This is from the Japan Times...
nb, both of my aikido teachers at RYA are Senshusei course graduates, at a time when the course was even harder than what is described below. They appear in Robert Twigger's book.

It was a riot: Carter and classmates pose for a shot with the riot police who joined them on the 11-month Senshusei Aikido course at the Yoshinkan Honbu Dojo. ANDREW CARTER

THE ZEIT GIST

Battered Briton survives aikido ordeal

Punishing course leaves Englishman bruised but hungry for more 'cultivation'

By DAMIEN OKADO-GOUGH

At the end of February, a group of international students graduated from the Tokyo-based Yoshinkan Honbu Dojo, one of the most intensive martial arts training centers in the world.

Eyesore: Andrew Carter sports a shiner after his first session at the Yoshinkan Honbu Dojo in Tokyo last year. TIES BEEK

Yoshinkan (meaning "hall for cultivating the spirit") is a style of aikido founded by Gozo Shioda after World War II. Made famous by the controversial book "Angry White Pyjamas" by Robert Twigger, the Senshusei Aikido training course was initially started at the dojo in 1957 to train members of the Tokyo riot police. In 1991 the 11-month program opened its doors to applicants outside the police force, and since then the course has attracted recruits from all over world.

One such recruit, Englishman Andrew Carter, 24, who graduated from the course this year, spoke to The Japan Times about his motivations for starting the program and his experiences over the nearly yearlong course.

"I always wanted to join the British Army's Royal Marines when I was in my teens, but in university I went off the idea of the military ― the killing people part ― but I still wanted to experience something similar in terms of the training," he recalls. Then he read "Angry White Pyjamas," and after coming to Japan as an English teacher on the JET program, he decided to sign up for the Senshusei course.

Training takes place from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. five days a week, so paying his way was going to be a challenge. Arriving in Tokyo from Nagoya with only enough money for one month's rent, he shared a four-bunk hostel room with seven other people for the first two months of the course.

"I taught English to one of the guesthouse residents in exchange for food. I ate curry udon (noodles) for almost every meal for two months. One of the other guys, an American, had only pancake mix for two weeks of the first month."

Carter could have saved more money to help him get set up, but, he says, "I believed that a hard life outside the dojo was also important for one year, so I didn't mind coming with so little money. I was willing to endure the hardships it would bring."

The Senshusei course is famous ― some might say infamous ― for the severity of the training. Injury is not just possible, it's seemingly inevitable. The first training session of the course, says Carter, was "interesting."

"It was an hour of nonstop, difficult exercises. Out of 10 of us, one guy's legs gave out and he collapsed. I collided with another guy and he went to hospital with a cut to his head; I got a black eye out of that clash. One guy's nose started bleeding due to too many press-ups."

And this was only the first training session. For the next 11 months, Carter and his fellow trainees would endure three such sessions a day, five days a week.

"We all had bleeding backs due to hundreds of backward break-falls. The cuts would reopen each day and the backs of our dogi ― uniforms ― would turn red with blood stains. You're not allowed to start a training session with a dirty dogi, so one of the guys would tape women's sanitary towels to his back to soak up the blood."

Carter had damaged his knees during running activities in school, which made certain trials in particular all the more severe.

"My knees can become very painful. It makes seiza ― kneeling in the Japanese way ― a nightmare. Two months of the course focus onsuwari waza ― kneeling techniques ― so I wore knee supports, but other students who didn't found their knees would bleed from pivoting on them so much day after day. My training partner ended up on crutches as a result of suwari waza and seiza."

And if that was not enough, Carter also suffered back injuries.

"I damaged tissue around the lower back which lasted for about a month and a half. It made walking difficult. Sometimes I would collapse in work and my boss would have me over a table massaging my back."

Despite this, Carter stuck with the course and soon settled into the rigors of it. Then, two months after starting, he and his fellow trainees joined the police recruits for two out of the three daily classes.

