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Greenville Academy of Martial Arts, 4400 moulton Street suite i, Greenville, TX (2026)

08/29/2026

What is a McDojo?

Seriously. People throw this phrase around all the time, but it always tends to mean something different.

Sometimes they mean it has preditory moneymaking practices, like contracts and mandatory testing. Like McDonalds! 😀

Sometimes they mean they have unsafe training methods that are likely to get people hurt. Like McDonalds! 😀

Sometimes they mean a totally fake martial art with an unqualified, untrained instructor. Like McDonalds! 😀

Sometimes they mean it's cheap, low quality and low effort training. Show up, pay your dues and get your belt. Okay, this one is actually like McDonalds.

The problem is, everyone tends to decide what "McDojo" is whenever they see it. And "it" tends to just be "things i dont personally do," "things I don't get," or "business," just business. Different people monetize the art different ways and everyone has a problem with something.

So lets break down the term and, just for fun, give it an actual definition.

What is McDonalds known for?
-cheap
-mediocre quality
-consistent across locations
-won't make you sick
-everywhere
-recognizable trademark

What's the martial arts analogue to this?
-cheap
-mediocre quality
consistent throughout schools of teh same style/organization
-won't get you injured by practicing it
-popular
-well known name.

The thing about this is, if we go off of this definition, it's not that bad of a burn. It's basically saying "this is a good daycare" or "this is a fun experience for a few years." With the caveats that what you see is what you get. If more martial arts were standardized like this, we'd have an easier time choosing styles.

We'd have Whatajitsu, kung-fil-a, and Five Guys Gouge Out Their Eyes at the top, Then Boxing King and McDojo at the bottom.

But thats not what we have. For better or worse, we have 3 or 4 well known brands--BJJ, ATA taekwondo and Shotokan karate-- that are fairly standard across the board and the rest are mom and pop shops. And mom and pop shops are great...when they're great.

Sometimes they have roaches in the back and wobbly tables in the front, but the best fried chicken you've ever had. Sometimes it's a bunch of mediocre garbage, but you can't argue with the price. And sometimes you find a truly special hidden gem.

One time, my wife and I went to a Restaurant called Chicken 'n Fish in Eureka springs Arkansas. It had red vynal seats and a classic diner aesthetic--and the best sushi i've had in my life. The previous owner's daughter married an award winning sushi chef and the menu underwent changes from the typical diner fair. I think they changed their name in 2020, but that e perience stuck with me.

You run into dojo's like that. Nothing special in the mats or the signs or the name, but something truly spectacular about the training.

That's what I encountered when I started training with my sensei, and later the Machimura Ya Ti Kobujutsu organization under Master Lindsey--now renamed Machimura Inakadi kobujutsu kyokai under Sensei Marlon Laws--and that's the kind of dojo I try to be: The best mom and pop shop I can be.

How do you define McDojo? What do you think of my definition? What's the Whataburger of martial arts? Let me Know in the Comments below.

08/28/2026

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, but tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”

-Sun Tzu

There's a lot more to be said about targets and tools than we have this month–and more than we can cover in one seminar. But this journey of dipping our toes in the waters of the topic has been a rewarding one. If this is the first article you're reading, go back and follow along on a month's worth of articles discussing striking targets on your opponent’s body and developing and training the striking tools on your own.

This month has been heavily focused on techniques and training methods, but today I'm going to break down some strategies that implement the techniques we've been discussing.

Fight to the Rear Corner

The rear corner refers to the point just behind the opponent's shoulder from which you can control his arm and strike his back where he can't defend himself. This is a prime target in positioning and with quick action on the part of whoever takes it, could spell victory. To fight to this place you could utilize

A kick to the side of the front knee to take the balance and open the way for you to go.

A strike and push over or under the elbow to shove them and further open the way to the back

A strike to the hairline or top of the spine with the heel of your hand or forearm once you're there.

