Hey, I just realized that this past July, our little group reached a milestone – it’s fourteen years since since the inception of the NHPC Karate ministry, now called HIS Karate Foundation.  That’s a long time for the train(ing) to be chugging along!  

In the past, in the elite groups your sensei’s belonged to, placed high value on certain aspects of training, like: an agressive martial spirit, achieving high technical excellence, training for hours, three or four or even five days a week, performing hundreds of punching/kicking repetitions as a form of warmup and conditioning, doing hundreds of crunches and pushups after training as a form of “cool-down”, heavy sparring, heavy bagwork, and on and on.  Nowadays, I like to think that with age has come a changing perspective and little bit of wisdom, haha.  While those parts of our youthful karate experience were invaluable, today I really believe that the most enduring aspects of training are: humility with strength, trying one’s best in everything one does, being an example to others with one’s way of life – not just in the dojo, and…hanging in there through dogged, quiet perseverance.  I’m very proud of every member in our group; whether you can come once or twice a week, or a couple of times a month.  In the face of life’s many required activities and distractions, you still find some time to devote to training.  You folks certainly do persevere, and even our most junior color belt has been with us for years, trying to learn something about Karate-Do.  If, after many hours spent in karate training over many years, we can just come to understand and embody the basic tenets of the Dojo Kun: Seek perfection of character, Be faithful, Endeavor, Respect others, Refrain from violent behavior – then the time and effort invested, certainly has not been wasted.