Latin Quotes from the Oldskool

Nihil aliud scit necessitas quam vincere - Necesssity knows nothing else but victory. (Syrus)

Nemo timendo ad summum pervenit locum - No man by fearing reaches the top. (Syrus)

Mens agitat molem - The mind moves the matter. (Vergil)

Maior risus, acrior ensis: quadragesima octava regula quaesitus - The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife: the 48th rule of acquisition

Facilius per partes in cognitionem totius adducimur - We are more easily led part by part to an understanding of the whole. (Seneca)

Facilius est multa facere quam diu - It is easier to do many things than to do one for a long time. (Quintilianus)

Fas est et ab hoste doceri - It’s proper to learn even from an enemy. (Ovid)

Homines, dum docent, discunt - Men learn while they teach. (Seneca)

Gladiator in arena consilium capit - The gladiator is formulating his plan in the arena (i.e., too late) (Seneca)

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto - I am human, therefore nothing human is strange to me

Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas - Although the power is lacking, the will is commendable. (Ovid)

Veni, vidi, vici - I came, I saw, I conquered. (Julius Caesar)

Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - I see the better way and approve it, but I follow the worse way

Vis consili expers mole ruit sua - Brute force bereft of wisdom falls to ruin by its own weight. (Discretion is the better part of valor) (Horace)

Vitiis nemo sine nascitur - No-one is born without faults. (Horace)

Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem - Remember when life’s path is steep to keep your mind even. (Horace)

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero - Seize the day, leave as little as possible to tomorrow.(Horace)

Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.(Horace)

Tai Chi reduces tension headaches apparently!

As part of the study, the researchers conducted a 15-week Tai Chi
program and found that participating patients improved on a
quality-of-life based measurement called SF-36 and also on a test
called HIT-6TM designed to capture the effect of headaches. A 15 week
intervention of Tai Chi practice was effective in reducing headaches.
The patients also reported improvement in energy levels, emotional well
being, social functioning and mental health.

More Here

Qigong Improves Concentration in School Children

Claudia Witt, MD, and associates from the Institute for Social
Epidemiology, Epidemiology and Health Economics at the University of
Berlin, did a study on 140 students to determine the result of a
six-month program of Xianggong (”fragrant qigong”), movement
instruction for the students’ health and behaviour.

More Here

Evolutionary Fitness

I’m looking into this at the moment, sounds pretty interesting

http://www.whywenothithard.com/2008/02/review-evolutionary-fitness.html

More science than an undergrad course, but simple and easy-to-apply
principles make this a superb all-around diet/fitness system. May not
be ideal for high-level athletes though.

Advice: Beginning BJJ / MMA / Martial arts in general

Lately it seems like I’ve been seeing threads pop up left and right from new grapplers who get upset at how quickly they get tapped, or who wonder how they can get better faster, or who simply think they suck. With respect, frankly its starting to get tiresome.

From the Colonel over at Sherdog

Another Meditation Article

In 1985, the meditation team made a video of monks drying cold, wet sheets with body heat. They also documented monks spending a winter night on a rocky ledge 15,000 feet high in the Himalayas. The sleep-out took place in February on the night of the winter full moon when temperatures reached zero degrees F. Wearing only woolen or cotton shawls, the monks promptly fell asleep on the rocky ledge, They did not huddle together and the video shows no evidence of shivering. They slept until dawn then walked back to their monastery.
Read it here

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Furious Angels - Boondock Video

Furious Angels - Boondock

The finest MMA highlight video I have ever seen.
Blood, emotion, glory and crushing defeats; it touched me.
So much more than the uneducated and ignorant view that ‘it’s just two men fighting’

It may be, and perhaps should be, difficult to accept the notion that a prizefighter’s work merits the same kind of attention we lavish on an artist’s, but once we begin attending to and describing what he does in the ring, it becomes increasingly difficult to refuse the expenditure. The fighter creates a style in a world of risk and opportunity. His disciplined body assumes the essential postures of the mind: aggressive and defensive, elusively graceful with its shifts of direction, or struggling with all its stylistic resources against a resistant but, until the very end, alterable reality. A great fighter redefines the possible.

