I have been a fan of the martial arts since I was a little kid, watching badly dubbed wu xia exploitation movies on Saturday afternoons in New York.  I started training in Brooklyn when I was about 13 years old, then took a break during high school while I played football (badly, I might add), and then again during college.  In six years of college and graduate school I attained a first degree black belt in Seido Karate training under (now) Shihan Christopher Caile, founder of the well known site FightingArts.com.

After getting my black belt I injured my hip and found my asthma and allergies worsening, and basically stopped training for the following decade.  I did some weight training and some light cardio, and maybe a few Tae Bo tapes here and there, but I didn't set foot in a dojo for a full twelve years.

I recently found myself feeling physically better than I had in a long time, thanks to some new drugs and lots of working out, and decided to go back to my old style, although I now live in Maryland and train with Howard County Seido here in Maryland.

There are a lot of interesting things I've discovered about training after a layoff and training as an older person (I'm 35).  I intend to write about these things in this blog.  But there is one thing that has dramatically changed my training.

When I first trained, everything I learned came from the handful of people in my club - my teachers and sempai, and what they had learned.  Not to disparage anybody, but this was a pretty small community, and my teachers knew and taught me a huge amount, but not everything.  Now I have a resource that wasn't available to me before - the internet.

I've been able to go online and learn so much about training, stretching, cardio, and strength building, all for free, and all so quickly.  The amount of information I've been able to access is simply enormous, and has paid incredible dividends in my own training.

I'm writing this blog because I've found that many peope in my class have yet to mine the resources available online to facilitate their training.  As I discover new training protocols, new philosophical articles, or anything else that helps me as a martial artist, I'll describe it or link to it.

I'm not trying to sell myself as a great fighter (I'm not), a marvel of physical fitness (I'm really not), or a master teacher (I'm definitely not).  I'm just someone who is learning and improving and I wanted to share the process with anybody else who is interested.  I hope you enjoy it.