Divide and conquer

Here I don’t mean splitting up multiple opponents and taking them one by one, but splitting your opponent’s focus between high and low to make each subsequent hit more likely to land. This was used on me by an MMA fighter and Wrestling Coach Scott VanHuss a few years back while the gym Aftermath MMA was open. After a short sequence of punches and knees, I was on the ground. He'd moved my focus up and down so much I didn't have a chance to respond to the techniques coming in. A few techniques to this end:

Strikes to the eye. Whether they land or not they'll illicit a reaction

Kicks to the groin. Again, they don't have to land to get someone to respond and if they do land, even better.

Strikes to the nose. This one's pretty standard, but a bloody nose is obnoxious in a fight, even if it's not a fight ender. And it can sometimes open up another target

The neck. If it lands hard, the fight's over, if it lands soft you create a gag response and an opening and if it doesn't land, it definitely gets their attention.

Kicks to right before the hip or right above their knee. Either of these targets takes their balance and should bring their head forwards to open up one of the aforementioned targets.

Element of Surprise

I don't mean a surprise attack in this case, but using surprise to create an opening to attack. In yesterday's article we discussed the use of strategies taught in kata. One from pinan shodan embodies this strategy. We can shout or Kia to startled our opponent, kick then between the legs on the way in and when they double over from the groin kick–or shoot their hips back to avoid it–we stab to the throat. These are all techniques we've talked about, but used to concert with

A loud noise

Throwing something at them (hat, spit wad, pocket sand etc)

A motion like we're about to hit them and after they react, actually hit them. That second part is important. One thing we emphasize in our organization is, if someone tries to make you flinch, maul them. Otherwise they know what you do when you're startled and they have a plan for next time.

That's enough to get on with, but I feel like we've only scratched the surface. Maybe I'll take these articles and expand them into a book one day and give the topic the focus it deserves, but until then, we'll have a new theme for next week's discussions and tomorrow is the Targets and Tools Seminar–see y'all around.

08/27/2026

It goes by many names and grows from many cultures–sometimes independently and sometimes as a part of long standing traditions. Poomssae, Hyungs, Forms, jurus and, yes, kata. Kata and its analogues do a few things that improve the training of striking targets on our opponent and using the tools on our body.

For starters, kata allows us to strike at full force to certain targets without risk of injury to ourselves or a training partner and without the need of equipment. This is the great utility of kata. We can train it anywhere without any equipment or training partners and continue to improve. And, since we measure off of our own body when determining the location of targets–and since we take that with us–we’ll always be able to work on the location of those targets measuring off of ourselves.

Kusanku Mei has a segment where you strike over your arm towards the face before abandoning the technique and stabbing to the throat. This sequence teaches the “high low” principle as well as throwing feints with it, but also ingrains two targets, the eyes and the throat. it also subtly teaches another target and that’s the sensitive areas surrounding the elbow because while one hand is attacking the opponent’s face, the other is protectng the bottom or top of the elbow depending on if you’re attacking over or under the other arm.

There’s another thing the segment teaches and that’s to put power behind the second technique without by twisting your hips into it without overcommitting to the first. This would be compromised with a training partner because safety would necessitate not adding power to the second technique either. This is just one one second sequence from one kata.

Kata are full of such lessons if you submit yourself to its tutilage. The spear hand in Pinan Shodan teaches a different target–namely the solar plexus depending on your interpretation of the movements surrounding it–and a different strategy: startling your opponent to create an opening. Every kata has countless lessons to teach anyone willing to learn.

Furthermore, Kata improves our awareness of our own bodies and as a result our awareness of other peoples’. I remember asking my prior marine, then security guard and range safety officer step dad about using cover and room clearing. As he explained the methods of slowly ‘slicing the pie’ and inching around doors to enter rooms, he chided me on my foot and leg being exposed. He alluded to the fact that my traditional martial arts training should have made me more aware of my body to the point where i knew where my leg was in relation to the door without looking.

He was right.

Another time, i was sitting at lunch with an internal kung fu instructor and he commented to me that I “Have good touch.”

I told him i was married.

