Intelligent Curriculum® SEE IT HERE!

Hi, Tom Callos here, I'm team coach for the Ultimate Black Belt Test -and I'm the head of the martial arts association known as The 100.

My new venture, as you see it here, is called Intelligent Curriculum® --partly because the internet allows us, as martial arts teachers, to design and display our school's curriculum and everything that has to do with communicating to students, parents, and potential members, in a new, dynamic, and intelligent way.

Just take a look at how attractive the simple blog is that I've designed as an example -and see how I've made two entries as examples of how your own students could be seeing YOUR curriculum.

The other reason I call this work "Intelligent" is that looking at your school's curriculum in a new way, laying it out in a more complete and educational fashion, and doing it all in a format that gives you SO MUCH control over the what and why ----well, it's very intelligent, very "today," and let me tell you, it's going to be very good for your school/business.

Can You Bring Me 100 People?

To: UBBT and 100 Folk

Re: Staff and Students and a Mission

My friends, YOUR SCHOOL is so much more than a “karate” or “taekwondo” or “kung fu” school. Your brand of martial arts is a quantum leap ahead of what the typical martial arts school used to be. And, of course, you’re not just teaching a richer brand of physical martial arts –you’re educational approach has evolved to a place where your work impacts lives deeply.

And not JUST the lives of your students, but everyone in their/your sphere of influence; If you tackle Project-Based Leadership Training (PBLT) you are making inroads, change, and improvements in your community.

Let me remind you of one of my favorite quotes from my Peace Flashcard set, Peace is More Important Than Punches:

This might be THE ESSENCE and the core of our philosophy. “Self-defense” is believing, understanding, and taking action on the idea that you CAN and DO make a difference. You are not powerless –and you are not a “victim of circumstances.”

But wait, we (UBBT and 100 folk) take this idea a step further. It’s not enough to have an empowering philosophy, ACTION on IDEAS is where it’s at. We are THE ACTION HEROES of this Century –and every student who comes into our domain is empowered with the ability to turn all these wonderful notions, ideas, and slogans into ACTION IN THEIR LIVES –and of course, since it’s NOT always about YOU –in the WORLD.

Our training is then, in essence, ACTION-HERO Training.

There will be a day, if I have my way, when a martial arts school is synonymous with community service, with mobilizing its students for projects that burn with the talk we talk so well. The education you provide your students will have everything our teachers taught us, like a concrete foundation, and from there we will build a structure on top of that full of rich experience and modern, functional, centered beliefs. You see, this is self-defense for today.

How YOU Can Help This Work, RIGHT NOW:

We need people--special people. We need more of the kind of people who see their martial arts journey as something more than memorizing 12 forms, a couple of dozen one-steps, and some self-defense.

I’m looking for people to join the UBBT, the UBBT Student Program, and the UBBT for Kids, who are willing to try new ideas –to take action in their lives and in their schools and in their communities.

I’m looking for people who would be willing to eat healthier –and not just for themselves, but to serve as role models for as many people as we can possibly reach through our collective work (millions?).

What if we had a website that was FAT with hundreds of people each working on themselves in extraordinary ways? Imagine the power of 100 young people exploring healthy eating –while working on their martial arts. Could those 100 inspire a 1000 others? Could we get this “school” of people living in different cities all over the world to create something –like a school without borders –that changed the world for the better (at the very least the “martial arts world?”). We could! And guess what, it’s never been done! We could do it!

When I started studying the martial arts in 1971, we (the martial arts community) met in magazines and tournaments. In the 1980’s we met through an audio cassette tape sent out by EFC and thru conventions, seminars, and tournaments. Then we met through a box and DVD’s. Today we meet here on the internet –and it’s rich and content heavy and in an instant messages and ideas and results are transmitted to groups of people who come together for, well ---good reasons.

Even this lecture I’m giving you now, which at one time might have been an outline for a full presentation at a convention, is delivered to you in the comfort of your own home or office.

I’m looking for 100 people to Join us in the Next 30 Days

I’m looking for UBBT members, I’m looking for YOU to bring in special people to the UBBT Student Program ($75 a month), and I’m looking for kids with a interest in joining a national experiment in martial arts activism to join the UBBT for KIDS ($9.95 a month).

Now what I’ll give your students who become a part of these programs, is...