Meditation Books UK

A bit of an experiment in making a website of books that are relevant to this blog.
If you fancy a look at some meditation and chi kung books then have a peek at Meditation Books UK

Extreme situation - Drastic solutions

Ok, maybe the title is a bit, well, extreme; but I haven’t been able to train any kind of martial art for the last 3 months.

As I said earlier, I’ve moved to a different country and had the decision for my new location taken out of my hands.
There simply isn’t anywhere to train here until I get my ass some wheels. So that’s the situation, what about the solution?

Well, it turns out there is somewhere to train. A junior high school nearby actually has a Judo club that trains 4 times a week.

Is this what I want to train in? not really (I am definitely not slagging off Judo here, but I was just getting into MMA in a serious way before I left and would have liked to continue that momentum).. Do I think that training with kids will be that beneficial… not really… Am I in for a surprise regarding those last two statements… quite possibly!!

I’ve go to admit that I’ve been pretty despondent about this lack of places to train. Very despondent to be honest. I’m not naive enough to think that adverts are going to just through themselves at me and say train here! But, when you’ve spent pretty much every day looking for places to train and ways to get there, and have it come to shit… well, that’s pretty demoralising. But, There’s a problem: don’t whine about it, just carry on looking for a solution, even a stop-gap solution and then just sort it out! So here I am, training in Judo at a school! Time to throw the white belt and Gi on and get beaten up by little kids again! Isn’t it strange how things turn out!!

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Paralysis By Analysis and Casual Analysis Paralysis

Paralysis By Analysis and Casual Analysis Paralysis are two related concepts that I feel I need to take a firm hold of at the moment.

Paralysis By Analysis is a state where you get so overwhelmed by the amount of options available to you and the sheer amount of things to do contained by those options (the decision tree) that you just stumble around and don’t actually start anything!

Casual Analysis Paralysis occurs when you are researching a topic and get so wrapped up in the sub topics (especially the minutiae) to the point where the goal is no longer in sight and get lost; then you start stumbling around again trying to get back on track.

I really think that these are major problems in Qi Gong / Chi Kung and Martial Arts. These days there is a shed load of books and DVDs available and it’s only natural to try to sift through them to try to find the good, solid information. (and there’s a colossal amount of complete and utter bollocks out there it has to be said). This is where Casual Analysis Paralysis hits you; you get so involved in researching the qigong forms, differences between this and that movement, the instructor/master’s history, the student’s personalities and achievements etc. that you basically fuck yourself and end up under a pile of books / web pages.
After this stage, when you settle on a style/master/etc you then begin to learn about all the training methods and end points of the style This is when Paralysis By Analysis bites you: you become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of exercises, meditations, visualisations, mantras etc that are contained in the style/teachings and the belief that you need to do them all now or in some as yet unknown order, that you freeze and don’t practice / start practising until some vague point in the future when you think you might have this whole mess sorted in you head and have this magical roadmap to the final goal….

This is not all bad. Obviously researching is good and so is learning about the style you choose. If you didn’t… well… If you don’t know what you want, you end up with what someone else decides to give you… Nosce te Ipsum
But, floundering around is all too easy to do.

I think this affects us all. You cannot solve it by being closed minded and ignoring every other style/method just because it’s different to yours (see what happened when stand up fighters ignored the ground game back in the day). But you cannot solve it by being some like kind of butterfly and throwing yourself around to everything just because it catches your eye.
For me at least, I have tried to face this by having a set of criteria that I keep in mind when I’m researching other methods / systems. These criteria are pretty unbending (is it practical, is it effective, will it add to my skill set enough to justify the expense in gaining it etc). Also I have a set of goals or outcomes that I require anything I study / train in to fulfil. One caveat though; even these criteria and goals must be subject to evolution.

These are just my thoughts though. To be honest, a lot of people just put the blinders on and they seem to do ok!

Everyone knows the saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none” however, the full phrase is “Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better than master of one.”

Regardless though, all this pontificating about training will come to bugger all if you don’t actually train.

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