Bully

The Consequences Of Bullying

This movie gives parents and children a provocative look at the realities and the consequences of bullying.   Yet the real shame lies in what actually happens to children when they are bullied, and how it affects all aspects of their lives directly and indirectly into their adolescence and sometimes through adulthood.

The great thing about this movie was that it was intended to be viewed by school aged children and school administrators to help educate people on the realities of bullying.

Yet the movie has not been allowed to be viewed in most schools because of the nature it’s content.  I personally find that amusing and disturbing, that the administrators are shielding students from something that their students are exposed to on daily basis, irony and the reality of how the people in charge truly tackle problems with political correctness.

I highly suggest that you take a moment and look at the trailer, and if provoked enough go out to the theaters watch it.  Finally if you are a school administrator dare to be different and take it upon yourself to at least have your staff members watch this eye opening expose’.

Check Out The Site For More Information:
http://thebullyproject.com/indexflash.html#

There is no doubt your child has to face many steep challenges and worrisome obstacles in today’s day and age martial arts classes for children can help your child deal with growing pains.

As a parent, I’m sure you can recognize the issues your child has to face on a daily basis.

The Local Bully

Nothing feels worse for your child than being bullied, trust me I know from personal experience. Bullies amuse themselves in sick ways and thrive on harassing, demoralizing and physically abusing your child.

This can affect your child on a variety of levels:

• Destroying their self-esteem and self-confidence
• Affecting their ability to focus
• Affecting their grades and attendance
• Affecting their social skills
• Making them perpetually anxious or depressed
• Possibly getting physically assaulted and/or seriously hurt

After talking to parent after parent about the horror of bullying, the schools typically do nothing about bullies.  Actually parents have told me that their schools never address the issue directly or resolve it in a satisfactory manner.

The reality of bullying is that it has gotten a lot of media attention recently because there have been several severe beatings which have resulted from bullying.  Some bullies have even gone out of their way to post their destructive handiwork on Youtube, go figure?

This in turn has created a whole slew of bullying and anti-bullying experts injecting their psychobabble to media resources on how to hypothetically deal with bullying. The end result is that it is not an effective way of dealing with the problem because they tap dance around political correctness, viewing the bully as a “disordered victim,” and generally encourage a passive response that unjustly distances the bully from punishment and redirection.

Remember, bullies have been around since the dawn of time. I can go on and on about historical figures who have bullied whole countries and have created wars. Unfortunately there is a common sense approach to dealing with them called retaliation, that’s the reality of the matter.

There are non-violent responses to bullying: telling a teacher or principal, telling a parent, avoiding bullies, gathering in small groups of friends. When all else fails and no one is around to protect your child they can run or defend themselves.  It is my opinion from personal experience that the former will not work as well the latter.

School Administrators love to tap dance around the issue by attempting to have the child who is bullying your child have some form of mediation, which will in the end turn into the bully being subjected to teasing from his or her peers. This could actually backfire and give the bully more fuel for his or her fire. Psychoanalyzing your child’s tormentor and having a heart to heart is good in theory, yet reality is reality, seriously…

A Complete “Bully-Proof System of Self Defense”

Self Defense instruction is an extremely important part of our program. We want your children to be able to realistically defend themselves.

The self defense system that we teach has been proven to be effective, whether it is handling the local bully or saving people from serious physical harm.

We are here to teach children to walk away and avoid confrontation when at all possible and to seek guidance from parents, teachers and school administrators when at all possible.

Yet when no one is around to be able to protect your child, your child will be given the proper tools to handle himself or herself when faced with dangerous situations.

Tired of Being Bullied?

I am Woodys dad and I just wanted to tell you that he went to a christmas party last night and was confronted by a constant bully.

The boy called Woody something bad and then slapped him in the face.Well Woody for the first time gave him a straight blast to the face and went rite into his stance to continue.

The boy much larger then Woody fell back and screamed he punched me. Woody was moved to another part of the party by some kids and explained the situation. So all was fine.