"They were a mixed bunch," he says. "Two of them were girls, one a mother of two kids, three young guys and two older guys. Most of them would stick out anything. One guy kept training with a dislocated shoulder for an hour.

"When one of the international students was injured, we could take time off, but when one of the police was injured, as soon as they were fit enough to return to the dojo, they would be back. And if they couldn't train they'd be watching from the sidelines while standing in some sort of stress position. They were tough."

Soon, they started to get to know each other and bonds started to form.

"They were quite friendly to us. During our breaks we would relax together, eat lunch and use each other's medicines and ointments, etc. It is a requirement for the cops to have a black belt in a martial art before the course, so they were all black belts in judo, kendo or aikido."

But the friendship with the riot police members was not confined to the dojo.

"We had three dojo parties throughout the year. We had to perform for the teachers with the cops for our first one. We had a lot of fun at those parties. Most dojo parties ended with at least one of us or a cop passed out through drinking too much."

The police training course ended before the international students' course, but that was not the last of the camaraderie between the two groups, Carter explains.

"The cops left in November, but in February they turned up at our graduation, which was really cool of them. We didn't expect it, so it was a surprise."

Another surprise was the mental toll the course took on its participants, says Carter.

"I expected harsh training, brutal teachers and pain in my knees. I also was prepared for the possibility that I would not be physically strong enough to hack the course, but I was physically able to do everything that was asked of me. What I did not expect at the start of the course was how mentally demanding it would be."

Shugyo is a Japanese word that means "commitment to a discipline," and trainees on the Senshusei course must try to get a deep understanding of shugyo.

"Shugyo makes a great impact in the rest of your life; without some form of it, real training is impossible."

Soon after starting the course, Carter came to realize that he did not fully understand this concept.

"Others were studying techniques in their spare time while I was working or resting. It soon became clear that I was the weakest in the group as I was constantly making technical mistakes. I spent many embarrassing training sessions in front of my peers making mistakes. It was during this year that I decided I needed to re-evaluate my way of approaching life if I am to ever to be worthy of my black belt, if ever I'm to fulfill my full potential as a human being."

"I now see myself as a very different person. I used to drink and socialize a lot and leave studying to the last minute, but my year in the dojo has had a profound effect on me. It teaches you that you have to be focused, you have to predict what's coming up and study it and you have to be aware constantly of your own movements as well as being aware of a strict culture and of the teacher's needs."

"At the end of the year I see so many areas that I can improve on, in both aikido and in my life. But this is not a negative thing; it is very possible that without the course I would have never come to realize this. For me the course really unlocked a desire to do my best in all areas of life, not just the physical side of it, as I originally thought this year would develop."

Despite the physical and mental hardships that Carter endured over his year at the Yoshinkan Honbu Dojo, he feels it has all been worthwhile.

"I will take the course again and I hope to improve on the areas I am weak on. This I see as an exciting and rewarding challenge that stretches ahead of me for possibly the rest of my life, and this, more than anything else, is what I will take away from my year in the 'hall for cultivating the spirit.' "

On Aikido

OK, so let's talk aikido.

I LOVE AIKIDO. I think it is a complex, subtle, graceful, beautiful art. People are endlessly fascinated by aikido, and so am I. After more than 20 years of studying martial arts of all shapes and sizes, aikido remains a true love of mine.

Like any true love, however, it should not be blind, but instead be tempered with mutual respect and understanding. It should be based on trust. I trust that my training will develop in me a set of skills I can depend on if needed.

It is my view that aikido exists as a system that helps students learn some very important lessons in a safe and controlled manner.

Aikido, as it is commonly taught, doesn't work.

Shocked? You shouldn't be. Aikido is designed to teach specific lessons on body mechanics; for us to master CONCEPTS, not the techniques themselves. Therein lies the fallacy for most people. People who come to the aikido school looking for self defense are puzzled. "that would never work on the street", they say. They are right. We train aikido in a particular way to master the concepts behind the techniques, and to be able to practice them in repetition without injuring our training partners or ourselves. No one should EVER get injured practicing aikido,

Think about it. In combat, nobody would ever do a technique that they know has an ukemi.

