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| 2/1/2011 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This is free service (yes, as in FREE) offered to all martial artists who have news the martial arts world should know about. Submit your your news, events, press releases, and articles to admin@martialinfo.com. For more submission guidelines, click here. |
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Message from Tom Callos |
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10 Tips for Martial Arts Students, to Deepen Your Practice 
By Tom Callos
You didnt start your study of the martial arts to go through the motions of it all, did you? Of course you didnt, but look around you in your next class and Ill bet you spot a number of your classmates doing that very thing, going through the motions. Its human nature to get distracted, to multi-task, and wander off course. To deepen and strengthen your practice so that you stay on the mark and make reasonable progress, I offer you these 10 time-tested, Tom-tested tips: 1. As often as you can remember to do so, say to yourself I am aware that I am training (kicking, punching grappling, or whatever it is youre doing at the moment). For me, that never fails to get my head out of the clouds and back into my practice (I am aware that I am writing this!). 2. Use a training partner (or partners) to hold you accountable to more intense, more focused, and more present practice. Friends are a good thing. 3. Eat better food before and after ever class (and, of course, that translates into ALL THE TIME). If youre bodys jammed full of food-delivered chemicals, cups of corn-syrup, and crates full of unnecessary carbs or fats, youre going to find you dont function like the well-oiled machine you"re supposed to be. Contrary to the way a lot of people live their lives, what you eat IS important to your performance. In fact, what you eat IS self-defense. 4. Breath deeply, focus on breathing deeply, think about breathing deeply, and maybe, if you have a habit of forgetting, write BREATH DEEPLY on the backside of your hand. To see just how much this helps you, do it. Youll feel the benefits right away. 5. Take your practice off of the mat. Courtesy and respect for others isnt something thats practiced in the school with people youre semi-afraid of. Its for that ding-dong at the supermarket (you can tell what someone is made of by how they treat the people that mean nothing to them). Its for your Mom, who sometimes bugs you in a big way. Its for the substitute teacher (yes, even for him/her). 6. Practice at home, a minimum of 10 minutes a day on the days you dont attend classes. Little things add up, so even 10 minutes of practice can help you grow. Oh, and if you dont think 10 minutes matters, try to hold your side-kick out out for 10 minutes or try and hold your breath for 10 minutes. Yeah. 7. Read age-appropriate philosophy. Champions, whether in science, baseball, chess, jiu-jitsu, or cross-country skiing, all have belief systems that make them rise above hardship and overcome obstacles. They all learn to cope with defeat --and victory. Reading the words of someone with experience can be the next best thing to talking with them face-to-face. 8. Go crazy. Yes, act in a way that most people would consider very odd indeed. For example, when things start getting really hard, you pretend theyre getting easier. Crazy! When everyone else complains --and for good reasons too, you find the good in the situation and jump up to be the first person to turn whatever is wrong, right. Insane! When everyone else quits, you stick to it! Youre a nut!  Actually, youre a martial artist.
9. Measure your own personal performance on a scale between 1 and 10, with 1 being your worst performance --and 10 being an all out, focused, beautiful-to-behold effort. Try to operate as close to level 10 as you can during your classes (whether youre standing still or doing difficult maneuvers). And while youre at it, try to LIVE at level 10, whenever possible. Its a good thing.
10. I hate to drop this one on you last, as its a bit of a let-down after all this glorious focus on you and yours, but maybe the best way to deepen your own practice of the martial arts is to help other deepen theirs. Yes, thats right, in the end, its not about you at all. Funny how it always works out that way. Tom Callos About the Author: Tom Callos bio and project portfolio may be read at www.tomcallos.com Visit web site for more information. |
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11 Simple Instructions for Improving the Quality of your Students Martial Arts Written by Tom Callos (Authors note: These are 11, with a bonus, ideas, thoughts, observations that are meant to stimulate your thinking. I hope they do!)
My guess is you could cut your curriculum in HALF, and still be teaching too much stuff. You see, once your students now HOW to execute (at level 10, with great attention to detail), then teaching them new things becomes a breeze. Require your students to practice. Practice, at home and in addition to the 2 to 4 classes a student might attend per week, is the smallest common denominator to improvement, retention, and success. Like a parent, you have to choose your battles carefully, as you could fight all day long if youre not careful. If you fight the battle of home practice, even if just for 10 minutes a day, there will be a lot of other battles you wont have to fight --down the road. Build a visual data-base, on your digital dojo, (online resources) of great and amazing examples of techniques, forms, etc., so that your students (and anyone who helps them) can, at the push of a button, see perfect or near-perfect examples of what you expect/desire. Create different categories for different age groups (dont show a 65-year-old an 18-year-olds 540 and expect them to match it. See: www.100examples.spruz.com andwww.50examples.spruz.com, I built both of these just for this purpose. Cultivate a mindset that TODAY is the most important day of practice. Great skills are acquired thorough small, incremental, top-quality practice sessions.