I wanted to thank you for working with Woody and you and your staff keeping him positive. He told me later his training just took over.

Woody would have never done anything if it was not for Jeet Kune Do.We are calling it a Christmas miracle. Thanks again and Merry Christmas to you and yours. See you soon.

Real World Life Skills Combined
With Real World Self Defense

Children learn how to protect and handle themselves realistically and effectively when you are not around.

We teach your child a self defense system that is situated for the real world. It’s a complete system and is effective in all ranges of combat including kicking, punching, close quarters and grappling range.

Even though we specialize in all aspects of self defense, we instill the core value that self defense is to be used as a last resort. This is especially true when there are no parents, teachers or elders around to help diffuse the situation.

The goal of the program is to give your children the tools to protect themselves in any situation that may challenge them.  Perseverance, tenacity and the will to succeed are instilled in our students daily.

These are life skills that will help them whether it’s dealing with the local bully or having the will and tenacity to ace an upcoming test or project, or possessing the self-confidence to thrive in a totally new social group or activity.

The life skills that they will take with them will serve them in any situation where an unavoidable adjustment needs to be made.

Call Today To Schedule Your Child’s

Free

Private Lesson

(518) 371-5858

The Reality of Rape Exist

Knowing Your Enemy Is An Important Aspect Of Self Defense Training

Whether You Like What They Have to Say Or Not!

This post is not here to alarm you and if it does then that’s a good thing!  Fear is one of our strongest emotions it has inspired man’s survival through the centuries especially during the most adverse situations.  The goal of this clip is educate everyone about how a rapist:

• Picks his victims?
• What he looks for?
• Where he most commonly attacks women?
• Where he brings them to?
• What kind of  weapon he uses?
• How he psychologically terrorizes his victims?
• How he uses their psychology to render them helpless

This video is harsh, real and eye opening.  Remember that no one wants to think of this ever happening to them, by the same token no one ever thinks that they will be diagnosed with a life threatening illnesss such as breast cancer yet the reality of the matter is that we should take the necessary preventative steps to get our mammogram screenings annually at a certain age.  This helps ensure that we can be proactive in our approach to treating this disease, especially before it gets to its latter stages.

I am sharing this video clip with you, to give you insight on how a true criminal thinks. remember most importantly that situational awareness is you first form of defense and that  learning a reality based self defense system is secondary yet a necessary form of insurance just incase you weren’t paying attention which is something we are all guilty of.

Ronda Rousey “Team Hayastan” Beats Miesha Tate for Strikeforce Title. Rousey beat Tate via armbar submission at 4:27 of the first round in their women’s bantamweight title bout at Strikeforce in Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio.

Great Job By Team Hayastan!!!

Check Out Our Link To Our Grappling Program In Our About Us Section

The Jeet Kune Do Self Defense Training Center Is The Only Program In The Capital District That Offers Hayastan Grappling

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The Tournament Date will be May 26

Training Seminar will be May 27th 

More Info To Follow

Such As Time and Location

Visit

www.gokor.com

For More Information

Found this great old clip of Kickboxing Legend Benny The Jet….

Great Find, different perspective on Modern Karate meets old school MMA,

 
Dear Concerned Parent,
 
There is no doubt your child has to face many steep challenges and worrisome obstacles in today’s day and age.
 
Growing up and the growing pains associated with it can be hard to deal with.
 
As a parent, I’m sure you can recognize the issues your child has to face on a daily basis.
 
The Local Bully
 
Nothing feels worse for your child than being bullied, trust me I know from personal experience. Bullies amuse themselves in sick ways and thrive on harassing, demoralizing and physically abusing your child.  This can affect your child on a variety of levels:
 
• Destroying their self-esteem and self-confidence
 
• Affecting their ability to focus
 
• Affecting their grades and attendance
 
• Affecting their social skills
 
• Making them perpetually anxious or depressed
 
• Possibly getting physically assaulted and/or seriously hurt
 
 
After talking to parent after parent about the horror of bullying, the schools typically do nothing about bullies.  Actually parents have told me that their schools never address the issue directly or resolve it in a satisfactory manner.
 
