In today’s world, your attention is under constant attack. At any given moment, there are countless forces competing for your focus. Notifications, messages, news, social media, conversations, and problems are all pulling at your awareness, trying to redirect your attention away from what you are doing and toward something else. Most of the time, that “something else” has very little value.
In this video I finally get my hands on a new Ganuting sword from Traditional Filipino Weaponry.
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 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.
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.
Put simply: self-protection aims to avoid the fight, self-defense manages the fight that finds you, and self-offense ends the fight when no lesser option will do. Train all three. Build the plan that keeps you out of trouble, the skills that let you steer trouble down, and the ability to act decisively when there is no other choice.