· A consistent daily, weekly, and monthly education in human potential through the martial arts. We’ll expose them to thinking that supports YOUR work –and we will talk about the richness of the martial arts, about mission, about change, about being centered, compassionate, aware, and conscious.

· I will talk with them about the power of what they are doing when they step onto your mat.

· I will engage them in the Alabama Project (and invite them to attend). I will talk to them about fitness, about acts of kindness, about PBLT, about Intelligent Curriculum, about helping you, and about the mission YOU are on to make your path to mastery a rich and daily spiritual practice.

· I will talk to them about the kind of history we are trying to make (and you know what, we could make history. We could change the entire western world’s view of what the martial arts are about –beyond the ring, beyond the mat).

· I will encourage them to stay your student –to practice with awareness, and to help you in your mission to make a difference in your community.

· I will bring resources to the table, videos, books, ideas, authors, heroes, and concepts you don’t’ have the time to dig up. Your students will come to YOU with ideas –and they’ll feel like they’re a part of something big, something extraordinary.

What you’d have here is the first real, authentic, functional MARTIAL ARTS ASSOCIATION. You are, in essence, hiring me as a staff member –and my job is to INSPIRE. I inspire student and teachers to see their martial arts as a deep, important, life-enhancing practice. My job is to boost your sales by boosting your presence in your community.

Can you help? Can you bring me students you know would blossom in this kind of environment? Do you have members you’d like to groom for this kind of activism and activities? Any future leaders out there who might benefit from the relationships they would make in our group?

Bring ‘em on!

This year I’d like to move forward in the world with the power of 100 people committed to crafting a new mission in the martial arts world. 100 people doing acts of kindness, 100 people reading, training, talking, and exploring diabetes education, anger management, PBLT, and so on.

I can HELP YOU be a better teacher –and it won’t cost you a penny.

Can you help the UBBT grow to a place where we are recognized as the most amazing martial arts group in the world? Will WE have a chance to speak at TED (www.ted.com)?

HELP! Let’s Grow! Let’s see what 100 highly motivated, pro-active people bring to our table.

Tom Callos

The POWER of the MOMENT

I’m Tom Callos –and I am an educational activist, working in the martial arts industry.

For the most part, I teach school owners, instructors, managers, and their staff members how to run martial arts schools in a way that is efficient, effective, fun, rewarding, and profitable.

There are a number of other organizations and consultants who do this kind of work too.

However, I have a very different slant to my advice and methods than do my contemporaries in the martial arts world.

I focus on business practices and concepts that are about raising the social consciousness of the owner, the staff, and students; I promote a kind of martial arts education that deals with issues far beyond the scope of what, traditionally, has been dealt with or discussed in martial arts schools.

I teach my clients how to embrace self-defense in a way that is relevant to today. I help them learn how to teach things that reside outside of the realm of kicking, punching, and grappling; things that people living in today’s world need to know about protecting themselves, their families, and their communities.

While most consultants, including myself, will deal with business statistics, sales procedures, promotional strategies, and all of the other obvious and basic necessities of running a business, I believe in a kind of martial arts that is an authentic path to mastery, a kind of martial arts that transcends the profit-and-loss statement.

The Power of the Moment

My clients and I have launched an authentic and experiential leadership training program –as until now, many schools claim to teach leadership, but very few have a sound method or curriculum to do so. We are championing the first-ever anger management teacher-training program in the martial arts industry. People might think that martial arts teachers know a lot about anger management and teach it to their students, but until now that has not been the case.

The martial artists I work with are coached in a new kind of Intelligent Curriculum®, a new kind of educational mission for their schools, and we craft a new stance, a new position and role for the martial arts school in the community.

A martial arts school, as I see it, should be a place where the student learns as much about peace, as she learns about the opposite of peace. Students should be inspired and directed to take their martial arts out of their dojo (school) and into the world. Anger management, environmental self-defense, dietary self-defense, community involvement, meditation, empathy training, and sustainable living represent a part of the new kind of “self-defense lessons” taught in schools that recognize what I call the power of the moment.

That moment is the opening that comes every so often; that moment when the young and impressionable student is listening to his or her martial arts teacher like only a child can –with that wide-eyed acceptance, that fully open mind, ready to grow, instantly absorbing, and highly impressionable.

When that moment comes, as I have seen it come so many times, my job is to make sure the teacher knows what power his or her words, influence, actions, and position wields.