Joking aside, what he explained was that i had good sensitivity to my training partner’s movements during sticking hands training. He asked how i would have developed that without more extensive sticking hands training and the only thing i could think of–and with further reflection, i stick by–is that my kata training from matsumura seito–particilarly slow and soft training, bonus points when it was with my eyes closed–developed my awareness of my own body to the point where I was more aware of my opponents’.

This includes not only while making contact with them in sticking hands training, but in striking too. Since all humans have roughly the same shape and proportions, becoming aware of your own body naturally makes you more aware of other peoples’. You just need to adjust for size–which is ingrained from the combination of partner training and kata training and becomes natural and instinctual after such training.

What’s more, kata gives us the opportunity to develop some of our tools while training. Obviously, when we kick or punch we work those muscles involved. But we also have a shance to strengthen our figners by flexing them and “trying to touch the ceiling” after each knife hand. There was a time when Marlon emphasized the open hand move at the end of pinan nidan as a chance to exercise your thumbs for the same purpose as you would your fingers. And there are some moves in kata–the entirety of Sanchin/Sanzan for instance–that is purely to develop your tools without isometric exercises or tendon stretching.

There’s a lot of talk about the utility of kata in martial arts training and a lot of that talk comes from people that don’t understand it. Either those who slavishly do it out of a duty to their art and teachers or those who iconoclastically discard it like some people discard other longstanding traditions. But like G K Chesterton said:

“...a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. … And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.”

Kata is like that. And two of the Golden beams from its oil lamp, is the development of striking targets and developing tools.

Wow, a whole month coming to an end. Just one more article on the subject and then the seminar. Stick around for the conclusion of our chats.

08/26/2026

For a while in the early stages of my matsumura seito training, whenever I'd go to a seminar, Marlon would take me aside before it got started and say “don't hurt nobody.”

I guess I'd developed a reputation.

The problem was, I was taking a mindset and training methodology I'd developed from training other styles and brought them in to a style where throat, eyes, ears, temple and spine were all prime targets.

A few precautions make training dangerous targets safe (besides going slow as discussed yesterday).

Alternate targets. We can practice eye strikes beside the head, throat strikes to the chest and groin strikes to the thigh. These adjustments make it viable to train at a faster pace without significantly injuring your training partner.

Alternate tools. Fingers to the eyes and foreknuckles to the throat can all be replaced with a fist. Significantly safer than other tool, a fist will still sting. But small chance of blinding or suffocating your target.

The third safety method isn't a safety method at all, it's the default and what we think we'll do to begin with: stop just short of your target. The problem is, you have to either train slower, defeating the purpose of using these methods, or develop enough self control to stop short at a moderate pace, which again, everyone thinks they have until they're wiping eye-boogers off their index finger.

The problem with training on safe, regardless of the method you choose, is that what you train you ingrain. So hitting beside the head or with a closed fist or stopping short becomes muscle memory.

The solution is that fighting drills are not the only aspect of your training and solo training either with a target or in the air is necessary to overlap with the partner training and let you practice the techniques that would otherwise be too dangerous to do at full tilt. This is one of the things kata is for and is the topic of tomorrow's article.

Hope to see you then and for the Targets and Tools Seminar this weekend.

08/26/2026

Okinawan conditioning drill

08/25/2026

The young men with full kit and nightvision kicking in doors and dragging terrorist leaders out of their compounds and the old men doing tai chi in the park have something in common.

Slow training.

The oft repeated mantra with its origin in special forces training is “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” This paradoxical phrase relates to training slowly and not rushing, perfecting motions and gradually escalating the speed as long as mastery of the movements remains.

My teacher said it a different way: Train slow learn fast; train fast learn slow. His point was, our brains don’t know if we’re going fast or slow, only the route we’re taking. Every time we do something the same way twice, we wear the path we take down smoother. These paths are more properly called neural pathways, they’re the connections in our brains that electrical signals take through the neurons to accomplish tasks. Around the channels of neurons there’s a substance called myelin that makes signals travel faster and more efficiently down the pathway. The more you do the same task, the more myelin, the faster and more efficiently we do things.