In a fight, the goal will be to end the fight as quickly as possible. One technique and done. This cannot be achieved when we do techniques we know have ukemi, and we should always expect our opponent to be a well-trained martial artist of equal or greater ability. If we give them an out, we should expect them to take it.

Before you give up and go start studying Krav Maga, Muay Thai, or boxing - Wait. Aikido techniques illustrate some very effective and important ways of harnessing our strength and disrupting our opponent's balance. To summarize:

1) how to keep our head and hips in alignment
2) how to use our hips to generate linear and centrifugal power
3) how to control and use the center line
4) how to drop our weight or load the opponent on our hips
5) how to use our elbows to connect to our hip power
6) how to isolate our opponent's arms from their hip power
7) how to maintain contact with the ground and fall safely
8) how to strike using atemi to disrupt the opponent's focus
9) how to maintain contact with the opponent's body at all times
10) how to control/immobilize an opponent on the ground

In addition to the above, we must develop a deep understanding of "the aikido chain".

The major techniques of aikido are expressly designed to help us understand the chain of power from our opponent's wrist to elbow to shoulder to spine and head. Each one shows us how to control uke's head/spine by a single touchpoint in a different way. If you concentrate on uke's wrist, you miss the entire objective of the technique, which is always about following the chain of control to manipulate uke's shoulder and, ultimately, their head and spine.

Aikido's effectiveness as a martial art manifests in two main ways.

1) manipulating uke's head and spine from a single contact point
2) adjusting the angles and footwork to remove ukemi so the opponent has no escape

Sadly, many teachers of aikido do not understand how to make the techniques effective, or even how to explain their effectiveness to students once they are mature enough to need that knowledge. I personally do not advocate the study of martial arts that are not "martial". Without some real practicality, we lose the application of the art. At that point you might as well just play the piano.

Now, I want you to go back and carefully study all the aikido techniques you have seen and start to discover how each one moves uke's head and spine to take away their strength and balance. After that, begin to look at how to isolate and remove uke's ability to take an ukemi. Let me be clear: there is no ukemi in aikido. For combat, it does not exist. It is there only for safety during training.

Very quickly you will find aikido to have a deeper and much more effective side.
Done with the right intent and understanding, aikido is positively devastating - you should not need to be a 5th dan to understand that.

Use Your Head

Martial arts is more than just moving our bodies around. Proper training should yield a detailed understanding of the human body and how it functions. At a high level, this is learning where our key weapons are when we attack (hard points) and where to apply them on an opponent (soft points).

At a deeper level in Chinese martial arts you find systems like dim mak, where practitioners learn to use energy meridian theory as a means of disrupting the opponent.

While formidable, this is not enough. We must also complete our circle of knowledge by understanding how to deliver strength from our bodies (and remove it from others). Another related body of knowledge is about our health and healing. In our study of Hilot, we are taught several sub-systems such as massage/osteopathy, dietetics/naturopathy, and psychotherapy to keep ourselves in optimal condition and to promote our longevity.

In short, martial arts training is for those people who want to achieve a deeper understanding of the human body.

One of the basics is how to use your head.
When we use our body to deliver strength, we know that it must always be done with the head in alignment to the cervical spine. That is, we must have our head in alignment to generate power. This means no looking down, no looking sideways, no twisting of the head, and no leaning forward or backward. If any of these things occur, the power of the technique is diminished or removed completely.

When you train, it is very important to pay attention to the position of your head as you move.
Be sure you are not looking down. Be sure your head is not twisted or rotated for any movement. In principle, maximum power is generated when our head and hips are in the same alignment, since they are at either end of our spinal column. This is important to consider.

The converse is also true. When we fight, our primary objective should always be to ensure that the opponent's head and hips are NEVER in proper alignment, so our opponent is unable to generate power. Not only should we try to get the head/hips/spine out of alignment as soon as possible, our action should be designed to make sure the opponent never recovers that balance.