It is at that moment that we want our hero at the front of the class to speak not about defeating an opponent or striking another human being or winning a tournament; we want to hear words and ideas that inspire compassion, awareness, respect for self, for family, for the community, for the global community, and for the planet.

We want a seed planted and/or watered at that moment; something that has the potential to sprout into a kind of wisdom and happiness that is uncommon, but the deepest wish of every mother and father. My clients are the kinds of teachers who are acutely aware of the power of the moment; they live to create those moments –so that they might make a true contribution to a better and more peaceful world.

We consider this “our business.” We spend only the smallest amount of time necessary working on how to run our businesses so that we can pay the bills and have money left over (like all business owners); we spend the majority of our energy on coming up with the most innovative, creative, interesting, and powerful ways to create moments of deep learning, constructive and useful attitudes, and the kind of awareness that promotes peace of mind –and peace in action.

Engaged Martial Arts

In my programs, the teacher must transform himself into someone who makes the pursuit of genuine martial arts mastery a deep, personal and spiritual daily practice. You can recognize my clients because they are training to be in the best shape of their lives; they are eating and living with full consciousness of what they consume; they define and engage their heroes; they practice meditation; they read; and they take on projects with their students that benefit their respective communities; projects that show, firsthand, how to apply their training principles to life —off of the mat.

My members are grounded, real –and exuberant people.

Among our ranks is an Academy Award winning filmmaker; there are songwriters, environmental and civil engineers, artists, attorneys, authors, world champions, school teachers, counselors, journalists, grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers, mothers—and all of them are martial artists with a desire to make a difference, here and now, through what they teach and how they teach it.

That is the mission of this work, which is now made up of my work and the work of my clients.

It manifests itself in all sorts of interesting projects, such as (to name a few):

The Alabama Project
Each year we build and/or remodel a house in Alabama with housing activist Pam Dorr (click on the link to see her video-profile from the Hallmark Channel) and students from the famous Rural Studio. In 2009 we will be renovating a two-room schoolhouse in Hale County, Alabama, one of the last remaining Rosenwald Schools in the area.

I use these projects to empower martial arts teachers to step out of their schools and engage their communities in all sorts of unique ways.

Our involvement with architects, artists, engineers, and activists is my intentional training program to show teachers how to break down the barriers between disciplines. Participants in these projects inevitably return to their own communities and begin to engage in activities with their students that teach lessons far beyond blocking punches and breaking boards.

Peace is More Important than Punches
One of my most important missions is to help martial arts teachers teach Peace Education to their students. In 2007 I developed a set of teaching flash cards called “Peace is More Important Than Punches.” A number of schools have started using these cards to introduce peace-thinking to students. One of our members, Ms. Debby Young, is helping to have the cards translated into Swahili –for use in the new Kenyan Library System.

The Dietary Self-Defense Program
Several of my clients, members of the UBBT and The 100, are working with a new dietary self-defense program. Components include posters, flash cards, and written lessons meant to be added to the curriculum of all martial arts schools, regardless of system or style.

The Environmental Self-Defense Initiative
In 2006 I called upon all martial arts teachers in the international martial arts community to adopt the Environmental Self-Defense Initiative, which asks schools to require their young students to do 5 to 10 “acts of environmental self-defense” along with their regular belt-testing curriculum to earn their green belts.



MADDCAP™
MADDCAP™ (Martial Arts Defeat Diabetes® Community Awareness Project) is the first-ever diabetes teacher and student training program in the martial arts world. More info may be seen at http://www.defeatdiabetes.org/.



The Veterans in Martial Arts Program
I have called upon all martial arts schools in the international martial arts community to give free lessons for the remainder of 2008 to all returning veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. What is Enlightenment? magazine is the first publication to publish this request, in it’s May, 2008 issue.

The UBBT ECO-Adventure
Each year I take a number of clients on a 4-day eco-adventure along the Pacific Crest Trail, just outside of Lake Tahoe, CA. As a result of this program, dozens of clients are now making outdoor education a part of their programs.

The Anger Management Teacher Training Program
The first anger management teacher training program in the martial arts may be seen at http://www.angercoachonline.com/

The Elder Circle Project
Still in development, this project seeks to involve grandparents in martial arts schools. We are proposing that at least once every quarter, a teacher invites one or more grandparents to come to the school and share his or her life story with young students. We intend to develop this idea for use in all interested martial arts schools.

What a pleasure it is to put all of this in this blog!

