Thoughts of a Well Balanced Martial Artist

www.westportboxing.com

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on July 25, 2011 at 9:31 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: balanced, black belt, Calasanz System, conditioning, Exercise, fighting, Kickboxing, Kung Fu, Martial Arts, Self Defense, Sparring, unique and personal

Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans and the Martial Arts: A Complete Package – by Calasanz

On Tuesday, October 7, 2008 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released new Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. The goal is to encourage the American population to add some type of physical activity to their daily routine.

Daily physical exercise is vital for achieving and maintaining a healthy body. Scientific studies have proven that regular workouts help reduce the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis. Regular exercise also decreases depression and improves the physical and mental consequences of aging.

For adults, the guidelines recommend any where from two and one half hours a week of moderate intensity aerobic physical activity, or one hour and 15 minutes of vigorous physical activity. It also recommended that adults should incorporate some type of strength training into their workouts.

Training in the martial arts offers adults who would like to meet these federal guidelines a complete package. A typical martial arts class includes plenty of aerobic activity. Martial art warm-up routines may include a variety of calisthenics, light jogging around the classroom and jumping jacks. The class then turns to learning and practicing kicks, blocks and punches in repetition, which is a great way to get the heart pumping.

A martial arts class is also full of opportunities to build up your strength. Classes often include push-ups, sit-ups and light weight lifting. Bag work, sparring and self-defense practice with a partner helps develop both strength and cardiovascular health and can also be a lot of fun.

Another health benefit to martial arts training is stress relief. Taking your aggressions out on a kicking pad or punching bag helps you release those emotions. Over time, stress can affect one’s health and cause gastrointestinal problems, acne, weight loss/gain, headaches, insomnia and addictions. Many martial art instructors incorporate some type of meditation into their classes to help students center the mind and relax. This means fewer trips to the doctor’s office!

As a martial artist, you will not only meet the federal guidelines for physical activity, but you also learn how to defend yourself. All it takes is a few martial arts classes a week. What you get at the end of the day is everything that the federal government has recommended to keep adults healthy as well as learning techniques that could one day save your life. Do you get these results from working out at the local fitness center?

Calasanz Martial Arts and Fitness

507 Westport Ave.Norwalk,CT06851

1-800-414-9544

www.westportboxing.com

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on June 28, 2011 at 2:09 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: balanced, Calasanz System, conditioning, Exercise, Fitness, Martial Arts, Self Defense, Training, unique and personal

Fighting for Your Life! – By Calasanz

Get into a good martial arts school that teaches you how to survive! Don’t spend years learning useless forms or how to use weapons that were popular in ancient societies. Who carries around a staff or sword in the real world? Find a school with a curriculum that emphasizes overall fitness, self-defense and survival!

Most martial artists will tell you that your chances of surviving abduction once an attacker gets you into his car are slim to none. Their advice is to fight for your life because statistics show that the consequences are grim. On Wednesday, July 28, 2004, Larissa del Mar Fiallo, Miss Dominican Republic, was assaulted by two men who tried to kidnap her in the parking lot of a shopping mall.

What is interesting us about this story reported by CNN.com (July 29, 2004) is that Ms. Fiallo was able to escape her attackers because of her judo training. She explained how she fought back when the two men tried to get her into their car and how she knocked over the larger one three times. Her attackers eventually left the scene. While Ms. Fiallo suffered deep cuts and bruises to various parts of her body, she survived the attack and was released from the hospital several days later.

Most people are concerned with their safety in an increasingly uncertain world. They want to be prepared to defend themselves and their loved ones. Ms. Fiallo’s years of judo training paid off. Are you ready to fight for your life?

Calasanz Martial Arts and Fitness

507 Westport Ave.Norwalk,CT06851

1-800-414-9544

www.westportboxing.com

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on June 24, 2011 at 10:53 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: balanced, Calasanz System, counter attack, Dominican Republic, fighting, Martial Arts, Self Defense, Training, Women

Making Fitness Part of Your Life: By Calasanz

Pick up a newspaper or turn on the local news on any given day and you are liable to hear a report on how Americans are getting fatter. Government statistics tell us that approximately 60 percent of Americans-127 million people- are overweight. Many women who enroll in my school tell me that one of their primary goals is to lose weight. Unfortunately, some expect instant results. They become discouraged and inpatient if they don’t see immediate weight loss. Some even drop out altogether.