A very simple way of defining martial arts is to say that it is the "science of our strength applied to our opponent's weakness." This is worth thinking deeply about.

See you in class.

Are you lazy?

*** this is copied from Aaron at Tempo Boxing. If you do not know him, you should. If you have not trained with him, you should. He is a real life "hero" (and a great guy)

Are you lazy? (be honest)

I know a lot of lazy people. People who would rather spend the day planted on their couch than anywhere else. People who choose take-out over home cooked, every night of the week. People who would rather have a root canal than go do a workout. Sure, I know that we all have our occasional lazy day on the couch, but lately it seems that more and more people are turning laziness into a career. What about you? Check if the following describe you:

* You are habitually inactive.
* You'd rather be a passive observer than an active participant.
* You're a master excuse-maker.
* You find shortcuts in order to avoid the long haul.

If that's you, don't get down on yourself. There are many legitimate causes of laziness.
Here are just a few...

Sleep Deprivation: When you're short on sleep it's easy to become unmotivated, which quickly turns into laziness. Get a minimum of eight hours of sleep each night in order to maintain enough energy to get you through the day. Some experts even say that ten hours of sleep each night is what you need to function at your best.

Caffeine Abuse: Starting your day with a jolt of java may help with your initial alertness, but the dip in energy that takes place a few hours later could be the reason that you become lazy later in the day. Avoid the rush and crash of caffeine and instead rely on your steady supply of natural energy.

Bad Habit: At some point being lazy simply becomes a habit. If every night after work you head straight to the couch, it soon becomes automatic and not a conscious decision. Breaking the habit of laziness is actually quite easy. Simply take yourself off of autopilot and make the conscious decision to do something productive instead - like heading to the gym rather than the couch.

Inactivity: If your job keeps you in a chair for hours at a time, and you don't exercise when off the clock, then your body is just accustomed to inactivity. It's time to wake up your under-used muscles and to reacquaint yourself with the joy of motion. A simple way to get back into the swing of things is to go on a 30 to 60 minute walk either before work or after you return home. Once you've broken yourself in with consistent walks, contact me to get started on a fitness program that will quickly get your body back into great shape.Laziness begins when you ignore that little nagging voice in your head. You know, the one that reminds you when you should take action on something rather than sit by and let the opportunity slip away.

Is today the day that you will kick laziness to the curb?

Is today the day that you will take action toward achieving your goals?

Is today the day that you will listen to that little voice of reason?

(thanks Aaron!)

What a Wonderful World

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom, for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

I see skies of blue, and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces, of people going by
I see friends shaking hands, sayin' "how do you do?"
They're really sayin' "I love you"

I hear babies cryin', I watch them grow
They'll learn much more, than I'll ever know
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

Yes I think to myself, what a wonderful world
Oh yeah


It IS a wonderful world after all, isn't it?

Boxing Basics

Boxing is a core skill which every good fighter should have.

Here are some ideas on how to organize your knowledge of "the sweet science"

Basic attacks

jab (high, low) - lead hand probing shot; bread and butter of boxing

cross (high, low) - rear "power" hand

hook (lead hand, rear hand) - circular shot parallel to the floor. Can be high (head) or low (body)

uppercut (lead hand, rear hand) - tight upward shot perpendicular to the floor.

Basic Blocks

cover - elbow up and hand to ear - like brushing your hair

catch - use rear hand palm/fingers to swat down jab

cuff - use closest hand in a circular motion against cuff of opponent's glove

dodge/slip - bend knees/turn head to evade to inside (near other hand) or outside (away from other hand)

roll - move glove down to ribs, dip head and use shoulder to take shot

cross glove - use opposite side glove to smack down attack

forearm - put foream/elbow tightly against your ribs to protect against low shots

bob and weave - bend knees and dip under the shot. DO NOT lean forward

pull - shift weight to 70% back foot and lean your upper body away from the shot - RETURN IMMEDIATELY