The reality of bullying is that it has gotten a lot of media attention recently because there have been several severe beatings which have resulted from bullying.  Some bullies have even gone out of their way to post their destructive handiwork on Youtube, go figure?  
 
This in turn has created a whole slew of bullying and anti-bullying experts injecting their psychobabble to media resources on how to hypothetically deal with bullying. The end result is that it is not an effective way of dealing with the problem because they tap dance around political correctness, viewing the bully as a “disordered victim,” and generally encourage a passive response that unjustly distances the bully from punishment and redirection.
 
Remember, bullies have been around since the dawn of time. I can go on and on about historical figures who have bullied whole countries and have created wars. Unfortunately there is a common sense approach to dealing with them called retaliation, that’s the reality of the matter.  
 
There are non-violent responses to bullying: telling a teacher or principal, telling a parent, avoiding bullies, gathering in small groups of friends. When all else fails and no one is around to protect your child they can run or defend themselves. It is my opinion from personal experience that the former will not work as well the latter.  
 
School Administrators love to tap dance around the issue by attempting to have the child who is bullying your child have some form of mediation, which will in the end turn into the bully being subjected to teasing from his or her peers. This could actually backfire and give the bully more fuel for his or her fire. Psychoanalyzing your child’s tormentor and having a heart to heart is good in theory, yet reality is reality, seriously…

A Complete “Bully-Proof System of Self Defense”
 
Self Defense instruction is an extremely important part of our program. We want your children to be able to realistically defend themselves.  The self defense system that we teach has been proven to be effective, whether it is handling the local bully or saving people from serious physical harm.  We are here to teach children to walk away and avoid confrontation when at all possible and to seek guidance from parents, teachers and school administrators when at all possible. Yet when no one is around to be able to protect your child, your child will be given the proper tools to handle himself or herself when faced with dangerous situations.

Bully-Proof Your Child Today
CALL TODAY SCHEDULE A FREE INTRODUCTORY LESSON TODAY!

(518) 371-5858

If you are going to step inside a cage or a ring, which would you rather have: Advice based on tradition and opinion or, advice based on evidence? Let’s be honest as we answer this question, you are offering yourself up for definite bodily harm as everybody gets hit in a fight, good fighters just don’t get hit as much.

Do you want hearsay? Strategies and tactics uttered out of habit that have, perhaps, not had much practical thought placed behind them? Do you want to train or drill ideas that might be more related to a different environment than the one you are entering? This is your body you are putting on the line, wouldn’t it be wise to arm yourself with the best information available?

I’m going to gamble that your answer will have you err on the side of evidence over what might simply be dogma. If at any point in your training you confront a bit of evidence (evidence, not advice) that butts against what you have assumed to be correct all along, well, that’s terrific. You’ve learned something. Discard the under-performing tool and get to work incorporating the new tool. This sort of going with the evidence stance has nothing to do with personal likes or, dislikes, allegiances or alliances, respect or disrespect, it’s just a simple acknowledgment of truth.

All advice, from all sources is usually offered with good intentions as, for the most part, people are well-meaning but, if at any point the advice fails the evidentiary test then it’s gotta go bye-bye. Allow this quote from the late Michael Crichton to fuel this perspective: “Intentions are meaningless, all that matters are results.”

I bring up the need for non-dogmatic thinking because the sport of MMA has had a curious history. Unlike most other sports, some branches of MMA have come to us from avenues that allowed their sport/art to become cloaked in a bit of crypto-mysticism or, strict codes of unwavering lineage and/or tradition stopping just short of oaths of fealty reminiscent of medieval vassals and lords. These two stances stifle honest questioning and experimentation, the hallmarks of progress.

