SW Portland Martial Arts Blog

Got a weakness in your game?  Of course you do.  Everyone does.  Let’s say, for the sake of this post, that your weakness is your throwing game.  To shore up that weakness, you take an 8 week long Judo seminar with the awesome coaches from Portland Judo.  Nice job!  Now you’ve got your foot in the door.

The next step is to practice your newly found game, with partners you trust, in a safe environment.  We got it!  Come to the (usually small) BJJ day classes.  We’ll start from standing and go slow!  In 5 years, we’ll have a decent throwing game.

It wouldn’t hurt if we had the Judo teachers come over once in a while to help us out… and maybe a wrestling coach!

Meanwhile, anyone got a weakness is their stick fighting game?  Good news!  There’s a seminar coming up in November and December to get your foot in that door, too.  Check the events tab for more info.

There are currently 4 events in under our event tab.

A 6 week stick fighting course taught by Sifu Kevin Jackson that will meet every Saturday in November and December (except for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years).

A 3 hour internal martial arts seminar on Monday, October 24th taught by Sifu Shanti (not the one from MDP – a different Sifu Shanti) that focuses on how to find your own structure and using that to unbalance someone else.

A “male only” self defense class.  We’ve done a “women only” self defense class and have had great success and feedback with that.  Now we’ll see what comes from this class.  If it’s anything like the women’s class, I will end up learning more than the students.

And finally, we have a Tai Chi seminar led by Sifu Anthony Sang that happens on December 17th and 18th.  He will be teaching a short form and applications of that form over the course of 6 hours.

We hope you’ll expand your martial arts world by attending one (or all ) of these fantastic opportunities.

We all want to go fast.  It’s a natural urge.  Fast seems like a really good idea in martial arts.  The thing is, if we don’t have any concept of what we are doing, if we are just flailing around then all going fast is going to do is make us flail around fast.

Even with all that warning, it is STILL tempting to go fast.  Maybe it masks our mistakes.  Maybe it masks our nervousness.  Maybe it masks our desperation.

Tonight in class, we aimed for smooth instead of fast.  The hope is that when we practice faster, we’ll move with competency instead of panic.