Ninjutsu Training Online

Hi Ninjutsu Fans

Here is a new Podcast for your Enjoyment and Learning!

Bufu Ikkan

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There are times when you need to have items hidden within your home. Be it a weapon, money, important documents or just something you don’t want your noisy spouse to easily find. So here are 5 easy locations that are often overlooked in a cursory search of a home.

1. Empty cereal boxes on the shelf of your cabinet or  pantry.
2. Above the door or inside the closet (not a walk-in) up      over the door.
3. Behind a decorative blanket hung on a wall
4. Non-locking hideaway picture frame.
5. False bottom in bedside drawer.

I have a long list of locations and instructions on how to build concealed location, to help keep your “hidden” items hidden!

Bufu Ikkan

Gambatte (Keep Going!)

“Forget your sadness, anger, grudges and hatred. Let them pass like smoke caught in a breeze. You should not deviate from the path of righteousness; you should lead a life worthy of a man. Don’t be possessed by greed, luxury, or your ego. You should accept sorrows, sadness and hatred as they are, and consider them a chance for trial given to you by the powers…a blessing given by nature. Have both your mind and your time fully engaged in budo, and have your mind deeply set on bujutsu.”

Soke Hatsumi

What does it take to “keep going” for you? Is it a friend to push you to go and train? Is it that need and drive to continue on in the face of adversity?

Just what does it  mean to you to “Keep going.” In the martial arts and in life? Have you actually spent some time thinking about this very simple yet complex few words?

The journey in the martial arts can be short or it can continue until the day you pass on. The student’s who remain student for life, keep going, because they are learning new things each day. They challenge themselves to overcome adversity, injury, sickness, their ego, greed etc, in their pursuit of an everlasting training and learning. Often I have to reflect back upon my days and years in training, whether the training was hard or soft, the dojo was hot or cold, I have always kept training, day after day, year after year. Why I have to ask myself and you should as well, do I continue to learn and train? I push myself each day to learn something new, whether it is in the martial arts or my many other interests, I am continuously trying to move forward and grow. Many of you who are reading or listening to this short piece would do well to reflect on your past training, review you r notes, films and photos of days past, but remember that tomorrow is a new day and new learning should occur.

My final words for you to reflect upon:

Do not become trapped in the conventions of someone else’s purpose for your training. Strive to be better in little steps each day and keep going, move forward, don’t look back and hold regrets that you should of, or could of done something differently, instead take the leap and  as Nike says “ just do it.”

Bufu Ikkan

Sensei Steve Lefebvre

“A Ninja never carries a grudge when humiliated or denounced. A Ninja possesses a compassionate heart and pursues peace and harmony. This attitude is called the spirit of Ninniku. Ceaselessly helping the people around him, a Ninja uses Ninpo to maintain a just society, weak persons and justice. For this purpose, Ninpo Bugei, the origin of all martial arts and a previously guarded secret can now be taught to all.”

Shoto Tanemura

The collection of intelligence was and remains a fundamental purpose of a Ninja. The gathering and sorting of information skills served a Ninja’s clan with the ability to predict and interpret what was heading their way in terms of trade, military movement, even potential new business arrangements. A Ninja agent is like a spider sensing its prey from a vibration on its web. Their network of informants was their web just as your network can work the same for you.

In order to accomplish a task the Ninja would first develop a plan that took into account the six major considerations for a successful espionage, I have included a little to the Why is this is still of vital importance for you today.

• Anonymity – Maintaining secrecy about oneself and that of their mission. How important is this in an age of instantaneous blogging, tweeting, video capture etc.
• To be able to determine the aims of the opponent. Being prepared with knowledge of an opponent’s goals or end point in mind will help you potentially negotiate a raise, buy a business, land a new job, just to name a few.
• Gathering information. This goes hand in hand with the above statement, but gathering the information and understanding it can be a tricky process.
• Sowing confusion or setting up a false path for an opponent to follow. Ahh yes, someone is trying to find out about you on Facebook, and of course you have only the most appropriate posts regarding your lifestyle, right?
• Figuring out the tactics of your opponent, their numbers and movements. I can easily relate this to recent suggestions I have given some students on job searching and what to come prepared with at their interviews.
• Finally, counterespionage, hey now who is searching you and what can you do to help thwart their activities, learn to become unpredictable!

From our Ancient traditions, tactics and strategies, the modern practitioner can utilize choho skills as a method to protect ones family and friends, advance themselves professionally and or even search out information on an opponent’s martial skill, financial background, education in order to prepare yourself for a conflict or negotiation strategy.

Bufu Ikkan

Ps: Yes, for those who already know there will be a new product coming soon, and you guessed it, it will be covering Choho skills! Ancient to the modern strategies, tactics, tricks and tips this will be the first time anywhere that a lot of this information will be available so stay tuned for the product launch!!

Thanks for all the email replies my fellow Ninja practitioners. I am always amazed at the amount of feedback this site generates, but that is thanks to all of you NIT’s (Ninja In Training).

Let’s start off with a little training work to help develop Aerobic conditioning. Aerobic conditioning is the process in which one trains the heart and lungs to pump blood more efficiently, thereby allowing more oxygen to travel to the muscles and associated organs. This type of conditioning really is highlighted once you start to pass the 800meter mark on a track, or trail.

