Today is my birthday (happy birthday to me!) and I decided to compete to celebrate!  I had the opportunity to compete in the Central Florida Sport Karate Challenge in Lake County, FL.  Only competed in one event, Traditional Forms, and placed 2nd.  I will say this, the gentleman who bested me today deserved it as [...]

It has been a few days since I updated here, but for good reason.  This past weekend I battled out several championship rounds of food poisoning.  Certainly a worthy opponent, this food poisoning, but in the end who’s still standing?!  You know this!
It definitely was not what I had on the agenda over the weekend [...]

…I salute you!!!
Well, here we are friends!  This is the Final Countdown (another shameless tribute to big music and big hair from the past :)  Tomorrow begins the world’s most prestigious Martial Arts tournament…the 2009 U.S. Open World Martial Arts Championships.  Martial Artists from all over the globe are converging on Orlando as I type (they have [...]

We did quite a bit of training today, but light in intensity.  I’ve had to wrap my ankle as it twisted yesterday twice…nothing major, and it wasn’t even during training when it twisted, but still need to take care of it as I do a lot of heavy pivoting on it.  Pinkie toe still jammed [...]

I took a rest day yesterday and stepped away from everything training-wise.  Thursdays are my normal rest days, and I forgot to take one again this week.  We just had so much momentum with some good training days, that Thursday just flew by and next thing you know…it’s Saturday night and I was wiped!
At the [...]

As you know, preparing for and competing at this level is no “one-man” show.  There is always a team of people working together to make things happen.  That’s simply the way things work in any situation.  A couple of days ago I introduced you to Chuck, who is on our team and assisting me in [...]

O.K., so today has been rough physically.  Main reason why is that I was up past 4:30a.m. this morning not being able to sleep.  I went to bed early enough to unwind, worked through my mental relaxation, and as I was dozing I suddenly, and really like a mental machine, began going through each step [...]

This week I had the privilege of interviewing a legend in the world of Martial Arts.  He’s a living legend…Mike McCoy, owner of the U.S. Open World Martial Arts Championship Tournament!  It’s not everyday you get to sit down with someone of this caliber and talk to them and learn from them.  My experience in [...]

It has been a long week, full of good training and good times with family and friends.  I was treated to a Father’s Day eve dinner tonight, so I gotta admit, I took it easy and took some time to relax and play with the family. (the pic is of Michael, me, and Nathaniel about [...]

I had a full, hard day of training today…and as I was wrapping up some self-defense training at a local park with the team, we met a very cool young man by the name of Patrick, and his family, who also trains in martial arts.  He jumped in and helped us with some super-cool karate moves and [...]