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As human beings, I think it is our nature to spend a lot of time trying to define things.

In my realm of physical development and exploration, sometimes those questions could be: What is strength? What is discipline? What is karate?

In the context of my family and work life, the questions often look more like: What does it mean to be a good father, a good husband, a good leader?

These are worthwhile questions - and important questions. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time thinking about many of them, or exploring them for myself in the gym, the dojo, the office, at home, etc. They often occupy my subconscious.

But my sensei has challenged me to shift my thinking… What if sometimes we begin with the wrong question?

Maybe, before asking what something is, we should ask what it is not.

There are things in life that become more difficult to explain the more words we use to describe them. We add definitions and categories until eventually we’ve built a box around something that was never supposed to fit inside such restrictions.

But this method of subtraction works differently.

Take something away. Then something else. Remove everything that doesn’t belong.

Eventually, what remains begins to take shape by process of elimination.

Elimination for Gain

In Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey explores his life. He discusses how he didn’t intentionally map out the life he is living today, or develop himself as a “guru” of life lessons to share. Instead, he became who he is by trying different things and asking himself what he didn’t want to be.

“The first step that leads to our identity in life is usually not I know who I am, but rather I know who I’m not. Process of elimination.”

-Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

I like that approach. I don’t necessarily know who I was yesterday, who I am today, or who I will become. But I can try, fail, learn from mistakes, and try again. And probably fail again. And keep going.

There is an old idea in sculpture that the finished product already exists inside the stone. The sculptor’s job is simply to remove everything that isn’t part of it. To chisel away the bits that don’t belong, so that all that is left is the true essence of the sculpture itself.

Whether or not that’s literally how a sculptor thinks, I’ve always liked the image.

The creation happens through subtraction. Maybe some of the more important things in our lives work in a similar fashion.

Karate certainly does.

What Karate Is Not

Ask ten people (practitioner or otherwise) what karate is and you’ll probably get ten different answers.

A martial art.

Self-defense.

Fighting.

Exercise.

Discipline.

Tradition.

Sport.

I think some of those answers are better than others. Most contain a semblance of truth. But none of them seem sufficient to me.

So maybe I can get closer by telling you what karate is not.

Karate is not fighting.

Of course karate contains theory and mindset training that involve elements fighting. Its techniques have consequences. The movements are not arbitrary. We punch, kick, strike, move and learn to generate force for a reason.

But if karate were simply fighting, then it would leave out the historical context of the creation of the art itself.

Traditional Okinawan karate requires that the practitioner study the art, which evolves into the practitioner studying themselves.

Karate is not trading blows.

It couldn’t possibly be. Popular culture often depicts martial arts as a beautifully choreographed exchange - block, counter, kick, evade, strike, repeat. But traditional karate contains a very different principle.

Ikken hissatsu. One fist, certain death. Or one strike, one kill.

The principle doesn’t need to be interpreted as a literal instruction to kill someone to understand what it demands from the practitioner: decisiveness. Commitment. The understanding that a real encounter carries consequences and may not give you another opportunity.

This was the approach of the Okinawans after the invasion of the Satsuma clan in 1609. They had to survive. When face-to-face with the legendary Satsuma samurai clan, the Okinawans had one chance at survival.

There was no trading blows.

Karate is not exercise.

It certainly is exercise. Kata can leave you breathing hard. Stances strengthen the legs, such as the dreaded horse stance. Repetition develops coordination, balance, mobility and conditioning.

But there are much more efficient ways to get in shape.

I can pick up a kettlebell and accomplish an equally challenging, if not more challenging, cardiovascular and strength work in thirty minutes than I probably could in a long karate practice.

If fitness were the point, I wouldn’t need karate. And the truth is that I do need karate.

Karate is not kata, either.

I can memorize another kata. Then another. Then another. Rei to rei.

I can collect movements in the same way someone might collect books and never read them deeply.

Knowing more isn’t necessarily understanding more. Perhaps this is why the traditional way required karateka to study a single kata for ten years or more.

That couldn’t possibly be simply memorizing movements of the kata (and perhaps there’s room here for additional searching for what kata is not, too).

Karate is most certainly not the belt around my waist. It isn’t the number of years I’ve practiced. It isn’t how many techniques I know.

And karate certainly isn’t performance.

The truth is that the most impactful karate I’ve ever practiced happened when nobody was watching.

The same movement.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Years ago, one of my baseball coaches used to challenge us with a question:

Who are you when no one is watching?

I understood what he meant then. I understand it differently now.

Because when you remove fighting, fitness, belts, rank, recognition and performance from karate, something remains.

I hesitate to name it…

Maybe that’s the point. The search continues.

What Training Is Not

The same question follows me outside the dojo.

I train a lot. Ask my wife… she will tell you.

Kettlebells. Running. Jump rope. Strength work. Carries. Sometimes a heavy piece of iron gets picked up from the ground simply because picking up heavy things from the ground is useful and therapeutic for me.

If you asked me why I work out, I could give you plenty of answers.

Health.

Strength.

Longevity.

I want to look strong.

I want to be strong.

I want to be capable.

All are true. But still incomplete.

So again:

What is training not?

For me, training is not punishment.

I don’t need to earn my food. I don’t need to pay penance for a vacation or a beer or a piece of pizza - or a whole pizza… I mean, who can eat just one piece of pizza? Movement isn’t a debt I owe because I enjoyed myself yesterday.

It is not a method for me to remove my inner demons because I don’t know any other way to deal with them. It’s not something I hold over myself as a way to create guilt or enforce some hollow rules I set for myself.

There is so much to try and learn from training. Morphing it into a form of punishment does not accomplish the true essence and benefit of training.

Training is not primarily about looking a certain way.

I’d be lying if I said appearance doesn’t matter to me at all. I like looking athletic. I like having muscle. There is a lot of satisfaction in seeing physical evidence of work.

But that cannot be enough. Because bodies change. Age comes. Strength eventually declines.

If the mirror is the only scoreboard, this game has a predetermined ending.

Training isn’t about proving how tough I am, either.

There will always be someone stronger. Someone faster. Someone more skilled. Someone who can lift more, run farther, endure longer.

Trying to build an identity around being tougher than everyone else is a remarkably efficient way to become insecure.

The point of strength is not strength alone. Maybe the strange dichotomy of pursuing strength long enough is that it eventually teaches you how limited your strength really is.

There is always another weight. Another person stronger than you. Another challenge you weren’t prepared to face or burden you weren’t prepared to carry.

Perhaps humility isn’t the opposite of strength at all. Perhaps it is one of the things left standing after we remove everything strength is not.

And training is not an escape from responsibility.

This one can really be challenging. But there is a mindset shift that takes training from an escape, and can turn it into a purposeful pathway.

I have a family. I have children. I have a marriage. I have a career and a house and responsibilities that do not care whether today’s programming calls for five sets or six.

Training matters to me. A lot.

But it cannot matter more than the things I’m supposedly training myself to be capable of carrying.

There would be something deeply ironic about becoming physically strong while neglecting everything that requires strength from me.

Strength that requires abandoning responsibility isn’t strength.

So I train. Not because training is the most important thing in my life.

Perhaps because it helps prepare me for the things that are.

In strength training, we can choose the weight we lift and carry. In life, we don’t get to choose. It chooses us.

Do I know what training is to me? I don’t really think so. I will continue to explore and eliminate what it is not.

What Are You Not Trying to Become?

Eventually this question becomes uncomfortable.

Because once you start using subtraction to understand karate and training, it becomes difficult not to apply it elsewhere.

What does it mean to be a good father?

I don’t know if I could give you a complete definition.

But I know some things fatherhood isn’t.

It isn’t control. It isn’t simply providing money. It isn’t being physically present while your attention is somewhere else. It isn’t creating smaller versions of yourself.

What does it mean to be a good leader?

Again, I’m not sure I can give you a perfect novel-ready definition.

But leadership isn’t authority. It isn’t a title. It isn’t taking credit when things go well and distributing blame when they don’t.

And then there is the larger life question.

What kind of man do I want to become?

That’s an incredibly difficult question. So turn it around.

What kind of man do I refuse to become?

Now I have a place to start.

I don’t want to become someone whose children remember him looking at a phone more often than looking them in the eye or watching them play.

I don’t want to become someone whose strength exists only in a gym.

I don’t want to become someone who mistakes being respected for being feared.

I don’t want to become someone who knows the principles but stops practicing and studying them.

I don’t want to become someone who becomes so busy building a life that he forgets to inhabit it.

These don’t completely define the person I want to become.

But they begin drawing the outline.

Perhaps drawing the outline is the point of the journey.

The Search for Identity in the Empty Space

I’ve written before about ma - the Japanese idea of space, interval, the meaningful emptiness between things.

I usually think about ma as the space that allows something else to exist. The space the sculptor chisels away to reveal the art beneath the rock. The silence between musical notes that gives weight to sound itself. The pause that gives movement timing.

Maybe there is ma in identity, too.

We spend much of our lives adding. More knowledge. More possessions. More titles. More muscle. More achievements. More responsibilities. More experiences.

We keep adding things in the hope that eventually what we’ve collected will help explain who we are.

Maybe becoming also requires subtraction.

Removing ego. Removing distraction. Removing expectations we inherited without ever questioning.

Deciding what doesn’t belong.

The Enduring Study of What it is Not

I still don’t know exactly what karate is. I might never know.

I don’t completely know what training is to me. Perhaps I’ll never know that, either.

And I certainly don’t know exactly what kind of father, husband, leader or man I will eventually become.

Maybe I don’t need to.

Not yet.

I can keep practicing. Keep paying attention. Keep making mistakes. Keep discovering the things that don’t belong.

Take one away.

Then another.

Process of elimination.

And perhaps, somewhere underneath everything I thought I was supposed to become, I’ll discover what was there all along.

We are shaped not only by what we choose to become, but by what we refuse to become.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

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In the short existence of my Substack platform, I’ve already written about a few of the “Martial Mindsets” I’ve learned about and found valuable in my own life and training. But from the perspective of my westernized lens, there are countless other valuable lessons to be learned from Japanese wisdom.

Today, I decided to write about one of those: fuben-eki.

There isn’t a perfect English translation, but it means something like “the benefit of inconvenience.”

Not everything worth having should be made easier. That seems incredibly counterintuitive in the modern world.

We live in an age built around removing friction. Groceries arrive without leaving the couch. We can summon dinner with a few taps on a screen. Dishwashers clean our plates. Robot vacuums clean our floors. We have machines to use to lift weights rather than simply lifting heavy objects. Algorithms choose our music. Artificial intelligence helps us word emails, texts and drafts in a specific tone. I use these tools myself. My job tells me I’ll go extinct if I don’t learn how to use it.

Convenience has become one of our highest virtues.

But somewhere along the way, I wonder if we’ve accidentally optimized away something deeply human.

Fuben-eki suggests that the inconvenience itself is not simply an obstacle to overcome - it is often the very thing producing the benefit.

The struggle isn’t standing in the way of the lesson.

The struggle is the lesson.

Fuben-eki in Training:

A few weeks ago, my karate sensei challenged me. He asked if I’d be interested in pursuing the best physical shape of my life.

Naturally, my mind gravitates towards optimized programming. Periodization. Nutrition. Recovery metrics. Maybe a new strength cycle.

Instead he talked about digging post holes. Splitting wood. Carrying heavy things for long distances. Working with my hands. Moving earth.

The kind of labor our great-grandfathers would have simply called “Tuesday.”

At first it felt almost... inefficient.

Why swing an axe when I can swing my macebell? Why carry rocks when I can put on a weighted vest or carry heavy kettlebells or sandbags?

Why spend an afternoon digging when I could finish a perfectly designed workout in forty-five minutes?

Because those questions reveal exactly how deeply I’ve been conditioned to value efficiency above all else.

Manual labor refuses to isolate muscles. It asks your entire body to solve problems. It demands patience. Balance. Awareness. Adaptability.

You don’t simply lift the log. You figure out how to lift the log.

You don’t just carry weight. You navigate uneven ground.

You adjust. You stumble. You learn.

The inconvenience becomes your teacher.

I’ve noticed the same thing happening with my kettlebell practice.

Lately I’ve found myself searching backward instead of forward. Less interested in the newest fitness trends. More interested in the older ways.

How did the early kettlebell lifters train before every movement had ten different accessory exercises? Before every weakness required another specialized machine? Before every inconvenience was engineered away?

There is something deeply attractive about simple tools that ask more from the person holding them. One bell. One body. Thousands of possibilities.

Creativity is often born from limitation.

When you don’t have the perfect equipment, you become resourceful.

When you don’t have the ideal conditions, you adapt.

When you can’t optimize everything, you begin developing something even more valuable than efficiency.

You develop capability.

Fuben-eki at Home:

I don’t think this idea ends in the gym. I think it begins there.

Because the greatest inconveniences in my life don’t involve exercise.

They happen in my kitchen. The sink somehow fills with dishes again. The trash can is full. Someone spilled milk. Laundry has multiplied overnight. Tiny shoes appear in impossible places… Everywhere. EVERYWHERE! The floor somehow needs vacuuming... again.

It’s easy to see these moments as interruptions. Little taxes imposed upon my day.

But every one of those inconveniences is evidence of something beautiful.

Dirty dishes mean my family shared another meal together. Overflowing laundry means little bodies are growing. The overflowing trash can means there was food on the table. The toys scattered across the floor mean laughter happened here. The fingerprints on the windows remind me that curious little hands still reach toward the world.

One day...

The sink will stay empty. The laundry basket won’t overflow. The toys won’t need picking up. The house will stay remarkably clean.

And if I’m honest...

That version of convenience feels a little heartbreaking.

What Inconvenience Represents:

I wonder how often gratitude hides inside inconvenience. Perhaps we’ve simply been looking at it backwards.

Instead of asking, “Why do I have to do this?” Maybe the better question is, “What blessing made this necessary?”

The answer changes the context entirely.

I don’t carry groceries because life is difficult. I carry groceries because there are people I love waiting at home.

I don’t wash dishes because they’re dirty. I wash dishes because they were used.

I don’t mow a yard because the grass keeps growing. I mow it because I have a place to call home.

The Lesson:

Karate teaches that we don’t merely practice techniques. We practice ourselves.

Maybe life works the same way.

Every inconvenience is quietly shaping us. Teaching patience. Humility. Creativity. Strength. Presence. Gratitude.

Not despite the inconvenience. Because of it.

Perhaps that’s what fuben-eki is really trying to teach…

Some things become valuable precisely because they require something from us. Some lessons cannot be downloaded. Some strength cannot be automated. Some gratitude only appears after your hands become dirty.

So maybe the next time the trash needs taking out...

Or the dishes seem endless...

Or your workout requires more effort than efficiency...

Pause. Look again.

The inconvenience may not be stealing something from you. It may be giving something back.

And perhaps the richest life isn’t the one with the least friction.

Perhaps it’s the one that recognizes every inconvenience as another quiet reminder that we’ve been blessed with something worth caring for.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

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Life… is all about seasons.

There are seasons when everything seems to move in harmony.

Ideas arrive before you have time to chase them. Training feels purposeful. Work has momentum. The conversations around your dinner table or during time spent with mentors and friends linger a little longer. Even the ordinary moments - a quiet meditation before sunrise, the rhythm of a kettlebell swing, the deliberate cadence of kata practice - seem to reveal something worth carrying with you. And it all flows so easily, without effort.

Life feels connected.

Then, almost without warning, the current changes. The season changes.

Over the past several weeks, I haven’t written much.

At first, I blamed it on just being “busy.” Or maybe I had run out of meaningful ideas worth sharing. Maybe I had lost whatever spark had been carrying these essays along. I found myself lacking the same fervor for writing and manufacturing ideas that had felt intentional and meaningful to me for the previous six months since I started my Substack.

The silence was frustrating because writing had become another form of practice. The lessons seemed to find me everywhere. A worn kettlebell became a teacher. A polished napkin dispenser in a small Okinawan restaurant became a lesson in excellence. A quiet morning sitting in my daily deep squat hold became an invitation to simply breathe.

Then the words simply stopped coming.

But life didn’t.

If anything, life became fuller.

My children are growing faster than I can comprehend. My responsibilities at work continue to expand and become more complex. My sensei has challenged me to rethink what strength looks like - not through another perfectly programmed workout, but through honest labor. At home, I’m building a place where my family can gather and where I hope my children will someday remember watching their dad train while they played nearby.

Not only was writing feeling less inspired. Work and responsibilities of daily life were requiring so much of my mental energy and attention that I'd also missed three weeks of time in the dojo. My “training” hadn’t stopped. I was pushing through the challenge as I always do; however, the dojo has become a sanctuary of centeredness for me. A place where something meaningful happens. A place I can go and have one of the wisest human beings I know feed into my spirit and bring me back to the most important gift life has to offer: family.

I was missing the dojo. I was not fed by writing.

But the truth is… none of those things are interruptions to life.

They are life.

Yet I spent several weeks treating this season as though it were an obstacle, a challenge to overcome. I kept asking myself one question:

“How do I get back?”

Back to writing. Back to the rhythm. Back to the version of life that felt familiar.

Then I realized I was asking the wrong question.

In Okinawan karate, there is a principle called tai sabaki. It is often translated as “body movement,” but that really sells the principle short. Tai sabaki is not stepping out of the way. It is repositioning yourself without abandoning the encounter. You move off the line of force, not because you are retreating, but because remaining directly in its path serves no purpose, and often invites danger.

Instead, you stay engaged.

You simply change your relationship to the moment.

The more I reflected on it, the more I realized this principle extends far beyond the dojo.

How often do we mistake movement for retreat?

A young father wonders why he no longer has the same hours to devote to hobbies that once defined him.

A leader struggles because the skills that earned a promotion are no longer the skills required to lead well.

An athlete discovers that the body which once thrived on intensity now demands patience, recovery, and precision.

A husband finds that love is expressed less through grand gestures and more through a thousand quiet acts of faithfulness that no one else will ever notice.

The temptation is always the same.

Stand your ground.

Push harder.

Force your way back.

But principles often teach the opposite.

The oak survives storms not because it refuses to move, but because it knows where to yield and where to remain rooted.

The river reaches the sea not by overpowering every obstacle, but by flowing around what it cannot move.

Even in karate, the strongest response is rarely to meet force with force. More often, it is to redirect it.

Life has seasons that ask the same of us.

For a long time, I believed consistency meant doing the same things in the same way regardless of circumstance.

Now I’m beginning to think consistency is something deeper.

The practices may change.

The principles do not.

There are seasons to write every week.

There are seasons to build.

There are seasons to train hard.

There are seasons to carry children who still want to be held, knowing they won’t ask forever.