Most common attacks and their blocks

attack block

jab - catch/cuff/pull/dodge

cross - cover/dodge/roll

hook - cover/pull/cross glove/bob and weave, forearm (if low)

uppercut - cover/pull/cross glove, forearm (if low)

Long Distance Attacks (can return long distance counter or close in)

- jab

- cross

* long distance in boxing is actually "middle distance" which extends to kicking range (long distance) or contracts to short distance

Short Distance Attacks (usually returned with short distance counters)

- hook

- uppercut

* short distance expands to long distance or contracts into clinch distance (elbows/knees/headbutt) or grappling/wrestling

Key Footwork Concepts - plant feet everytime you hit; don't hit when moving

triangle stepping - move 45 degrees away from incoming shots (esp hook/cross) to dissipate attack power

triangle punching power - triangle between both feet and puch impact point to generate max power

45 degree principle - slip and evade to step out 45 degrees to opponent's back pocket

V-step - bob and weave should bend knees and be a "V" shape down and back up

See you in the ring!

Time Is Money

Time is Money. How many times have you heard that?

It is usually used to make people move faster, rush more, get more done.
On our way to the Bali camp, we talked about it again, especially in light of some things Sensei Scott told us in Singapore Saturday about "coloring our days".

Time really IS money. Far more similar than you probably thought. Time and money can both be spent and used, even wasted. How many people do you know who waste their time? I bet those same people waste their money too.

Many smart people believe money is a tool. A powerful tool that can be used to help you achieve freedom to do the things you want. By that same rationale, time can be used to help you achieve freedom to do the things you want. By removing excess such as television, you may find you have much more time than you thought you did to engage in things you enjoy.

Far more importantly, money can be invested. I did my master's degree in Finance, and we spent long hours learning how to invest money to achieve wealth and financial freedom. I contend that you invest time the same way, and often achieve the same quality of results. It is important to make conscious decisions in how you spend both time and money if you want to increase your quality of life.

Many people squander both their money and their time. Then, when they need some, it isn't there. None left. Money can be saved in a bank and withdrawn later - there are no bank accounts for storing time, but by making poor life decisions which shorten your life (such as smoking, excessive drinking) you can be certain you aren't adding time to your life.

Financially, we have a certain finite period during which we can labor to earn money. By carefully managing how we use those earnings, we can achieve a lifestyle balance we want. Temporally, we have a certain lifetime in order to do the activities we want and make our mark on the world. When it is gone, it is gone. Our loved ones die as part of the lesson that we must treat the time in our lives as precious.

It is useful to be frugal with both time and money, and to use them really for the things which are important to you.

Think about it.

Great Expectations

The time is near.

Next week I will be in Bali for the annual training camp. Guro Jeff Espinous, Guro Fred, and many others will be there. I've been looking forward to this for the past 5 months since I came back to Japan.

Last year, our annual training camp was held at an Indonesian temple site in Singapore, and had so much going on. There were intensives at the school, a week-long seminar on all aspects of kali, silat, and Dumog (with Guro Adrian and Guro Olivia), the black belt test/demo of Guro Guillaume and Guro Maxime, advanced gradings for Guro Lila and Guro Bruno, and a tremendous amount of sharing ideas and training. Guro Jeff opened my eyes to so many things, and taught me so much about FLOW. He is truly magic to train with. Beyond that, everyone was very, very friendly. There was a tremendous sense of community and fellowship.

This year's camp promises to be even better - we are expected to have another strong team from Europe joining, as well as Dr. Charles Gibert from Tahiti, to lecture on Chinese and Western medicine and homepathy.

I am packing up my bags, and this week cannot get over soon enough! See you on the beach!!

A few moments well spent

I know it's hard - like me, you probably never have enough time for all the things you need/want to do. Very often you barely get done the things you need to do, let alone the things you want to do. In particular, most of us have the best intentions of training every day - or at least several days a week. In practice, we end up missing lessons or training sessions for any number of reasons: business trip, client issue, sick wife or kids, friends visiting from out of town, etc.

