Ninjutsu Training Online

The other day I was approached by a friend of mine to ask how they could build their awareness so they could avoid dangerous areas. Now in the ancient days of the ninja, there was no easy way to gather information from the news or internet, but today it is a different story. Let’s start with an easy  question, go to Google and type in “5 most dangerous cities in the USA 2013”, you will see a host of articles populate the search. I chose one to which include the FBI’s Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report(I bet you never heard of this one!)

#5 Memphis, Tenn

#4 St Louis , Mo

#3 Oakland, Calif

#2 Detroit, Mich

#1 Flint, Mich

Ok, now after gleaning through the report, I also gathered this tidbit, all of the most dangerous cities have the highest unemployment levels(all above 10%) and low percentage of High School diplomas(below 86%). After gathering this information, I reviewed the local surrounding town and city data around my home location and found that all of this data is available(for free) especially on various real estate, and Town/City webpages. Now what does this all mean to you as a lesson? Well, if you want to be aware of your surroundings you need to be informed about your surroundings. Utilizing the internet to gather information on a particular subject is pretty easy today, but then the analysis and further exploration to glean out the information required for your purposes can be somewhat difficult if you don’t understand how to analyze and lean down the information to something useful.

Your lesson today is to find the same type of information on the local surrounding towns and cities in your area, so you know where the higher crime areas are, what type of crimes are most prevalent, so that you can avoid or be prepared to prevent them. Hey, during the 15 min search for the information in my area, I came upon an  a brief report of a rash of car break ins in my town!

You never know where the information may lead you.

Bufu Ikkan!

Ninja Land Navigation Skills

Well before the advent of a GPS device or even a very good compass, the ninja of ancient Japan navigated across the countryside, day or night, all with low tech skills. Shocking!!! Well of course there have been great technological developments that allow us to start and end a few feet from where we plan, but what if you had to navigate without a GPS or good compass, could you do it?? Over the years, I have learned from Scouting, primitive survival training and practice, several methods to navigate without a compass but here is one of the easiest and most practical to learn and implement in your training.

Watch Method (Northern Hemisphere)

1)      Hold a watch (one that contains hands) face parallel to the ground

2)      Point the hour handoff the present time in the direction of the sun

3)      Take the point halfway between the hour hand and 12. This position indicates South.

4)      To find north rotate 180 degrees

1. Ex) It is 6:00, point the hour hand at the sun, and the halfway point would be 3:00 which would be south.

Watch Method (Southern Hemisphere)

1)      Hold a watch (one that contains hands) face parallel to the ground

2)      Point the watches 12:00 position in the direction of the sun

3)      Take the point halfway between the 12:00 and the hour hand. This position indicates North.

4)      To find south  rotate 180 degrees

1. Ex) It is 6:00, point the 12:00 position at the sun, and the halfway point would be 3:00 which would be north.

Now, I have taught this to my students, Scouts etc. and they are all pretty amazed at how easy it is and surprisingly accurate as well. So find a place you can’t get easily lost in and practice this skill! For those of you who where a digital watch….it is time to buy a new watch!!

Bufu Ikkan!

Hello Ninjutsu Fans,

Ok a lot to cover quickly, first: thank you for all of the emails and links to see why I haven’t been posting lately…well 2 fold. Work has been keeping me swamped with a contract from SOCOM, starting up as well as producing a lot of other items for various LEO and military units I actually was buried!( Lets just say I work in the ballistics field and run a plant that produces a lot of units) secondly I am gathering a ton of information for posts and new Online Training material. This upcoming launch will also coincide with our first Training Group program later this month.

Alright, Independence day is a great time to reflect back on the freedoms we have here in our great country, but as we all know it didn’t come or will remain free unless we keep it that way. So one of the best methods to stay free and enjoy it is to become informed and learn about things you will need to know in the future. As a ninjutsu practitioner you should already be familiar with the martial arts, but what about improvised weapons? Escaping tactics, Disguise, Information gathering and protection of that information, Land navigation, primitive survival skills and so on and so on. Well stay tuned here and spread the word my friends because here comes some great material!!

Time to go make things go BOOM!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!
Bufu Ikkan

Ninjutsu Fans!

I have started to update the Video section so stay tuned for new videos being added on a regular basis! The last two were old Soke Hatsumi and Soke Takamatsu clips. Great finds to those who shared them.

Bufu Ikkan

The other day I was teaching a small group of students about covert communications, especially after we learned about the massive amount of metadata the government has been allowing the NSA to accumulate secretly. My students asked how could they secretly communicate without using a cell or landline phone and then one of them mentioned  about the new Dead Drop activity that is hitting the electronic arena (more on that in a moment). But what I started to show them was another “old school” method called the “Dead Drop” using a metal spike I picked up at a gun show not too long ago.

What I did was give a specified location to the students on where to locate the Dead drop and once they found it, there would be details on the rest of the training session(a great orienteering and evasion course) Now of course this would not work in an urban environment, right? Wrong, of course it does there is always a way to set up a dead drop for passing information along to your group. Example: a metal box secured under a payphone, a key holder under a tire wheel well, a fake bolt, fake coin etc. There are hundreds of ways to set this type of communication transfer up.

Alright a new Dead Drop that has hit the scene is one where someone is sharing electronic files with oters by placing a memory stick into a wall or crack. All you have to do is come up and download what you need onto your laptop or tablet and off you go!

Check out this one: Very cool method to share files and even better if you encrypt it so that only those who have the encryption key can view or extract the information.

Alright Ninja Fans, more information for you to add to your practice and training!

Bufu Ikkan!