Other sports, operate in a train-drill-practice-scrimmage-play the game- learn what you did right or wrong-incorporate those results into your training- and then play again continuum. These sports are using the objective empirical method whether it is called that or not and, we all think that they are wise to do so. It’s not just the scientific method it’s good common sense.

We’ve all seen old films of early football or basketball games or, Olympic competition and we marvel at what was and respect these pioneers for their accomplishments. But, you can’t help but notice that games and individual events have evolved since the “old days.” Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe swam beautifully in the Olympics of yore but, how do you think they would stack up against the Michael Phelps of today (baked or not)? How would a 1930s era college football team fare against a team of today? These are subjective questions, I know, and we can quibble and offer, “Well, if they had access to the same training opportunities and the same resources as we have today” argument…but, that proves the point, doesn’t it?

They didn’t have these resources and or opportunities available to them. They were providing the data to foster the astonishing improvements and performances we see today. To paraphrase Isaac Newton, these athletes of yore are the giants upon whose shoulders we stand today.

No other sport would hamstring itself with blind obeisance to an outmoded tactic, strategy, or tool. When Jim Corbett began dissecting the Great John L. Sullivan with the “new technology” of the jab, traditionalists didn’t suppress the jab and insist that we go back to the old way, boxers the world over took a look at early film of Gentleman Jim and eagerly adopted the jab as their own.

In the 1968 Summer Olympics, Dick Fosbury took the Gold in the high jump with what has come to be known as the Fosbury Flop. Prior to Fosbury’s innovation, athletes had cleared the bar with techniques such as the straddle, the Western Roll, the Eastern Cut-Off, and the scissors-jump. Previous high-jumpers were landing either on sand or low matting and therefore had to be a bit more careful in their landing. The advent of deeper foam landing surfaces allowed for a bit more carefree technique on the landing and Fosbury’s flop evolved to exploit this change. Fosbury’s Flop wasn’t discounted or ignored; it was quickly adopted and incorporated by other athletes.

And that’s the way it should be, whether in sports, business, or, everyday life. Always evolving, always adapting, always paying attention. Always willing to slough off what pays low dividends in favor of that which pays high yields.

Let us clarify that high yield goal even further. We want high yields based on safe investments. We don’t want our training to echo the current economy where projected high yields were based on risky investment tools that ended up paying, well we know where that got us. We want our training to be safe vehicles that still pay high returns. We don’t want to be the gamblers with “a system” visiting the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas hoping for a bit of Lady Luck based on something we caught in the film 21.

No, we want to be the Bellagio itself. We want house odds at all times. You want to be the Bellagio that only offers game that it knows that it will win more often than not. As soon as the casino customers start pulling more than we do on an individual game then that game either has to be tweaked or it’s gotta go. Casinos stay solvent over the long haul; gamblers don’t. Be the Bellagio.

In our goal to be the Bellagio we’ve got to know what wins fights. We’ve got to know what gambits get us into trouble. We’ve got to quantify offense and defense in a qualitative manner that allows us to build hierarchies of utility. We’ve got to separate the wheat from the chaff and recognize that what might be “Black Jack” in one version of combat sports might just be “bust” in MMA. To shed this casino metaphor and move to the concrete let’s look to the Omaplata submission.

The Omaplata (coil lock or leg-wrap DWL to the wrestlers among us) is a high-percentage submission in jiu-jitsu competition and submission wrestling tournaments. How does it stack up in MMA? Well, out of the 640 fights examined for this study, the Omaplata was attempted 48 times and finished 0 times.

0 out of 48 attempts in 640 bouts. These bouts were comprised of the cream of the crop of competitors: fantastic jiu-jitsu players, excellent wrestlers, formidable kick-boxers. Athletes that, in all probability, had a better than average working knowledge of how to set up and utilize this submission that serves so well in other arenas and yet in MMA, we can now look at the numbers and see it as the under-performing investment tool that it is–at least in this arena and as it is being set-up as of this writing.

