Dear Students, Teachers and Parents,

Mark your calendars – August 2nd is Colorado State Games. The
American Black Belt Academy supports this event and helps run it for
the Colorado Sports Corporation and the State of Colorado. If you
want to help by volunteering to help, please see Dawn at the main
school or e-mail her at Dawn18@.... We are tentatively
scheduling a training session for all the referees and volunteers at
the end of the month.

How would you like to make $50, $100 or even $500 a month? As we
approach the time for school to begin, this marks the time many
people decide to take martial arts lessons. We have discussed our
marketing plan for the fall and have decided that we would like to
pay our existing students instead of the media to advertise. Our VIP
guest pass program works like this – you give someone a guest pass to
try our program and if they join we will pay you $50 cash. We know
that people share good things with their friends and this allows us
to help our school grow from referrals. Feel free to pick up some
guest passes at your school.

Lesson Of The Week

Lesson of the Week – The Bear

This week I went outside my house because my dog was barking only to
find a fairly large black bear walking just off my deck. As my dog
barked to chased the bear away, I continued to try and call him back,
knowing that if the bear turned to attack he would be in big trouble.
The bear continued to walk away, not worried too much about the noise
of the dog behind him, simply deciding to relocate out of convenience.

The bear is one of the 9 animals of the original 18 postures of
Kojosho Kempo. The bear is known for its physical use of what we call
gravitational marriage, or using its body weight in conjunction with
its strikes. Utilizing this tactic allows a small person to be able
to deliver tremendous power in a self-defense situation.

There is another element to the bear system most people overlook.
That is where the bear just slowly walks around and never appears to
be in any real hurry, but when he does attack he is deceptively fast.
This tactic reminds me of many of my past and current martial arts
teachers. While they walk around with a smile, very respectful of
others and many times their looks do not display the real awesome
combat abilities hidden within these warriors. These bears are soft
and gentle, but contain tremendous power within.

While I edify the courage of my dog trying to protect the family by
chasing away an animal 3 times its size, I also appreciate the
confidence of the bear as he slowly walked away into the trees.
Knowing that he could handle the dog if need be, he simply chose to
avoid confrontation and move on.

I guess the moral of this week's lesson is that we should not judge
people too quickly. Most of the great fighters I have met over the
years are the most humble and respectful people you could ever meet,
but one should not take those actions as signs of weakness. Just like
the bear walking away into the trees, a person with confidence will
attempt to avoid confrontation if possible. Teddy Roosevelt once
said, "Speak softly but carry a big stick." Well most senior martial
artists follow that strategy and do speak and act softly, but have
the hidden ability of unleashing a big stick. This is the bear's way
towards black belt excellence.
Respectfully,
Terry Bryan, Kyoshi