There are seasons to lead quietly through difficult problems at work that no one outside your team will ever see.

The practices change.

The principles remain.

Presence.

Discipline.

Humility.

Stewardship.

Service.

Those are the things we carry from one season into the next.

Perhaps that’s why this period felt so unsettling. I mistook the absence of one practice for the absence of purpose. I assumed that because I wasn’t producing words, I wasn’t growing.

But growth has never been measured by output alone.

Sometimes growth looks like building the kids a playset one piece at a time.

Sometimes it looks like digging a post hole instead of swinging a kettlebell.

Sometimes it looks like reading one more bedtime story after an exhausting day because a little voice asks, “Just one more?”

Sometimes it looks like choosing silence over forcing words that aren’t ready to be written.

There is wisdom in accepting the season you have been given instead of clinging to the one you just left.

That doesn’t mean lowering your standards. It doesn’t mean abandoning discipline. It doesn’t mean waiting passively for life to become easier.

It means continuing to practice the principles, even when the practice itself changes.

Maybe that is what tai sabaki has been teaching me all along.

Not how to escape. Not how to “get out of the way.” Not how to avoid difficulty. But how to move with wisdom instead of stubbornness. To step just far enough off the line that I can remain fully engaged with what matters most.

I suspect another season of writing will come. The ideas will return. The blank pages will begin filling again.

But if they don’t arrive tomorrow, that’s alright.

Because the story hasn’t stopped. For now, it simply isn’t being written with ink.

It’s being written in the ordinary work of becoming the kind of husband, father, leader, student, and man I hope these pages have always been pointing toward.

And perhaps that is the deepest lesson of all.

The path does not disappear when it bends.

It simply asks us to keep walking. One step at a time.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

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My sensei loves to tell this story about his first trip to Okinawa.

He had traveled there to train with the head of the style I practice. Like many martial artists who appreciate the traditional methods and principles of the Okinawan styles, Okinawa held an almost mythical status in his mind. It was the birthplace of the art he had dedicated so much of his life to studying. The home of the teachers whose influence had reached across oceans and generations.

During the trip, his training partner was having some sort of blood sugar issue and needed food immediately. They happened to be near a McDonald’s, so they stopped.

Now, if you know my sensei, you’ll appreciate the irony. He is one of the healthiest people I have ever met. His diet is disciplined, intentional, and remarkably clean. Walking into a McDonald’s was probably not how he envisioned spending part of his pilgrimage to Okinawa.

But life rarely asks for our preferences before presenting us with circumstances.

While his friend ordered food, my sensei stood quietly and looked around the restaurant. That’s when he noticed a young employee making his way from table to table. He wasn’t serving customers or taking orders. He wasn’t sweeping floors or stocking supplies.

He was polishing the napkin boxes.

One at a time.

He would pick one up, wipe it down carefully until there was no blemishes or finger smudges remaining, return it to the table, and move to the next. There was nothing hurried about it. Nothing performative. No sense that he was simply trying to look busy until his shift ended. He appeared completely absorbed in the task itself.

The napkin boxes mattered because, in that moment, they were his responsibility.

My sensei has told that story many times over the years, and what has always struck me is that he never talks about what they ate. He doesn’t talk about the restaurant, or how funny it was to be at a McDonald’s in Okinawa. He doesn’t even talk much about the employee himself.

He talks about the napkin boxes.

Or rather, he talks about what the napkin boxes represented.

At first glance, it seems like such an insignificant thing. Most of us would walk right past it without giving it a second thought. In fact, many people would probably wonder why someone would spend so much care on something so unimportant.

But the lesson isn’t about the napkin box.

The lesson is about the spirit that polished it.

We live in a culture that constantly encourages us to think in terms of outcomes. We celebrate promotions, championships, personal records, awards, titles, and achievements. We talk endlessly about goals and milestones and success. There is nothing inherently wrong with those things, but over time they can convince us that excellence only matters when the result is visible.

What gets lost is the understanding that the quality of our lives is largely determined by what we do when nobody is paying attention.

My high school baseball coach used to challenge us with a question that seemed simple at the time but has only grown more meaningful over the years:

Who are you when nobody is watching?

Not who you pretend to be. Not who you hope others think you are. Not who you become when recognition is available.

Who are you when the stands are empty, the lights are off, and no credit is waiting on the other side of the effort?

Because that person - the one who exists beyond the audience - is the person you truly are.

Character is forged in those quiet places. In the unseen repetitions. In the small choices. In the ordinary moments when nobody would know the difference if you chose the easier path.

The young man polishing napkin boxes reminded me of that lesson immediately.

Character is built in ordinary moments. It is built in the small decisions that seem too insignificant to matter.

The way we answer an email.

The way we put away our training equipment.

The way we clean our home.

The way we show up for work on a day when motivation is nowhere to be found.

The way we speak to our spouse after a stressful afternoon.

The way we respond when a task feels repetitive, mundane, or beneath our abilities.

Those moments are easy to dismiss because they rarely feel important at the time. Yet they are the moments that quietly shape who we become.

This is one of the greatest lessons martial arts has ever taught me. People often imagine the dojo as a place where extraordinary things happen. They think about powerful techniques, difficult kata, hard training sessions, or moments of breakthrough. And these extraordinary things do, in fact, happen in the dojo. But most of the lessons worth carrying into life are learned through repetition and attention. They are learned through bowing properly when nobody is watching. Through taking care of equipment. Through showing respect in seemingly minor interactions. Through practicing the basics long after they stop being exciting.

The dojo, if we’re paying attention, was never really the building.

The dojo is everywhere.

It’s in the office when you’re reconciling an account that nobody else may ever review. It’s in the backyard when you’re putting the kettlebells away after a workout. It’s in the kitchen while loading the dishwasher after everyone else has gone to bed. It’s in the conversations we have with our children, our coworkers, and our neighbors.

Every one of those moments presents the same question:

What kind of spirit will you bring to the task in front of you?

The more I study traditional Okinawan martial arts and philosophy, the more convinced I become that excellence is not a performance. It is not something we turn on when the stakes are high or when an audience is present. Excellence is a habit of being. A way of moving through the world. A commitment to bringing your best effort to whatever responsibility rests in your hands, regardless of how visible or invisible that responsibility may be.

The young man polishing napkin boxes in an Okinawan McDonald’s may never know that a visiting martial artist remembered him years later. He wasn’t trying to leave an impression.

And perhaps that’s exactly why he did.

Because every so often, we encounter someone who reminds us that there is dignity in doing simple things well. Someone who reminds us that greatness is rarely found in grand gestures. More often, it is found in the quiet decision to fully inhabit the moment we are in and the work we have been given.

The napkin box was never the lesson.

The lesson was the spirit that polished it.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

Thank you for reading - hope you enjoyed!

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When I started my career in public accounting, I had no idea how much auditing would shape the way I viewed the world.

Part of my training in public accounting taught me concepts in the audit world that sound quite intense…

Control deficiency. Significant deficiency. Material weakness.

At the time, they were simply professional terms. Categories used to evaluate the effectiveness of a company’s internal control environment. We would assess processes, identify risks, test controls, and determine whether weaknesses existed that could lead to larger problems.

The interesting thing was that as an auditor, we weren’t searching for perfection.

In fact, quite the opposite.

Every audit began with the assumption that human beings are imperfect. People make mistakes. Processes break down. Communication fails. Things get overlooked. Controls exist because even good people, working hard and acting honestly, will occasionally miss something important. Anyone who thinks otherwise is completely unreasonable.

The purpose of the audit was never to prove perfection. The purpose was to understand whether the system could still be trusted.

I viewed these concepts entirely through the lens of accounting. They belonged in financial statements, audit reports, and management letters.

But the older I get, the more I realize those ideas extend far beyond the walls of a conference room.

Because every one of us is operating some version of an internal control environment.

As human beings, leaders, athletes, martial artists, (and in my case as a husband and father), we all have systems that govern how we think, behave, react, recover, communicate, and grow. We all have habits, routines, disciplines, and relationships that either strengthen our foundation or slowly allow it to erode.

And just like organizations, we all develop deficiencies.

Some are small. Some deserve more attention.

And some, if ignored long enough, eventually become material.

That realization has changed the way I view accounting, training, fatherhood, leadership, and life itself.

Looking Back to Move Forward

Every month, we accountants do something that most people typically avoid intentionally.

We stop.

We pause long enough to compare expectations against reality. We review what happened, investigate discrepancies, reconcile accounts, identify weaknesses, and determine where improvements need to be made. Then we adjust our approach and do it all again the following month.

The process is repetitive. Sometimes tedious. Often overlooked by people outside the profession.

Yet the older I get, the more convinced I become that this process has very little to do with accounting and almost everything to do with becoming a better human being.

Most people believe growth comes from showing up. And to a certain extent, they’re absolutely right. The hardest workout is often the first one. The hardest martial arts class is usually the first one. The hardest conversation in a marriage is often the first honest one. The hardest prayer may be the first sincere one after a long period of silence.

Showing up matters.

In fact, it matters more than almost anything else. Nothing else can happen until we do.

But eventually, if we stay committed long enough, showing up stops being the lesson.

The lesson becomes awareness. The lesson becomes observation. The lesson becomes learning how to identify weakness before weakness identifies us.

Somewhere between month-end closes, kettlebell training sessions, fatherhood, and years spent studying martial arts philosophy, I began noticing that accounting, strength training, and personal development all share a surprisingly similar pursuit. On the surface, they seem completely unrelated. One deals with spreadsheets and financial statements. One deals with iron. One deals with punches, kata, and principles that have survived for centuries.

Yet all three are ultimately searching for the same thing:

Truth… not perfection.

Truth.

And truth has a way of exposing weakness.

Participation vs. Practice

When most people begin a training program, consistency is the initial goal. Can you establish the habit? Can you become the kind of person who shows up even when motivation disappears? For many people, that single change is transformative.

Consistency changes lives. It is, without question, one of the most important tools we have for self-improvement. Whether the goal is strength, martial arts, leadership, marriage, faith, or fatherhood, meaningful progress rarely comes from occasional bursts of motivation. It comes from repeated effort over long periods of time.

But after enough months and years of showing up again and again, the workout doesn’t necessarily change anymore - you do.

When I first picked up a kettlebell, my goals were simple. Like many people during the COVID pandemic, I suddenly found myself searching for a new way to train. The commercial gyms had closed, equipment was scarce, and I needed something that could deliver results without requiring an entire garage full of machines.

What I had was a small living room and roughly eight feet of open space.

So I adapted.

I wanted to improve the way I moved. I wanted to build strength, improve conditioning, and add muscle. I wanted a training tool that was efficient enough for a busy schedule but effective enough to produce meaningful results.

The kettlebell checked every box.

In my admittedly biased opinion, it remains one of the most versatile training tools ever created. It can build strength, conditioning, coordination, mobility, power, and muscle mass - all while fitting neatly into a corner of a room.

At the time, however, I wasn’t thinking about any of that.

I simply wanted to learn the movements, get stronger, and complete the workout.

What I didn’t realize was that years later, the kettlebell would begin teaching me something entirely different.

When I train with my kettlebells today, I notice my breathing during a long cycle set. I pay attention to how relaxed my grip remains under fatigue. I become curious about where tension appears unnecessarily and where posture begins to break down. I notice whether I’m forcing movements, rushing transitions, or using strength to compensate for deficiencies in technique.

The iron has stopped teaching me how to show up.

Instead, it has started teaching me how to pay attention.

The same thing happens in the dojo. A beginner asks how to properly throw the punch. An experienced practitioner asks why his shoulder rises during the punch.

A beginner asks how to perform the kata. An experienced practitioner asks how to better connect with the hara during the kata. How to coordinate the breath with the movements.

The pursuit changes.

You stop collecting techniques and begin removing inefficiencies.

And I believe that may be one of the most important shifts a person can make in any area of life.

The Hidden Gift of Shoshin

One of the first concepts I wrote about in the Martial Mindset series was shoshin, or “beginner’s mind.” Shoshin is often primarily viewed as a mindset for learning. The willingness to remain curious. The humility to acknowledge that there is always more to understand.

Over time, I’ve come to appreciate a deeper layer of the concept.

Shoshin is what makes self-examination possible. Without it, we stop looking. Without it, we assume we’ve already figured things out.

The danger of experience is not that it teaches us too much.

The danger of experience is that it convinces us we no longer need to learn.

I’ve seen this in accounting. I’ve seen it in leadership. I’ve seen it in strength training. I’ve seen it in martial arts.

The moment we stop asking questions, we stop finding weaknesses. And the moment we stop finding weaknesses, they begin finding us. A beginner’s mind doesn’t mean thinking like a beginner.

It means remaining humble enough to keep learning like one.

The Unmodified Opinion

Looking back on what I learned during my time as an auditor, I can say that one of the most misunderstood concepts in auditing is the “unmodified opinion.”

People hear the phrase “clean audit opinion” and assume it means perfection… Trust me, it doesn’t.

A company can receive an unmodified opinion while still having errors, inefficiencies, and opportunities for improvement. The opinion simply means the system can be reasonably relied upon. The underlying structure is sound. The truth can still be trusted.

I think many of us would benefit from viewing ourselves through the same lens.

We often assume that a good father never loses patience, a good husband never misses a cue, a disciplined athlete never has an off day, or a strong leader never makes mistakes. But that standard isn’t realistic, nor is it particularly useful. Human beings are imperfect by design.

The question is not whether mistakes occur. The question is what happens after they occur.

One of my favorite concepts from my Martial Mindset series is heijoshin - the everyday, unshaken mind. Not because it suggests some superhuman calm, but because it reminds us that steadiness is not the absence of disruption. Steadiness is the ability to return to center.

A husband who apologizes quickly.

A father who recognizes when stress is bleeding into family life.

A leader who owns mistakes instead of defending them.

A martial artist who returns to fundamentals when technique begins to deteriorate.

Strong people drift. They simply notice the drift before it becomes direction.

Trust is not built because someone never fails. Trust is built because people know what happens after the failure. The system corrects itself. Accountability exists. The truth is not hidden.

In auditing language, there is reasonable assurance that the system can still be trusted.

That may be one of the best definitions of integrity I’ve ever encountered. Not perfection. But consistently reliable humility and radical honesty.

Control Deficiencies

A control deficiency is not catastrophic… that is precisely what makes it dangerous.

Life still works.

The bills get paid. The workouts still happen. The career progresses. Nothing appears broken enough to demand immediate attention.

And so weakness becomes normalized.

A little less sleep. A little more distraction. A little less patience. A little less presence. A little less discipline. Nothing dramatic.

Just drift.

The problem is that drift compounds.

In kettlebell training, deficiencies often hide behind strength for a surprisingly long time. You can muscle through poor mechanics. You can compensate for bad breathing. You can overcome inefficiency with effort.

Until you can’t.

The bell always tells the truth eventually.

Martial arts is even less forgiving. Small errors become large errors under pressure. A slight loss of balance. A breakdown in breathing. A momentary lapse in awareness. A rushed transition.

Under stress, weaknesses become magnified.

Life operates exactly the same way.

Many of us spend years carrying deficiencies that have not yet become painful enough to address. We answer our children while staring at our phones. We listen to our spouses while mentally reviewing tomorrow’s schedule. We train our bodies while neglecting our minds. We pursue achievement while starving our relationships.

An Honest Admission

If I’m being completely honest, this is the section where I find myself most often.

Not material weakness. Not significant deficiency.

Control deficiency.

The reason I find this category so interesting is because, at least in my own life, it rarely looks like failure.

In fact, from the outside it often looks like success.

I wake up early. I train consistently. I show up for work. I provide for my family. I help with bedtime. I take the kids on adventures. I write. I pray. I try to be intentional about how I live.

If someone asked me whether I was doing the things I value, the answer would largely be yes.

And yet there are seasons where I can feel myself drifting. Not away from my responsibilities.

Away from the moment.

I think many of us assume that if we’re doing the right things, then we must be fully engaged in them. But I’ve learned those are not always the same thing.

I’ve had mornings where I’m training with a kettlebell in my hands, but my mind is already at work. I’ve sat on the floor building block towers with my kids while mentally replaying a meeting from earlier in the day. I’ve listened to my wife tell me about something important while simultaneously constructing tomorrow’s to-do list in my head.

I’m there.

But I’m not fully there.

My life is still “working.”

The workout gets completed. The project gets finished. The dishes get washed. The bills get paid. The kids get tucked into bed.

Nothing appears broken enough to force a change. So my natural response has often been the same response I’ve applied to almost every challenge I’ve faced throughout my life:

Try harder.

Become more disciplined. Work a little more. Optimize a little more. Push a little harder.

For all of my life, I’ve assumed the solution to drift is effort.

But the more I write and reflect, the more I start noticing the same thing I notice when training. If a kettlebell movement feels off, adding more force rarely fixes the problem. If my breathing is rushed, if my posture is breaking down, if my timing is off, simply trying harder usually makes the deficiency worse. Strength can compensate for poor mechanics for a while, but compensation is not correction.

Life seems to work the same way.

The more I examine my own patterns, the more I realize that my greatest deficiency isn’t effort. If anything, in fact, effort was often the thing I’ve had in abundance.

Often my deficiency is presence.

My life is full - so full of blessings. I don’t need to add more to my life. I need to arrive more fully in the life I already have.

That realization is uncomfortable because it forces me to acknowledge something I didn’t particularly want to see. I can be a disciplined person and still be distracted. I can be productive and still be absent. I can be physically present in the room while mentally living somewhere else entirely.

But strangely, that realization may also be freeing.

Because a control deficiency is not a verdict.

It’s a finding.

It’s not evidence that the system is broken. It’s evidence that the system can improve.

And perhaps that’s the real value of these audits we perform on ourselves from time to time. Not guilt. Not shame. Not self-criticism.

Awareness.

Because once we can see the drift, we can begin correcting it.

And every time we return our attention to the moment we’re actually living, we take one step back toward center.

Significant Deficiencies

Eventually, the deficiency risk is no longer theoretical.

The system still functions, but experienced observers can see where things are headed.

This is where many successful people quietly live.

The executive whose family sees less of him each year. The athlete training through injuries that never fully heal. The leader who cannot disconnect. The husband who assumes everything is fine because nobody is arguing. The father who is physically present but emotionally unavailable. The martial artist who confuses repetition with improvement. The accountant who confuses busyness with effectiveness.

Everything still appears successful from the outside.

For now.

One of the most dangerous forms of weakness is the weakness that receives applause.

Exhaustion. Overcommitment. Constant urgency.

These things often look like dedication.

Sometimes they are simply deficiencies wearing a disguise.

