Eskrima Kombat

(Picture Above: If you face a road block, do you stop and sit there, or do you find another path to get to your destination?)

As the CEO, Founder, and Chief Instructor of Bayani Warrior Group LLC., I have come across many different types of people that find their way into our group. While I find a lot of people who seek training from us, I also come across many individuals who say how much they like our material yet do not make the effort to come out to train with us. While this is no problem to me, I have been thinking about how we as human beings tend to put limits on ourselves. Today, I intend on discussing how we as human beings put self-imposed limits on our goals, and what we can do to overcome them. 

In the last 2 years since I’ve been teaching through Bayani Warrior full-time, I’ve seen people from every walk of life come in to train with us. We have stay-at-home moms, police officers, photographers, museum managers, entrepreneurs, teachers, retail managers, and full-time students in our group. While they are all from different paths, the one common denominator among all of them is the fact that they wish to learn a functional form of Filipino martial arts as a means to properly protect themselves and the ones they care about. The interesting thing about many of these individuals is that they actually sought me out through our website and social media. They saw our website, or the videos on our YouTube channel, and took the next step and started training with us, and many of them stick around for the long haul.

However, there are also many individuals who have contacted me, whether it be through phone or over the internet, and they talk about how much they love the training videos and how they wish they could be a part of the group, but they usually have something that’s holding them back from training. It could be distance. It could be money issues. It could be a lot of things. I can see that the desire is there to train, but there is still something holding them back. The crazy part is, anytime we have a limit, it’s often something we impose on ourselves.

(Picture Above: The choice is yours. Will you work hard to get what you want, or succumb to the circumstances?)

One limit people put on themselves is distance. Recently, an individual contacted me regarding training with my group in our Cranford, New Jersey chapter. This individual lived 20 minutes away from the location we train out of, and she said she wanted to train with us, but 20 minutes was “too far away” to come out and train with us. In my experience, if a person wants to train, they will do whatever they need to do in order to make it to training. For instance I have a student in Michigan who drives 10 hours to New Jersey and back to attend sessions with us. I myself travel to Dallas, Texas to train the Dallas-Fort Worth Bayani Warrior Training Group, and the students there pay me to come out to train them. I’m also going to Michigan in March to teach a seminar for the Bayani Warrior Michigan Training Group. The truth is that distance is only an issue if you allow it. Desire trumps distance every time. My teacher Tuhon Carl Atienza of Atienza Kali did a recent interview with my good friend Guro Ervin Quintin of IMPACT Martial Arts in Virginia Beach, VA and discussed the issue of distance of training.

(Picture Above: Self-Explanatory. You will be surprised what goal setting, faith, and will power can do.)

The next thing that holds people back is finances. Now, I know how tough the economy is, and I know how tough it can be to pay for training. I myself pay hundreds of dollars a month for my own training. Between my training in Atienza Kali, Sayoc Kali, as well as cost of equipment (blades, ammunition for shooting) and gas for driving to the various places I need to train at, the price can get pretty high.  Between that and my personal bills, I totally empathize with those who have a hard time coming up with money for training. However, one thing I’ve learned is that if you work hard enough, monitor your expenses, and save up, the money actually just falls into place. And quite honestly, my students know that if money is ever an issue, they can always find a way to train. I have several students who are college students, and while the majority of college students are “broke”, these college students always manage to save up hundreds of dollars for training (and no, their parents do not help them pay for training). It’s amazing what happens when you put your mind on a goal and take the necessary steps to make that goal happen. 

(Picture Above: Spending money is tough these days but with the right focus and mindset, money can come to you right when you need it most.)

The last thing that holds people back is their ego. My teacher Tuhon Carl Atienza once told me “Ego is the enemy of growth.” In other words, ego is what prevents people from being able to see themselves for who they really are, and as a result, they are unwilling to do what it takes to grow since it may harm their self-image or ego. A lot of people let their ego get in the way. Many people are afraid to come into training because if they spar with us or train with us, then they afraid of looking bad or “losing”. In reality, training is just training, and unless you want to grow and move forward, you need to train, move around, and learn. I find that those who aren’t afraid to look stupid are often the ones who improve their skills the fastest. I myself am learning new things all the time, and I don’t always do them perfectly. It’s through constant mistake-making that we grow the most. 

(Picture above: When it comes to training, leave your ego at the door. Once you walk, be prepared to learn and make mistakes. Mistakes are part of learning.)

In conclusion, we all have things that may hinder our training, but it’s our decision whether or not we succumb to those hindrances or rise above them. Whether your hindrance is distance, money, or even your ego, the good news is that you are in control of how you approach each of them. If you can overcome one of those things, it’s amazing what else you can overcome.