In this seminar session in Cleveland, Tennessee, we’re working through half guard sweep concepts and how to create the reaction needed to make those sweeps work.
Instead of forcing techniques, the goal is to build an environment that makes your opponent uncomfortable and forces them to react. Once that reaction happens, the sweep becomes available.
In this video, Sifu Alan Baker trains in Tampa, Florida with Guru Joe Wakey, breaking down timing concepts behind a Filipino Martial Arts knife jab drill.
This latest update expands the curriculum with several additional takedown and off-balancing methods designed to improve control, timing, and positional dominance. The material now includes instruction on the Low Line Foot Sweep, Single Leg Pick, Putar Kepala, Head & Knee Tap, Minor Outer Hook, Major Outer Reap, Valley Drop, Bump & Snap, Major Inner Reap, and Forward Foot Sweep, providing students with a broader set of entries and finishes for destabilizing the opponent and bringing the fight to the ground.
This lecture hits because it challenges the story most people were taught: “eat less, move more,” and “calories in, calories out.” The core message is that the real battlefield is hormonal, and the biggest player on that field is insulin. When insulin stays elevated, your body changes what it does with food. It stores more, burns less, and you end up hungry again even when you have eaten plenty.
In my 55th year, I’ve found myself doing something that I think a lot of disciplined people eventually do. I’ve started digging up the old habits that worked. Not the trendy stuff. Not the new hack of the month. The foundational practices that built my body, my discipline, and my mindset in the first place.
Most people treat rash guards like they’re just “No Gi shirts.” They’re not. A good rash guard is part of your training equipment. It affects how you move, how your …
There comes a point in every warrior’s life when the pursuit of power, precision, and performance gives way to a deeper question. How do I preserve it? After decades of training in the martial and combative sciences, I came to realize that longevity is not simply the absence of decay. It’s a skill. It can be trained, refined, and lived.
I talk about developing timeless tools all the time, because I’ve watched the same story play out for decades. A student starts training, gets excited, gets strong, gets fast, learns a pile of techniques, and for a while, they feel unstoppable. Then life shows up. Mileage shows up. Injuries show up. Stress shows up. Work, family, travel, responsibility, time under tension in the real world. Somewhere down the road that same student starts saying the sentence that makes my eye twitch: “I’m just not what I used to be.”
Inside every man or woman who trains, there’s a quiet understanding that most people will never touch. You can’t grow without pressure. You can’t sharpen without friction. And you can’t claim you’re building a warrior’s life while avoiding the very challenges that forge your identity. The hard season is not a detour. It’s the curriculum.
I have been doing various forms of fasting for the majority of my life. I was introduced to the concept by one of my Kung Fu teachers when I was in my teens, and it has been something I’ve followed ever since. It was never presented to me as a “diet.” It was presented as a practice. Discipline. Control. Clarity. The ability to operate without being ruled by comfort. Over the years, I saw something else too.