This is where zanshin becomes invaluable. Remaining awareness. Continued awareness. The ability to notice what most people stop noticing.

The greatest practitioners are not always the strongest or most talented. They are often the most observant. They see weakness before it becomes a problem.

And because they see it early, they can improve it.

One caveat I’d add here - and perhaps another honest admission - is that I am often not the person in my household who maintains this level of awareness.

My wife is.

Left to my own devices, I have an incredible ability to put my head down and push through almost anything. Long hours. Stress. Fatigue. Difficult seasons. New responsibilities. I can convince myself that everything is fine because the mission is still moving forward.

From the outside, it probably looks like resilience, and sometimes it is.

But sometimes it’s just tunnel vision.

One of my greatest strengths has always been the ability to endure. It’s also one of my greatest vulnerabilities. When life becomes chaotic, I have a tendency to narrow my focus, put on blinders, and drive forward. That approach can be incredibly useful for a short period of time. It helps me solve problems. It helps me carry responsibility. It helps me persevere when quitting would be easier.

But it also wears me down.

The difficult part is that when I’m operating this way, I’m often the last person to notice it.

My wife usually sees it long before I do.

She notices when my patience gets shorter. She notices when my mind is somewhere else. She notices when I’m carrying stress that I haven’t acknowledged, or when I’m trying to solve every problem through effort instead of awareness.

Life has a way of creating what soldiers often call the “fog of war.” Responsibilities pile up. Children need attention. Work becomes demanding. Unexpected problems appear. Visibility decreases. Perspective narrows. And when we’re deep enough in that fog, it becomes incredibly difficult to evaluate ourselves objectively.

That’s why relationships matter. And not just relationships that encourage us. Relationships that reveal us.

People who know us well enough, and love us enough, to tell us when our internal picture no longer matches reality.

Because sometimes the greatest act of awareness is being willing to borrow someone else’s eyes until we can see clearly again.

Material Weakness

In auditing, a material weakness does not necessarily mean disaster has already occurred.

It means there is a reasonable possibility that something important could fail because the current controls are insufficient.

That definition has stayed with me for years. Because life works exactly the same way.

Most failures do not begin as failures. They begin as neglected weaknesses.

The neglected conversation. The neglected habit. The neglected relationship. The neglected prayer life. The neglected recovery. The neglected self-reflection.

Eventually pressure arrives. And pressure reveals what was already there.

The health didn’t disappear overnight. The burnout didn’t arrive overnight. The injury often didn’t just happen out of nowhere.

The weakness simply remained unexamined long enough to become structural.

As fathers, this becomes especially sobering.

At some point we realize our children are learning less from our advice and more from our example. Less from our words and more from our nervous systems. They watch how we handle frustration. They watch how we respond to failure. They watch how we treat their mother. They watch whether we are truly present when nobody else is watching.

Suddenly self-improvement feels much less like a personal project and much more like a responsibility.

Not because perfection is required.

Because awareness is required.

The Internal Audit

The beautiful thing about auditing is that its purpose is not punishment. Its purpose is visibility.

Good auditors are not searching for failure. They are searching for truth.

The same should be true of us.

Training is an audit. Prayer is an audit. Journaling is an audit. Silence is an audit. Hard conversations are an audit.

Anything that helps us see reality more clearly is a gift.

The longer I train, the less interested I become in my strengths. Strengths tend to take care of themselves. Growth almost always hides inside the things we’d rather ignore: the weak grip that begins failing under fatigue, the rushed breath that reveals impatience, the drifting attention that keeps us from being fully present, the difficult conversation we’ve been avoiding, or the habit we’ve stopped examining because it feels too familiar to question.

Growth lives in the deficiencies.

Every month, accountants reconcile their books.

Every training session, the iron reconciles us.

Every kata reveals something.

Every difficult conversation reveals something.

Every season of fatherhood reveals something.

Every challenge reveals something.

The question is whether we’re willing to see it.

Because mastery is not the elimination of weakness.

Mastery is the willingness to examine weakness honestly, learn from it humbly, and return to the work again tomorrow.

Not because we are broken.

But because we are unfinished.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

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Before strength, there is breath.

Before movement, before focus, before calm, before speech, before action - there is breath. And yet most of us move through life barely aware of it.

We obsess over the newest workout split, the newest supplement stack, the newest optimization protocol, the newest piece of equipment that promises to finally unlock whatever it is we think we’re missing. We build complexity into nearly every corner of modern life, as if wisdom must always arrive wrapped in sophistication. I am incredibly guilty of this myself. It’s so easy to get swept up by the flashyness of the latest and greatest, which sell simplicity but don’t truly provide it. Or, at least, don’t produce significant results.

The older I get, the more I realize that many of the deepest truths are even more painfully simple. Lift heavy things. Walk often. Sleep. Pray. Eat mostly whole foods. Breathe deeply. Repeat for a lifetime.

That’s it.

Or at least, that’s where it begins.

I think this is part of why kettlebells resonate with me so deeply. A kettlebell is almost offensively simple. It is a hunk of iron with a handle. No screens. No subscriptions. No endless adjustments. Just gravity and movement and honesty. You can train nearly every major movement pattern with one bell. You can build strength, endurance, mobility, power, coordination, resilience. You can train in your garage, your driveway, your backyard, a field, a barn, a dojo, or the middle of the woods beside a fallen log and a pile of stones if you really wanted to. There is something deeply human about that simplicity. True simplicity.

And I think life itself often works the same way.

We complicate nutrition when much of the answer is simply prioritizing protein, eating fruits and vegetables, and consuming more real food than processed food. My life honestly became easier the moment I stopped trying to endlessly optimize every meal and simply made sure we always had basics in the house. A protein source. Bags of broccoli and carrots in the fridge. Rice. Fruit. Eggs. Now during the week I can cook a batch of protein, steam broccoli the next day, and lunch is done. Simple, sustainable, repeatable. Not flashy. Just foundational.

Breathing may be the greatest example of this principle.

It is one of the most powerful health tools available to us, completely free, accessible nearly every moment of every day, and yet most people never think about it until something goes wrong.

In traditional Okinawan martial arts, proper breathing is often one of the very first things taught in the dojo. Not because it is glamorous, but because nothing else can truly be optimized without it. Before speed, before power, before precision, there must be proper breath. If your breathing is chaotic, your movement will become chaotic with it. If your breathing is shallow, your nervous system often becomes shallow too. If your breathing panics, your mind and spirit tend to follow close behind.

There’s an old saying in martial arts and combat training:

“Can’t breathe, can’t fight.”

And while this axiom certainly applies physically, I think it applies just as much to the rest of life.

The difficult conversation. The screaming toddler. The mounting bills. The uncertainty at work. The diagnosis you never expected. The anxiety that creeps in at two in the morning. The grief you cannot explain. The moments where life seems to narrow around you until it feels like the walls are closing in.

The first thing we often lose in those moments is the breath.

Shoulders rise. Jaw tightens. Chest constricts. Breathing becomes shallow and frantic. The body prepares for war, even if the “war” is simply modern stress layered on top of modern stress. And perhaps one of the great disciplines of being human is learning to reclaim the breath before everything else spirals with it.

Kettlebell training taught me this in a way almost nothing else has.

The bell exposes poor breathing immediately. The moment your breathing falls apart, your technique usually follows right behind it. Swings become sloppy. Cleans start crashing into your forearms. Presses lose stability. Your nervous system begins redlining. The iron reveals truth quickly because it forces you to coordinate breath, tension, relaxation, posture, timing, and movement all at once.

Eventually you realize the workout is not merely muscular.

It is respiratory, neurological, psychological, spiritual.

The kettlebell teaches you to remain calm while generating force. To brace without becoming rigid. To exert without panicking. To recover while still moving. To breathe through discomfort rather than fleeing from it. It teaches rhythm, cadence, awareness, presence. The breath becomes the metronome underneath the movement.

Scientifically, breath sits at the center of nearly everything happening in the body. Oxygen fuels cellular energy production. Every organ, every muscle, every tissue depends upon it. Your brain alone consumes a tremendous amount of oxygen relative to its size. Efficient breathing influences energy production, recovery, stress regulation, cognition, endurance, and nervous system balance.

But the conversation is not only about oxygen.

It is also about carbon dioxide.

Most people think of CO₂ as merely a waste gas that should be expelled as quickly as possible, but the body is far more nuanced than that. Healthy tolerance to carbon dioxide actually helps improve oxygen delivery to tissues. This is part of why chronic over-breathing - rapid, shallow chest breathing, stress breathing, excessive mouth breathing - can create problems. Ironically, constantly trying to dump CO₂ can actually make oxygen utilization less efficient.

Within reason, learning to tolerate rising CO₂ levels is part of what allows the body to remain calm under stress.

This is important in modern life because most people are not suffering from an inability to access stimulation. We are overstimulated constantly. Nervous systems pinned at redline. Notifications. Screens. Pressure. Noise. Hurry. We have become extraordinarily uncomfortable with stillness.

Breathing can retrain that.

This is one reason practices like nasal breathing, diaphragmatic breathing, controlled breath holds, and slower breathing patterns can feel so powerful. Not because they are mystical shortcuts, but because they reconnect us to foundational physiology that many of us have unconsciously drifted away from.

Nasal breathing alone changed a tremendous amount for me. Not in some rigid “never mouth breathe under any circumstances” kind of way - if you push hard enough during heavy swings, snatches, sprints, or brutal conditioning work, your body will use what it needs. But as a general baseline for daily life and much of training, nasal breathing slows things down. It filters and humidifies the air. It encourages diaphragmatic breathing. It often regulates intensity more naturally. Most importantly, though, it creates awareness.

You begin noticing when stress changes your breathing.

You begin noticing when your chest tightens before your mind even catches up.

You begin noticing that anxiety often arrives in the body before it fully arrives in thought.

Awareness precedes change… it always does.

In many Okinawan and Japanese martial traditions, we speak of breathing into the hara - the center located deep in the lower abdomen. Western physiology would largely describe this as diaphragmatic breathing, but there is also something experiential about it that goes beyond anatomy. Breathing into the hara feels grounding, rooted. It anchors the body. Connects posture. Calms the mind. Organizes movement.

And kettlebell training constantly reinforces this lesson.

A heavy swing requires proper bracing and breath timing. A press requires tension without suffocation. A snatch demands explosive exhalation paired with relaxation in the correct places. Too much tension and you gas out… too little tension and you lose structure. The breath becomes the bridge between softness and force.

And maybe that is why breathing represents life itself so beautifully.

Sometimes the breath swells like a storm.

Sometimes it settles like an undisturbed lake.

Sometimes it is explosive and violent.

Sometimes it is quiet enough to barely notice.

Fast breathing can energize us. Slow breathing can calm us. Sharp breathing can generate power. Gentle breathing can restore recovery. The extremes coexist together, just like every other part of life.

The key is learning when each is appropriate.

Some practices that have helped me over the years are remarkably simple. Box breathing, often used in military and tactical communities, can calm the nervous system surprisingly quickly: inhale, hold, exhale, hold - equal counts throughout. Sitting in a deep squat while training breathwork became meditative for me, especially first thing in the morning. Belly breathing with one hand on the chest and one on the abdomen helped retrain awareness of where my breath was actually going. Conservative breath hold work helped me recognize how quickly panic can arise internally, even when the body is actually okay.

And then there are the deep-water free divers.

Some can hold their breath for staggering lengths of time, but what fascinates me most is that their gift is not merely lung capacity. It is calmness. Efficiency. Relaxation. The body consumes less oxygen when the mind stops fighting itself.

I have heard interviews of free divers who stress that the most important factor in their dives is not the breath, or the ability to hold their breath for a long time. Rather, it is their ability to maintain calm. Maintain clarity during discomfort.

There’s a lesson in that for all of us.

Most people leak energy constantly through tension, anxiety, overthinking, shallow breathing, distraction, and perpetual internal resistance. We exhaust ourselves long before the real work even begins.

The breath teaches economy.

Presence.

Stillness beneath pressure.

And perhaps that is the deeper lesson underneath all of this: we do not necessarily need more complexity. We need deeper connection to fundamentals. More awareness of what has always been available to us. The modern world constantly sells us the next answer, but some of the oldest answers still remain undefeated.

A kettlebell. A walk outside. Playing barefoot in the front yard with the kids. Whole foods. A quiet prayer. A moment of stillness. A deep breath.

I still work on this every single day. Some days my breathing feels grounded and calm. Other days stress creeps in and I catch myself breathing high in my chest again, rushing through life as if I am trying to outrun it. Honestly, most days there are ebbs and flows between a high stress breathing response and calmness. But maybe that awareness itself is part of the practice. Part of the training.

Because breath is not something we master once. It is something we return to for the entirety of our lives.

One inhale. One exhale. One repetition at a time.

Each one is one.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

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Anyone who has spent real time exploring or training with kettlebells knows the rack position is where things can really start to get honest.

Not the lockout overhead. Not the dramatic grind. Not the final rep where your whole body strains and your face contorts while everyone around you watches to see if you’ll finish it.

The rack.

The bell pressed against your forearm. The pressure against the chest and ribs. The subtle fight to keep the wrist stacked properly. The lungs trying to find space to breathe underneath tension. The trunk quietly bracing to keep everything organized while externally… it almost looks like nothing is happening at all.

Standing still suddenly becomes work.

And that is precisely why the rack matters.

Because most of life does not happen in the visible moment of triumph. Most of life happens in the positions that prepare us to move well in the first place.

Life is the rack.

I’ve always respected the raw force of powerlifting and maximal effort training. There is something deeply human about watching someone summon everything they have to move an impossible weight. The aggression. The nervous system override. The singular commitment to a moment. There is beauty in that too.

But kettlebell training - at least the way I have come to experience it - asks something different of you.

Not just force… integration.

Breath. Structure. Timing. Relaxation where relaxation should exist and tension where tension is actually needed. Body, mind, and spirit all learning to move together instead of fighting each other for control.

You cannot muscle your way through a long kettlebell session the same way you can survive one all-out maximal lift. The bell exposes inefficiency too quickly. If your breathing is chaotic, the bell tells you. If your shoulders tense unnecessarily, the bell tells you. If your grip becomes desperate, the bell tells you. If your mind drifts away from the moment in front of you, the bell tells you that too.

And eventually you might begin to realize something uncomfortable: the movement only looks smooth externally because of the invisible organization happening internally.

That feels a lot like adulthood to me.

There is a concept in martial arts called Heijoshin. It is often translated as the “everyday mind” or the “unshaken mind.” The idea is not that a person becomes emotionless or detached from difficulty. It is that through training, composure becomes accessible even while pressure is present. (If interested, check out my full article on Heijoshin in my Martial Mindset series).

Not because the pressure disappears. But because the person becomes more internally organized beneath it.

That has always felt more meaningful to me than the idea of becoming fearless. Fearlessness is often temporary. Adrenaline fades. Emotion fluctuates.

But steadiness… steadiness can be practiced.

The rack position teaches this quietly.

You cannot breathe frantically and remain efficient in the rack. You cannot waste energy carelessly and expect longevity from the movement. The bell forces you to settle yourself internally before you can move well externally.

In that way, the rack becomes more than a position. It becomes practice for the rest of life.

For fatherhood. For leadership. For difficult conversations. For uncertainty. For the ordinary pressures that rarely look dramatic from the outside, but still require us to remain steady underneath them.

Maybe that is what strength actually begins to look like over time.

Not becoming “harder.” Becoming harder to shake.

When I was younger, I imagined strength as something visible. Something explosive. Something undeniable. The big moment. The finish line. The lockout overhead where everyone could clearly see the weight had been conquered. The rippling muscles of Rocky Balboa and Conan the Barbarian. That must’ve been strength. It is and was… but strength can truly be so much more.

The older I get, the more I think real strength looks almost painfully ordinary from the outside.

It looks like the father who comes home exhausted and still kneels down to help his daughter with her shoes while dinner burns slightly in the background and a toddler melts down two rooms away.

It looks like the husband who takes a breath before responding instead of transmitting the full force of his stress onto the people he loves most (Lord knows I am guilty of this often!).

It looks like the leader who remains steady enough that everyone else can settle their nervous systems simply because they walked into the room.

It looks like repetition. Bills. Laundry. Early mornings. Quiet consistency. Showing up again and again long after the excitement has faded.

No applause. No dramatic soundtrack (though I sure do LOVE Eye of the Tiger and Rocky’s epic training montage music…).

Just the steady simplicity of carrying responsibility with integrity.

I had a baseball coach once who used to ask the team, “Who are you when nobody is watching?”

At the time, I thought he meant effort. Character. Work ethic. And I think he did.

But I understand the question a little differently now.

Because eventually you realize the visible moments are not actually who you are. The performance is not who you are. The lockout is not who you are.

The real you is found in the quiet repetitions nobody celebrates. The way you carry yourself when the room is empty. The way you breathe under pressure. The way you handle the monotonous responsibilities that will never become a social media post or a highlight reel.

The rack position is strangely symbolic that way. To someone watching casually, it almost looks unimpressive. You’re just standing there holding weight near your chest.

But internally, everything is working.

The posture. The brace. The breath. The alignment. The restraint. The focus. The conservation of energy. The discipline not to waste movement unnecessarily.

And maybe that is what maturity actually is.

Not becoming louder. Not becoming more dramatic.

But becoming more organized internally. More integrated. More honest with yourself about where your energy leaks and where your ego still tries to compensate for weakness.

Because the truth is, nobody can live at lockout forever. Nobody can sustain life entirely in the big visible moments.

Eventually the weight always returns back down to the rack.

Back to responsibility. Back to structure. Back to breathing. Back to preparation. Back to the quiet work of holding yourself together with enough integrity to do the next repetition well.

That is where life is actually lived. Not overhead.

Here. Under tension. Close to the chest. Breathing carefully. Staying organized.

The press is what people see.

The rack is what sustains it.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

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Thank you for reading, and thanks for the support! I thought it might be fun to end this post with a specific kettlebell workout that I’ve done a number of times myself that integrates the principles in this article. 30 minutes. You’ll get some quality movement in and you might just learn a little something about yourself, too.

30 Minute Kettlebell Workout

Focus: The Rack Position

This session is not about racing through reps or chasing exhaustion for its own sake. The goal is to stay organized under tension. Breathe well. Move cleanly. Let the rack position teach you composure instead of chaos.

The weight should feel challenging enough that you must stay intentional… but not so heavy that the movement turns sloppy.

Own the rack.
Own your breath.
Own the transitions.

Warm-Up - 5 Minutes

Move continuously and smoothly.

• Halos × 5 each direction

• Bodyweight Cossack Squats × 5/side

• Deadbugs × 6/side

• Light KB Swings × 15

• Rack Hold Marches × 20 steps

Repeat as needed until warm and breathing steadily.

