Friday, July 28, 2006

Karate is a Thing of the Spirit

Karate is a Thing of the Spirit

This is how I feel about training; it trains the spirit mainly. We must defeat the weakness in ourselves before we can conquer anything else.

7 comments:

Royce said...

Excellent article. Very insightfull. Thank you for posting.

Pete said...

Great article, Rif. tame the beast within through the intensity of training.how very true.

Going through some of my personal highs and lows, I find I am at my best when I am training, and when I am not usually coincides when my training is fragmented, unfocused, and irregular.

We need dragons to slay to stay sharp!

Tom Furman said...

Nice post. For your entertainment, chase down the old book by the same name, by Floridian Harry Crews. It takes place in Ft. Lauderdale and involves lots of interesting training.

Mark Reifkind said...

Tom,

I read that years ago, love Crews.

royce and pete, you are welcome, I love stuff like this, it keeps me going.

Franz Snideman said...

Awesome article Rif. And YES Pete, we do need dragons to slay. We are men, and that is part of being a man.

I have always hated violence and voided it at all costs. Violence in my oppinion in nothing to be glorified. However, because of the volatile state of man kind since the beginning of time, I see the importance in knowing how to fight, not for the sake of fighting itself, but because of the humble nature it gives you. It's also nice to know that if and when things get ugly, there's some motor engrams in your nervous system that know what to do.

Pete said...

I agree Franz, I believe, as does Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, that if you truly believe that you can hurt someone (or in my case, have to pull the trigger) and you exude that aura that you are not afraid to take that choice, there is a marked likelihood that you will never have to actually do it. It is the calmness that comes with already having made the decision, instead of the nervousness associated with uncertainty. It is truly a humbling feeling since it takes total commitment to something higher than self and ego.
And I agree, it always helps to have the skills to handle your self when faced with no other option.

Royce said...

Franz, I agree wholeheartedly. I also avoid violence as much as possible. This descision came from not avoiding violence when I was younger, it lead to some bad things in my life. For a long time I took almost a pacifist viewpoint on things.
Then I got married and had children, my wife had a stalker/tweaker ex-husband, I really learned the value of being able to handle yourself, it is a means to protect our loved ones, or to protect an ideal. Wich is exactly what we as men should do in my very humble opinion

205, 215, 217.5,205 x 1 x 6, 190 x 1 x 3, laterals, rear delts bw pushups

 Well this went great. not perfect but the basic premise worked and I'm happy. I was not optimistic at all about this at all given recen...