Personally, I dont teach technique. I teach execution. If the athlete executes with full body, mind, emotions, and spirit (at level 10), then teaching technique is a process of memorization. When you know how to execute, at level 10, a single movement, you know where youre going with all movements. When you know how to perform a single kata at level 10, you know what to do with all kata. Take the emphasis and focus in your school off of the 1980"s/90"s born focus on belt rank advancement. Billing services and other groups in their infinite and well-meaning ignorance have connected belt ranks to sales, and belt rank promotion to "progress" and "retention." So much so that an entire generation of teachers are walking around thinking and teaching in a way that almost DEMANDS belt rank advancement. So we see green, purple, brown, and red belts, even black belts, that are 6, 7, 8. and 9 + years old --and most of them can"t really punch with any authority, don"t execute precise stances even, and generally just look bad. Sure, they"re black belts (or whatever), and they"ve been showing up at the school for a year of longer, but what VALUE do they really bring to your school. Warm bodies do not make great black belts. You must disconnect approval and merit, as much as you can, from rank. You have to cultivate a mindset of non-rank as achievement. Progress and success can be measured in hundreds of ways, but giving out high ranks to kids or adults that aren"t solid representatives of the best you/we can produce, is flat out destructive to your school --and the martial arts. You might now "know how" to do the above, yet....but this isn"t brain surgery. You/we can figure it out. I"m already there. Bonus Suggestions: Be patient. Be kind, be gentle, be beautiful about the way you teach. Talk with your students, a lot. Talk with parents too. Be an example of a fine athlete. |
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A Martial Arts Business Coaching Report for School Owners/Managers Marketing Lesson of The Day Tell Better / More Stories by Tom Callos on January 24, 2011 (Note to reader: To own something it to make it your unique selling proposition, something that sets you and your business apart from your competition). To own the self-discipline market you would do well to document 10 or 20 or 100 stories of your young (or older) students using self-discipline to their benefit (to your community"s benefit).
To own leadership training, youd want to have leadership stories, yes? To own fitness, would you want to show what results your work gets, right? Here are some Instructions on how to go about owning any subject: 1. Improve the QUALITY of your storytelling. 2. Increase the QUANTITY of your available stories. Its the search to find, to make, to create and to TELL the stories at your school that not only allows you to highlight and profile your students, but that in turn shines a light on what you are really and genuinely involved in (what you do for a living).
You write your stories, adding photos, videos, and 1st-person testimonials on blogs. You store your videos on youtube or vimeo. Each piece you write weaves your schools name, the name of your area, your school, and key words that relate to what you do (self-discipline, focus, etc.) into your story --and in your title and tags. Your goal is to write good stories that are not obvious pitches or obvious intended manipulation of the Internet. You should never resort to writing bogus material to affect your supposed search engine optimization", and/or in any way produce fake, insincere, or anything not made up of the best quality info you can muster. How often do you do this? All day long, the same way you put on your game face when you unlock your schools doors in the morning. You keep creating and telling great stories about the value of what YOU and your team create. This is your business. You can make a film-a-day about what goes on at your school, yes? The little victories? The epiphanies? The hard work? a 30 second film? Yes, you can. And you can write a good-solid blog post about your school and the journey, every day. When people come in and enroll because of your reputation, because of what you DO, you dont have to entertain the suggestions of business-consultant-hucksters trying to teach you how to enroll floods of new students. You dont have to hide your prices, you dont have to do anything manipulative to enroll people. And having 1, 2, or 3 staff members that do what I described above? Well, thats the kind of work that puts you in a management / marketing league of your own. |
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Open 2009 Kata Maschile |
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10 Ideas, from Tom Callos |
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Character 
By: Three-time Super Bowl champion and former All-Pro offensive guard Mark SchlerethA few days ago America honored Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and I was reminded of a story that Id like to share with you. As a parent, youre involved with things in your childrens lives thatwhen you were their ageyou had no interest in at all. Things that you avoided like the plague. Like homework. I was never a great student. As a young man, my focus centered mostly on football, food and young ladies. I did what I had to do to get by. D for diploma as the old saying goes. I spent most of my adult life with a piece of protective plastic strapped to my head like a Spartan shield, which I used as a battering ram. So how much sense can I have? Math? Useless. Spelling? Please. I cant spell my way out of a wet paper s-a-c-k. But an art project? Can a brother get an Amen from the congregation?! Besides recess, art was my best subject. My youngest daughter, Avery, was in grade school when she was assigned a big project on Dr. King. This was my wheel house. Pictures, drawings and minimal research. A perfect fit for a general studies major from the University of Idaho. Nothing too detailed or elaborate, just the basics. Sweet! As Avery and I did our research, one line of Dr. Kings famous, I Have a Dream speech struck me with the blunt force trauma of a (in his prime) Mike Tyson uppercut: I have a dream that one day a man will not be judged by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. I hopesomedayDr. Kings dream becomes reality. But until that day comes, were left with some tough questions. What is character? Are we born with it or is it something we learn? (From who?) Can anybody have it? Should we all have it? Orlike bipartisan politicsis it impossible to obtain with consistency? This is what Ive learned. Character, like a beautiful garden, needs constant tending. We need to surround ourselves with people who challenge us, people who arent afraid to get dirty pruning, weeding and cultivating our soil so that we may bear fruit. When I played for the Broncos there was a sign that hung in our training room. Every morning while I was icing my knees or rehabbing my broken body Id read that sign. I memorized it so it became woven into the fabric of my soul. You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. How true it is. Im not proud of the man I am at times. There are days when I bend on penitent knee, embarrassed to enter into my Fathers presence because of my selfish and sinful nature. Im consistently in awe of His grace and mercy. So onward I press, challenged by the people I choose to associate with and challenging myself on this journey, this quest for CHARACTER! Visit web site for more information. |
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