Main EMOM - 20 Minutes

(Every Minute on the Minute)

Cycle through the following 5 minutes for 4 total rounds.

Minute 1 - Double or Single KB Clean + Front Squat

• 5 cleans

• 5 squats

Focus: Smooth clean into a calm rack. Don’t crash the bells. Breathe at the top.

Minute 2 - Rack Carry

• 40-50 seconds walking

Options:

• Single-arm suitcase-style rack carry

• Double rack carry

• Alternating sides each round

Focus: Slow breathing. Tall posture. Quiet feet.

This is the heart of the workout.

Minute 3 - Push Press or Strict Press

• 6-8 reps total

Focus: Every rep starts from a stable rack. Don’t rush the dip or drive. Own the return back down.

Minute 4 - Bent Over Row (Explosive)

• 12-15/side

Focus: Stay athletic. Hips back. Let the breath stay calm even while working.

Minute 5 - Swings

• 15-20 reps

Focus: Float the bell. Relax the arms. Sharp exhale. Smooth hinge.

Then immediately back to Minute 1.

Finisher - 5 Minutes

The Rack Test

5-Minute Continuous Flow

Without setting the bell(s) down:

• 5 Rack Reverse Lunges (left)

• 5 Rack Reverse Lunges (right)

• 10 Marching Steps

• 5 Push Presses

• 20-second Rack Hold

Repeat continuously for 5 minutes.

Switch sides as needed if using one bell. The goal is not speed. The goal is composure.

You should finish the workout feeling:

• challenged

• organized

• grounded

• present

Not destroyed. Because this isn’t about surviving chaos. It’s about learning how to remain steady underneath it.

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We’ve all felt it before. The “weight” of space. When we’ve hit our peak flow, the moments seem to slow down. There’s a distinction between one moment and the next, rather than overflow.

This space exists in movement as well.

We tend to fix our attention on what’s obvious - the swing, the snatch, the catch. The visible effort. The outcome, the end result of the movement. The thing we can point to and say, that’s the work.

But the deeper truth is that the work isn’t actually in the movement itself. It’s in the space that allows the movement to exist at all.

The Bell

Pick up a kettlebell and watch closely - not just the hinge or the drive, but what happens in between. There’s a brief moment where the bell feels almost weightless, where it’s no longer being pulled but hasn’t yet begun to fall.

Effort gives way to something quieter, something less forceful and more precise. Most people rush through that moment. They’re so focused on completing the rep, on hitting the number, on moving to the next thing, that they miss perhaps the main part that’s actually trying to teach them something.

You have to learn to feel it. And eventually, you learn to live there.

The Brush

In my limited studies on brushwork, it is evident that it teaches this same lesson, just in a different language. In ink work, the stroke is what draws the eye, but it’s only meaningful because of what surrounds it.

The slight pause before the brush touches the paper, the subtle release of pressure halfway through the line, the empty space that gives the mark its shape, contrast, and life - these are the elements that separate intention from noise. Without that space, it’s just ink on paper. Movement without meaning.

Different context, but the principles remain the same.

The Silence

Perhaps one of the greatest use cases of the value of the space in between is found in music. What moves us isn’t just the notes themselves, but the silence between them - the brief pause that builds tension, the held breath before resolution, the space that allows one note to end so the next can truly matter.

Remove that silence, and you don’t get something more powerful. You just get more sound.

The Moment Before

You see it in baseball, too, in a moment so small it’s easy to overlook. The ball leaves the pitcher’s hand, the batter begins to load, and for a split second everything feels… still.

Not paused, not slow - just quiet in a way that’s hard to describe unless you’ve felt it. And inside that stillness sits the full weight of what’s about to happen. Contact or miss. Momentum or reset.

The outcome hasn’t revealed itself yet, but it’s already there, waiting in that narrow space before the swing commits and everything unfolds at once.

Then it explodes.

Our Relationship with Space

Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost our relationship with that kind of space. We’ve trained ourselves to fill it. Every gap in the day, every silence in a conversation, every margin in our schedule gets occupied.

Notifications, meetings, inputs, outputs - we’ve come to believe that if we’re not actively doing something, we’re falling behind. And in doing so, we eliminate the very thing that makes doing anything well even possible.

Because space is often where the real work happens. It’s where awareness has room to show up, where decisions begin to form, where restraint becomes an option instead of a missed opportunity.

It’s the breath before you speak, the moment before you hit send, the pause before you respond to your kids when they’ve pushed you right to the edge. That space - small as it may seem - is where who you are actually lives.

Ma

In the martial traditions, there’s a concept for this: ma. It’s often translated as “timing,” but I don’t believe that captures its true essence.

It’s not just when something happens; it’s the interval that gives it meaning. Too early, and you force it. Too late, and you’re chasing it. But when you can feel that space - when you can trust it - everything begins to move with a kind of quiet precision that doesn’t need to announce itself to be understood.

It’s the distance between two movements. The silence between two sounds. The breath between two decisions.

And once you start to feel it, you begin to realize that it isn’t something you force or manufacture. It’s something you become aware of - something that was always there, waiting to be noticed. It’s part of your being - but the chaos of life and the world around us numbs its presence.

Beyond the Strike

You see this most clearly in martial arts, where so much attention is placed on the visible end of a movement.

The fully extended punch. The kick at its “end” point. The clean, finished position that’s easiest to evaluate and correct.

We’re taught proper punching and kicking technique through kihon and kata. It starts with making a proper fist, curling the toes back in our kicks, and then we begin learning the punching and kicking. But over time, as we learn, it’s easy to mistake the visible endpoint of the punch or kick for the technique itself.

Because the truth is, that’s not where the technique lives. It’s just where it becomes obvious.

The real work is happening in the parts most people move through too quickly to notice.

It’s in the chamber before the kick snaps forward, where balance is quietly established and the body organizes itself without tension. It’s in the subtle generation of power from the hara, before the arm even begins to move - an internal shift that doesn’t look like much from the outside, but changes everything about what follows.

Nothing is forced. Nothing is rushed. It builds… and then it expresses.

And then there’s the part almost everyone overlooks entirely.

The return.

We tend to think of a punch as ending at full extension, as if the technique is complete the moment it reaches its peak. But that’s only half the picture. The moment between that extension and the return - the space where the body is neither striking nor resetting - is still very much part of the movement.

It’s still part of the strike.

A careless return reveals more than a weak punch ever will.

If you collapse too early, the structure disappears. If you hesitate or drift, the rhythm breaks. If you disconnect, even briefly, awareness fades and the movement loses its integrity. It’s about getting off line but remaining engaged.

But when the return carries the same intention as the strike - when it’s just as connected, just as deliberate, just as present - the technique doesn’t end at the point of contact. It continues through it, beyond it, and back into readiness without interruption.

There’s no gap. No drop-off. Just continuity.

This is where ma becomes something you don’t just understand, but something you feel.

Not only in the moment before the strike, as power gathers and intention forms - but in the space after it, as the body transitions without losing awareness. The interval between expression and recovery. Between action and readiness again.

It’s the part most people either rush through or relax out of too soon.

But it’s also the part that separates movement from mastery.

At Work

This shows up in your work more than you might realize. Building something meaningful - whether it’s a team, a process, or a career - doesn’t come from reacting to every issue the moment it appears. It comes from creating enough space to think clearly, to respond intentionally, and to separate what actually matters from what simply feels urgent.

Anyone can move fast. Very few people can move well.

At Home

You see it at home, too. The tighter you pack your schedule, the more chaotic everything begins to feel. The more you try to control every outcome, the more resistance you create.

But when you leave space - real, unfilled space - you start to notice things that would otherwise slip right past you. Your daughter’s tone. Your son’s curiosity. The way your wife looks at you when you’re actually present instead of just physically there.

None of that exists in the rush.

The Shift

The space carries weight. In all of these contexts. This principle became apparent to me in the martial context and trained with my kettlebells. And over time, awareness of the space can cause a shift. You stop living only for the big moments - the wins, the milestones, the visible outcomes - and start to recognize that life isn’t actually built there. It’s built in the quiet spaces between them.

The kettlebell float is that space, that shift. Where the movement transitions. The ordinary pauses. The unnoticed transitions. The moments that don’t demand your attention, but quietly shape everything.

The Space Between

The bell moves. The brush moves. The note sounds and fades. The bat swings.

Life moves.

But if you want to understand any of it - if you want to move through it with any real sense of balance, presence, and control - you have to learn to see what most people overlook. Not the movement. Not the effort.

The space in between.

Because most people try to control their life through action.

Very few realize it’s the space between actions that can actually determine everything.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

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“Relax your shoulders…”

“Let your eyes relax…”

“Steady your mind…”

“Settle into the movement…”

I wish I knew how many times I’ve been encouraged to relax (or some version of that advice) between my athletic career and now my martial journey. It has to be easily in the thousands.

Why is it so difficult for me to follow this guidance?

I believe there is a subtle trap in effort that most of us don’t recognize until we’ve lived in it for a while.

We start to believe that the answer is always more. More focus. More intensity. More control. We tighten our grip on the bell, on the brush, on the baseball bat, on our daily schedules, on our work, on our relationships - thinking that if we just hold on a little harder, things will finally fall into place.

Has that ever proven to work for anyone? For me, what always happens instead is much quieter than that.

Movement shortens. Breath rises. The mind narrows. And slowly, without realizing it, I’ve traded capability for control.

Where Tension Begins to Work Against You

In training, this tension shows up quickly.

You try to dominate the kettlebell. You grip too hard in the backswing, over-guide the arc, overcorrect the path. The bell stops floating and starts fighting. Every rep becomes something you survive instead of something you express.

In the brush, it’s even more unforgiving. The thought stiffens. The ink hesitates. The stroke tells on you before you even lift your hand from the page.

But the deeper lesson isn’t in the bell or the brush… it’s in what they reveal.

The more tension you hold, the less room there is for anything else.

Tightening Restricts Expansion

Expansion requires space. Space in your breath, space in your body, space in your thinking. When you tighten, you collapse that space.

Not all at once - but enough.

Enough that your awareness narrows. Enough that your reactions become automatic instead of intentional. Enough that you stop seeing what’s actually in front of you.

And when awareness narrows, understanding narrows with it.

This Is the Uke Spirit

A traditional martial principle that often gets overlooked is the spirit of the uke.

The one who receives.

Not passively. Not weakly. But with awareness. With readiness. With openness.

To receive without tension is not to give up control. It’s to remain available. Available to feel, available to adapt, available to understand what is actually happening - rather than what you expected to happen.

This is where smoothness is born.

The Martial Mindset Beneath It

This idea runs through all of it.

Heijoshin - the ability to remain steady, even when things around you are not.

Fudoshin - not rigid, but grounded. Not brittle, but rooted.

Zanshin - awareness that doesn’t collapse the moment action ends.

Mushin - the absence of unnecessary thought, not the absence of thought altogether.

Each of these requires space. And space cannot exist where everything is clenched.

A line that has always stuck with me from one of the martial arts books I’ve got in my library (I don’t even remember which book, but the concept is simple and could be referred to in a number of martial texts) is “emptiness facilitates movement.”

I love this line because it digs deeper than just “relaxing.” Emptiness is the state of existence where movement can happen freely. And it’s only in this state where it can truly be facilitated optimally.

This encompasses the mental, physical and spiritual all together. Much deeper than “relax, dude.”

What the Bell has Taught Me About Real-Life Tension

We’ve all experienced moments where this lesson stops being theoretical.

Maybe it’s at work…

A deadline tightening. Numbers not lining up the way they should. No history of proper documentation or tie outs of data. You can feel the pressure building, and instead of stepping back, you lean in harder. You grip the process tighter. You check the same thing three times.

When this happens, don’t we naturally gravitate towards trying harder?

I will find myself thinking about it as I’m lying in bed. As I’m sitting at the dinner table with my family. Times when I should be mentally present, I’m only physically present.

The more you push… the more resistance you feel. The harder you try to control the moment, the more effort it takes just to hold onto it.

Until you realize - you’re not responding anymore…

You’re gripping. Just like I’ve done hundreds of times with the bell. But the bell teaches smoothness is where life flows best.

The Feedback Loop of Tension

Tension feeds itself. And tension is a hungry beast. The tighter you get, the less you can feel. The less you can feel, the more you try to control. The more you try to control, the tighter you become.

It’s a loop.

And it doesn’t break with more effort. It breaks with awareness.

What Tension Does to the Nervous System

There’s a real, physiological cost to the way we tighten.

When you grip too hard - physically, mentally, or even spiritually - your body reads it as a signal that something is “wrong.” Something needs to be controlled. Something might be a threat. And without asking for permission, your system shifts into the sympathetic nervous system - your fight-or-flight state.

The impact of this is pervasive. Your heart rate rises. Your breathing shortens. Your muscles stay partially contracted. Your awareness narrows.

The amygdala becomes more active, scanning and reacting, while the prefrontal cortex - the part of your mind responsible for clarity, patience, and good judgment - starts to step back.

You don’t lose your ability to think. You lose access to it.

And when this becomes your default - when you live in that constant low-grade tension - cortisol stays elevated, recovery drops, and everything begins to feel harder than it should.

This is why smoothness matters.

Because when you release what doesn’t need to be held - when you breathe, soften, and create space - you shift back toward a regulated state. Your awareness expands. Your thinking clears. Your body follows.

Tightening restricts. But space… gives you somewhere to move.

The Critical Shift from Tension to Smoothness

At some point, if you stay with it long enough, the realization comes - but it often isn’t obvious.

It comes in a rep that feels different.

The bell floats instead of fights. Your breath drops instead of rises. The movement connects instead of breaks.

And you realize…

You didn’t get stronger in that moment.

You got less in your own way.

Emptiness facilitates movement.

Life Is No Different

We do the same thing outside of training.

We tighten around conversations - trying to control how we’re perceived. We tighten around decisions - trying to eliminate uncertainty. We tighten around outcomes - trying to guarantee results.

And in doing so, we reduce our ability to actually respond to what’s happening.

We stop listening. We stop observing. We stop adapting.

Because tension has filled the space where awareness should live.

This is the unfortunate truth of our world today:

The demands of our work, our families, our relationships, our finances - even our desire to be good people - begin to pull at us from every direction. And over time, without realizing it, we start to shape ourselves around those demands.

We tighten. We adjust. We become what the moment asks of us.

Until one day, we feel… empty.

But not because we’ve lost ourselves. Because we’ve moved so far away from what is true that we can no longer feel it clearly.

But real emptiness isn’t absence. It’s clarity.

It’s the removal of everything that doesn’t belong - so that what remains cannot be shaken by what surrounds it.

And when you reach that place -

Nothing outside of you needs to be controlled… because nothing outside of you can pull you away from who you are.

We must allow for smoothness. Must allow for expansion. Must allow for space.

Expansion Is Where Understanding Lives

When you allow space - when you loosen what doesn’t need to be held - you begin to see more.

More angles. More nuance. More possibility.

You start to understand not just the situation, but your place within it. And that’s where growth can actually happen.

Not in force. But in expansion.

Bring It Back to the Bell & The Brush

The kettlebell teaches you to apply tension only at the moment it’s needed - then release it.

The brush teaches you that the quality of the line is a direct reflection of the state of your hand - and your mind.

Both are asking the same question:

Can you stay engaged without becoming rigid?

Can you remain strong without becoming tight?

The Path Forward

You don’t need less effort. You need less unnecessary effort.

Grip what matters. Release what doesn’t. Create space where you can.

Because the moment you stop trying to control everything - you start to understand what’s actually in front of you.

And from there…

You can finally move with it. You can finally let the clarity and strength within you become the emptiness that facilitates the movement of your life.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

Thanks so much for your support of my journal. I hope you enjoyed!

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No surprise (to those who have seen or read some of my content by this point), but I LOVE kettlebells. There is something quiet about a kettlebell. Something mysterious.

It sits where you left it - unmoved, unbothered, unchanged. It doesn’t call to you or remind you it’s there. It doesn’t care if you train today, or skip, or come back tomorrow with a better attitude.

It simply exists.

And that’s what makes it different from almost everything else in your life. That’s what makes it a great teacher.

We tend to move through our days as if something is keeping score. At work, there are deadlines and expectations. At home, there are responsibilities we carry - some spoken, some not. Even internally, there’s this quiet narrative running: what we meant to do, what we almost did, what we’ll do better next time.

But the iron has no awareness of any of that.

It doesn’t know your past. It doesn’t anticipate your future. It doesn’t measure your worth or adjust based on your intentions. It has no opinion of you whatsoever.

It is inanimate.

And in that inanimacy, there is no judgment - only truth.

When you step up to the bell, nothing has been decided yet. Not by the world, not by the weight.

Only by you.

If your movement is sharp, the bell rises clean. If your timing is off, it lets you know - sometimes subtly, sometimes not. Not as punishment. Not as correction.

Just as reflection.

This is where people get it wrong. We live in a time where an entire industry has formed around “influence.” Many of those voices do have something valuable to offer -lessons learned, experience earned. But just as often, what’s being shared is shaped by a life that doesn’t look like yours, in a season you may not be in.

And somewhere along the way, we start measuring ourselves against it. As if we should be doing what they’re doing. As if their path is “the” path.

I’ve come across content before sharing a narrative on the importance of “training no matter what.” If you’re injured, no one cares. If you’re facing life’s greatest difficulties, no one cares.

The narrative is harsh. It’s hard.

But the iron isn’t hard. And it isn’t soft either.

It’s neutral.

And neutrality can be uncomfortable, because it removes the story we like to tell ourselves. It removes the ability for us to blame or feel guilt. It leaves only what was done.

But there’s something unexpectedly generous in that too. Because the iron doesn’t carry yesterday forward.

It doesn’t remember missed lifts or hold onto bad sessions. It doesn’t reward you for what you did last week or punish you for what you didn’t do yesterday. Every time you come back to it, it meets you the same way - completely present, completely unchanged.

Ready.

Over time, if you keep showing up, you start to feel the shift. Not in a single session, but across days - quietly, almost unnoticed at first. You begin to understand that training isn’t about having a perfect workout or chasing some peak moment. It’s not about the “get fit in 30 days” challenges. It isn’t about waking up at 4am to run 10 miles before lifting for two hours.

It’s about the rhythm of each 24-hour cycle.

You show up today, for as much time and effort as you have to give on this day. Then, you recover. And you return again tomorrow.

No grand declaration. No dramatic overhaul.

Just continuity.

That’s where commitment actually lives. Not in intensity. Not in motivation.

In returning.

And somewhere along the way, you might realize you’re not the only one noticing. A small voice from the top step of the front porch. Bare feet on the concrete.

