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You Need Reminders It happens to the best of us: we get caught up in the process of going to the dojo, putting on our uniforms, warming up, practicing techniques, etc. We get lost in the ritual of training and the time flies by. Unless we make a concerted effort, it... | Practice
I suggest you print these tips out or copy them into a small notebook you can keep in your gym bag. Making notes of your own observations will help tremendously. Just take a few seconds to remember each point before practice and a couple of minutes to write down your... | Practice
This week, I want you to remember to relax. It’s probably the most common advice in the world as it can pertain to anything we do in life. Of course, learning to relax can improve your relationships, your health, and your mood. But what we’re most... | Practice
Everyone knows that breathing is important in Taido, just as in… well, pretty much everything. Learning to use your breath is a big part of Taido’s taiki (“body energy”) idea. Every hokei includes techniques for learning to master the breath,... | Practice
Work on your balance. Everyone knows that balance is important, especially in sports. Most sports movements take place on one leg, or by transitioning the weight from one leg to another. This means shifting our balance. In Taido, the balance shifting is extremely... | Practice
By now, you should have incorporated regular logging of your training. You’ve probably noticed that you can move better when you’re relaxed and that you can relax easier when you breathe. If you’ve been doing the balance drills and dynamic swings in... | Practice
I hope you’re putting these tips to good use and beginning to see results in your training. This time, I want to give you a little advice on stretching that you can apply in every practice. As in the last tip on balance, I mentioned this one in my warm-up... | Practice
Some people have good posture. Others don’t. Students who already have excellent posture don’t need this tip. The rest of us need to get our acts together. Of all the difficult-to-break bad habits, poor posture may be the king. There are a lot of reasons... | Practice
We’ve all heard that practice makes perfect. In fact, this is totally untrue. We naturally improve at whatever we do often, even if that just means we become very good at sitting in front of the TV. We are always practicing, even when we don’t think we... | Practice
OK, so last time I asked you to be mindful of your foot and knee alignment and glossed over some of the reasons that this is important from a biomechanical perspective. Good stuff, and if you actually practiced it, you should be noticing better control of most of your... | Practice
The last tip dealt with posture, which I basically used to refer to spinal alignment. If you have improved your posture over the past couple of weeks, you know that using your body correctly can have a big impact on your Taido. This time, we’re going to work on... | Practice
I take Taido seriously for the most part, and you’ve probably noticed in these tips that I can be very intense when it comes to certain details. So far, I’ve given you a lot of detailed information on developing certain skills and attributes that will... | Practice
For this installment, I want to talk about geometry. Yay! Since the last couple of lessons involved alignment, it seemed like a good time to discuss how Taido uses line. It would be virtually impossible to train Taido for any length of time without hearing of the... | Practice
Taido is a set of principles about being and doing. That’s all it really could be after all. Just like any other physical discipline (sport, dance, sex cult), Taido includes instruction on why and how to use the body in response to various types of stimulus. In...