Martial Journal

Violence – My Perspective I’ve come to believe two things about violence: it is fluid in nature and it is morally neutral. I don’t think I’ll get much pushback about violence being fluid. After all, almost all of us train in dealing with any number of unpredictable scenarios. There’s a [Read More]

Taking A Look Back At 2018 Wow. What a year 2018 was for Martial Journal. It really is hard to believe that we are back in December already, but multiple calendar checks have verified it for me so I guess it must be true. As I take a look back at this [Read More]

Recently I encountered a variation of this question in a martial arts channel on Reddit. The person asking the question was a teenage instructor at a traditional martial arts (TMA) school. She had begun teaching several older students, some of whom were old enough to be her parents. To complicate [Read More]

By Jonathan Bluestein The modern era has seen a significant rise in the popularity of sports-oriented martial arts, and eventually Mixed Martial Arts. The philosophical roots of these martial arts are strongly linked with American Capitalism. That is to say, that there exists a belief in sports martial arts, whereby [Read More]

The Black Belt. Everybody in the world knows it means… or thinks they know what it means! They think a Black Belt means you’re tough—maybe even a killer. It means you’re skilled—maybe even a master. It means you’re wise—maybe even a white-bearded wizard who wields the power to turn villains [Read More]

The open letter I’d love to write, but would never send…   Dear Parent/Spectator, I spend a lot of my time looking at my feet. Part of it is as I am getting older I am working ever harder at making sure I can still see them as I stand [Read More]

The Reality Of Perception I consider myself a fan of British comedy. I adore Monty Python, and I’m also a big fan of Eddie Izzard. Find his HBO Special “Dressed to Kill” sometime; he has a way of talking about language that is quite similar to George Carlin. The example [Read More]

First Things First (WARNING: This article may contain mild spoilers for both seasons of Iron Fist, Luke Cage season two, and The Defenders.) I recently had the pleasure of recording two podcast episodes about Iron Fist. The first one I recorded on Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio with the host, Jeremy [Read More]

What Is The True Price Of Fanaticism? The following is an excerpt from my book, “The True Believers” which was recently re-released in a 2nd edition. It’s a story about the darker side of martial arts communities, and how great things became corrupted by codependency, fanaticism, and yes, money. Some [Read More]

This write-up is the second in the series offering survey-driven data to interested martial artists. Our last report was on enrollment, and you read the write-up right here on Martial Journal. Well, here. If you haven’t followed the previous articles, here’s the short version. We construct surveys for martial artists [Read More]

A common prejudice among educated humans in both academia AND the martial arts is a bias against people who are self-taught. The nerdy word for these self-taught people is “autodidacts.” While I agree with the opinion that, especially in highly technical areas of expertise, formal training is nearly always the [Read More]

Traditional Martial Arts – Filling in the Gaps I was listening to a martial arts podcast last week while I was on the treadmill and I heard a line that really struck a chord in me. The line was essentially a statement by a traditional martial artist that said he [Read More]

Appetite For Destruction (Of Boards) My boards are stacked. Spacers set tightly at the edge. I raise my hand to strike the stack. *thud* The dull, dead sound of a hand hitting the boards and not going through. The force runs through my hand and wrist, up my arm. Why [Read More]