In my 20 plus years of training men, women and children of all shapes and sizes, I have learned that diets just don’t work. If they did, we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic. The diet industry continually makes promises that they can’t deliver and is fleecing the public at the tune of $40 billion dollars a year. The diet industry doesn’t want to tell you the truth. And why should they with the kind of money they’re taking out of people’s misery?

The truth is that weight loss is difficult for many people to achieve. Weight loss is a personal struggle, complicated by an individual’s upbringing, eating habits, metabolism, genetics and psychology. Yo-yo dieting and subjecting the body to strange eating regimes is much more detrimental to one’s physical and mental health than maintaining a steady weight.

I’m not here to sell you the same bill of goods as the diet industry. What I will do is encourage you to develop a healthy lifestyle and feel better about yourself. When you train, come with the attitude that you want to move, breathe and stretch. What is important is that you focus on wellness.

If you want to lose weight, it will take patience, exercise, sensible diet changes and sacrifice. There is no way around it. Focus on fitness…moving, breathing, stretching, feeling strong and enjoying the martial arts.

Calasanz Martial Arts and Fitness

507 Westport Ave.Norwalk,CT06851

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on May 30, 2011 at 1:08 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: balanced, Calasanz System, conditioning, Disipline, Exercise, Fitness, Martial Arts, Training, weight loss

Are You Teaching Martial Arts or Self-Esteem? By Calasanz

In order to attract children, many martial art schools advertise that martial arts training helps develop self-esteem. This promise is directed to parents in hopes of convincing them that there is more to martial arts than just learning how to fight. While this is true, I believe that it has been taken to extremes. I don’t intend to criticize my colleagues. This is merely an observation that I have made after dealing with the countless students who have come from other schools.

An injustice is done to students when the instructor offers too much praise at the expense of critiquing technique and demanding higher standards. Students, both adults and children, like hearing nice words. From a business perspective, it’s all about making the customer happy. When customers are happy, they keep coming back. From a martial art perspective, however, it is deceiving. This deception leads to the instructor avoiding corrections so that his student’s ego will not be bruised or offended. For example, one student who had earned a black belt at another school told me that the instructor praised him even when he was hit or knocked down by a lower ranked student. He would tell him that he “did great!” Over time, the student believes what the teacher is telling him.

In reality, it is the instructor’s responsibility to admonish the black belt who should know better. If he doesn’t, then he shouldn’t be wearing the belt. It’s dishonest to promote a student just to boost his self-esteem. This practice is widespread especially when it comes to training children. Some teachers will tell parents that monthly testing is great for their kids’ self-esteem. In all honesty, the only benefit is to the school’s cash register.

Traditional martial arts instructors were hard on their students because they wanted them to learn. In circles that still hold on to this tradition, the tougher the teacher is on you, the more he likes you and wants you to succeed. They show their concern by demanding more from you.

A realistic approach to teaching is particularly important when a student has made it known that he is enrolling because he wants to learn how to protect himself. For the student who wants to study martial arts as an alternative to other fitness programs, I say let them have fun. There is room in martial arts for all types. But if the student wants self-defense or a parent wants to help a child who is being bullied, this is a different story. What good will kind words do them when their personal safety is in danger?

Calasanz Martial Arts and Fitness

507 Westport Ave.Norwalk,CT06851

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on May 30, 2011 at 12:25 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: Martial Arts, Fitness, Exercise, balanced, fighting, Training, Disipline, Self Defense, Calasanz System, unique and personal, self esteem

Training the Beginner: A Lifetime of Lessons – Calasanz Extended Biography

Continued from: “Teaching the Calasanz System – Part Three: A Lifetime of Lessons – Calasanz Extended Biography”

I tell my beginning students to stop focusing on how they look and concentrate on how they feel. Do they have more energy? So they have more confidence? This is what is important. If you stick with something long enough, you will eventually see the physical results. But within a few months, you start to feel more secure in that you’ve learned something about defending yourself.