So how do you go about improving your capacity? Well let’s take two classic exercises running and swimming! Oh yeah you will need to run, but let’s see if we can mix it up a bit, instead of getting out in the street and pounding pavement, how about you tray Trail Running instead. Head out to a rural location, hiking trail, or public park area and start running! You will immediately see the difference in running off road vs on the street. In the Shinden Fudo ryu, there is an emphasis to train in nature and to be natural, and what better way to highlight this ryuha’s strategy but to get out there and hit the trails.(check out www.trails.com for trails in your area)

Moving on to swimming, another of my favorites, normally I combine the both into 1 workout. I will run a 5K then complete it with laps in my pool. Finally I work on breath capacity, and underwater stealth activities either in the pool or my pond (yes, I own a fairly large pond…). Swimming is a great way to first cool off but adds a different dimension to your Aerobic conditioning, but hitting and utilizing different muscle groups but still pumping up the heart and lungs! Try various strokes, butterfly, overhand, backhand, Australian crawl, and side stroke. Hey, this is an easy way to get the family involved in training, head for the pool, lake, pond or sea and have some fun!

Bufu Ikkan

Sensei Steve

Endurance (also called, Wind, Stamina, Resilience)

Endurance is the athletic attribute of an individual to exert him/herself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from, and have immunity to wounds, or fatigue. Normally this breaks down into either aerobic or anaerobic conditioning.

An Ninja from the past had a reputation of being able to go to extreme lengths of endurance and or stamina to accomplish their missions. Traveling long distances in short amounts of time, holding positions while their enemy searched in vain for them, even holding their breath while submerged or hidden under a layer of earth. The Ninja knew that their training had to push the limits in order to develop these skills.

So let me start you with a question, “How do you train to develop endurance?” my next post will give you some tips and training ideas that I incorporate into my daily training as well as that of my students.

Send me or post here your tips!!

Bufu Ikkan

Sensei Lefebvre

Within the Gyokko Ryu, there are rules called the Ninja no Kissoku:

1. The character Nin, means to guard the nation with one’s life.
2. Forget self, be patient and fear not dying
3. Say or show nothing in danger
4. As a strong enemy comes, keep an immovable spirit
5. Serve and protect the master the same as you would your parents
6. Vices dissipate your proficiency
7. Being drunk affects your judgement
8. Destroy the enemy’s power, but spare his life
9. Teach not to others without the master’s permission

Many people talk about Mushin. What is it? How do I practice in Mushin? Will it help my training and fighting ability? There are so many questions on Mushin that I decided to discuss a few points and why it is so important in training.

Mushin, literally translates as “no mind”. Sometimes, the term “no thought” is more appropriate. When dealing with an action an opponent or otherwise, you just deal with what is. Not what could happen, will happen or any other thing, only “what is”.(I have borrowed the “what is” from Larry Renosa, a senior student of Steven Seagal) Many of us have had the following happen; you are driving to work, you stop at the lights, listen to the radio, avoid that pedestrian, and all of a sudden you have arrived at work. Hopefully you were not sleeping but in a state of dealing with “what is” or mushin. Zen is living in the moment fully. Mushin is Zen applied to conflict. Many make some deep mystical philosophy out of the idea of mushin.

Werner Erhard once wrote ” This is it. There are no hidden meanings. All that mystical stuff is just what’s so.”

In my studies of ancient warriors, and philosophies I have come across a common theme. One must train diligently in a calm and relaxed manner, allowing the mind not to rest on any one particular technique or theory. For when it does your opponent has seized the moment and won the battle. A few styles of traditional martial arts, offer a unique training method known as randori.

Randori is a free flowing drill where opponents take turns attacking an individual in a predescribed manner. Later, at more advanced levels the opponent comes at you with many attacks in a never ending stream. Randori allows us to leave kata and inot instantaneous intuitive, creative decision making of an infinite variety of techniques. The ability to stand in the middle of a group of attackers and then deal with each of them efficiently is no easy task. Morihei Ueshiba, was famous for his randori, and it has been popularized by the practice of Aikido.

Helpful hints to all my randori players,

1)     Relax and feed your opponent in a constant manner.

2)     Take your ukemi and move off the training area.

3)     Always try to return to the middle of the mat to execute techniques.

4)     Breathe in a constant rhythmic manner, allowing your awareness to expand.

5)     Go for it.

Through randori, you may start to glimpse mushin. You will find it happening gradually. More and more, then just when you think you have obtained it, it is gone. Don’t grasp, just reach and you will obtain it.

Bufu Ikkan

An untapped wealth of information lies at your fingertips, yes that is the Internet. Now being able to successfully search and filter the information you need is a modern application of the Ninja’s Choho skill. By understanding how to focus your search on particular items, you can quickly weed out many superfluous bits of useless information, thereby speeding up your search. What follows are two examples to you improve your utilization of the Google Search engine.

1)      Exact Words and Phrases

One of the most basic and widely known search tricks is to utilize “quotation” marks to search for an exact phrase or term. For example, perform the following search and you’ll only get pages that contain the word “Ninjutsu” followed by the word “Training”

2)      Excluding a Word

Now if you are looking to exclude a word in your search the minus sign will allow you to specify words that shouldn’t appear in your results.

For example, if you’re looking for pages about Ninjutsu that don’t mention Online, use the following search: Ninjutsu -Online

Ok, very simple techniques that you can use to improve your Modern application of Choho, which reminds me, I am now up to 75 pages in the new upcoming Choho E-Book coming out soon. This book will cover a wealth of information gathering skills, network establishment, and of course modern application of ancient strategies and tactics of the ancient ninja. So stay tuned.

Bufu Ikkan