Tom Callos
tomcallos@gmail.com
530-903-0286

A Call to Associations

A Call to Every Martial
Arts Association in the World

To: Every Supply Company, Every Consulting Firm, Every Billing Service, Every Magazine, Every Association of Every Style and who have Come Together for Every Reason under the Martial Arts Sun

For a Moment, Put Profit Aside
Money's a darn fine thing. It buys stuff. I value it as much as the next person. I think a portion of everyone's day, of their life, should be focused –like a laser beam –on making enough of it to make ends meet (and then some).

However, with that being said, for the reminder of this short request, I'm putting the making a profit part of the money thing aside. I'm not denying it makes "the world go around," I'm not suggesting it isn't important, I'm simply addressing that which has little or nothing to do with making money to show a profit.

Martial Arts Associations - Groups I'm Asking You To Consider the Following

Martial arts associations, whether you have 10 members or 10,000, I'm asking you to recognize your power. You have the power to reach your members –and, quite possibly, to mobilize them. You have the power (albeit sometimes a lot less than you would like), to influence people, to educate them, and to inspire them to DO SOMETHING.

Now, most of the time, you're trying to get them to buy stuff or pay dues, which is good. But there's something else you could get them to do –and it's that something else that could play a significant role in a better image for the martial arts, for the kind of attention we want, and to prove that the arts are really what we say they are (something special).

Let's Start with Something Very Simple.

Imagine this: If you had 500 members (or 167 members, each with two "significant others"), and each of those 500 people did 10 acts of kindness for 5 other people, you would have impacted 2500 people and be directly responsible for 250,000 acts of kindness.
What human being wouldn't appreciate a little more kindness in his or her life? Simple, yet it is something that we have never done –and something, I think, indicative of the values we promote.

Let's take it to another place:

Imagine if one of the billing services in our industry created a program that allowed students to voluntarily donate an extra $.10 to a dollar every month over and above their tuition. With a $.25 donation, 10,000 students could accumulate $60,000 in 24 months. Now imagine we gave that money to Oprah and let her gift it to the most worthwhile activist on her long list of people working on amazing and world-changing projects. How exciting would that be?
Think about what we could do with four or five times that much.

Century, NAPMA, EFC, APS, UFC, the WTF –everyone, everyone! What profits would be lost in utilizing the simple idea of combining forces to do something absolutely extraordinary? Something so stunning, so solid, so enlightened, that the good from it could light the face of a million martial artists --and possibly, a million martial artists to be.

It's not about profit, it's about the opportunity. It's about the martial arts and what is not fighting. It is about a lot of people doing very, very little –to show how much can be done. I'd like to see a half-dozen of the most prominent business owners in the martial arts world use their influence to do something amazing.

I'll bet you if these men and women led the movement, a whole lot of teachers and students would step in to help.

Why not? Why not in our lifetime? Is Oprah the only one who has the chutzpah to step up and take ultra-positive action in the world? We could do it –and a million "karate kids" could own a piece of it.

Note: Of course, in no way do I mean disrespect to any martial arts group; I simply dream of what we could do if we put down our company names, set aside our styles, groups, and differences, and just did something completely unexpected.

Tom Callos

Interview with Diana Lee Inosanto

Meet Diana Lee Inosanto and listen to her talk about her directorial debut with her film The Sensei

She also talks about the movie's connection to Bruce Lee.


Click on the Image or HERE to listen.

Most interesting!

5 Reasons to Change the Way You Belt Test, NOW

Professional martial arts teachers: When it comes to belt testing, whether it’s a green belt test or a black belt test, it is a mistake to get tied into a tradition of testing. What we want to get attached to is THE RESULTS that our testing process produces.

Some of the things we want to affect through the process are:

• We want our students to be technically proficient (stances, kicks, and other maneuvers).

• We want a student to have an attitude that is congruent with his or her belt rank.

And in a perfect world:

• We want our students to have a sense of TEAM, with fellow classmates.

• We want them to have a set of experiences, from their training, that have had an impact on their life outside of your school.

At a test we’d like to hear:

“I’m a better, more patient father, because of this training.”

“Because of my test, I have healed some old relationships that needed healing. This training gave me the incentive and the courage to do it.”

“I’m more fit now than I was in college.”

“I could never get myself to eat like I knew that I should, but this training changed that. Now I apply the same discipline to my diet as I do to my workouts.”

“The training has touched me deeply, in ways I never would have expected.”

