I Challenge You!!

Easy challenge though, if you have a yard, or a balcony, or a porch, build a square meter garden. Not enough room for a square meter garden, do a square foot or a hanging plant.

Pick whatever food you want to grow. Then grow it. Repeat again next year, and so on and so on.

http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/gem/Training%20Program%20in%20EnglishWeb.pdf

Resolution?

Have you chosen a resolution for the new year? I'd like to suggest awareness.

Wake up and look around you. Think about self defense, not necessarily from punches and kicks. Look at the threats around you and decide how you are going to protect yourself.

If you were walking down a street and you noticed that the further you went the more you were in the wrong neighborhood, a neighborhood that would most likely shorten your life, wouldn't you turn around and get out of there?

So take a look at the neighborhood you are walking into now. Do you smoke? Do you have lousy food habits like I did two years ago? Are you sitting on the couch day after day without getting up and being active?

If you are doing those things you are walking into a dangerous neighborhood, you are shortening your time on Earth. You are taking years away from your life, years that your kids could have you and they won't. Trust me, even when they grow up, they will still want you to hang around for a few more years.

Is it worth it to keep walking down that road? Is it worth your life to hang onto those habits? Is a little more nicotine worth the grief of your loved ones? Is taking the easy path, not getting up and getting fit, worth the price?

Wake up, get up, get aware, move towards health and sustainability, change a few habits. You don't have to go insane with it, you don't have to go off the grid and have a sheep farm. Drive a little less, walk a little more, eat a little healthier. Make small changes.

You can't run a race without taking lots of small steps.

www.franklinkungfu.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/East-West-Kung-Fu/85287569502

Have You Gotten Complacent?

Are you feeling stagnant? Have you hit a plateau? Getting bored with where you are?

Are you doing the same old things and getting the same results?

That's how I was feeling about two years ago. I was doing some pretty good stuff and getting some pretty good results, but I didn't really feel like I was making much progress, in kung fu, in fitness, in life. . .

So I did something about it. Heavily influenced by my wife's F.I.R.S.T. program and Tom Callos' Ultimate Black Belt Test, I put together my own program. I called it the Ten Tigers Program.

It's fairly ambitious, 35,000 pushups and crunches in a year is just the tip of the iceberg. I did the program two years running, and it starts again in March. A few brave folks decided to join me on the journey and change their lives too. For my students, it also included one on one training sessions. It is hard, it is fun, it is life changing.

And it's coming again!

If you want to get up and do something about all that complacency, you have some choices, commit to your own training plan, (feel free to look at the Ten Tigers program as inspiration), commit to doing all the stuff I've already published in Ten Tigers, or come join the fun with us in 2011.

If you are one of my kung fu students, it's easy, come ask me. If you are a martial arts student with someone else, ask them to use my blueprint, if they won't ask them if you can do my program. If you aren't a martial artist at all, you can still do it, it's customizable.

So get off the couch, come join the fun, and change your life.

www.franklinkungfu.com

www.facebook.com/Sifu.Steven

Fail or Win?

They called it a fail, I call it a win.

see more funny videos

Alone at home, he spotted a masked intruder fought him off enough to escape and escaped. Good self defense.

Earth Day Fair

Don't forget to go check out the Earth Day Fair in Franklin this Saturday.

Don't forget about our Project Based Leadership Training this Saturday.

Don't forget Ten Tigers workout Saturday.

Don't forget I'm not answering my phone on Sunday.

www.franklinkungfu.com

eastwestkungfu.ning.com

Finding Time Versus Making Time.

I caught myself thinking, "I just can't find time to. . .". So I started thinking about that phrase again. "Find time", what exactly had I done to try to find time? It turned out in this instance I had done nothing to try to find time. I was just passively hoping to find time. That's kind of like hoping to find a check in the mailbox, or hoping that without practice I'll just get good at my kung fu (or whatever other endeavor I'm taking on).

So I started thinking about actively finding time, maybe that would work. So I start looking at my daily schedule and realize that there were lots of spot where I might have time to do something. I hadn't found it because I hadn't been looking for it. So hooray I found time.

I still didn't follow through with what I had found time for. Something else always got in the way.

To meet a new commitment/goal/whatever, I have to MAKE time. I have to set aside time in my day that is dedicated to whatever thing I couldn't FIND time for. Sometimes the schedule can be very exact (12:30 to 1:30 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday). Sometimes I need it to be more flexible (as soon as my daughter goes down for her nap at least three days per week).

The Ten Tigers Program last year really taught me how to do this.