The Hunter: Martial Arts Training Involution #224

Posted on September 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

If you like the kind of thing you find in these weekly T.I. you’d probably love one or both of my ebooks pictured on the left.  Click here to download them from Smashwords!

FYI, the September focus for Cabal Fang is Grappling (a.k.a. “the clinch” or stand-up wrestling) and the symbol is the Quill — so the T.I.s will revolve around those two pole stars for the course of the month.

And now on with the show…

The Hunter: Martial Arts T.I. #224

  • Warm-up thoroughly for at at least 8 minutes. Do 2-3 minutes each of (a) jumping rope (b) light calisthenics and (c) shadowboxing, forms, or light heavy bag work, or 8 minutes of MBF.
  • Grappling Conditioner #3.  Set a countdown timer for 10:00 mins and complete as many sets as you can before the timer beeps of 5 Bag Lifts (regular or Kansas-styled), 10 mounted strikes, and 5 Splay ‘n’ Punch.  Take as few 12-count breaks as you need in order to finish.  Then…
  • Complete this month’s constitutional.  Burpees w/ hop (25), Smearing Push-ups (25), Drop Duck-unders (25), Back-ups (50), Ab Punches (1 min — if training solo use a medicine ball), Get-ups (25), Prisoner Get-ups (25).  If you finish in under 15 minutes, go back and do an extra 5 of each.
  • Learn to tell direction by Orion.  Last month Orion returned to the night sky after his summer absence and is now visible for about an hour before dawn.  It’s one of the most visible and easily recognizable constellations in the sky and is perfect for this purpose.  If you can spot Orion, look at the belt of three bright stars.  If they are pointed parallel to the horizon, you’re looking east.  If they’re almost flat to the horizon, you’re looking west.  If they’re at about 45° you’re looking south.  See picture below (I learned this from Gooley’s  great book The Nature Instinct).     
  • Go soulsearching — in your journal.  Last month we practiced sacred reading, this month journaling.  Think of journaling as sacred writing.  No, you’re not writing the Bhagavad Gita or the Bible!  But you are writing down the things that are going on in your life, which then allows you to go back and self-analyze using the four ways of reading sacred books (literally, morally, allegorically and anagogically).  You have a story, and every story has at least four layers of meaning awaiting discovery.  This is what is meant by “finding oneself.”  Include your training activities — if it ain’t in the training journal it didn’t happen!


TWO MARTIAL ARTS DISTANCE LEARNING PROGRAMS AVAILABLE. 100% free and operated through my non-profit, Cabal Fang is a martial arts for personal development, self-defense and fitness. If Frontier Rough ‘n’ Tumble — the fighting arts, survival skills, lifeways and ethos of the colonial and indigenous peoples of North American during the frontier period (1607 – 1912) — is more to your liking, check out Bobcat Frontier Martial Arts, my for-profit martial art project. Click either photo to get started today!

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Cord and Rule: C.F. Martial Arts Ranks and Achievements

Posted on September 2, 2020 | Leave a comment
cord rule

My cord and rule.

In the martial art of Cabal Fang we keep track of our progress using two primary tools — journaling and the cord and rule program.  Click here to view a google doc describing how it works.  Picture of my cord and rule on the left.

Journaling makes you think about where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re heading.  The cord and rule program – inspired by ancient measuring devices that became synonymous with “rulership” and status — make sure that we “measure up.”

You might say that the journal is an internal/reflective measuring device and the cord and rule are an external/objective measuring device.  Together they help to insure that we “keep things straight.”  The words rules, ruler, and rulership all have the same root.  Think about that for a minute.  Then think about the symbolism of “the Golden Rule.”

If all of this sounds really interesting and fun, you might want to think about enrolling in the Cabal Fang Hermit Path Distance Learning Program.  We’re a non-profit, so it’s 100% free.

Here’s a video on this topic.

 

 

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Grandpa Lyne and Me Sharing a Love for Canes

Posted on August 31, 2020 | 3 comments

Those who know me are aware that I’m something of a cane fighter.  Coincidentally, my great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side, one “Captain” James E. Lyne, is somewhat famous for his hand-made canes.

James and his wife operated a general store with an apothecary and a Civil War relic shop.  He ran the relic stand and did the heavy lifting at the general store, while she ran the counter, operated the apothecary, and kept the books.