In dealing with personal security for your team, family and or clients, there is often an overlooked area of communication in which to convey a “secret” message, oh yes it is the ubiquitous phone. Whether you are on a cell phone or land line it doesn’t matter, your conversation can be tapped, recorded, intercepted and potentially endanger you or the recipient. So in order to help prevent this from occurring here are a few tips on how to surreptitiously communicate!

1)      Remember all call start with a common greeting “hello…” without this your call becomes very easy to flag as suspicious.

2)      Set up particular code wor or phrases in advance that both parties know. Ex: Honey, I have the flower project to work on so I’ll be late, translates “there is trouble in our area so I will be there shortly. Whatever you chose make sure it is understood on both ends and not shared with others.

3)      Keep it short and simple. This is best, so as not to lead anyone listening that there is actually something being passed between the parties other than a short message.

4)      Practice! Make sure each member on the team or the parties know what to do if a code phrase or word is given.

Now, I have given a few tips but of course this can be a quite expansive lesson here, so what you need to do is figure out what messages you may want to transfer to your family or team members, bring them into the practice and then start using it. Knowing that there can be trouble and preparing for it in advance gives a ninjutsu practitioner an edge to help his family, friends and himself a significant advantage over his opponents or circumstances.

Bufu Ikkan

Alright, I give in!! Just because I have slowed down on my posting doesn’t mean you can bury my email inbox!! But I get it and so June will be a month of free lessons for you all to put into your training regime.  It starts here:

Are you Ready?

Over the last few weeks the country has had very severe storms raging across the states. Devasted homes, lives shattered, but a few..very Ninja Like, are moving on and were prepared to handle these crises. Now here is the lesson: we each live somewhere where a natural or man made disaster can occur at any time, so how have you prepared? As we live in an increasingly electronic world over the next week I want you to create a thumb drive with the following information(encrypted of course) with you Personal and family information! It should contain photographic copies of your passport, social security cards, marriage certificates, bank accounts, 401k etc etc. Mine also contains individual medical information including blood type, allergies and medication information. This is just step 1 my young ninja’s get ready for a whole lot more!

(well of course I didn’t tell you how to encrypt, or where to locate this, that will be in the upcoming Online training Section)

Bufu Ikkan

Hello Fellow Ninja,

Keeping in top physical shape is never an easy task, especially when you may be on the road, traveling for work etc. So it just so happens I was on the road last week but I had a plan to work out in the hotel gym….NOT.. the gym consisted of an elliptical bike and a treadmill no weights! So I went down the road to the local school and did the following.

Warm Up

25 Pushups

25 Situps

25 Free squats

Workout

10 Handstand push ups

10 Pull ups

Sprint – 25 yards – drop and do 10 pushups, 10 situps

Sprint 25 yards – 10 burpees

5 Handstand pushups

Sprint 25 yards – 50 flutter kicks

Sprint 25 yards – 10 pushups

Insano Death monkey 25 yards circle(as best that you can figure out)

Stretch out 15 mins

No equipment needed, I utilized a tree branch for the pull ups, leaned against it for the handstand push ups, and used a playground field for the sprinting. Great short workout and I hope you try it out sometime soon.

Bufu Ikkan

All right ninja fans, what is an A.A.R.? Well of course it is the military acronym for After Action Report! Now, one of the best tips I ever started implementing was the AAR. After a training session take a ½ hr or so and sit down and reflect on your session. Whether it was a physical condition session, or martial practice it doesn’t matter, what matters is you tear apart every moment of your training and the performance you gave during it. It is also advisable to bring in your training partner, teammate, coach, or teacher to help you honestly reflect on what you did and how you truly performed.

I have a student who has no idea on how to critique himself. He is a fantastic martial artist but he can’t see that in his own reviews. Over the years I have seen my fair share of students and teachers fail at this type of brutally honest critiquing. This is utilized in the US forces extensively, Olympic athletes utilize this in their training programs, professional bodybuilders, successful business individuals, but sadly not enough martial artists take this on.

I can show you pages and pages of critiques on myself and the reflections and comments of my partners and teachers. It has kept me realistic in my performance and often times humbled when I needed it.(Hey, everyone has an Ego and it can get in the way!!) So take this lesson away with you to your next training session .A.A.R!

Alright now I have to critique my lock picking skills because I am once again somewhat stuck on a particularly difficult picking….Arrrggggh!!

Bufu Ikkan

“There is no safer place than the dojo. Therefore , the students should have to go outside the training hall to discover things for themselves, rather than always relying on being taught. I can only teach that approach, that feeling, that special sense. That’s all I can teach, ultimately. So it could be said that I can perjaps teach you to be your own teacher.  – Soke Masaaki Hatsumi

When I look back in my life I have often been pushed by my various teachers to go “outside of the dojo” and to learn from others. This often led me to explore new arts, develop new skills, and little did I know grow my underground network of contacts and information sources. This website was put into place for this reason, to give others more or different information than they might be receiving at their home dojo. We have people from all over the world reaching out and asking questions, reading the lessons or blog posts, even joining the membership side for even more information, and that is driving me with a passion to add even more for my fellow ninjutsu practitioners.

So where is this leading? Well as many of you know, I consider myself an “Information Vampire!” Now this is not to be confused with a “collector of information”. I suck in the material and PRACTICE, everything I learn. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is when I meet   “the collector” who can spout off terms and ideas but cannot put the rubber to the road and apply anything they are talking about. Crap I have met and worked with several highly ranked individuals who were no more than collectors of drills and information but could never truly impart the knowledge in a real world application.

So, your lesson today is to get outside your dojo and apply the lessons you have gained here where ever you train. Get outside your comfort zone and “DO IT NOW.”

More to come this week! But now it is time for some Ninja Conditioning roadwork.

Bufu Ikkan

(Happy Mother’s Day to all you Moms who support us each day!)