My suggestion is to develop a very fast set of things you can do every morning and every night - the drill should take no more than 5 minutes tops, and be 2-3 movements total. This is something you should be able to find the time for EVERY DAY. EVERY SINGLE DAY. Find a quiet spot to do them; cross off each day so you know you did it. Feel happy that no matter what, you always get in those few core movements. Make sure they don't need anything except your body weight, so you can even do them in a hotel if need be. Make it a promise to yourself. Some of my favorites are:

• pushups and crunches (work up to doing 50 pushups and 200 crunches; it should take about 5 mins)
• squats/coconut crushers (work up to doing 100)
• leg stretches (2-3 movements for helping open up your hips)
• pull ups on a bar
• 2-3 vikram yoga postures (1 minute each)
• some stick movements
• any of the exercises we do in class (esp the ones Lila does at the end!)
  

You get the point... that 5-10 minutes per day can create a lasting effect and change on your body - IF YOU DO IT EVERY DAY. The routine/habit is just as valuable as the movement.

Don't skip days. Ever. Period.

Let me know how you get on.

Horses For Courses

Today I got the happy news that one of my friends has started Yoshinkan Aikido.
For her, the physical part is not the issue - she has years of classical ballet training and is an avid snowboarder; she looks just like she did when she was 18 (current age undisclosed).
She joked, "the hardest part was waking up early to get to 7am training".

Everyone faces their own unique set of challenges in training.
Everyone also has their own unique set of goals they want to achieve.

For some it is self-defense, for others, physical fitness. Still others want to improve their self-esteem and confidence. Some students want to explore their own spirituality. Many people train becuase of the special fellowship they build with other students in the community of the dojo. Many of my brothers and sisters train so that they can become teachers themselves some day and help others to change their lives.

For her, it is building the discipline of getting up early. One day at a time, one training at a time, she will prove to herself that she can master her own life, and develop the habits that will help her find her own special brand of success.

Celebrate yourself.
Celebrate the reasons that brought you to your martial arts.
Celebrate each little goal you reach in your training, that brings you more and more of the life you want.
Celebrate every positive change you make.
Celebrate your improvement.

Every new student makes me feel like celebrating.
The dojo is always the best place to be.

Bonsai

Over the weekend we took the kids to Honmoku Park and the adjoining Sankeien. Sankeien is a great walk around with a lot of historic buildings beautifully restored. It will be especially beautiful when the leaves change.

We were fortunate to go there when there was an exhibition of bonsai, the little trees. The bonsai is in many ways symbolic of Japan and the Japanese mentality, closely interlinked with Zen Buddhism and martial arts. So much so, that Mr. Miyagi even prunes his bonsai and they play a role in the plot.

To the unititiated, bonsai are simply that, little miniature trees.
To the Japanese, they can be so much more. Some of those little trees are literally hundreds of years old, carefully pruned and kept for several generations. They are small, yes, but mature trees nonetheless.

The bonsai allow Japanese to express their own culture and lifestyle, which is often kept in claustrophobic close quarters, but which can yield beauty and elegance, just in the way a bonsai survives being kept in it's small pot year after year.

Bonsai ENDURE - much as the Japanese do. Many bonsai even flower or yield tiny fruit, which is a reminder to the Japanese of their seasonality.

Bonsai are cared for very carefully, kept neatly pruned, and watched over someones like a pet of sorts. Owners lavish attention on their plants, talking to them, playing music for them, and so on. Their design can be very precise and intended to create the wabisabi - the random pattern of nature - which Japanese find to be the ultimate in aesthetic beauty.

As martial artists, bonsai represent control. Control of self. Precision. Endurance. Adaptability. They teach us that we must have careful attention to detail, and prune our lives and our training regularly to keep them elegant and beautiful. They teach us to always remain in harmony with nature. Bonsai require service, commitment, and dedication to live - so do we. So does our practice.

I love bonsai trees and what they represent. I love how they make me feel, and what they make me think about. It calls me back to a gentler time, when we could appreciate the simple things in life more fully.