I don’t believe he was really a captain in the Confederate army though.  To hear my great-grandma tell it, he was so young they wouldn’t let him fight in the “War of Northern Aggression” as they called it.  She always said all they’d let him do was carry messages and blow a bugle.  Rumor has it he said whatever he needed to say to make his battlefield tours fun and entertaining.

Anyway, great-great-grandpa Lyne liked to carve and sell souvenir canes.  Here are some pics of his canes by way of canequest.com.

At some point he was also a caretaker of Seven Pines Battlefield.  Somewhere around here I have a newspaper article about it.  If more folks are interested, I’ll see if I can dig it up and scan it.

 

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Rope and Rag: Martial Arts Training Involution #223

Posted on August 29, 2020 | Leave a comment

Are you enjoying the new four-fold format?  Please comment and let me know!

Rope and Rag: Martial Arts T.I. #223

  • Warm-up thoroughly for at at least 8 minutes. Do 2-3 minutes each of (a) jumping rope (b) light calisthenics and (c) shadowboxing, forms, or light heavy bag work, or 8 minutes of MBF.
  • 8 mins of martial fitness.  You can do this one unarmed or, if you train with weapons, with a dull training weapon.  Set timer for 8 x 1:00.  Round 1: strike the air while doing Russian Squats.  Round 2: Low Crawl forward and backward up and down your training area making sure your profile is as low as possible.  Round 3: Get-ups.  Round 4: Strikes vs. heavy bag.  Repeat once more for 8 total rounds.  The first time you hit the heavy bag do so standing, the second time do so grounded.  Consider tying a rag to your heavy bag (s) to simulate hair.  See video below.
  • 150 max power kicks vs. heavy bag.  Go as fast and as hard as you can.  Record your time in your training journal and beat it next time.
  • Learn to tie a bowline knot.  The right knot at the right time can save your bacon.  If you need a cinch-proof loop in the end of a line, say you need loop to make a lasso or anchor a line to a post or branch, then you need bowline knot.  See photo set below.   Practice makes perfect.  Tie it and untie it 25 times until you have it down.
  • Sacred reading part 4.  As we’ve learned in previous weeks, the essence of sacred reading is to analyze the things you read in four different ways: literally, morally, allegorically and anagogically.  Consider that these ways of reading can be applied to all forms of input, not just to sacred literature.  Try reading a newspaper article or interpreting a friend’s story in these four ways.   Everything is a story, and every story has at least four layers of meaning awaiting discovery.
  • Journal.  As always, log everything you did and thought about in your training journal, even if it’s only a few lines.  If it ain’t in the training journal it didn’t happen!


TWO MARTIAL ARTS DISTANCE LEARNING PROGRAMS AVAILABLE. 100% free and operated through my non-profit, Cabal Fang is a martial arts for personal development, self-defense and fitness. If Frontier Rough ‘n’ Tumble — the fighting arts, survival skills, lifeways and ethos of the colonial and indigenous peoples of North American during the frontier period (1607 – 1912) — is more to your liking, check out Bobcat Frontier Martial Arts, my for-profit martial art project. Click either photo to get started today!

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SACRÉ CŒUR DIABOLIQUE a Poem

Posted on August 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

sacré Cœur diabolique

The power of my art is such
That I chain the world or set it free
Make me Queen or let me be
Anoint me Queen or from me flee
To make my art I must speak free
Whatever my inner heart doth see
I give it voice the choice is mine
To be whatever I must be

 

 

“Hey Mitch, what’s this poetry thing all about?” I want to collaborate with Blue Öyster Cult and I’m hoping the Öyster Boys will think this would make a good lyric.

Did you know I wrote a paranormal/mystery/romance book inspired by Blue Öyster Cult’s lyrical themes?  Click here to download it here for free!

The cover to my book “Chatters on the Tide” inspired by the music of Blue Öyster Cult

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I Know What We Did This Summer

Posted on August 25, 2020 | 1 comment
big run hike

Robert, me and Morgan at the Big Run overlook

My son and his family re-located to Japan.  It is profoundly sad to have them so far away from me.  But rather than be all weepy and mopey, I’m focusing on the positive.

For one thing, I’m really proud I have a son who’s smart enough to land a high-powered international job and courageous enough to take it.