Slow, smooth; smooth, fast.

We normally call this muscle memory. When we build up muscle memory, there’s one thing we must avoid if we are to improve: Variantions. The more variations on how we do something, the less myelin builds up around each different pathway and the less sure we can be that we’ll fall along the right path. This issue is created–among other things–by training too fast. When we train fast, we blaze past all those little details we’re meant to be perfecting and we do things a dozen different sloppy ways and rarely the right way. But doing things slowly affords us the time to instill precision in our motions.

Therefore for more difficult or detail oriented techniques, slow training becomes the best way to achieve mastery, not just the fastest. I remember at by instructor’s prompting, I spent a week doing pinan shodan–the first kata in our curriculumn–over and over again, painfully slowly and with my eyes closed. At the end of the week I felt a dramatic improvement when I sparred with one of his other students who’d consistently given me a run for my money in the past. But more to this point, that week i would train in 10 repetition bursts. By the third repetition, I started getting frustrated with all the errors i found. By the sixth i was feeling depressed. by the 9th i was ready to quit karate and by the 10th i was ready to quit everything and find a hole to hide in. I found more mistakes, more gaps in my ability, more issues with my balance, or the trajectory of a punch or the angle of my foot.

Slow training felt worse, but was way better for me–and fast training is the opposite. Slow training is medicine, fast training is candy. And candy has its place–but not as the bulk of our diet. Fast training is the desert at the end of the day: we get the meat and potatoes polished off first before we allow ourselves the treat.

To become proficient at precision skills, it takes many many precise repetitions at a speed slow enough to catch errors along the way. Every error myelinates a new neural pathway, creates more bad muscle memory. And here’s the scary part: neural pathways don’t disappear. We don’t erase them with correct training, we just beat a new path and hope we wear it in deep enough so when push comes to shove, we fall into the right pathway. We can abandon a pathway, and like a path in a garden becoming overgrown and obscured, it will fade with time, but wouldn’t it just be easier to get it right the first time?

Slow training facilitates that. Fast training prevents it.

And fast training can be dangerous. If we’re training skills that require higher degrees of precaution such as with joint locks or striking vital areas (the topic of this month’s discussions) then training quickly multiplies the chances of losing an eye or spending months in recovery from a joint injury.

For these reasons, when we set out to develop our targeting we ought to do so through slow partner training. Slow training makes it efficient, accurate and safe.

This the last week of targeting articles, so stick around for the last few. And this weekend the Targets and Tools seminar will cap off our discussions with applications.

08/25/2026

Okinawan Finger strength exercize #

08/24/2026

The hungry orc leered at the bound hobbits. “What about their legs? They don’t need them, do they?”
Why yes, yes they do. And if you were one of the fighting uruk-hai, you would know that.

Like last weeks discussion on feet as a tool of combat, the legs aren’t one tool, they’re several. The shin is a devastating bladed weapon; the calf a lever with which to toss the target to the ground and the knee the tip of a spear a thick as a weaver’s beam.

Bas Ruten has a series of videos that really stuck with me on kicking with the shin. The long and short of it is, roll your leg over so you hit with the blade of your shin and not the side. Hitting with the side of your shin can result in a broken leg, hitting with the blade of your shin can deal massive damage to your opponent. There are videos of both circulating the internet. One video features Strong man Eddy Hall getting kicking by a powerful roundhouse kick to his massive thigh, leaving the ground briefly before falling back to it sideways. The kickboxer that hit him pointed to a sweat silhouette on the matt and said “you left your soul here.”

As for breaking the shin, there are tons of videos of kickboxers breaking their shins it fights and in training and usually, though with some exceptions, it’s the result of not turning their hips over to hit with the blade of the shine. It also bears mentioning that legs are incredibly powerful, and you should not always hit at full capacity and what’s more, you should condition what you intend to hit with (more on that next week).