“Dad… what are you doing?”

You pause - not to explain everything, just enough.

“Training.”

They don’t see the program or understand the mechanics. They’re not analyzing your hinge or your breathing. They’re watching something much simpler than that.

They’re watching you come back.

To the same place. To the same bell. Day after day.

The iron isn’t teaching them directly. But it’s teaching you. And through you… it reaches them.

As we all know, there are days where everything feels aligned - body, breath, timing. And there are also days where nothing quite clicks. The iron doesn’t adjust to meet you in either case.

So you learn to meet it where it is. In that moment.

Steady. Without forcing it. Without drifting too far in either direction.

That’s where a different kind of strength starts to show up - not just physical, but mental. A steadiness that isn’t rigid, but also doesn’t waver with every good or bad rep.

You stop chasing good sets. You stop overreacting to bad ones. You just continue.

Rep by rep. Breath by breath.

And if you stay with it long enough, something shifts beneath the surface. The work is still there - the effort, the fatigue, the discipline - but there’s also a kind of clarity that starts to emerge.

A stillness. A sense that this is no longer just exercise.

It’s practice. It’s life.

So yes, I do love kettlebells. I love how they imitate life. The ups and the downs. The good days and the bad days. The loss of balance and the steadying once again. There is much to learn from the kettlebell as a teacher.

The iron, in its inanimacy, becomes a path - not because it’s leading you somewhere specific, but because it strips away everything that isn’t essential. What remains is simple, but not easy:

Commitment. Presence. Effort. Return.

Day after day.

Not to prove something. Not to chase an outcome.

Just to walk it.

This is the Way of the Iron.

It doesn’t ask for your belief. It doesn’t promise you anything. It doesn’t need you to show up.

It simply waits.

And if you meet it - consistently, honestly, without attachment - it gives something back. Not all at once, and not in a way you can measure in a single day.

But in the quiet accumulation of days.

Because in the end -

The iron does not care what you do. But if you stay with it long enough… it will show you who you are becoming.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

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The tenth martial mindset is the full integration of all the other mindsets. We take the lessons learned from all the previous nine mindsets and go from “training” to “becoming.”

After the techniques, after the reps, after the spreadsheets, after the noise - there is a point where the “practice” ends and everything surrounding you quiets down.

This is where everything must come together.

Not in force. Not in complexity. But in truth.

That place… is Kokoro (心).

What Is Kokoro?

At its simplest, kokoro is often translated as heart, mind, or spirit. But to me, Kokoro is not a part of you. It is the integration of all of you.

The kanji 心 is deceptively simple - three strokes, sometimes four in calligraphic form. But its meaning is vast. In classical Japanese (and earlier Chinese usage), it refers to the seat of emotion, thought, intention, and will.

Not separated. Not compartmentalized. Unified.

In Western thinking, we tend to divide:

• Mind vs body

• Logic vs emotion

• Strength vs compassion

But kokoro rejects that fragmentation. Instead, it says:

Your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, your instincts, your discipline, your love… are one thing.

Where Did Kokoro Come From?

The concept of kokoro originates from ancient Chinese philosophy, where the character 心 (xin) represented the heart-mind - the center of human experience.

Just like the other mindsets, kokoro originated from the concepts and beliefs of everyday life in China.

• Confucianism → moral character, sincerity, righteousness

• Daoism → natural alignment, effortless action

• Zen Buddhism → direct awareness, presence beyond thought

When these traditions made their way into Japan, xin became kokoro - and the meaning deepened through culture, poetry, and practice.

And then… it found its way into the martial arts.

Kokoro in Okinawan Martial Arts

Okinawan karate was never just about fighting.

It was about becoming whole.

Influenced by Chinese quanfa, Zen philosophy, and the realities of life on Okinawa, the masters didn’t separate:

• Technique from character

• Power from humility

• Combat from compassion

Kokoro became the invisible thread running through it all.

You can see it in the old teachings:

• Strike with intent - but without hatred

• Train the body - but refine the spirit

• Be strong - but never hard

The goal was never just effective technique.

The goal was a refined human being.

Kokoro and the Nine That Came Before

If the previous mindsets were individual tools… Kokoro is the hand that holds them all.

• Shoshin (Beginner’s Mind) → openness

• Heijoshin (Everyday Mind) → consistency

• Fudoshin (Immovable Mind) → stability

• Zanshin (Remaining Mind) → awareness

• Senshin (Purified Mind) → clarity

• Mushin (No Mind) → flow

• Isshin (One Heart) → unity of purpose

• Seishin (Spirit/Mind Discipline) → cultivated will

• Shinshin (Mind-Body Connection) → integration of form

Each one develops a facet. Kokoro is what can happen when they stop being separate. It’s what can happen when we build, bit by bit, our mental disciplines from the foundation.

Kokoro in Accounting

This might seem like a stretch. Really, it’s not.

You can build processes. You can design systems. You can enforce controls.

But if they are disconnected - if the data doesn’t reflect reality, or the team isn’t aligned… something breaks.

Kokoro in accounting is accuracy that reflects truth in the numbers. It’s processes that flow logically and with repeatability, and it is leadership that connects people to purpose.

It’s when the numbers, the systems, and the people all tell the same story. That’s integrity.

That’s kokoro.

Kokoro in Fatherhood

There’s a moment - perhaps you’ve felt it…

You’re holding your child. They look up at you - you see it in their eyes… they aren’t evaluating, not judging - just trusting.

And in that moment, nothing is divided. You are strong, but gentle. You are disciplined, but present. You are responsible, but loving.

You are not switching roles. You are simply… whole. That is kokoro.

Not performative nor forced. Fully integrated.

Kokoro in Relationships

You can train alone. You can think alone. You can convince yourself you’re aligned… alone.

But relationships remove that illusion. Because people don’t respond to what you say you are. They respond to what you consistently bring.

Kokoro in relationships is simple… what you feel, what you say, what you do… all match.

In marriage, this is tested daily. Not in big moments - but in small ones. Like showing up when you said you would. Listening without preparing your response. Carrying responsibility without being asked.

Kokoro asks you to show up not as who you’ve always been - but as who you’ve chosen to become.

If your life is a ledger, relationships are where it gets audited. Not by numbers. By people.

Kokoro in relationships is this… no one should have to guess who you are.

Kokoro in Martial Arts (Beyond Okinawan Karate)

Kokoro is the true essence of your being. It is all of what makes you, you.

So, kokoro in a martial context would mean bringing your total being into your training and (God forbid) any combat situation you may be faced with. It means bringing the totality of training, mindset, preparation, study, body, spirit into the moment. With full presence.

This is a lost art in the modern world. You are the only person who knows exactly what has gone on in your everyday life. The challenges you’ve faced. The joy you’ve felt. The strain of it all.

Kokoro brings it all together.

So, when we talk about training kokoro in martial arts, we are discussing the totality of your physical training, your mindset, your beliefs. It all plays a part in developing the art that will become yours.

When beginning a journey in martial arts, we often think only of technique. This is how we must begin. There has to be a path.

“Welcome to the dojo. This is how we stand.”

“We make a fist like this…”

“These are our basic techniques…”

We can stay on this path forever, if we’d like. And there is nothing wrong with this.

We can also choose to go beyond. To delve deeper into the understanding of who we are.

This, in my opinion, is the ultimate aim of the martial journey.

Not to learn how to fight. Not to learn what to do if someone tries to steal your wallet.

But to learn how to walk the path of self-discovery. Not to get to any particular destination but rather to enjoy the processing of evolving and becoming.

This is kokoro in martial arts.

The Practice of Kokoro

You don’t “achieve” kokoro. You remove what blocks it.

• Distraction

• Ego

• Inconsistency

• Misalignment

And you return - again and again - to alignment:

• Say what you mean

• Do what you say

• Feel what is true

• Act without conflict

It sounds so simple. But as we all know, it is not easy.

Kokoro starts with the path. Whatever the path may be for you.

It requires an open mind. It demands consistency. It forces stability. It develops awareness. It creates clarity. It allows for flow. It unifies purpose. It cultivates the will. It integrates all of these things into one.

And then somewhere along the path, if you’ve walked its uncertain horizons with dedication and openness to its lessons, you realize you’ve become someone different than you were before.

And then… you keep walking.

Closing: The Circle Closes

At the beginning of this series, we sought better discipline, better awareness, better strength.

But at the end…we realize the goal was never more.

It was less separation.

Kokoro is not something you add to your life.

It is what remains when your training, your work, your family, your thoughts, your actions, etc., stop pulling in different directions.

And become one.

Life and training are not separate. You are not separate.

There is only this:

One body. One heart. One mind.

Kokoro.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey of the Martial Mindset Series. It has been truly humbling for me to learn more about and share these bits of ancient wisdom with you all. It is my hope that these writings will have provided value in your life in some way or another, as they have in mine.

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It’s happened more times than I’d like to admit.

My kids are playing on the living room floor. I’ve just gotten home from a long, stressful day at work - constant interruptions, questions, problems. My mind is still there, even though my body is home.

I’m in the kitchen, trying to get dinner started.

“Daddy, can you come play?”

“Not right now, monkeys,” I say. “Daddy’s making dinner.”

They go right back to playing. No big reaction, no meltdown.

And in the moment, it doesn’t seem like a big deal.

In my head, I justify it.

I’m getting dinner on the table. We’re going to sit down together. Families who eat together stay connected.

All good things. But there’s a gap.

Between who I think I am as a father… and how I’m actually showing up.

The truth is, sometimes I don’t just want to make dinner. I want a few minutes. To focus. To breathe. To not be needed. My day at work rarely allows for that.

But here’s what hits me - at work, I don’t tell people, “I’m busy. Come back later.” But that’s exactly what I’m saying to my kids.

Now, I can’t be available to them every second of every day. That’s not reality. But I do want them to know something deeper:

That I’m here.

Not just physically - but fully. For them. For their mom. For this life we’re building together.

So the question becomes: How do I close that gap?

This is where Shinshin comes in.

What is Shinshin?

Shinshin is most often translated as:

“Mind and Body as One”

• 心 (Shin) - mind, heart, spirit

• 身 (Shin) - body

I think this slightly simplifies Shinshin, though. Shinshin is more than unity. It is the removal of separation.

The removal of delay. The removal of hesitation. The removal of contradiction.

It is the closing of the gap.

From Tai Sabaki… to One Movement

My sensei explains it simply. At first, you learn in pieces:

Tai sabaki (body control, body movement)… then strike. You move… then you hit. There’s a pause. A break. A gap.

With training, it becomes:

Tai sabaki and strike.

Closer. More connected. But still two things.

With longer, more deliberate training, you might get:

Tai sabaki-strike.

Now they begin to blend. Less separation. Less delay.

And eventually… there are no longer two words. No longer two actions. No longer even a sequence.

Just movement. Just expression. The body moves as the strike.

There is no gap left to close - because it no longer exists.

That is Shinshin.

The Invisible Gaps We Carry

This same gap shows up everywhere.

The Identity Gap

The space between:

Who you think you are, who you actually are, and who you want to be.

We tell ourselves stories:
“I’m disciplined.”
“I’m a leader.”
“I’m consistent.”

But our actions don’t always agree. These gaps are where friction starts to move in.

The Action Gap

The space between:

What you know you should do and what you actually do.

You know you should train consistently, speak up when no one else will, lead with clarity and conviction, follow through on promises.

And yet… you hesitate. You delay. You choose differently. I know I often do.

That gap compounds over time. Not in dramatic failures…but in small, repeated misalignments.

Just as incremental improvements compound over time into huge returns, incremental misalignments also compound. Into disappointment. Into separation. Into resentment.

How Shinshin Closes the Gap

Shinshin doesn’t give you more knowledge. It demands alignment. It trains you to remove the delay between:

Recognition → Decision → Action

Until they are no longer steps. Just one movement. Just like tai sabaki-strike.

The old masters didn’t teach this through lectures. They taught it through intentional repetition, immediate correction, and presence under pressure.

You didn’t get time to think your way through it. You had to become it. Because under pressure, you don’t rise to your thoughts - you fall to your level of integration.

Shinshin is that integration.

Built on the Foundations Before It

Shinshin doesn’t stand alone. It is built on everything that came before it.

• Shoshin gave you openness to learn

• Fudoshin gave you stability under pressure

• Zanshin gave you continued awareness

• Senshin / Mushin (early glimpses) showed you moments of flow

But Shinshin is where those ideas stop being concepts…and start becoming behavior.

It is the bridge between understanding the path and walking it without interruption.

The Risk of Leadership Without Shinshin

Without Shinshin, leadership becomes fragmented.

You get:

• Delayed decisions masked as “thoughtfulness”

• Soft communication that avoids necessary clarity

• Inconsistent standards between words and actions

• Analysis paralysis when action is required

People don’t follow what you say. They follow what you consistently do. And they can feel the gap. Even if they can’t name it.

The Strength of a Shinshin Leader

A Shinshin leader is different. Not louder. Not more aggressive. But more aligned.

Shinshin leaders:

• Act quickly when clarity is present

• Communicate directly without hesitation

• Follow through without internal negotiation

• Move with a quiet confidence that doesn’t need explanation

There is no performance, no split between identity and behavior.

What they believe… shows up immediately in how they act.

Close the Gap - A Practice

You don’t think your way into Shinshin. You train it. Not in theory - but in the smallest moments of your day.

You could start here:

1. Eliminate hesitation in simple actions

When you know - act.

Don’t negotiate with yourself over things you’ve already decided matter. Decide, act.

2. Do exactly what you said you would do

No inflation. No excuses. This is where identity begins to align with reality. And people see and recognize it.

3. Train clean, connected movement

In the gym. In martial practice. Don’t rush - but don’t separate. Move and act as one.

A pushup doesn’t just come from the pectorals, shoulders and triceps. It comes from the total body. From the fingertips to the toes, every part of the body is involved in lowering your chest to the floor, and lifting yourself back up.

Full integration.

4. Shorten the space between thought and action

Not recklessly. But decisively. Confidence is built by closing this gap repeatedly.

Fighter pilot John Boyd developed what’s known as the OODA Loop:

Observe → Orient → Decide → Act

In combat, the goal wasn’t just to move faster - it was to move more fluidly than your opponent could process.

To cycle through those steps so seamlessly that they no longer felt like separate phases. That’s Shinshin.

At first, life feels like:

Observe… then orient… then decide… then act.

Four distinct steps. Four opportunities for hesitation. But with training, those steps compress.

They begin to overlap. Until eventually you’re no longer running a loop.

You’re expressing a response.

Recognition and action become one continuous movement.

That’s how you close the gap.

5. Notice where the gap still exists

Where do you hesitate? Where do you delay? Where do your actions contradict your standards?

That’s your training ground. Be honest with yourself. Brutally. That’s the only way to close the gap.

Final Thought

At first, life feels like think… then act.

Then, think and act.

Then, think-act.

And eventually…there is no separation at all. You become the kind of man whose actions no longer need translation.

No gap between who you are - and how you move.

That is Shinshin.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

Thanks for reading The Iron & The Ink. One more installment of The Martial Mindset Series left next week. Thanks to all who have joined me on this journey!

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Most of us probably believe we train for strength (and probably intend to train for strength and composition).

We pick up a kettlebell to build muscle. We practice kata to improve technique. We work long hours to advance in our careers. We try to become better fathers, better leaders, better people.

But if we stay with the work long enough, something often begins to shift.

The kettlebell set gets longer. The kata repetitions grow into the thousands. The responsibilities at work become heavier. The small daily demands of life accumulate.

And somewhere along the way, we might realize something:

The weight was never the point.

The Japanese martial traditions have a word for what is actually being developed through sustained effort and disciplined practice:

Seishin.

The Meaning of Seishin

The word Seishin (精神) is composed of two kanji characters.

精 (Sei) - refined, purified, essence, vitality

神 (Shin) - spirit, soul, animating force

Together, these characters describe a state of being that is deeper than simple mental focus. Seishin refers to the refinement and cultivation of one’s spirit - the strengthening of character, resilience, and moral clarity through effort and discipline.

In classical martial traditions, this idea is often expressed through the phrase:

Seishin Tanren - The forging of the spirit.

The word Tanren literally refers to the process of forging steel in a furnace - heating, hammering, and refining metal until it becomes strong and resilient.

The metaphor is intentional.

Just as steel is strengthened through heat and pressure, the human spirit is refined through effort, repetition, and adversity.

Training, in this sense, is not simply about becoming more capable.

It is about becoming more refined, not letting the pressures of daily life create the foundation that becomes who you are. Rather, let the pressures of daily life help you build a new transformative foundation built on resilience, determination, and integrity.

I think my high school baseball coach described this best - after a tough loss (which, we didn’t often do - we were pretty good!) coach would say:

“The same fire that melts butter tempers steel.”

This is the true essence of Seishin. Facing the challenges in life head on and allowing ourselves to not only experience failure through stretching ourselves, but by learning from the failures in a way to come back stronger than before.

Historical Context

The concept of Seishin is older than karate itself.

Its roots run through several philosophical traditions that influenced Japanese martial culture:

• Confucian teachings emphasized discipline, self-cultivation, and moral development.

• Zen Buddhism emphasized clarity of mind through focused practice and direct experience.

• Bushidō, the ethical code associated with the samurai class, emphasized honor, restraint, and responsibility.

Within these traditions, martial training was never seen as purely physical. It was understood as a method of shaping the character of the practitioner.

This philosophy became especially visible when karate was introduced into the Japanese educational system in the early twentieth century.

One of the most influential figures in this transition was Gichin Funakoshi. Funakoshi famously wrote:

“The ultimate aim of karate lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of its participants.”

This statement further captures the essence of Seishin from a traditional martial sense.

The goal of training is not to “win.” The goal is to become the kind of person who can carry strength responsibly.

How the Idea Entered Okinawan Karate

Early Okinawan karate developed primarily as a practical method of life protection.

Training emphasized effectiveness, conditioning, and efficient body movement and alignment. The focus was on protecting oneself and one’s community in a difficult and sometimes dangerous environment. The goal of training was not sport… it was survival.

As karate spread from Okinawa to mainland Japan in the early 1900s, its presentation began to evolve.

In Japanese schools and universities, martial arts were framed not only as systems of physical training, but also as methods of character education.

Dojo etiquette, repetition, discipline, and humility were emphasized as much as technique.

Students were expected to develop not only skill, but also self-control, perseverance, and respect.

Over time, this perspective became deeply embedded in the way karate is practiced around the world.

Training was no longer only about learning how to defend and protect. It became a method of shaping the person doing the training.

Seishin in Martial Training

Anyone who has spent meaningful time in a dojo eventually recognizes a simple truth.

