Adapting jiu-jitsu for kids

With no jiu-jitsu classes for kids around, I wonder how the schools who do have kids’ classes adapt the art for kids. I assume they also follow judo conventions of no joint locks below a certain age. A friend of mine has a daughter who trained bjj for a while. He seemed to recall some [...]

Offtopic: Stephen Curry on being in The Zone

“I don’t really hear much,” he said, describing the feeling of being in that zone. “No matter how many people are in the stands, it’s the same exact feeling as if I was in the gym by myself. I just get into a groove that’s just my own, you know? That’s what it’s like.”
from Curry [...]

Cung Le new Strikeforce champion

What an exciting 3rd round. Video seems to be taken down:

Another one likely taken down soon:

Not sure why Shamrock didn’t shoot - to prove a point or due to bad knees? Check out Cung Le’s back hook kick to spinning back fist and the leg sweep.
After the fight Shamrock said “Cung Le broke my right [...]

Press 擠 or squeeze

擠 - the character ji is usually translated as press or squeeze, which I’ve always found a bit confusing.
Ji also means crowded, or to crowd, or to squeeze. It could have a connotation like the attendants pushing or squeezing or crowding people onto the Tokyo subway. It could also mean something like “it’s crowded in [...]

Learn to be kind via meditation

More from neuroscience (the stories just seem to be everywhere, in this case from Scientific American):
New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison finds that we can acquire a greater capacity for compassion through meditation training, in much the same way as athletes or musicians train to improve their skill.
Again we find a modern scientific explanation [...]

Runner’s high finally validated by science after 30 years

This NY Time article talks about a study that finally gives some validation of the runner’s high hypothesis. An excerpt:
THE runner’s high: Every athlete has heard of it, most seem to believe in it and many say they have experienced it. But for years scientists have reserved judgment because no rigorous test confirmed its existence.
…
The [...]

Yang Chengfu selected comments

A few comments from Yang Chengfu’s book Essence and Applications of Taijiquan (Taijiquan Tiyong Quanshu), translated by Louis Swaim.
On the wuji standing posture (update: some mention on EF that he may not be talking about wuji…hmm…):
People all too easily neglect this posture, and really do not know the method of its practice or its application. [...]

Where does the yi live?

All the brain reading makes me wonder - does the yi live in the left or right hemisphere of the brain?
It seems to be in both.

What is “energy”?

People like to blather on and on about what is “qi” and so on. They never really come to a consensus. The right-brained stuff tells me - who cares. Having some left-brained explanation is really irrelevant. Nevertheless, the left-brained stuff says, in more modern terms, what the heck is “energy” anyway? I’m pretty sure I [...]

Right brain perceives the “energy” - neuroscientist describes her own stroke

This video is quite extraordinary. An expert in neuroscience and advocate for people with mental illness, Jill Bolte Taylor, suffered her own stroke and, amazingly, had enough clarity during it to realize she was having a stroke and she should take advantage of a rare opportunity to try to study the brain from the inside [...]