The bottom line? We want our testing to be positive, to be powerful, to be indicative of our BEST work. So, with that in mind, here are my 10 reasons, no, make that WAYS, to change the way you belt test, now.

Reason 1: More Time to Affect Change

Make your test last longer. Like a month or two or three or in the case of high ranking students, a year (like the Ultimate Black Belt Test). Why? What’s the hurry? Aren’t 100 push-ups or three reps of a form a day for a year WAY better than 1 rep of a form on test day? Which is better for you as a teacher, challenging and helping a student to develop daily discipline, or having them kick-it on one day? In the long run, teaching a student to shape his or her day in a way that affects the future is better than teaching them how to shine on a single day.

Furthermore, a really good black belt test is a chance for the general public and your other students to see what you have created. They get to see a master craftsman and his or her
”products.” Well, what’s better, to have a day of your work on the showroom floor, or to take 100 days or more, and show your skills that way? A test that lasts a month, 6 months, or a year gives you that long to talk about the process, to show the process, and to enjoy the process.

Reason 2: More Time to Share

Everyone on your test should be writing and/or filming the PROCESS. Each member should be keeping an on-line journal documenting the effort and learning experience he or she is going through. Those public journal entries will make your candidates better writers and communicators; they will open the process to people who might never have been able to see, hear, or experience the journey of martial arts testing; and the record of the time your students test will ultimately become cherished memories that anchor the student to your school and the process with vivid intensity.

On line journals even have a way of guiding those students who come later; they serve as examples of effort, growth, and expectations.

Reason 3: More Time To Change

I can’t get nearly as much done in a day, no matter how hard I work or how organized I am, compared to what I can get done with just a hour’s worth of effort, every day for an extended period of time. In a perfect world, when a student comes up in front of you to test, they would bring with them this overwhelming body of evidence that shows you how hard they are working, how seriously they take the process, and how committed they are to your ideas. You can’t get someone to stop everything they are doing and commit themselves like an Olympian to your testing process, but you can get them to commit some time, each day to it. To elicit real, authentic, live-changing change, you have to give a student more time –and not just “time,” but QUALITY time.

Reason 4: It’s HARDER This Way, Without Being STUPID

Torturing student on the day of their test, trying to break them down –or being afraid that you might break them down or injure them, is not the way to go about testing. Torture them for a month or two or three or even a year! But push them in small digestible, non-injurious ways. Bring them to their black belt test having coached them through 1000 hard reps of their form over 6 months or a year, instead of driving them to exhaustion, like some kind of college frat-house hazing on the day of their exam. Make the 1000 reps over a period of time their “test” –instead of asking them to show you a form on one day. It is immensely more difficult to apply consistent, daily discipline to one’s life, versus doing something really good on one day.

What you really teach students through requiring them to SEE THEIR TEST as a daily thing, versus a one day or one week event, is that giant accomplishments, massive transformation, is achieve with DAILY activity, not cramming.

Reason 5: You Can Teach More Skills, More Stuff, if You Have More Time

You can’t get a student to read a book in your classes, but they could do it at home, if you give them enough time. What if all of your black belt candidates had to take an on-line anger management training program –and they could do it in 10 minute increments, at home, over a month or two?

Well, what you could do is talk about it to prospective members, to the media, to all sorts of people –and what more did you have to do? Did it change your classes? Did you have to invest more time?

You see, stretching out the testing process lets you coach your students with ideas and practices you wouldn’t have been able to implement any other way. And can you see, in your mind’s eye, the LIST of things you require? IMPRESSIVE, yet because of the time frame, not impossible –and in fact, quite do-able! If you REALLY want to have a life-changing, lasting experience with your students, WHY NOT?

Reason 6: IMPRESS (for a purpose)

Which of these two mini-tests are more impressive:

Test 1

Forms 1 to 12

10 rounds of sparring

Self defense drills 1 to 10

Running 5 miles

250 push-ups and 250 crunches

Break 10 boards (I’m not a board-breaking advocate, I think it’s a waste of natural resources, but I’ll use this example t make a point).

Test 2

500 recorded repetitions of all forms.

500 rounds of sparring.

1000 self-defense techniques, practiced at full speed.

A 500 mile run.

10,000 push-ups and sit-ups.

Breaking 500 boards

Reason 7: You Need to Change Your Test in a Way That Gives You a Unique Selling Proposition.