The physical repetitions are only part of what is happening.

Kata are repeated thousands of times. Conditioning drills are performed long after fatigue appears. Techniques are refined through slow, deliberate repetition.

From the outside, this might look monotonous. But the purpose is not merely technical mastery.

The real work is happening somewhere deeper.

Through repetition, the practitioner develops patience. Through difficulty, the practitioner develops perseverance. Through structure and discipline, the practitioner develops restraint. Through principles, the practitioner learns how to apply lessons both inside and outside the dojo.

Karate does not simply shape the body… it shapes the person who inhabits it.

Seishin in Strength Training

Strength training offers a surprisingly clear window into Seishin.

Anyone who has worked through a demanding kettlebell session understands this.

A long cycle set. Heavy carries. Heavy double kettlebell squats. Secret Service Snatch test.

In these moments, muscle absolutely matters - but muscle is not the deciding factor.

What matters is the quiet decision to continue.

One more repetition. One more breath. One more step forward.

Strength training develops the body. But chosen sustained effort develops something else.

Consistency over time slowly refines the practitioner. Not through dramatic breakthroughs, but through the steady accumulation of disciplined action.

The Iron gives us a chance to study ourselves on a deeper sense… to develop our inner ability to continue. To stay. To be there when no one else is or wants to be. To be the one who chooses to run into the storm rather than away from it.

The Ink is what gives us the chance to let this study settle and add meaning. We aren’t just lifting the Iron… we are using it as a tool for shaping ourselves into someone intimately knowledgeable about who we really are as opposed to who we want to be or who we think we are. And choosing to close that gap.

This is Seishin.

Seishin in Daily Life

Outside the gym or dojo, Seishin rarely appears in dramatic ways. Instead, it shows up in quiet moments:

Continuing a difficult project when progress feels slow. Having an honest conversation when avoidance would be easier. Returning to the work after a setback. Remaining steady when circumstances become uncertain.

Seishin is not loud toughness or aggressive determination.

It is a quieter form of resilience. The ability to remain consistent with one’s values and responsibilities, even when circumstances are difficult.

This form of resilience doesn’t come naturally, and it doesn’t just “happen” to someone. It is forged. Through the challenges and arrows of life. Through breaking down and building back up from the foundation. Through determining the principles that anchor our lives so that we can live with presence and purpose.

Seishin in Fatherhood

Few roles refine the spirit quite like fatherhood.

Children test patience in ways that no training drill ever could.

They create chaos when you are tired. They ask questions when you are distracted. They require presence when your attention is already divided.

In these moments, the real training becomes clear.

Children learn from what they observe.

They see how we respond when we are frustrated. They notice whether we remain patient when things are difficult. They learn from the way we handle responsibility.

Seishin in fatherhood is not about grand gestures… it is about small, consistent demonstrations of patience, presence, and restraint.

Offering a hug during a breakdown rather than immediate discipline. A calm demeanor when the chaos ramps up in the witching hours. Sitting in quiet thought and prayer to depict a different approach to managing daily stress.

Over time, these quiet actions shape not only our children, but ourselves.

Seishin in Professional Life

Professional life provides its own version of the forge.

Deadlines accumulate. Decisions carry consequences. Pressure appears when the stakes are high.

In these moments, competence is important. But character becomes essential.

Integrity requires telling the truth when numbers are uncomfortable. Consistency requires maintaining standards when shortcuts would be easier. Leadership requires remaining steady when others are uncertain.

Professional skill may open opportunities. But Seishin is what allows someone to carry those opportunities responsibly.

Where Seishin Fits in the Martial Mindset Series

Throughout this series, we have explored several traditional martial mindsets.

Shoshin reminds us to remain open and curious.
Heijōshin teaches calmness in the midst of chaos.
Fudōshin emphasizes steady composure.
Zanshin cultivates sustained awareness.
Senshin sharpens anticipatory intuition.
Mushin allows action to occur without hesitation.
Isshin unifies heart, purpose, and intention.

Seishin sits quietly beneath all of them. It is not simply a mindset.

It is the gradual refinement of the person who practices them. Over time, training shapes not only how we think, but who we become. That is the beautiful nuance of consistent training deposits.

The Result of Consistent Training

If we look closely, the deeper purpose of training eventually becomes clear.

The kettlebell always returns to the floor. The kata eventually ends. The workday eventually closes.

But something remains… the patience developed through repetition. The composure learned through pressure. The discipline built through consistency.

These qualities accumulate slowly, often without us noticing.

Until one day, in the middle of a difficult moment, we respond differently than we once would have. More steady. More patient. More deliberate.

Not because we forced ourselves to, but because the consistency of training changed us.

This is Seishin.

Not something we achieve once. Something we slowly become.

Long after the training ends, the spirit it shaped is still there.

I will leave us this week with one final quote that I truly love from Sokon “Bushi” Matsumura:

“To all those whose progress remains hampered by ego-related distractions, let humility - the spiritual cornerstone upon which Karate rests - serve to remind one to place virtue before vice, values before vanity and principles before personalities.”

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

Very humbly, I thank you for reading. Two more “Martial Mindsets” to go in this series. I hope you are enjoying!

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The world we live in causes division.

Pulled between responsibilities. Split between ambition and obligation. Strong in one room, distracted in the next. Focused at work, absent at home. Present in body, fragmented in mind.

We live in pieces.

Isshin is different. Isshin means one heart. Not intensity, not aggression, not hype.

One heart.

The Kanji:

Isshin-ryū (一心流) breaks down simply:

• 一 (ichi) - one

• 心 (shin) - heart, mind, spirit

• 流 (ryū) - stream, lineage, school

Literally “The School of One Heart,” or “One Heart Way.”

But like most things in traditional martial arts, the deeper meaning sits beneath the translation.

Isshin implies unity of intention. A mind that is not split. A heart that is not scattered. A spirit that does not hesitate between directions.

It suggests something rare in modern life: integration.

Not performing one role at work and another at home. Not saying one thing and living another. Not thinking one thing and doing another.

One heart way.

That is why this concept sits at the center of the system that shaped my own training.

A Brief History of Isshin-ryū

Isshin-ryū was founded by Tatsuo Shimabuku (1908–1975), an Okinawan karate master who formally named the style in 1956.

But to understand Isshin-ryū, you have to understand the moment in history when it appeared. The context is important.

Okinawan karate had already gone through several waves of development. Earlier generations trained privately and quietly. The art was shaped through family lines, village teachers, and personal mentorship rather than organized schools. The lessons were passed down orally rather than written down.

By the early 20th century, karate had begun spreading more broadly. Okinawan masters were refining and teaching their systems more openly. After World War II, Okinawa was rebuilding under American military presence, and many servicemen began seeking out training from local masters.

Shimabuku found himself at the crossroads of that moment.

He had trained under several influential teachers and absorbed different branches of Okinawan fighting knowledge. Rather than simply preserving one lineage exactly as he received it, he synthesized what he believed worked best.

That decision was not unusual in the deeper history of martial arts. Many systems were shaped exactly this way - through a practitioner integrating the teachings of multiple masters into something cohesive.

Isshin-ryū is not a rejection of tradition. It is the tradition of the karate style of Shimabuku himself. It is his style.

In this way, Isshin-ryū is really an integration of tradition.

The Influences: Kyan, Miyagi, and Motobu

Shimabuku’s training drew from several major influences in Okinawan karate. Each brought a different perspective to the art.

Chōtoku Kyan - speed and natural movement

Chōtoku Kyan represented the Shōrin-ryū lineage, known for its quick footwork, mobility, and natural body mechanics.

Shōrin systems tend to emphasize:

• relaxed speed

• evasive movement

• efficient striking

• natural posture

Where some systems root heavily into the ground, Shōrin approaches often feel lighter and more mobile.

This influence shows up clearly in Isshin-ryū’s quick snapping techniques and natural stance transitions.

Chōjun Miyagi - structure and breath

Chōjun Miyagi, founder of Gōjū-ryū, represents the other side of the Okinawan spectrum.

Gōjū literally means “hard-soft.”

The system emphasizes:

• rooted structure

• controlled breathing

• tension and release

• close-range power generation

Where Shōrin emphasizes speed and evasion, Gōjū emphasizes internal strength and stability.

This influence appears in Isshin-ryū through the importance of breathing, body connection, and the use of kata like Sanchin and Seiunchin that develop structural power.

Chōki Motobu - practical combat mindset

Motobu was known less for formal kata presentation and more for real-world fighting ability.

His approach emphasized:

• practicality

• close-range striking

• direct application

• realism over performance

Motobu famously criticized karate that looked impressive but lacked real combat effectiveness.

That pragmatic mindset runs strongly through Isshin-ryū as well.

Integration Rather than Imitation

Each of these teachers represented a different expression of Okinawan karate:

• Kyan - speed and flow

• Miyagi - structure and breath

• Motobu - practical application

Shimabuku integrated these perspectives into a system that balanced them.

Not too rigid, not too loose. Not theoretical, not chaotic.

Just effective.

The Vertical Fist

One of the most recognizable technical features of Isshin-ryū is the vertical fist, with the thumb resting on top.

At first glance, it looks like a minor detail.

But it reflects a deeper philosophy about alignment.

When the fist rotates vertically, the bones of the forearm line up more directly behind the first two knuckles. The wrist remains structurally supported through proper alignment and engagement of the extensor pollicis longus tendon (when the thumb is placed atop the vertical fist). The elbow tracks naturally behind the strike. Everything stacks.

The fist locks into place not through tension, but through alignment.

This reinforces efficient power transmission from the ground through the hips and into the strike.

In other words…the structure does the work. Not the ego.

Alignment: Physical, Mental, Spiritual

This idea of alignment extends far beyond punching mechanics. Alignment in the body teaches alignment in the mind.

When your posture collapses, your breathing shortens. When your breathing shortens, your awareness narrows. When your awareness narrows, your reactions become emotional rather than intentional.

Training alignment physically begins to restore alignment mentally. And over time, that alignment becomes something deeper - a sense that the body, mind, and spirit are moving in the same direction.

That is Isshin. Not just one fist. One heart.

Isshin in the Body

Train Isshin-ryū with intention and something subtle begins to change.

The body starts operating as a single system…

The wrists strengthen. The hips connect to the shoulders. The breath begins to flow and brace naturally. The feet root without stiffness.

Kata stops being simple choreography.

It becomes constant cycles of tension and release. Compression and expansion. Power generation and relaxation.

The body stops behaving like a collection of isolated muscles. It becomes integrated.

One structure. One movement. Complete fluidity rather than rigidity.

Isshin in Leadership

Leadership also demands integration. A leader cannot afford to be a different person in every room.

Values must remain consistent whether speaking to executives, colleagues, or new employees. Decisions must balance strength and humility. Short-term pressure must be weighed against long-term responsibility.

Just as Shimabuku integrated multiple influences into one coherent system, leaders integrate mindful strategy and execution, accountability and empathy, discipline and flexibility.

Being able to be this type of leader takes training the same as training in the dojo or the gym. Awareness of the need to train to be an Isshin leader shows leadership in and of itself. But it doesn’t stop there. It requires the integration.

Isshin leadership is not loud. It is stable. The same person shows up every time.

Isshin in Fatherhood

Isshin fatherhood means true presence. Children may not understand leadership and martial theory or philosophy, but they do immediately recognize intention and authenticity.

If I am half-reading emails when playing with my kids, they notice my disengagement.

They feel my instability if I correct behavior without remaining calm and steady.

Chaos begets chaos. Whenever I feed into the chaos rather than remaining fully present and unaffected by the emotional roller coaster, I only create more chaos.

True isshin fatherhood means keeping a finger on the pulse of the emotions surrounding you. Deflecting when you need to deflect. Receiving when you need to receive. Integrating the two.

One heart.

Isshin in Marriage

Marriage can expose fragmentation very quickly.

When my work life is out of balance, my professional ambition without presence at home becomes distance.

When I get too attached to my routine, my discipline without kindness becomes rigidity.

Isshin calls for integration here as well.

The integrity required in business must also exist in conversation at home. The patience practiced in training must appear in everyday frustrations.

Isshin in marriage means digging deeper within your energy tank to not allow the world to deplete you so much that you give all of yourself to work and kids, and nothing to your partner.

My wife deserves much more from me than I often give - so I must continue to strive to be the fully integrated husband. The Isshin husband.

One heart.

Isshin in Fitness

In training, Isshin could mean simplicity and intention.

Rather than chasing every novel fad from social media, the focus remains on developing real capacity.

Breath connected to movement. Strength connected to structure. Endurance connected to composure.

A kettlebell swing performed with a scattered mind is just exercise. A swing performed with one heart becomes practice. The movement is the same. The intention changes everything.

Simplicity and intention allow for continuous improvement through consistency and driven purpose rather than just “getting a sweat in.” The intention is what transforms the “workout” into real training. To me, “training” indicates a deeper purpose. That should be what we strive for in the gym or with the iron. Isshin fitness.

One heart.

Isshin in the Martial Mindset Series

Within the larger progression of martial mindset concepts, Isshin represents integration.

Earlier principles cultivate different aspects of awareness.

Shoshin reminds us to remain open.

Heijōshin stabilizes the emotional baseline.

Fudōshin anchors the mind in adversity.

Zanshin maintains awareness beyond the moment of action.

Senshin prepares the mind to anticipate.

Mushin helps us clear the mind from unnecessary distraction.

Isshin brings them together.

It is not another mental state. It is the integration of all of them into one direction of intention.

Every movement carries a purpose. Every thought aligns with the larger whole. Every role becomes an expression of the same underlying character.

But the exciting thing about it is that it is your style. Just as Isshin-ryū was Tatsuo Shimabuku’s style, integrating all the previous martial mindsets through Isshin means all these principles begin to inform who you become. That is true ownership of your style.

For me, the pathway has been Isshin-ryū, but the style that I practice is mine and mine alone. It’s what I alone am capable of. That comes from integration of the principles.

The Vow I Return To

Isshin-ryū is my pathway. Isshin is more than my “style.”

It is the direction I’m trying to move toward.

The same man in the dojo. Same man in the office. Same man at the dinner table. Same man in quiet prayer.

Not louder, not flashier. Just whole.

One heart.

A Personal Note on Isshin

Most of the concepts in this Martial Mindset series are principles I’ve studied, reflected on, and tried to apply.

Isshin is different. Isshin is the system I live inside.

Isshin-ryū is the pathway of karate I train in. The kata, the stances, the vertical fist, the rhythm of breathing and movement - these aren’t theoretical ideas to me. They’re things my body has struggled through. Repeated. Failed at. Improved slowly over time.

And like most people who train seriously, I eventually realized something important:

Karate wasn’t just shaping how I move. It was shaping how I live, how I think, how I process my world.

The more time I spent practicing alignment, structure, breath, and intention, the more I began noticing where my life itself was misaligned (and continues to be misaligned).

The dojo has a way of revealing those things.

Your posture tells the truth. Your breath tells the truth. Your attention tells the truth.

The One Heart Way.

A Principle of Life: Isshin

Isshin is not something we “achieve.” It is something we return to and practice daily.

The world constantly pulls us toward fragmentation. Work pulls one way. Stress pulls another (or, really, ALL the others). Distraction leaks into every quiet moment if we allow it.

Isshin is the quiet discipline of returning to center. Again and again.

When my attention wanders, I return to one heart. When my emotions rise, I return to one heart. When responsibilities feel overwhelming, I return to one heart.

One breath. One step. One decision made with integrity. Each one is one.

The martial path teaches this through movement. Stand correctly, align the body, connect the breath, deliver the strike with structure and intention.

Life is not so different. Stand upright in your values, align your priorities, connect your actions to your principles, move forward with intention, one decision at a time.

Isshin is not perfection. It is alignment and integration with intention.

The daily practice of becoming the same person everywhere life places you.

Not divided, not scattered, whole.

One heart.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for next week’s installment of the Martial Mindset Series.

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As long as there has been physical training, there has been grip strength practice.

Stone lifting, carrying, and flipping are all foundational strength training modalities which were used to display physical nature and ability.

Before barbells were calibrated and gyms were climate controlled, strength was measured in the hands.

Grip strength is older than sport. Older than bodybuilding. Older than organized martial systems.

It is as old as survival, really.

In the ancient world, strength was not aesthetic - it was functional. Greek myth tells of Heracles wrestling lions and carrying what resisted being carried. Heroes were celebrated for raw feats of hand and forearm strength.

Across Iceland and Scotland, men proved themselves not with presses, but by lifting and carrying irregular stones. The Húsafell Stone was not meant to be hoisted overhead. It was meant to be lifted, held, and carried without being dropped.

The test was not how explosively you could move it.

The test was whether you could hold it.

Before curls, there were carries. Farmers carried water. Soldiers carried shields. Laborers carried timber. Parents carried children. Everything essential required hands that did not quit.

Strength began in the grip because life began in the grip.

Okinawan Hojo Undo

In Okinawa, this understanding was formalized in hojo undo - supplementary strength work that hardened the body for real application.

Practitioners trained with nigiri game - heavy jars filled with sand or stone - gripping the rim with their fingertips and walking under load.

They swung chi ishi, stone levers that demanded control from the fingers to the shoulder.

Or my personal favorite, near and dear to my heart, they trained with ishi sashi, or “stone padlock.” The ishi sashi was used for training forearm strength as well as total body functional strength and conditioning.

The root of this training could be found in Shaolin temples, where students young and old practiced functional strength training by flipping, pressing, and swinging heavy stone locks.

The goal of training was not appearance. It was fluidity and integration of martial skill and strength.

The hands were trained to seize, to redirect, to control. The open hand was alive.

A Modern Day Example

Applied in a more modern sense, the kettlebell has simply become a refined echo of the ancient ways. The ishi sashi is a predecessor to what we know the kettlebell to be today.

Typically carved into a squared shape with a handle in the middle, the ishi sashi was popularized by the traditional Goju ryu schools as a way to train hand, finger, forearm, and shoulder strength, as well as total body functionality and fluidity.

The ishi sashi had a thick handle. It required a shifting center of mass. It demanded that you hold what resists you.

The bell asks the same question the stone asked centuries ago:

Can you carry what is yours without dropping it?

The real-world application of the kettlebell is still evident today.

A heavy farmer’s carry is honest. You pick up the bells and walk. There is no hiding. No momentum. No theatrics. Just tension and forward steps. Your grip begins to fade long before your legs do. The mind whispers to set them down.

But you don’t drop what you’re responsible for.

Dead hangs are even more revealing. Suspended from a bar, there is nothing to press against, nothing to brace but gravity itself. Your fingers negotiate directly with the pull of the earth. Stay or fall. Hold or release.

