Sponseller's Black Belt Blog

The Dash

2006-08-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone; Hope you are all having a good day. I printed this story for handout as well, Winsave was down for awhile, it's back up now. But, here's a great little story a friend emailed to me, read & enjoy. At a recent funeral a man who was a friend of the deceased was asked to speak on behalf of his friend and to reflect on his life. The friend started out by mentioning the dates that would be on the tombstone; the date his life began and the date his life had ended. Then he asked everyone to think about the dash between those two dates. While the date someone is born is significant and of course the sad day when someone passes is why we are all here today, he said. But, what really mattered most was the dash between those two dates for it represented all the time on earth and only those that knew the deceased well really know what that little dash represented. Whats important is how we live our lives between the date we are born and the date we die. It matters not how much we have; cars, house, money, etc. What matters most is how we live, how we love and how we spend our dash. We never know how much time is left that can still be rearranged. If we could slow down enough to consider what's true and real and always try to understand how others feel and be less quick to anger & show appreciation more. We should try to treat others with more respect, smile more and remember this special dash might only last awhile. So, when our eulogy is read and our life is rehashed would we be proud of the things they say about how we lived, how we spend our DASH?

sparring, kickboxing classes & kids self-defense rules

2006-08-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog. I will publish regularly on this site & hope you enjoy checking it out. I am seeing a trend in the sparring attendance the past couple of months that is a pretty common one. People are taking a break from sparring. I see this happen an lot, people get excited about the cardio aspect of sparring & want to spar a lot for awhile and then it dwindles down. This is why I don't do a lot of sparring in classes. We have a lot of students that don't want to spar at all and that's fine. I have seen the kids attendance on Saturday's dwindle down this summer. Sparring a couple of times a month is fine, when you get too wrapped up into it you get burned out & get a lot of bruises and other potential injuries. I know most students over 30 don't like a lot of sparring. I have mixed feelings about sparring, it can be good in many ways for the right student, it can also hurt your confidence if you get hurt or if you allow yourself to get frustrated with your performance level. I hope you're all enjoying the kickboxing classes. I haven't seen a lot of regular attendance by many of the Taekwondo people which surprises me. I think a mixture of curriculum classes & the kickboxing classes are perfect. My friend in California opened my eyes to this type of class. He's 60 & we talked about our conditioning & our future health, etc. This class has been great for me because I work a full day regarding business management, promoting, marketing, cleaning, errands, etc, then I'm ont he floor for 5 hours a night teaching. This class has provided me with a great opportunity to shut my brain off & just train, exercise, stretch & condition. It's been very good for me. It's hard to work out with classes when you teach so these classes have been awesome. I talked to the kids today about 3 rules for self-defense; 1-avoid, 2-move away from & 3-block. It hink this is a simple, but very good rule to follow for kids. Avoid bullies, look out for potential trouble, be mindful of situations, people, etc, and work on avoiding them. The second aspect, move away from means that you can avoid eye contact, brush them off quickly & walk around, change directions, ignore them, etc. The 3rd is if you cannot avoid being close & someone grabs at you, punches at you or knocks your books out of your hands for example. Many times a good block is all it takes to send a strong message to someone that you can deflect aggression, and it may end things there. This also prevents you from striking someone when you may not need to. If you throw a combination of blocks at someone in school, this should buy you some time for a teacher to come to the situation, and it should keep you out of trouble for striking back & ending up in a fight. STriking too soon, & fighting could land you in as much trouble as the bully that started it. HAVE A GREAT DAY & I'LL TALK TO YOU ALL SOON. J. Sponseller

Welcome to Sponseller's Black Belt Blog!

2006-08-18T13:50:00.000-07:00

Welcome!

This is the blogsite for Sponseller's Black Belt Blog, the home of mat chats and other wonderful philosophy related to Sponseller's Taekwondo Academy.