaro said that he had heard that it is a breach of etiquette for lower ranking BJJ players to ask higher ranking BJJ players to roll. In other words, it would be odd for a white belt to ask a blue belt to roll. I have a limited view on the subject, having only started training in January 2017, and having only trained at one school. I have attended seminars and camps outside my own school, but those settings are a bit different. I am also only a blue belt, so I do not have much experience being a "senior belt." For what it's worth, at my home school, One Spirit Martial Arts , I have not encountered this situation. As a white belt, or as a blue belt, I did not feel any concern asking to roll with a higher belt. I do not feel weird when a white belt asks to roll with me. I believe this is a cultural norm set by professor Sauer and the head instructors at the academy. I...

Four years ago on January 30, 2017, I took my first jiu-jitsu lesson at One Spirit Martial Arts in Herndon, VA. It was a Gracie Combatives lesson. Someone took photos for the school's social media pages, and I ended up barely appearing in the back row of one of the photos.  In March it will be one year since I stopped training due to Covid-19 . Since then I have been trying to keep mentally and physically engaged with jiu-jitsu, despite not attending classes at the academy. For example, beginning on January 1, I started my "90 Days with Danaher" program. Every day I watch a John Danaher instructional. I started with the first two volumes of Feet to Floor, then continued with Go Further Faster 1 Pin and Turtle Escapes. I am now in the second volume, Go Further Faster 2 Guard Retention. I take notes on each video and screen captures for private reference.  Go Further Faster 1 Pin and Turtle Escapes screen capture with annotation Each day I share a few screen captures ...

  Today, 18 January 2021, the Martial Vitality project is five years old. I started it as the Rejoining the Tao blog in January 2016 . The Martial Vitality brand arrived later, when I was considering open a school. I consolidated both projects under the Martial Vitality name in July 2020 .  Martial Vitality captures what I find interesting about martial arts, outside of martial arts history. For example, the #martialartstechniqueoftheday  from my Instagram account  shares images of techniques, generally from very old grappling texts. If you prefer Twitter or Facebook I post using the same hashtags there. Currently I'm on the 18th day of my 90DayswithDanaher project, where I watch one John Danaher instructional video each day. I started the month with his Solo Drills series and continued with volume 1 of Feet to Floor. I'm watching the second volume of Feet to Floor now. You might also want to check out my sister projects Martial History Team  and Sourcing Bru...

  2020 was not the best year for anyone, let alone for those practicing martial arts. Nevertheless, I've been summarizing my martial arts activities each year since my return in January 2016 , so why stop now? Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu I started 2020 as a fairly new blue belt , having tested at One Spirit Martial Arts (OSMA) in October 2019. I had 35 classes during the remainder of 2019 at that rank. I wrote in my 2019 Martial Arts Year in Review that "my goal is 17 classes per month, which is 204 classes per year. I expect that will translate into about 20 hours of class time per month, or 240 hours of class time per year." Before Covid-19 became a serious problem in my area, I participated in 40 BJJ classes at OSMA, with my final class occurring 11 March 2020. That was 40 classes in 70 days, and perhaps it was a bit too much. I hurt my back a few times during that period, including the last class on 11 March. Although my school continued teaching for a bit more, took a brea...

Are you a Jiu-Jitsu practitioner? Have you heard of Beltchecker ? It's a free site that seeks to provide ways for BJJ practitioners to validate their own rank, and therefore the ranks of others. I had signed up a while ago, but had not taken the steps to verify my profile. The main steps involved uploading a profile photo, uploading a photo of me with my name and Beltchecker ID number (Reddit AMA-style), and verifying my name. I chose to do the latter by donating $2 to the project, rather than uploading copies of documents. Those steps verified me as a user, but I also needed to verify my rank. Each rank requires "votes" from existing registered users. For blue belt, I needed 200 points.  Registered users can vote to endorse my rank. The number of votes they can provide is based on their own rank. For example, a black belt can offer 100 votes.  I decided I would try contacting Jeff Shaw from Bellingham BJJ , as I had attended his great online history of BJJ sessions. I a...

Hello everyone. I just wanted to post a quick note describing my goal for this site. Previously I posted information on my personal martial arts journey on a blog called Rejoining the Tao. I also created a presence called Martial Vitality, as a possible home for a future martial arts school. I had various social media accounts for both sites, which was confusing. I decided to retire the Rejoining the Tao account and content and migrate the blog posts to this site. Therefore, everything previously published on that blog is now here. I've also retired the old @rejoiningthetao Twitter account, and asked my small number of dedicated followers to move to my @martialvitality Twitter account .  I've been posting regularly to the Martial Vitality Facebook account regularly, so that will continue. I will save this site for long-form material that I want to be sure survives any issues that could arise with Facebook. On a similar note, if you're not already following my new project f...

Trump and Putin, 2018 How does a high-ranking judoka handle President Trump's handshake?  Introduction Trump and Gorsuch, 2017 I'm fascinated by how world leaders and other officials deal with President Trump's handshake. Today I saw footage from a press conference hosted by Presidents Trump and Putin in Helsinki from 2018, and I got to see how a high-ranking judoka reacts. Background Warning:  this is not a political post.  It's a post about movement, balance, and technique. If you're not familiar with President Trump's handshake style, the story Donald Trump's strange handshake style and how Justin Trudeau beat it  is a good overview. A jiu-jitsu school's technique for defeating the Trump handshake also caught the attention of Vice News . I'm going to concentrate on the standing handshake in this post.  A so-called "movement expert" claims in this  video  that Trump is showing "affection" via his handshake style. I think Mr Trum...