Tests are, for the most part, all the same; and the results we’ve been getting, well...it’s OK. But I ask you: Can’t we do better? Can’t we at least TRY some new methods to see what happens? Do you know any other school that is doing it? Do you want to distinguish the QUALITY of education you provide –from your competitors? Of course you do!

There are a LOT of reasons to change your testing process I haven’t mentioned here; but I have one final and grand suggestion for you.

START THIS PROCESS of reinvigorating testing, of making it vital, relevant, authentic, and more powerful by DOING it yourself, FIRST. Show what can be done; LIVE the process. You will benefit (are you currently in the best shape of your life? Why not?), your students will benefit, your school will benefit.

Come live the Ultimate Black Belt Test and learn more this year than you have in the last 10. That, my friend, is an invitation!

Tom Callos

Interview with Author Dan Millman about the Martial Arts

Click this banner to listen to an interview with author and martial artist Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior) conducted by Tom Callos, May 1, 2008.

To Mom and Dad: Your Child and the Martial Arts

A letter to parents –from an old martial art

teacher –about martial arts lessons and children.

I’m going on 50 years old, which really isn’t that old, but to talk to you about what a child, your child, stands to learn from taking martial arts lessons, it’s old enough. I took my first lesson at the age of 9, received my first degree black belt at 19, and this year I will celebrate my 30^th year of teaching and assistant teaching the martial arts.

I’m going to condense my experience into a few hundred words for you; the goal is to give you the 30-year perspective on what I have learned as a result of my training –and what I know your child will learn, should you decide to make the martial arts a part of his or her life.

In some ways, martial arts schools are all the same. Each school is going to be contained in some kind of space, like a shopping mall, a free-standing building, a room in a gym, in an office building, a garage, or maybe on a stretch of lawn in a park or in someone’s backyard. What makes a martial school great is not the space it is in, although as parents we want the school to be clean and safe; what makes or breaks a martial arts school is the people that fill that space.

Here lies the primary reason to enroll –and then keep –your child in martial arts lessons, from the moment they first meet the age requirements of a school, until they leave your nest: The people.

The teachers (and students) in a martial arts school become leaders, heroes, role models, and friends to your child; and while martial arts teachers, like every kind of teacher, have their various strengths and weaknesses, their influence and friendship is worth every penny you will ever spend on tuition, times 10.

I remember my teachers, I remember the senior students in my classes, I remember my classmates and the students who joined after me. I remember when I was 12-years-old and a red belt student, a man in his mid 20’s, told me, nonchalantly, that “practice was the key to being a great martial artist –or a great anything.” I can hear his voice as if he told me that yesterday –and the advice has shaped my life. My father probably told me the same thing a 1000 times, but who listens to their parents –until much later in life?

A martial arts teacher is a real man or woman; they’re not heroes fabricated by the entertainment industry. These are real people that will be there, in their classes, day after day, patient, persistent, and persuasive. Their message is about consistent effort, about perseverance, about focus and goals and defense and self-control. Even teachers who can’t speak English can, with an uncanny ability delivered through their coaching, translate values and powerful, life-changing ideas to their students.

The kind of education a good martial arts teacher provides a young person is different from anything they will learn in grade school, from parents, or from football, soccer, or gymnastics coaches. The magic that forms in the long term relationship between a martial arts teacher and his or her students makes them an incredibly valuable, but all too often unacknowledged, part of “the village” that can help raise your child to be confident, self-disciplined, resilient, and resourceful.

Literally thousands of adults have told me, long after they stopped practicing the martial arts, what a powerful and positive influence their martial arts teacher was, and still is, in their life. I concur. Even the teachers that I came to think were inadequate, when I look back, I realize were a gift.

I owe them all a huge debt of gratitude for helping me develop respect for my self and others, for helping me build by body, develop my coping skills, and for the confidence their constant attention and direction gave me. It took me a long time to understand the value of their friendship, but oh, now, I so completely get it. What a blessing! I would hope that every child would have the chance to interact with teachers like I had, men and women who coached and fixed and taught and laughed and yelled and, as I now understand, loved.

The second most valuable reason to have your child studying the martial arts, any style, any method, is the philosophy that goes with the training. Every style, every teacher of any skill, has something positive to teach your child. Some, of course, do it much better than others, but whether they know it or not, they are imparting wisdom of the most extraordinary kind –and at a time in a child’s life that they really need it.