Grip strength has always been about more than forearms.

It is about staying.

The Open Hand

There is something else worth remembering.

Traditional karate was not built on the clenched fist alone. It was built on the open hand.

The hand that strikes is not always the hand that begins open - but the open hand was fundamental. It parries. It redirects. It seizes. It controls. It feels.

An open hand is responsive.

A closed fist can be equally closed off from reality. And a life lived entirely with a clenched fist is a life lived in tension.

The open hand requires confidence. You cannot guide with a rigid grip. You cannot protect effectively if you are always crushing. The strongest practitioners learn when to close and when to remain open.

This is true in training. It is truer in life.

The Farmer’s Carry & Leadership

The farmer’s carry may be the purest leadership drill ever invented.

You pick up something heavy. You stand tall… and you walk.

There is no spectacle to it. No explosive lift. No dramatic lockout. Just weight in your hands and distance in front of you.

At first, it feels manageable. Then the load begins to speak. Your grip starts to soften, your shoulders tighten, your mind begins its negotiation.

Set it down. You’ve gone far enough. No one will know.

This is where the lesson begins.

Grip strength teaches you that you can bear more than you believe. The body is rarely the first thing to fail. The mind is. When the weight feels overwhelming, the instinct is not physical collapse - it is mental surrender.

So you pause your mind. You breathe. You take another step.

Leadership feels the same.

You carry payroll. You carry culture. You carry decisions that ripple into homes you may never see. You carry expectations, deadlines, acquisitions, uncertainty.

Some days the weight feels uneven. Some days it digs into your hands.

And there are moments when it feels like everything you’re holding might slip. That is when grip becomes character.

Not aggression, not dominance, not bravado.

Steadiness.

The farmer’s carry teaches that forward progress under load does not require panic. It requires posture. Breath. One controlled step at a time.

Leadership is rarely about explosive strength. It is about sustained tension managed with composure.

But there is another lesson embedded in the hold.

Every carry has a set-down.

You train the grip by holding - and you preserve it by resting.

If you refuse to put the bells down, your grip will eventually fail. If you cling to every responsibility without pause, you will do the same.

The carry teaches discernment. There is a time to hold. There is a time to rest.

Rest is not weakness. It is strategy.

When you set the bells down intentionally - not because you collapsed, but because you chose to - you recover your strength. You reset your posture. You breathe fully again.

Then you pick them up once more.

In leadership, this means knowing when to pause your mind. When to step away from the noise. When to allow your nervous system to settle before taking the next step.

The importance of the hold teaches resilience. The importance of the rest teaches longevity.

Strong leaders are not those who never feel the weight. They are the ones who can carry it without panic - and set it down without guilt. Then pick it up again.

Because eventually, the weight you carry at work is not the only weight waiting for you. At some point, the bells are set down. The emails pause. The decisions can wait until morning.

And a smaller hand reaches for yours.

Fatherhood

In the morning, my hands are used for training with iron.

Later, a smaller hand wraps around mine.

When we cross a parking lot, my child does not evaluate my deadlift. They do not ask about volume cycles. They do not measure my forearms.

They check for steadiness. They check for presence. They check whether the hand holding theirs is calm.

The same grip that carries weight must carry trust… there is something sacred about that.

A farmer’s carry teaches you to keep walking under load. Fatherhood teaches you why you must.

You do not drop what matters because your grip is tired.

You adjust. You breathe. You keep walking.

The Strength Not to Crush

There is a difference between crushing strength and controlled strength.

The world has enough clenched fists… it needs more steady hands.

A strong hand can lift a kettlebell. It can sign its name with conviction. It can restrain force without escalating it. It can guide without dominating.

True strength is not measured by what you can break. It is measured by what you can hold without harming.

Closing Thoughts

Grip strength is not about domination. It is about reliability. About being the one who does not drop what matters. About staying when gravity pulls and others falter.

It is about the wisdom to close the fist with conviction - and the maturity to open it with gentleness.

Strong hands carry weight. Strong hands carry responsibility. Strong hands carry commitment and growth.

Open hands carry trust. Open hands carry humility. Open hands carry opportunity and presence.

The principles of grip training are ancient, yet the lessons are timeless. And they apply to all facets of life.

Strong hands. Open palms. Steady life.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

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There is a reason we train. It isn’t just to get stronger. Not just to sharpen technique. Not just to clear our heads.

We train because the mind does not mature by accident.

The old traditions understood something we often forget:
The development of character is not linear. It is layered. One on top of the next.

You feed the tripod - mind, body, and spirit - or it collapses.

Neglect the body and your spirit becomes fragile. Neglect the spirit and your strength becomes ego. Neglect the mind and both drift endlessly without direction.

The martial path is not about violence for me. It is about integration.

Dave Lowry, a respected scholar of classical budō, once wrote that traditional training was designed to produce “a person of reliable character under stress.”

Not a technician. Not a performer. Not an athlete. A person you could trust when pressure mounted.

That trustworthiness is not built in a single mindset. It is built progressively.

Shoshin. Heijōshin. Fudōshin. Zanshin. And eventually…

…Senshin.

The Progression Toward Responsibility

Shoshin (beginner’s mind) humbles you. You admit you don’t know, so you force yourself to start again. Over and over.

Heijōshin (steady mind) stabilizes you. You learn not to flinch or overreact.

Fudōshin (immovable mind) anchors you. You refuse to be thrown by emotion.

Zanshin (remaining mind) sharpens you. You stay aware even after action is taken.

These are foundations… but foundations alone do not build a house. (If you are interested in these four martial mindsets and are new to the series, see my previous posts on each mindset above for more detail).

Senshin is different.

先心 - Sen (before) + Shin (mind/heart).

The mind that goes before. The heart that acts early.

To me, there is a different kind of weight behind senshin. Deciding to act rather than react can be challenging.

What if the decision I make doesn’t work out? What if I cause more harm than good? What if I read the signs wrong?

These are all legitimate questions that the mind will often try to force upon you. But this is where the training of the martial mindsets becomes so crucial.

Take, for example, making a decision to address a cultural issue within a team before it has fully surfaced.

There has been a season in my leadership where I could sense something shifting. It wasn’t dramatic. There were no open conflicts. No formal complaints. Teammates were still working together.

But the tone in conversations was different. Energy and emotion felt strained. Deadlines were being met - but without true ownership.

Nothing was “broken.” Yet.

And this is the difficult space. When something is clearly wrong, action feels justified. When something is subtly off, action feels risky or uncertain.

I hesitated.

Who am I to intervene when I’m not the leader of this team? What if I create tension that wasn’t really there? What if I overcorrect?

So I waited. Not long. But long enough.

Long enough for small frustrations to calcify. Long enough for quiet disengagement to deepen. Long enough that when I finally acted, I was reacting - not leading.

That was a pivotal moment for me, and a lesson learned.

Senshin is not necessarily about reacting skillfully. It is about discerning early enough that reaction isn’t required. Steps can be taken ahead of time to alleviate any necessity for reaction.

The gentleman warrior in business is not the loudest voice in the room. He is the one willing to move before pressure forces his hand.

The Burden of Seeing Early

Miyamoto Musashi wrote in The Book of Five Rings:

“You must see that which cannot be seen.”

That line is often romanticized. But in practice, it is heavy.

Because once you begin to see patterns forming… you are accountable for how you respond.

In business, I’ve started to feel this more.

Cash flow doesn’t collapse without clues. Cultural fractures don’t erupt without tension building underneath. Burnout doesn’t appear overnight.

There are signals. Small ones.

And leadership is the willingness to move before the damage is obvious.

Senshin in business is not about being clever. It’s about preventing avoidable hardship.

A gentleman warrior does not wait for the building to burn before installing guardrails. He builds the systems early. He asks the uncomfortable questions early. He adjusts course early.

That is leadership maturity.

The Dojo Challenges Introspection

In the dojo, initiative is a very personal journey.

Tatsuo Shimabuku, founder of Isshin-Ryu Karate, wrote:

“The time to strike is when the opportunity presents itself.”

My understanding of this translates to the necessity for making a deep introspective inquiry into what “opportunity” means to you. And that is entirely personal.

You must do the inner work to understand when your time to strike will be. When you’ve searched within to determine your time to strike, it removes the moments between perceiving and reacting. You simply know when your opportunity has surfaced and the strike happens simultaneously.

Further, Gichin Funakoshi, founder of modern Karate, wrote:

“The ultimate aim of karate lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of its participants.”

Character is not perfected by reacting quickly. It is perfected by knowing yourself and seeing clearly.

It only exists because the earlier mindsets created internal stability.

Without Shoshin, you retain ego. Without Heijōshin, you panic. Without Fudōshin, you flinch. Without Zanshin, you miss the cue.

Senshin is the fruit of disciplined training.

The Father Who Must Adjust Himself First

This is where the concept stops being theoretical.

My children don’t lose control instantly… there are signs.

Fatigue in their eyes. Shortened responses. A subtle (or sometimes not-so-subtle) edge in tone.

And if I’m honest - there are signs in me too.

Impatience building. Distraction creeping in. Work frustrations mounting. The impulse to correct instead of connect.

Senshin in fatherhood is not controlling their behavior. It is governing myself early enough to protect the relationship.

In business, mistakes cost money.

In fatherhood, mistakes cost trust.

The gentleman warrior understands which ledger matters more.

The Shadow of Senshin

Here is the danger.

If Senshin is untethered from calm, it becomes anxiety.

If it is untethered from humility, it becomes control.

If it is untethered from spirit, it becomes micromanagement disguised as foresight.

Dave Lowry warns that traditional training was meant to shape the whole person - not produce rigid technicians obsessed with dominance.

The anticipating mind must remain relaxed. It must remain willing to be wrong. Otherwise it tightens.

And a tight leader is not trustworthy.

Leadership Development Through Senshin

In accounting, Senshin looks like:

• Modeling risk before it becomes crisis.

• Addressing cultural tension before turnover.

• Building processes that prevent audit findings rather than explaining them.

In training, it looks like:

• Adjusting breath before fatigue overwhelms.

• Deloading before injury demands it.

• Managing ego before it sabotages progress.

In fatherhood, it looks like:

• Correcting tone before regret.

• Listening before lecturing.

• Leading by regulation rather than reaction.

This is not flashy. It is quiet maturity.

The progression of the martial mindsets leads here.

Shoshin teaches you to learn.
Heijōshin teaches you to remain calm.
Fudōshin teaches you to remain grounded.
Zanshin teaches you to remain aware.
Senshin teaches you to remain responsible for what comes next.

The Gentleman Warrior’s Burden

The immature man reacts. The anxious man overreacts. The mature man sees early - and adjusts with restraint.

Senshin is not about predicting every storm.

It is about refusing to be surprised by the ones you could have prepared for.

The gentleman warrior does not obsess over the future. He honors it.

He trains his body so he can endure it. He trains his mind so he can interpret it. He trains his spirit so he can respond to it with integrity.

Because once you can see the storm forming…

…You are responsible for how you lead through it.

Senshin is the courage and discernment to act while there is still margin.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

Thanks for following the Martial Mindset Series with The Iron & The Ink… more to come!

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In Japanese martial traditions, there is a form of awareness that matters most after the technique is finished.

Not during the strike, not in the clash, but in the quiet moment when most people mentally disengage.

That awareness is called Zanshin.

It is not dramatic. It is not aggressive. And it is rarely visible to the outside eye.

But among serious practitioners, it is unmistakable.

The Kanji: What Remains

Zanshin is written with two characters:

• 残 (zan) - to remain, what is left behind

• 心 (shin) - heart, mind, spirit

Together they point to a state of continued presence - the mind that does not disengage simply because the action has stopped.

My favorite translation of Zanshin is “lingering spirit.” This translation implies that the spirit is calm, controlled, and focused. It is not tension or vigilance in the modern sense. It is composure that has not rushed to leave the moment.

Historical Context: Why Zanshin Was Necessary

In classical Japanese martial systems - particularly kenjutsu and other battlefield-derived arts - technique alone did not ensure survival. Many practitioners executed flawless movements and still died moments later.

Why?

Because they relaxed too soon.

Traditional training emphasized that an opponent may fall but not be finished. To mentally train that there are always at least five attackers.

My Sensei has taught this principle by repeating the simple phrase “still not over, still not over” as the ending rei (bow) of kata is completed. The emphasis being that we should not release our minds or our bodies from the moment, from the threat. Rather, remain fully present beyond the “completion” of the kata.

Zanshin was cultivated to prevent premature closure.

A technique without Zanshin was considered incomplete. To some, it was considered dangerous tactically.

The engagement was not over when the sword stopped moving. It was over only when awareness confirmed it was safe to disengage.

Zanshin Is Not Paranoia

Martial author Dave Lowry has written extensively about Zanshin, particularly in In the Dojo and Moving Toward Stillness.

Lowry is careful to clarify what Zanshin is not.

He describes Zanshin not as a constant state of alertness or scanning, but as a mind that has not collapsed inward or wandered outward once a technique is completed.

In In the Dojo, Lowry explains that Zanshin is the state in which:

“The body may relax, but the mind does not disengage.”
- Dave Lowry, In the Dojo

This distinction matters. Zanshin is not fear, not nervous anticipation, not tension held in the shoulders or jaw.

It is calm awareness that lingers.

Zanshin in Classical Training

In traditional dojo, Zanshin is often trained implicitly rather than explained.

You see it in the way a practitioner stands after a kata. In the way the eyes remain soft and active. You can feel it in their presence - it’s palpable.

Lowry notes that beginners often believe the technique is the point. Veterans understand that how one finishes reveals the level of training.

A practitioner who drops posture, exhales sharply, or looks away immediately after technique has revealed something important - awareness has already left.

Patrick McCarthy: Zanshin and Classical Budo

Karate historian and researcher Patrick McCarthy places Zanshin firmly within the broader framework of classical budō thinking.

McCarthy emphasizes that traditional karate - and Okinawan fighting methods in particular - were never about single techniques. They were about situational continuity.

In his writings on kata and classical application, McCarthy describes Zanshin as the mental state that:

• Maintains awareness beyond the immediate exchange

• Prevents fixation on a single outcome

• Keeps the practitioner adaptable and composed

Paraphrasing McCarthy’s framing, one might say that zanshin is the condition that allows technique to remain functional beyond its execution. To apply techniques in real life, there must be a bridging of the gap between simple technique and focused intention. This is where zanshin steps in.

In this view, Zanshin is not separate from technique - it is what allows technique to work in reality.

Zanshin vs. Modern Misunderstandings

In modern contexts, Zanshin is often simplified into “situational awareness.” I have read a number of books on situational awareness. These provide great information on “how-to” assess surroundings when out at a concert, entering a movie theatre, etc. Situational awareness helps keep us safe. And it is critical in today’s world.

However, that translation is incomplete.

Situational awareness can be anxious. Zanshin is not.

Zanshin is emotional regulation, postural integrity, breath control, and psychological neutrality.

It is awareness without attachment.

The practitioner is not hunting for threats. They are simply not absent. This transforms the principle of Zanshin from “situational awareness” to true “life protection.”

Zanshin in Accounting and Business

Zanshin appears in accounting after the numbers tie.

• The entry posts

• The reconciliation balances

• The close checklist is complete

Having a zanshin mindset in accounting asks:

• What changed because of this entry?

• Does the story still make sense?

• What feels subtly off?

Most material misstatements are not caused by lack of knowledge. They are caused by mental disengagement too early.

In business leadership, it is the discipline of staying present after the decision, after the win, after the meeting ends.

Most leaders relax when the slide deck closes. Zanshin leaders stay aware of what lingers.

Zanshin in leadership is not paranoia. It is most certainly not micromanagement.

It is composed vigilance.

Strategically, it becomes the habit of conducting thoughtful post-mortems, watching culture shifts after structural change, remaining steady while others emotionally spike or crash.

So often in business, the decision is made and the deal is closed, but the impact can take weeks or months to surface in full complexity.

Zanshin is the leader’s reminder:

Completion is not the same as conclusion. Stay tall. Stay calm. Stay aware of what remains.

Zanshin in Training (Gym & Kettlebells)

In physical training, Zanshin lives between effort and recovery. The set ends, but posture remains. The bell drops, but breath stays controlled. Fatigue rises, but awareness doesn’t collapse.

Many injuries happen not during exertion - but immediately after, when attention leaves the body.

Zanshin could be staying present long enough to hear what the body is saying after the stimulus.

At its deepest, Zanshin in kettlebell training could be this:

You do not separate yourself from the movement. You are not “doing a swing.” Rather, you are experiencing the force, gravity, breath, structure and rhythm that comes from the training.

Fully.

And when the bell comes to rest, awareness does not scatter. It remains.

The body is still engaged. The breath is still intentional. The mind is still present.

That continuity is what transforms training from exercise into practice.

Zanshin in Parenting

Zanshin in parenting could mean staying present after correction.

Children are highly sensitive to what lingers. It could be the emotional tone of a correction, the energy in the room, any unspoken tension.

My kids are acutely aware of my reactions to their actions. I am so often guilty of wanting to “control” the situation… “stop jumping off the couch;” “don’t put that in your mouth;” “come here so I can brush your teeth.” This isn’t zanshin.

Zanshin is not control - it is stewardship of the environment. Allowing our kids to experience life and learning lessons for themselves along the way (while maintaining a sense of awareness of what truly keeps them safe, of course).

The Continuing Mind

Zanshin teaches something subtle and demanding:

The moment does not end when action stops. It ends when awareness leaves.

To continue, one must not rush forward. To protect, one must not cling. To finish well, one must remain.

Zanshin is not tension. It is patience. Not vigilance - but presence.

Zanshin is maintaining awareness. Maintaining presence. Maintaining posture - even when nothing dramatic is happening.

In modern life, zanshin prevents something quieter but just as costly: carelessness.

Zanshin sharpens judgment. It protects the body. It steadies the voice. It deepens relationships. It strengthens leadership.

It teaches us to not just finish moments simply for the sake of the completion of the moment. Rather, finish the moment completely - complete mental, physical and spiritual presence.

The strike ends. The bow ends. The meeting ends. The conversation ends.

But awareness does not vanish.

And that continuity - that refusal to disengage prematurely - is what transforms training into character.

In the end, Zanshin is simple.

Stay.

Stay with the moment. Stay with the consequence. Stay with the people in front of you.

Because the difference between skill and wisdom is often just a few seconds of remaining awareness.

And speaking of staying… as always,

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

Thanks for reading! Stay with us for next week’s article.

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When first studying Fudōshin, it sort of feels like a contradiction.

If the mind becomes fixed on a single thing, it’s stuck. If it’s stuck, it’s no longer responsive. And if it is no longer responsive, how could it possibly be immovable?