Our first job with beginners is to work on their coordination. New students sometimes come to this school with misconceptions about martial arts training and their own abilities. For example, I have had many new students who have only worked out on machines. Some of them have a hard time making this transition, especially when they have to rely on their bodies to do the work. I had one woman who enrolled in the school after having spent several years working with machines. She told me that she wanted to take the traditional approach to studying the martial arts. It took me many months to work on her coordination. She was studying for her green belt and had to break a board. She was nervous about this so I arranged for a black belt instructor to help her get ready for the break. Her training required that her instructor to swing at her, she would evade it and then strike the pad with her shin. The next day she came into my office and complained that she had a tiny bruise on her shin. She was very angry and I was even more upset that we were having this conversation. A tiny bruise is inconsequential to what she had learned. I told her that a tiny bruise is nothing in comparison to what she learned here at the school. I reminded her of all I went through just to teach her the basics. She was now coordinated and able to train on her own without equipment. She didn’t want to hear it. She left in the middle of class and didn’t return.

We’ve had many students who have trained here because they couldn’t train anywhere else. We had the patience to work with them and help them develop skills that they never thought they would have. Once they learn how to control their bodies, they go off to other martial arts schools or take up dancing, yoga or some other type of physical activity. Now we have trained them to adapt to any physical activity. We get a lot of students who end up coming back because of the amount of attention we pay to their training. When they return, they find they have forgotten what they worked so hard to attain. Some of them don’t understand that it is the skill of the instructor and their commitment that can help them maintain a healthy body for the rest of their lives.

To be continued…

Calasanz Martial Arts and Fitness

507 Westport Ave. Norwalk, CT 06851

Published in:

on March 30, 2011 at 1:07 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: balanced, Beginners, Calasanz System, coordination, counter attack, Disipline, Exercise, Fitness, Flexibility, unique and personal

Teaching the Calasanz System – Part Two: A Lifetime of Lessons – Calasanz Extended Biography

Continued from: “Teaching the Calasanz System – Part one: A Lifetime of Lessons – Calasanz Extended Biography”

Regardless of my students’ goals, I always like to give them some techniques they could use on the streets. My private training in Wing Chun was the reason why I have incorporated this philosophy into my system. I was not happy with the fact that some of my classmates had spent close to ten years training and had no street survival skills. Many Wing Chun students spent all this time throwing punches without a purpose or sense of how they would use it in real life. For instance, our Wing Chun classes emphasize bringing your elbow to the center, which helps your punch get very hard and learning how to get grounded. I was fortunate enough when I began my Goju Ryu training that my teachers promoted self-defense skills and I have passed these skills down to my students.

Schools that promote black belts too quickly or don’t teach self-defense often trouble me. What troubles me more is the aerobic kickboxing craze. Unfortunately, they give people a false sense of security in believing they’ll be able to defend themselves with a dance routine. Understand that organizations that certify personal trainers often offer short-term courses or clinics that will teach you how to teach kickboxing. This is an insult to all of us who have spent many years training in the martial arts and a scam on the public. In some cases, students who have taken the aerobic kickboxing classes have been injured because of inadequate teacher supervision. While I train students who only want to learn kickboxing for recreation, I always incorporate some realistic movements so they can walk away with something useful. No one leaves my school without at least some basic knowledge of street survival.

The Calasanz System is very simple. Simplicity combined with skill allows us to take the best a student has to offer and improve on it. An example is training women. Because my style of fighting was always unsuited for tournaments, I found that I had to send “messages” of my skill to those who challenged me because I was not a competitor. My favorite type of message was asking a female student to do kicking drills with an obnoxious male! While women’s upper body strength cannot compare to that of a man, women do have naturally strong legs. I take that ability in women and teach them how to capitalize on it. Some of the best messages given here at the school were by women who embarrassed arrogant men!

Teaching a diverse population requires a lot of patience and natural skill. You can train someone to be a teacher all you want. If they don’t have it inside of them, they will never be effective. In this business, you have to help not only the talented and coordinated, but also the uncoordinated, the slow learner and the student with a variety of challenges. It is also a challenge to teach those who are very intelligent. I had this one student who was very smart and had spent twelve years training in a well known martial arts school. I was training him in kickboxing and trying to teach him how to protect his head when fighting at close range. He told me “Calasanz, all I have to do is pick up my hands. This would cause his opponent to look up, and then I could kick him.” This guy with twelve years of experience just demonstrated the skill of a white belt. I recognized was why his instructor had a hard time with him. This guy thought he knew it all and didn’t need help or correction from anyone.

To be continued…

Calasanz Martial Arts and Fitness

507 Westport Ave. Norwalk, CT 06851