The Martial Arts Podcast

With a martial arts career spanning across four different decades, Kim Aldus says martial arts is empowering.

Listen NOW to Kim Aldus on The Martial Arts Podcast

The multiple-time USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame inductee says helps boost her self-confidence by proving to herself that she can do it.

Mrs. Aldus joins me for a roughly 40-minute conversation about different topics.

On competing as a female: “There is a tendency for guys to be a little more swayed against females doing competition,” she says. “For the most part, they’ve kind of pushed me along and encouraged me to do things I didn’t think I could do.”

On paving a path for martial artists who are women: “I’m not out there just for me. I’m out there for all women. Too many guys say women shouldn’t be in the martial arts. ‘Really? I’m gonna show you.'”

On teaching self-defense to men: “Guys need to know this. So many guys don’t know how to hit properly or exactly what they should do to get out of a situation.”

On judging at competitions: “You just might be that little bit of a spark that pushes them on to achieve great things.”

On Vera Harrison: “She was one of the people who inspired me,” says Mrs. Aldus. “She’s always been there in the back of my martial arts career.”

On external vs. internal arts: “One of the things that I’ve learned is it all comes full circle,” she says. “One’s not better than the other.”

On Kathy Long at USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame: “I’m excited... I know that Kathy Long has an interest in Harley Davidson motorcycles. Yes!”

If you liked this podcast, consider checking out my weekly column, This Week In Martial Arts.

Get updates straight to your inbox!

Like what you’ve read and listened to? Sign up for my blog updates, and I’ll deliver my posts straight to your email address. Then, share this link on social media!

[mc4wp_form]

“Karate is a way of life, and it has been for me,” says Jim Price. “It’ll always be that way until the day I die.”

Mr. Jim Price is a black belt instructor with more than 40 years of experience in the martial arts, having trained since he was 20. He teaches Mr. Matthew Schell, who I podcasted with a few months ago.

Listen now

First impressions of karate in 1974:

“What always impressed me was I couldn’t get over the power and strength the teacher had, and the control. It just surprised me.”

Mr. Price relays a story of being in a horse stance – kiba dachi – and his instructor kicked him out of nowhere. The drill-sear

“It was nothing to go home (from tournaments) with blood on your uniform. You made contact.”

“Some of the teaching, I really agreed with. But a lot of it I didn’t.” He talks about teachers who instructed their students to lay flat on the ground so that the could jump on them. The students, then, would need to kiai to demonstrate tough stomachs. “That’s the first time I wound up getting two cracked ribs.”

On control:

“That’s what it’s really about.” He says one training method is to hang a weight from a string with chalk on the string. If you touch the line and flick the chalk powder off the string, Mr. Price says you demonstrate a lack of control.

Why switching from Shuri-ryu to Matsumura Seito Shorin-ryu was difficult:

“We were brainwashed” into thinking Shuri-ryu was the only true way in karate. “They didn’t want you questioning things in the Shuri-ryu system.”

“I fought it for about a year,” he says. “I really did care about the Shuri-ryu system.”

Mr. Price relays a story about performing a Shuri-ryu kata – Go Pei Sho (one of my favorites!) – at a tournament without knowing Mr. Koeppel was watching. “It really bothered me a lot ... it was almost like I hurt my teacher’s feelings.”

On competition:

Embarrassed by performing a Shuri-ryu kata as a Matsumura practitioner, Mr. Price spent a year and a half honing his forms and competing all around the tournament circuit.

Mr. Koeppel asked why he was spending so much time practicing for competition.

“I want people to know what we’re all about,” he told his teacher. They’d see many other styles, but “they don’t see Matsumura Seito.”

On the importance of getting younger people in leadership positions at organizations and tournaments:

“It seems like nowadays people are more around my age and into the 70s. Honestly, we need to get younger people involved ... we’re not going to be around forever, and someone’s going to have to step in.”

On why Mr. Koeppel is a great martial arts instructor:

“When he’s teaching us stuff, he’ll teach us so much. But he wants us to branch out there and think about what we’re really doing, come up with our interpretation and talk to him about it. He guides us on that right path.”

“He’ll be the only teacher I’ll ever have,” he says. “I’ll never have another.”

Listen to this podcast! (right click, Save Link As...)

Mr. Eddy Parker opened up with me about a variety of topics:

• How his uncle trained him old-school in martial arts without him even realizing it until later
• How he blew people away with kung fu in a sparring tournament
• Why the martial arts are like a way of life for him
• How he’s doing teaching at the School of Combative Arts in Peoria

Subscribe on iTunes or FeedBurner!

CORRECTION: I refer to this episode as “Episode 4” in this podcast, but it’s really Episode 3.

Listen to this podcast

In the first-ever edition of The Martial Arts Podcast, I sit down with my karate instructor, Dave Hawkey.

Mr. Hawkey talks about how he got started in martial arts, as well as the types of things he was seeing in Japan, Okinawa and the Philippines in the 1970s.

Subscribe on iTunes!

Listen now!

Mr. Joe Walker is a multiple-time world champion martial artist with more than 54 years of experience.

In this podcast, we talk about his start in judo, why judo teachers had more students than karate teachers in the early 1960s and how karate took over, his experience training with Grandmaster Robert Trias, how he learned the Israeli fighting art of haganah, and so much more.

I’m really happy with this episode because we both love talking martial arts. Following the recording of this episode, Mr. Walker showed me his dojo, including his wall of black belts and pictures from around Okinawa and other Asian countries. We’re both excited about bringing you another podcast episode in the future. Rest assured with more than 50 years in the martial arts, we won’t have any issues finding things to talk about.

Mr. Walker asked to preview this episode before he went out. He lamented referring to gis as dojos – he later corrected himself – and for forgetting the name of Seisho Tanahara, so he asked me if we wanted to re-record that segment. I told him I liked the raw feel of it, that I think this podcast works because it is more of a conversation and less of a formal, rigid Q&A. The essence of his response was that he was okay with it, saying that nobody’s ever perfect the first time they do something, and that we have to keep working to get better. I thought that was a great way to look at it.

Upcoming plugs and where I’ll be include...

• Aug. 2 – Martial Arts for St. Jude
• Aug. 15-17 – Share The Martial Arts