This tension shows up clearly when reading The Unfettered Mind, a series of letters written by the Zen monk Takuan Sōhō to swordsmen of his time. Takuan repeatedly warns that if the mind stops - on the opponent’s sword, on fear, on technique - it becomes trapped. A trapped mind is a defeated mind.

So what, then, could he really mean by the immovable mind?

When you hear the word immovable, don’t you instinctively think “difficult to move?”
Something rigid or fixed.

And yet, that interpretation misses the heart of Fudōshin entirely.

I don’t believe Takuan was advocating for a rigid, hyper-focused mental state. To me, he wasn’t describing a mind that locks onto one thing and refuses to move. In fact, he spends much of his writing warning against that very condition.

Instead, Fudōshin points to something subtler - and far more useful.

A Brief History of Fudōshin

The word Fudōshin didn’t appear out of nowhere, nor was it coined as a poetic metaphor.

It draws from older Japanese language, symbolism, and imagery that would have been immediately understood by warriors of the time.

A Breakdown of the Kanji

Fudōshin is written as:

• 不 (fu) - not, without

• 動 (dō) - moving, being moved, agitation

• 心 (shin) - heart-mind (emotion, intention, awareness)

Put simply, Fudōshin could be defined as “the mind that is not agitated.”

Not the mind that doesn’t move, but the mind that cannot be thrown off balance.

This distinction is critical - and often lost in translation.

The Image Behind the Word: Fudō Myōō

Historically, the term fudō also evokes Fudō Myōō, a fierce guardian figure widely known in Japan long before Takuan’s time.

Fudō Myōō is typically depicted:

• Standing firm on solid ground

• Surrounded by flames (representing chaos or ignorance)

• With an unshaken posture and unwavering gaze

Importantly, he is not shown as calm because nothing is happening -
he is calm because everything is happening, and yet he remains unmoved.

For the warrior class, this image wasn’t religious abstraction. It was symbolic shorthand to depict that chaos surrounds you, pressure mounts… yet your center does not collapse.

That visual language deeply influenced how words like fudō were understood.

So when Takuan speaks of the immovable mind, he is not praising rigidity. He is warning against fixation.

The immovable mind is not anchored to one thing. It is, instead, anchored to nothing at all - and therefore cannot be seized.

What Fudōshin Is (and Is Not)

Fudōshin is not a frozen mind. It is not stubbornness, nor is it tunnel vision.

This is a bit of a different concept than what I was often taught in my baseball days. Then, the key when at bat was to focus so intently on the ball that you see the precise movement of the seams to indicate what pitch is coming.

An even more extreme example was to try and read the pitcher’s grip as he was getting ready to hurl the ball towards the plate.

These are amazing skills… and they most certainly are achievable. But, this is not martial. This is not Fudōshin.

Fudōshin, rather, is a mind that cannot be captured.

It remains engaged without clinging. Focused without narrowing. Active without losing center. The mind moves freely, but it is not displaced.

When applied in a martial sense, it’s easy to see why this is more important than being so focused on a single thing that the mind ignores everything else around. This would put someone at a tactical disadvantage.

And keep in mind, the original context of Okinawan karate and many of the traditional martial arts was life protection. Not for sport.

Fudōshin is sometimes misunderstood as emotional hardness - gritting teeth, burying feelings, forcing composure.

That isn’t strength… that’s tension.

The immovable mind doesn’t suppress emotion - it allows emotion to pass without taking control.

This is Fudōshin.

From Zen Letters to Modern Life

Takuan was writing to warriors, but the problem he addressed is universal. Our minds are constantly being pulled - by urgency, emotion, distraction, and fear. The modern battlefield simply looks different.

In Accounting & Leadership

In accounting, it’s easy for the mind to “stop”:

• On a single variance

• On one late close item

• On a tense email or meeting

A stuck mind spirals. A reactive mind narrows… perspective collapses.

Fudōshin allows you to stay fully engaged with the details without losing sight of the whole. You can hold the entire balance sheet in view, not just one account. One issue doesn’t knock you off center. One mistake doesn’t define the moment.

Immovable does not mean inflexible. It means you are not emotionally or mentally hijacked by noise.

In Parenting

Parenting tests Fudōshin daily.

Schedules fall apart, emotions run high, kids melt down - sometimes all at once. A fixed mind reacts with frustration or control. It tries to force stillness.

A Fudōshin parent remains present and grounded. You respond instead of react. You adapt without abandoning boundaries. You don’t disengage - but you don’t get swept away either.

This is not detachment. This is calm engagement.

Fatherhood, practiced this way, becomes a martial art in itself. And this must be trained. Over and over again.

In the Gym

Under physical load, the mind loves to cling to the fatigue and discomfort you’re experiencing. To the number of reps you have left. The body will default into less quality to be able to “get through the set.”

When the mind locks onto strain, technique degrades and breathing tightens.

Fudōshin shows up as steady breath, wide awareness, and precise effort. The body works hard, but the mind does not panic or rush ahead. It stays centered while the body moves.

Strength is expressed cleanly because the mind does not stop.

In the Dojo

This is where Takuan’s insight is most obvious.

In kata practice, fixation is hesitation - and hesitation is amending the purity of the art. If the mind stops on one strike, one transition… it is already behind.

Fudōshin allows the practitioner to see everything without staring at anything. The eyes are soft. Awareness is broad. Response happens naturally, without pre-decision.

The body moves because the mind is free.

How Fudōshin Fits the Larger Path

If we zoom out, Fudōshin sits naturally alongside the earlier mindsets:

• Shoshin - openness, the beginner’s reset

• Heijōshin - emotional steadiness amid chaos

• Fudōshin - stable engagement without fixation

Fudōshin is not retreating from life. It is stepping fully into complexity without being dragged by it.

In practice, Fudōshin is less about controlling the mind and more about noticing where it gets stuck. Our minds all get stuck - often without us realizing it.
But the moment we notice we’ve lost center is the moment we can begin to return.

Shortening the distance to realization is the practice of Fudōshin.

The Reframe That Matters

Here’s the distinction worth holding onto, in my opinion:

Fudōshin is not a mind that refuses to move. It is a mind that cannot be moved against its will.

Nothing sticks, nothing steals your center.

In a world that constantly tries to seize your attention, outrage your emotions, and narrow your focus, Fudōshin becomes a quiet form of resistance.

You stay engaged. You stay adaptable. You stay grounded.

Immovable - not because you are rigid, but because you are free.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

Thanks for reading this weeks Martial Mindset… stay tuned for next week’s!

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There is a kind of calm that isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t require silence, solitude, or perfect conditions.

In Japanese martial philosophy, that calm is called Heijōshin - often translated as “the ordinary mind” or “the mind in its natural, balanced state.”

Not elevated. Not detached. Not emotionally numb.

Simply… steady.

Breaking Down the Kanji

平 (Hei) - flat, even, level, calm
This character suggests equilibrium. No sharp peaks, no deep valleys. Not absence of emotion, but freedom from being thrown off balance by it.

常 (Jō) - constant, normal, habitual
Heijōshin is not a special mindset you access under ideal conditions. It is the default you return to - again and again. Even when you inevitably fail to access it.

心 (Shin) - heart, mind, spirit
In Japanese thought, the heart and mind are not separate. What you feel, think, and embody all arise from the same place. It’s about your life experience, the essence of who you are.

Put together, Heijōshin points to a mind that remains calm and centered in ordinary life - not just in moments of crisis or mastery.

A Brief History & Martial Context

Heijōshin is deeply rooted in Zen Buddhism and classical Japanese martial traditions. It appears often in swordsmanship, archery, and later budo systems - not as a mystical ideal, but as a practical necessity.

A swordsman who becomes emotionally elevated - angry, fearful, eager, rushed - loses perception. A practitioner who tightens the mind tightens the body.

In my personal experience, when performing kata, my shoulders immediately elevate. Why? Because my mind is rushing through the movements, likely a carryover from my baseball days when I had to “perform” well under pressure.

In Okinawan karate, performance is not the point. The body moves optimally when the mind is relaxed. Despite uncertainty. Despite chaos. Despite pressure.

The body relaxes when the mind relaxes.

The legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi wrote repeatedly about maintaining an ordinary mind even in combat - seeing clearly without attachment, responding without hesitation, and remaining inwardly unmoved while outwardly decisive.

The dichotomy is this: extraordinary performance often arises from an unremarkable mental state.

Why Heijōshin Matters Now

We live in a world that actively profits from agitation.

• Endless news cycles engineered for outrage

• Social media designed to provoke comparison and urgency

• A busyness culture that equates stress with importance

The modern mind is rarely flat. It more closely resembles the S&P 500 charts than it does an undisturbed pond or a steady flowing river. It’s reactive. Overstimulated. Always overstimulated!

Heijōshin is not about disengaging from the world - it’s about refusing to let the world constantly hijack your nervous system. This doesn’t mean you don’t care. It means you don’t panic.

It means your default response is measured rather than compulsive. It means you can read the news without becoming the news. It means you can be busy without being scattered.

This matters because it is invaluable in a world where everyone’s minds are chaotic all the time. People will look to those who show calm amidst the constant chaos to set the tone.

Heijōshin at Work (and in Accounting)

This principle matters profoundly at work - but especially in accounting.

Growing companies are chaotic by nature. Acquisitions, system changes, incomplete or incorrect data. If they aren’t careful, growing companies can rely on flat out bad information to make business decisions, which might be overshadowed by the growth now… but will most certainly become a problem later.

In that environment, emotional volatility spreads like wildfire.

And here’s the truth: no one wants chaotic accountants.

People want accountants who are steady under pressure, clear in uncertainty, methodical when others are rushed, and calm when leadership is anxious.

Heijōshin in accounting doesn’t mean moving slowly. It means moving deliberately. It means not letting urgency override accuracy, not transmitting panic downstream to your team, creating predictable processes in unpredictable conditions.

When the accounting department becomes a place of calm, it acts as a stabilizer for the entire organization. The books don’t just record reality - they anchor it.

My goal at work isn’t to eliminate chaos. That’s impossible in a fast-growing business. My goal is to build an environment where chaos is met with clarity.

Flat mind. Ordinary mind. Reliable mind.

This all comes with the appropriate amount of preparation and attention to detail. Sun Tzu puts it best:

“The victorious warrior prepares first then goes to war, while the defeated warrior goes to war first then seeks to win.”

Heijōshin as a Father

Children don’t learn calm from lectures. They absorb it from presence.

They watch how we respond to inconvenience, how we handle frustration, how we move through uncertainty.

A raised voice, a clenched jaw, a phone pulled out mid-conversation - these teach more than any words ever will.

Modeling a calm, balanced mind for children is critically important - and brutally difficult.

Because kids don’t arrive when life is quiet. They arrive when you’re tired, behind schedule, already stretched. Most definitely when you’re overstimulated (fellow parents of young kids, I’ll say again…aren’t we ALWAYS overstimulated?).

Heijōshin doesn’t ask you to be perfect. It asks you to return.

To notice when you’ve been pulled off center - and to come back. Again. And again. And again.

Heijōshin in the Gym

The gym is one of the purest places to practice this principle.

No fads. No theatrics. No hype rituals before a lift.

Just work.

Heijōshin in training looks like:

• no emotional spike before a heavy set

• no self-talk trying to convince yourself

• no dramatic buildup

The bar doesn’t need motivation. Neither do you.

You approach the lift already knowing it can be done - because the work and the preparation has been done.

This is quiet confidence. Emotionless, but not empty. Focused, but relaxed.

It’s trusting your training so completely that effort feels inevitable, not heroic.

When training is grounded in Heijōshin, strength becomes repeatable. And repeatability - not short bursts of intensity - is what builds real capacity.

Not Arrival - Foundation

I don’t write this as someone who has “arrived.”

I lose my center. I get pulled into urgency. I react when I should respond. So much more often than I’d like to admit.

But Heijōshin gives me a foundation - a place to return to when I notice I’ve drifted.

Just like stance in the dojo. Just like breath under load. Just like balance under pressure.

Progress isn’t staying calm forever. Progress is shortening the distance back to center.

The Ordinary Mind, Practiced Daily

Heijōshin isn’t built in moments of chaos.

It’s built quietly in how you breathe when interrupted. In how you pause before responding. In how you reset after losing your temper.

The ordinary mind is not weak. It is not passive. It is resilient because it does not need to be reactive.

In a world addicted to reaction, calm is a form of strength.

And like all strength worth having - it must be practiced.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

Stay tuned for next week’s Martial Mindset! Thanks for reading…

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There is a quiet danger that comes with experience.

The more competent we become, the more subtle our blind spots grow. The more responsibility we carry, the more likely we are to rely on what has worked before. Over time, confidence hardens into assumption. Skill becomes habit. And without realizing it, attention can narrow.

In Japanese martial traditions, this problem was named early. The remedy was simple, but not easy: Shoshin - beginner’s mind.

Shoshin does not mean ignorance. It means openness without ego.

It is the willingness to meet each moment as if it still has something to teach you.

The Roots of Shoshin

The concept of shoshin comes from Zen Buddhism, where it was used to describe the mental posture of a novice monk - one who approaches practice without expectation, comparison, or the need to perform.

In Zen, the beginner’s mind is not valued because it knows less, but because it is less defended.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.”

As Zen thought filtered into Japanese culture - particularly through the warrior class - this idea found fertile ground. Samurai culture demanded competence, but it also understood something essential: overconfidence kills.

A mind that assumes is slower than a mind that observes. A mind that clings to reputation is easier to manipulate than one that remains empty.

Shoshin became a safeguard against complacency in training. It became a pathway to remain humble, yet confident.

From Japan to Okinawa

When martial traditions traveled to Okinawa and blended with indigenous fighting systems, shoshin did not arrive as a philosophical ornament. It arrived as a practical necessity.

Okinawan karate developed in a context of:

• Limited resources

• Restricted weapons

• Constant cultural exchange

• Real, personal consequence

There was no room for theatrics, no tolerance for ego. What worked mattered. What didn’t was discarded.

In that environment, shoshin became embedded not as a spoken doctrine, but as a training posture. It taught practitioners to appreciate the importance of listening, practicing basics longer than feels necessary, and assuming there is always more to learn.

The Okinawan emphasis on fundamentals, repetition, and humility is not accidental. It is shoshin in a physical sense.

Why Shoshin Comes First

In The Martial Mindset Series, shoshin is not placed at the beginning for poetic reasons. It is placed there because nothing else can exist without it.

Without shoshin - calm becomes complacency, strength becomes rigidity, awareness becomes tunnel vision, and experience becomes limitation.

Shoshin is the mindset that allows growth to continue after competence arrives.

It is the discipline of staying teachable. In order to start the journey of the warrior, one must accept that the pathway requires this level of humility.

There is a point where progress feels like motion, but no longer transformation. That point is not imposed by the art - it is imposed by the practitioner.

The art does not run out of lessons. The student runs out of openness.

Shoshin as a Reset

One of the most misunderstood aspects of beginner’s mind is the belief that it belongs only at the start.

In truth, shoshin is not a phase - it is a reset.

In martial training, returning to fundamentals consistently is never a sign of regression. In fact, mastery is not how far you travel from the basics, but how deeply you continue to relate to them.

The same is true in life.

When work becomes stale, when training plateaus, when parenting patterns stop working, shoshin allows you to step back without shame and say:

What if I begin again - on purpose?

Shoshin does not erase experience. It reorganizes it.

It reminds us that returning to basics is not going backward. It is how depth is maintained. It is how we build our foundation brick by brick.

Shoshin as a Father

Fatherhood is one of the fastest ways to expose false mastery.

Children change. Seasons change. What worked last year may fail today. Heck, what was helpful yesterday may be a hindrance today. Fatherhood isn’t about having it “figured out.” It’s about having the humility to know you’ll never have it figured out, but continue to strive towards it.

Shoshin in fatherhood looks like:

• Listening… really listening

• Letting your child show you who they are becoming, rather than pin-holing them into something you want for them

• Admitting when you don’t know and when you are wrong

• Being willing to relearn patience, communication, and calm amidst chaos

It takes humility to remain a student in a role where authority is assumed. But that humility creates trust.

Why Shoshin Is Harder for Leaders

Shoshin becomes more difficult - not easier - as responsibility increases.

Leaders are expected to have answers. Parents are expected to know everything. Experienced practitioners are expected to correct, not inquire. Over time, authority subtly discourages curiosity.

But leadership without shoshin calcifies.

At work, shoshin allows leaders to ask before making conclusions, remain curious even in senior roles, invite input without surrendering responsibility, and adapt with defensiveness. Shoshin allows a leader to receive feedback just as much (if not more) than providing it.

Shoshin does not weaken authority. It stabilizes it.

A leader who remains teachable does not lose respect - they earn deeper trust.

Shoshin in Training

In kettlebell training, shoshin appears the moment you stop chasing load and return to quality over quantity.

The bell doesn’t care how long you’ve been training. High volume kettlebell practice reveals true inner posture. When sets get long, breathing becomes labored and grip fatigues… ego has nowhere to hide.

The beginner’s mind stays curious when this discomfort arises. Shoshin allows for the bell to teach lessons it has to offer. Fatigue is where instruction becomes honest.

In martial arts, shoshin is the willingness to refine basics endlessly and mentally treating each rep as its own rep (“each one is one”). It is the welcoming of correction without defensiveness, the ability to train slowly when ego wants speed. It is the purity of heart to bow with sincerity, not out of routine.

The practitioner who loses shoshin may look impressive - but eventually stops improving.

The practitioner who keeps it remains dangerous in the truest sense: adaptable through building on the principles.

Shoshin Today

Modern life rewards certainty, speed, strong opinions, quick answers.

Shoshin asks for something different:

• Presence instead of performance

• Curiosity instead of control

• Learning instead of proving

It is countercultural precisely because it works.

Shoshin does not mean staying a beginner forever. It means never abandoning the beginner’s posture.

The Doorway

Every martial path begins the same way.

Not with mastery. Not with confidence. But with a bow.

A lowering of the ego. An opening of attention. A willingness to begin again. Humility.

Shoshin is not the absence of knowledge. It is the discipline of keeping the door open. It is the practice of finding the beauty in the mastering of the basics and understanding that there is no “arrival.” It is the backbone by which all other martial mindsets become possible. Without it, no other mindset can enter.

The art does not impose a ceiling. We do - when we stop returning to the basics and stop opening ourselves to correction and growth.

Shoshin is what keeps the doorway open to the continuous path on this journey of life. So, bow with humility… and step through the door.

Stay Strong. Be Humble.

Stay tuned for next week’s Martial Mindset! Thanks for reading…

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