The knee can be used to attack upwards, forwards or from the side—or if you’re my 4 year old, from directly above, right after I wake up. Like the elbow, the knee has a tremendous among of torque because it’s closer to your core. Also like the elbow, it’s a hard joint when struck with. But bear in mind, you have to attack perpendicular to your target. That is, drive forwards for the gut or upwards for the groin. Also like the elbow, they’re a great tool for smaller, weaker opponents and, of course, bear in mind that they are a very close ranged tool and trying to move in with them like you’re from the movie Ong Bak will likely be disastrous—or maybe you’ll score a flying knee, but you roll the dice either way.

This small arsenal caps off our discussion on tools and kicks off—pun intended—our discussion on train them. Stay tuned all this week for articles on training methods to avoid injury using tools in and out of the dojo, while training to “be as dangerous as you can in the safest manner possible.” –Marlon Laws.

08/24/2026

Okinawan Grip strength exercise

08/22/2026

Someone from our style got into a kicking match with a more modern “sport” focused practitioner. Now, this man was probably many times more athletic and flexible than our style’s practitioner. But, he was a recent blackbelt and a lot of times that piece of black fabric has an adverse effect on the size of one’s head.

Well it wasn’t much of a match, the sport stylist threw a kick and our guy drove his toe into his opponent’s inner thigh. The other practitioner got angry. He had two problems with the technique. 1) you can’t kick the inner thigh and 2) you can’t kick with the toe.

Needless to say, our stylist walked away humbled and with a wider point of view.

Well, no, but neither did the other guy.

The foot isn’t just one tool, it’s heel, the inner and outer edge, the ball of the foot, the flat of the foot and yes, even the toe.

Toes are for soft targets like the groin and inner thigh. I have a friend that texted me after training to inform me he had bruise somewhere very unpleasant. I’ll leave it at that, but suffice it to say, it was an effective strike. Toe strikes to the outer thigh, however, are not advised, the meaty part of the leg absorbs more damage than the toe deals before breaker, better use your shin of side of the foot to hit these zones.

I usually use the back of the heel as little spike I drop on my opponent’s calf or knee on my way by, stepping to their side or back. I don’t use it as much as other styled do with spinning hook kicks and the like because I try to avoid spinning. But, I use the bottom of the heal for a “side thrust kick,” Our styles longest ranged and hardest kick.

I rarely hit with the flat of the foot, but when I do, I’m either shoving or stomping. A follow up to an oblique kick to the knee could be stomping the top of the foot—more on that later—and a way to make space can be planting your foot on someone and driving them away. Again, not my go to method, but it’s there.

The inside and outside of the foot are both good tools for straight line kicks. The inside of the foot is great for close up kicks to the upper thigh, knee and ankle. The outside of the foot can be used for the same targets, but from farther away. They’re interchangeable based on range, swapping from one side to the other based on your distance from the target. The inside of the foot can also be used for crescent kicks to the knee and sweeps to the ankle and the outside of the foot can similarly be used to take the balance attacking the foot.

One part of the foot that is most definitely not a tool to be used is the top of the foot. If anything, this is a target. And teaching students to strike with the top of the foot is a fruit of too much point sparring and not enough getting your foot stomped to realize it’s a bad idea.

I had almost cursed in the last paragraph because I am so adamant about this point. Hitting with the top of the foot is like headbutting with your nose. It’s Master Ken levels of stupidity. If you’re mad while reading this, take your shoe off, go outside and kick a tree with the top of your foot as hard as you can and share the video in the comments to prove me wrong. Make sure to get a close up of your foot afterwards and don’t send me the doctor bill because I tried to warn you.

My wife trained with me up until she got pregnant. At one point she accidentally kicked a 9 year old in the hip with the top of her foot. The kid was fine.
My wife was limping for days.

Don’t do this, don’t teach this. Protect yourself, protect your students.

And come train next weekend for the Targets and Tools seminar.

Greenville Academy of Martial Arts

08/29/2026

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