Deadlift weights

My son lifting with the new Deadlift rig

For another, my son and I had an incredible couple of months.  Due to COVID-related visa snags, my daughter-in-law and two oldest grandsons were allowed in first.  They went over in June to get the boys in school on time.  My son wasn’t allowed in until earlier this week.  This gave us more one-on-one time than most thirty-something sons and almost-sixty-year-old dads can manage.

In no particular order, here’s a rundown of what we accomplished together followed by a photo collage.

  1. Trained martial arts together many times
  2. Hiked Cold and Pleasant Mountains with my daughter Morgan and crew
  3. Installed a new dishwasher
  4. Went shooting
  5. Vistited Patrick Henry’s Scotchtown
  6. Watched the entire Firefly TV series
  7. Sculpted the Petrænigma and wrote the secret codes and ciphers
  8. Built a Deadlift machine
  9. Lifted weights together — with his help and insight I broke my plateaus and set PRs in every lift!
  10. Hiked Big Run Gap with Morgan (it was hot Hell’s front porch and I nearly croaked)
  11. Cleaned out the spare bedroom and created my new office
  12. Built a shelf to hold my cargo boxes
  13. Played RPGS a half-dozen times — got Mo and Jack to play for the first time! — and planned improvements to the Spaz Zone vehicle maneuver rules too
  14. Replaced the backdoor threshold on the rental house
  15. Put the TV in my wife’s crafting area onto a swinging mount
Robert on the Deadlift machine
Robert working Squats with the yoke
Cargo boxes and shelf I made with Robert
My new office
Me, Mo and Robert on the way to Big Run
Big Run overlook
Big Run view
Deer by the road
Bust of Patrick Henry
Scotchtown dining table
Putting the Petrænigma in front of the Cabal Fang Temple
the Petrænigma — brass plate coming soon!
The banh mi (Thai sub) and shirimp chips I ate after we finished working for the day. Outstanding!
Laurel on Cold Mountain
Fire on Cold Mountain

And by the way, the subject of this post is a play on a movie title.  Did you get it?

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Martial Arts Training Involution #222 — NEW FORMAT!

Posted on August 22, 2020 | Leave a comment
phototropism

All about phototropism!

Starting with this week’s T.I. there will be a whole new format!  Each T.I. will include a foursome feast:

  • A fitness element — something to work your martial grit
  • A fighting element — something to work your martial skills
  • A faith element — a meditation, contemplation, prayer or sacred reading.  And finally the fourth element, which is all new…
  • A frontier element — a technique, skill, insight or tip relating to old-time lifeways, like nature observation and such.

Why?  To shake things up a little and promote my Frontier Rough ‘n’ Tumble  (“FRT”) program of course!

Sign up for the Bobcat FRT program  at Mitch’s General Store for just $19.99/month.  When you sign up you get a Bobcat Martial Arts hat and t-shirt ($29.98 value), a white bandanna and membership certificate ($9.99 value), a paperback copy of The Wildwood Workbook ($7.99 value) and your first training module ($9.99 value).  Each month you get a new module, book or other set of assignments and a 30-minute coaching call.  Just keep a training journal and send it in each month for evaluation and promotion.  You’ll be feeling fine as frog fur!

And now without further flourishing…

Phototropism: Martial Arts T.I. #222

  • Warm-up thoroughly for at at least 8 minutes. Do 2-3 minutes each of (a) jumping rope (b) light calisthenics and (c) shadowboxing, forms, or light heavy bag work, or 8 minutes of MBF.
  • Escape Plan. This one combines the fitness and fighting elements into a single delicious layered casserole of goodness.  See video below.  Set timer for fifteen intervals of 1 minute.  Run a minute, shadowbox for a minute, and do martial-relevant calisthenics for a minute.  Repeat four more times and your done.  Adjust running speed down to jogging or walking, and add rest breaks as needed, to suit your fitness level.  When you’re done, cool down by taking a walk and look at some trees.
  • Learn to find north using phototropism.  Plants naturally grow toward the light — even trees (see picture above).  Branches on the north side of a trees tend to be more vertical, those on the south more horizontal.  Go for a walk on a tree-lined street that runs east-west and look at the trees.  Ain’t that something?  Could save your life someday!
  • Sacred reading part 3.  This month’s symbol is the Book.  The essence of sacred reading is to analyze what you read in four different ways: literally, morally, allegorically and anagogically.  Last week you did some reading and some analyzing.  This week, memorize a meaningful snippet of sacred literature and recite it to yourself often during the week.  Memorizing sacred words gives you a special type of understanding — not so that you can impress your friends or hit people over the head with fancy words, but so that your command of the ideas can shape and hone they way you think.
  • Journal.  As always, log everything you did and thought about in your training journal, even if it’s only a few lines.  If it ain’t in the training journal it didn’t happen!