This is the sort of information that informs this primer. Just as we have statisticians in other sports informing strategy, tactics, and draft picks it is time we turn this empirical tool upon this sport that we love so dearly and allow the results to spur us forward. To allow us to evolve and with that evolution we can start seeing innovation ala Dick Fosbury and Jim Corbett that will give us new strategies and tactics to factor into our equations. Until then, we need to make sure that the equations we are working with now are accurate.

SUBTRACT MULTI-TASKING

We human beings are mighty fortunate; we have countless tools to allow us to get more done faster. It seems each month the iPhone adds more apps to make life easier, computers improve performance exponentially and other fruits of technology seem to keep apace. These technological increases are often due to improvements in the dual arenas of memory and parallel processing. These tools are a boon to human productivity because they are capable of performing many tasks, often at the same time, that we mortals either cannot do on our own or, don’t have the time to do on our own. See, we can build these awesome machines (not me, personally—I’m utterly useless here) that perform so well, all the while being painfully aware that we cannot perform these tasks as well ourselves.

The bad news (well, bad if you don’t accept the limits of your own brain) is that we do not have an expandable memory interface or efficient parallel processing. What I mean by this is that our memory, as seemingly prodigious as it is, only works when we “work with it.” We can’t simply observe and/or practice a good jab, kick, choke, joint lock once or twice and expect it to be there when we call it up as you might the directions to a restaurant with an iPhone app. Nope, our memory is of the kind that needs maintenance and reinforcement to make information actually stick; it is for this reason that we should pick and choose our input wisely as human memory improvement is so time-consuming that we should opt for efficient, effective memories as opposed to storing any old thing that comes down the pike. We can adapt the computer axiom of Garbage In Garbage Out (GIGO) for our own studies; we can flip that to the positive side of GIGO—Genius In Genius Out and seek the best information we can manage to fill the hard drive in our heads.

Most of us are all too familiar with the shortcomings of our own memories but we often forget to include the shortcomings of our task processing systems. These days the cheapest of laptops can truly multi-task, they can surf the web with more than a few viewing windows open at the same time, steam music from iTunes, and keep track of your word document all at the same time (as is occurring at the writing of this sentence). This awesome multi-tasking capability is the result of parallel processing—a system that allows multiple tasks to be performed simultaneously. We humans just aren’t built that way—we are not parallel processors but serial processors who trick ourselves into thinking we are multi-tasking when we aren’t.

Take this example, you are driving and have your favorite tune blaring and you come to a busy intersection where you must wait for your opportune time to cross traffic. Researchers have found that when humans are placed in this very same situation that, more often than not, they turn the music down until they have traversed the intersection. Why should this be? You don’t need your eyes to hear music? You don’t need your ears to scan the traffic for an opportune moment to cross? Experiments with many different scenarios of human multi-tasking seem to find the same results—humans who are “multi-tasking” are actually making rapid sifts in attention back and forth between the two tasks (or God forbid, more than two tasks) they are currently engaged in—and doing neither one particularly well. (Just think to anytime someone is surfing the Net, texting, or reading while also claiming to be paying attention to your conversation—they ain’t).

Computers and other parallel processors don’t do this performance shifting, as I key in this sentence my music doesn’t stop streaming, the web browser doesn’t stall—all continues operating beautifully whereas I, the lowly serial-processing human, must pay attention to this sentence before I can really “hear” what tune is playing (one of Green Day’s newest).