Maybe all our lives could use some cultivation.

Back to Basics 2010

Finally. After a few weeks of holiday time where the calendar was against us, my being out of town on Dec 18 and having both Christmas and New Year's Day fall on Fridays, we ended up going nearly a month without class.

Last Friday we recommenced our study group in earnest, refreshing our memory on the basic grip, basic angles 1-8, basic blocks, and kabkas. Our study group is intended to drill the first year curriculum of Kali Majapahit, but even if it were not, I LOVE to start the New Year getting back to basics. It is a way of reminding yourself purposefully that basics are the foundation of progress and that good basics lead to good techniques.

2010 promises to be an exciting year.
There is a great camp coming up in March in Bali, as well as a lot of changes happening in Kali Majapahit Singapore. In Japan we are going to focus on training hard, and on getting "official" with some marketing of the study group. It may even be possible to have visitors from Singapore come to teach some classes this year. I am also going to make a plan to prepare and test for 2nd dan in Yoshinkan Aikido in 2010.

I am excited about this year, and I hope you are too.

See you Friday night at the usual time (19:00), in the usual place.

Jan 2010 Kali Majapahit Japan Study Group

**** Starting back up on Friday, January 8 at 7pm at Bodyplant. See you there!! ****

Another reason for gun control

This just off CNN. A 4 year old boy accidentally shot and killed at church by a stray bullet.

Another reason why I don't want my kids to grow up in the US, in a culture of random violence.
The laws, and the safety training, are still so lax that stories like the above are commonplace. I refer to Jeff Cooper's easy to follow four rules of gun safety.

I know every right wing NRA advocate will insist that they be allowed their Second Amendment rights "to bear arms". I'd like to hear their explanation about how we prevent incidents like the story above.

I learned how to shoot pistols, rifles, and shotguns as part of my martial arts training.
However, I would be the first in line to forgo my right to bear arms in the interest of public safety. There are parts of the world where it is very dangerous to grow up. The United States of America should not be one of them. I choose Japan because it offers me the chance to work, an interesting culture to study, a fascinating language to master, as well as a safe environment for my boys to grow up. Singapore was the same. The risk - reward profile in the US simply doesn't make sense to me. It probably doesn't make sense to the mother of that poor 4 year old boy either.

We have models such as Japan and the UK for gun control that can be leveraged in the US.
It is sad that the NRA and other right wing organizations care more about their own memberships and the strength of their lobbying efforts than they do about the lives of children.

10,000

Just reading "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell.
He suggests that research has shown true expertise, world-class expertise, in a complex task such as a professional sport, playing an instrument, mastering chess, or the like is achieved at a level of about 10,000 hours of practice. The "magic number" is quoted by neurologist Daniel Levitin.

10,000 is a big number. 10,000 hours is a long time.

To give an easy measure, most people work about 2,000 hours per year if they work an 8 hour day. That would suggest mastery of a job function, even a relatively complex one, in about 5 years' time.

For hobbies, it takes a bit longer. Simple math would say that if you trained in martial arts for 2 hours per week, 50 weeks a year, that is 100 hours per year. Reaching mastery at this pace would then take you 100 years...uh oh.

This idea is not meant to be discouraging. Rather, it is to suggest that you increase your training time as much as possible. 10 hours a week sounds like a lot, doesn't it? That is averaging 2 hours a day on weekdays... However, that is still (just) 500 hours a year and then you would still need 20 years or so to match the researchers' definition of mastery :-)

How many hours of training do you think you have spent?

Most people end up settling for less than world class expertise.
Sadly, many teachers also settle for less than world class expertise.
Consider your teacher's dedication to training.

If martial arts is truly your passion, like it is mine, what will make all the difference is simply

HOW MUCH YOU TRAIN.

Now, stop reading and get back to training. So will I.

Remember,
"Practice isn't what you do once you are good. Practice is THE THING WHICH MAKES YOU GOOD."

Thanks Malcolm...