TWO MARTIAL ARTS DISTANCE LEARNING PROGRAMS AVAILABLE. 100% free and operated through my non-profit, Cabal Fang is a martial arts for personal development, self-defense and fitness. If Frontier Rough ‘n’ Tumble — the fighting arts, survival skills, lifeways and ethos of the colonial and indigenous peoples of North American during the frontier period (1607 – 1912) — is more to your liking, check out Bobcat Frontier Martial Arts, my for-profit martial art project. Click either photo to get started today!

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Plug and Play: Martial Arts T.I. #221

Posted on August 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

First a couple of plugs and then we can play.  And when we play, we’re going to plug in the moves of your choice.  Make sense?  No?  Just stick with me.

First plug is about SHIFT, the new-ish newsletter  I launched in April.  It isn’t exactly off to a scorching start.  If you signed up for it, please share your thoughts and opinions below so that I can make it better.  Thanks for your feedback!

Click here to visit Mitch’s General Store

Plug #2: Did you know that I have a quirky little online shop called Mitch’s General Store in which I sell all manner of unique fitness tools, martial arts modules, original artwork, books, and so forth?  Check it out.

 

And now on with the show, this is it.

Plug and Play: Martial Arts Training Involution #221

  • Warm-up thoroughly for at at least 8 minutes. Do 2-3 minutes each of (a) jumping rope (b) light calisthenics and (c) shadowboxing, forms, or light heavy bag work, or 8 minutes of MBF.
  • Wrestling Conditioner #2. This one’s should be a mainstay in your rotation.  Get out a floor bag, grappling dummy or silent partner and set a timer for 10 mins.  Strike 10 times from Top Saddle then drop and roll to Bottom Scissors.  Strike from bottom 10 times.  Hit your reversal of choice — Hip Heist (full or half), Kick Stand, DWL Sweep, etc. — and get back to Top Saddle.  Repeat until timer beeps.  Is this Greek to you?  Sounds like you need to start training — either IRL in Richmond (once COVID lifts) or via distance learning.  Links below.
  • Hike 1 mile with a heavy pack.  Heavy carries build real-deal strength.  Select a bag appropriate to your size, strength and fitness level and get walking (#30, #45 or #60).
  • Sacred reading part 2.  This month’s symbol is the Book.  The essence of sacred reading is to analyze what you read in four different ways: literally, morally, allegorically and anagogically.  This is called the Quadriga (see video below for more info).  Spend 15 minutes reading something of a spiritual, or at least philosophical, nature — the Holy Bible, the Tao Te Ching, the Meditations, whatever suits your fancy.  Apply at least two of the four types of reading to your selection and record your insights in your journal.

 


TWO MARTIAL ARTS DISTANCE LEARNING PROGRAMS AVAILABLE. 100% free and operated through my non-profit, Cabal Fang is a martial arts for personal development, self-defense and fitness. If Frontier Rough ‘n’ Tumble — the fighting arts, survival skills, lifeways and ethos of the colonial and indigenous peoples of North American during the frontier period (1607 – 1912) — is more to your liking, check out Bobcat Frontier Martial Arts, my for-profit martial art project. Click either photo to get started today!

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Dollar Short: Martial Arts T.I. #220

Posted on August 10, 2020 | Leave a comment

My apologies for the tardiness of the weekly T.I.  I got a little tied up, what with everything going on in these here parts, including but not limited to my adult son living with me for the last couple of months on account of his COVID-related visa struggles and blah blah blah (those of you who have my cell or email, reach out and I’ll share the boring details).

Anyway, without further ado, I present…

Dollar Short: Martial Arts Training Involution #220

  • Warm-up thoroughly for at at least 8 minutes. Do 2-3 minutes each of (a) jumping rope (b) light calisthenics and (c) shadowboxing, forms, or light heavy bag work, or 8 minutes of MBF.
  • Complete this month’s constitutional. Walking Push-ups (25), Wall Touches (100), Monkey Rolls (25), Crunch’n’Punch (25), Lunges (100), Jumping Jacks (100), Steam Engines (25).  Get it done in under 16:40 and you have us beat (so far).
  • Sacred reading.  This month’s symbol is the Book.  Spend 15 minutes reading something of a spiritual, or at least philosophical, nature — the Holy Bible, the Tao Te Ching, the Meditations, whatever suits your fancy.  Make sure you record in your journal any and all realizations and reflections come to you as you read.