Now, let’s take this serial vs. parallel processing to the fight game. The most efficient manifestation of physical movement will be rapid serial processing as opposed to simultaneous action. What I mean by this is that we should trim all offensive/defensive tools down to their bare minimum and insure that we perform one task and then the next and then the next and so on. We should dump simultaneous strikes (eye gouges accompanied by a foot stomp, et cetera) not just because they are mechanically unsound but because study after study shows us that human beings do best with single tasks (eggs in one basket) as opposed to Jack of All Trades and Master of None approaches. Keep in mind this advice is for simultaneous movement and not parallel strategies—you can box to set up your takedown (and this is an excellent strategy, by the way) but boxing while hitting your takedown is inadvisable.
Wise combat arts coaches, whether aware of the human serial processing research or not, have long echoed this 1-2-3 approach. Boxing coaches urge their fighters to “stick and move” (jab and then move) not “stick while moving.” Knowledgeable grappling coaches exhort their students to “wrestle for position before submission” as opposed to fishing for the submission before position has been attained. In the area of street self-defense Tony Blauer sagely pronounced in regard to fighting multiple attackers: “You don’t fight five guys at the same time you fight five guys one at a time.”

In light of the best research into how the human mind works we would be wise to skip texting while driving, forgo reading our Kindles while talking with our families, skip throwing a jab while hitting a double-leg at the same time because as our serial processing minds make erratic shifts in attention to mimic parallel processing we wind up doing none of these tasks well. In the fight, as in life, let’s stick with the basics, stick and move, one thing at a time, stick and move. Our performances will be better for it.

Mark Hatmaker

www.extremeselfprotection.com

I had the unique opportunity to train with martial arts legend Joe Lewis at seminar hosted by Walt Lysak on January 14th . I have had the unique experience of training with many great martial artist in my life time. The majority of them were students of the late Bruce Lee, funny thing Mr. Lewis was no exception.

Yet there was one major fundamental difference between him and Bruce’s other students that I’ve trained with.

Mr. Lewis was trained privately by Bruce. He was also one of the only competive martial artist that trained with Bruce, and actually ring tested what Bruce Lee had taught him. Proving that Jeet Kune Do was effective in the ring.

I have had the privelege of attending many seminars and have to admit that my students and I were particularly excited about attending this one.

Just to give you a recent background about Mr. Lewis, Mr. Lewis had a stage 4 tumor removed from his brain in mid July of 2011, the prognosis was that he had 6-8 months to live after his surgery. I felt blessed an privileged to get to train with him this January. Mr Lewis is someone that I had heard about through others many times before, yet never had an interest in learning from, until earlier last year.

Me and Mr. Lewis were going back and forth on facebook post which pertained to boxing and striking. As we bantered back and forth with one another I notice that we had similarities in our approach and interest towards striking. Finally I obtained Mr. Lewis’s phone number and was able to get chat  with Mr. Lewis over the phone in person, as per our conversation I was able to obtain a tremendous amount of information from him concerning his training with Bruce Lee and various boxing trainers throughout his life time.  After having that conversion with him I knew that I definitely wanted to get the opportunity to train with him.  I asked Mr. Lewis if he would be interested in teaching a seminar to my students in October of 2011, he agreed, I was more than excited to get an opportunity to train with this living legend.

Then I heard via through the grapevine that Mr. Lewis was diagnosed with Brain Cancer, actually he had a stage 4 Tumor.

I was crushed to hear this, and disappointed that I missed my chance to train with the Legend. I waited several months before I heard about how Mr. Lewis was doing post surgery, words were encouraging from my various sources.

Then earlier this year I found out that Walter Lysak was hosting Joe Lewis for a seminar in Springfield, Mass on January 14^th 2012.

Man was I excited, I have heard and read that Mr. Lewis was making a dramatic recovery, now came my chance to train with one of the few competitive fighters that Bruce Lee ever taught privately, his insights were going something to experience.

To Be Continued….

Part II What Joe Lewis Taught Me…

The JKD Straight Punch is consider the bread and butter punch.  The delivery and position of the arm aids in non telegraphic (deceptive) delivery, it gives you better body protection against any shot delivered to the rib cage, more power in different hand ranges of combat and gives you a better defense against certain grappling movements.  The JKD straight punch is not considered an end all, yet it is the preferred method because it presents these tactical advantages.  As a side note we use a variety of punches and hand techniques in this art this video is just highlighting one.