TWO MARTIAL ARTS DISTANCE LEARNING PROGRAMS ARE AVAILABLE. 100% free and operated through my non-profit, Cabal Fang is a martial arts for personal development, self-defense and fitness. If Frontier Rough ‘n’ Tumble — the fighting arts, survival skills, lifeways and ethos of the colonial and indigenous peoples of North American during the frontier period (1607 – 1912) — is more to your liking, check out Bobcat Frontier Martial Arts, my for-profit martial art project. Click either photo to get started today!

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Slack nor Howl: Martial Arts T.I. #219

Posted on August 1, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Slacker” was a term for citizens who were uninvolved in the war effort during World War I, and a “calamity howler” was a fear-mongerer.  When the Spanish flu hit in 1918,

“the term slacker took on the added meaning of one who went out in public while ill, coughed and sneezed openly and in the presence of others, and generally disregarded the prudent recommendations of city authorities. The calamity howler became one who spread unfounded rumors of hundreds of influenza deaths in one day and vituperated health officials’ inability to minimize the spread of the contagion.”¹

Here are some of the things people did to keep society moving during the Spanish Flu epidemic when schools, churches, offices and civic centers were closed:

  • Kids were encouraged to do use their knitting, crocheting, sewing, wood-shop and arts and crafts skills to make new or repair damaged hats, gloves, and toys for the needy.
  • Churches teamed with Boy Scout Clubs to deliver stay-at-home Sunday school lessons to the homes of parishioners.
  • High School students were expected to be prepared for exams when they returned to school.  Teachers were available to assist struggling students by phone.
  • Outdoor schools, opened to fight tuberculosis, continued to operate throughout the early 20th century.  Kids didn’t just make do with outdoor schools, they excelled. Evidence suggests that students actually learn better outdoors than they do within.²

We are martial artists.  We should neither slack nor howl, but get our butts in gear.

Slack nor Howl: Martial Arts Training Involution #219

  • Warm-up thoroughly for at at least 8 minutes. Do 2-3 minutes each of (a) jumping rope (b) light calisthenics and (c) shadowboxing, forms, or light heavy bag work, or 8 minutes of MBF.
  • Crack yourself a sack.  Get a floor bag (a heavy bag with chains taped).  Make one if necessary.  Set timer for 10 mins.  Scissor lock the bag from the bottom and squeeze as hard as you can.  Straighten your trunk while you hit the top of his “head” with hammer fists.  When your legs gas, swap top/bottom foot position.  If you can’t make the whole 10 minutes, alternate Smearing Push-ups on the bag and Hatmaker’s Kansas Burpees until the timer beeps.
  • Get your crack out of the sack.  Run 1 mile as fast as you can.
  • Sack up and crack right back.  Whatever pressures are putting the squeeze on you —  social, work, health, financial, etc. — there is always something you can do.  Restriction breeds creativity, not freedom.  Get paper and pen and set a timer for three minutes.  Don’t analyze and think deeply — you’ll do that later — just throw out ideas!  Write down as many things as you can that might help your current situation.  When the timer beeps, calmly review and analyze the list.  Pick the three best ideas.  Put them on your to-do list, set completion dates on your calendar, and so on.  Taking action — any kind of action — is better than laying there and letting life, your opponent, or your assailant, crush the life out of you.

¹ How Did LA Cope With The Influenza Pandemic Of 1918?

² Schools Beat Earlier Plagues with Outdoor Classes.  We Should Too.


TWO MARTIAL ARTS DISTANCE LEARNING PROGRAMS ARE AVAILABLE. 100% free and operated through my non-profit, Cabal Fang is a martial arts for personal development, self-defense and fitness. If Frontier Rough ‘n’ Tumble — the fighting arts, survival skills, lifeways and ethos of the colonial and indigenous peoples of North American during the frontier period (1607 – 1912) — is more to your liking, check out Bobcat Frontier Martial Arts, my for-profit martial art project. Click either photo to get started today!

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