I can still hear my teacher’s words:

“Eyes straight ahead! Focus!”

“It’s ok to be afraid, just don’t let it stop you from moving and trying!”

“What are the two qualities of a champion?” We would answer, shouting, “Attention to detail and follow through, sir!”

“Real bravery isn’t found in fighting! It’s found in not fighting!”

“Attention! Pay your respect!”

Pay your respect, indeed.

Mom, Dad, every lesson is important and it’s worth every penny, every minute you spend convincing your son or daughter that going to class that day is better than watching TV; it’s worth every bump, bruise, stubbed toe, and every tear.

The good times, the victories, the understanding of the value of finally breaking through a barrier, the friendships, the little kids, the teenagers, the parents, and the old folks –it’s so good, so very worthwhile, and so needed in today’s world, that I had to write you about it. I had to encourage you –and try to give you the big-picture perspective on the martial arts. If you can swing it, get your child into a martial arts school and keep them there, even when they don’t recognize the value of what they’re doing.

They will, someday.

About the Author

Tom Callos is a consultant to martial arts instructors, currently helping teachers to work environmentalism, anger management, kindness and leadership training into their schools. His websites are http://www.tomcallos.com/ and http://www.ultimateblackbelttest.com/. He may be reached by phone (PST) at 530-903-0286 and/or by e-mail at tomcallos@gmail.com.

How to Approach Your Black Belt Test

Your black belt test, in any style of martial arts, is your Olympics. From the first day you stepped on the mat, you began preparing for your test, whether you were aware of it or not. On the day you test for your black belt, you want to be at your absolute best, your peak; and going through the test should be like crawling through a long tunnel between one world and the next, like a birth; a rebirth. When you come to the other side, you should be changed; from that day on you are a new person.

When you practice your martial arts, whether you’re in your first week of lessons or a veteran of a thousand classes, knowing your test is coming up, that you are preparing yourself, that that day’s training session is connected to your test, gives you direction. You train with intention, with purpose and a sense of mission.

Every part of your life, every relationship, everything you consume, every thought, every action, every movement contains in it something that has to do with your test. You are in training. You are preparing yourself.

Getting ready for your black belt test requires that you become a representative of the martial arts. You represent the truth of it –or its frivolity. You represent every master teacher of every style of every school since the beginning. To everyone around you, you should represent the seriousness of the undertaking. It is more than your formal education, it is more than a contest, it is more than getting your degree, passing the Bar or getting married or any other event in your life. This is your black belt test, this is the event that requires you to practice ten-thousand repetitions, to dig deep, to be consistent, to train and train and train until the connections in your brain are so strong, so time-tested, and so automatic that the space between thinking and doing is eliminated.

Every toe knows its exact place. The foot is aligned, perfectly, as is the knee, the hip, the torso, the shoulders, the head, and the eyes. Like a master carpenter yielding a hammer, your hands, feet, elbows, and knees follow an exact path; they hit their targets with exact precision, with surprising force, with confidence that can only be born from practice. Your movement isn’t just movement, it is integration, it comes from your center, and your balance is perfect. You could do it all backwards, blindfolded, against one or more people, in the dark, on the grass, in the water, or anywhere, anytime, with or without a proper warm up.

When you test for your black belt, you are what you have shaped yourself to be. You have adjusted for any limitations and injuries. You move with a confidence that comes from repetition, from practice, from awareness, from intent, and from your breath. No stone has been left unturned. You ran the extra mile, you eliminated the unhealthy from your diet, you studied the best of the best, and you shaped and forged and worked on your movement. For you, it is all about the technique and nothing about the technique. Something drives you that is not your muscles.

When you test for your black belt, even your mistakes are polished. When you fall you flow, when you get hit, you embrace, when you tap, you win with a smile. You’re not hard on yourself, you don’t get angry; you cope, you adjust, and you accept. You have worked through the mistakes. You have worked through the frustration and the anger and the injuries.

The earlier you recognize the value of training for your black belt test, the better. The earlier you begin, the better. Preparing for your test shapes your experience; it makes you a better person. When other people are easily distracted, you are focused. When others eat without purpose, you choose a diet that prepares you for your training. When others give into anger, you see it as a chance to practice your control. You’re in training to be a black belt.

A professionally trained dancer carries with her a sense of center, of style, of confidence that lasts her entire life. A West Point graduate has a certain posture, an attentiveness and sense of confidence that shines –regardless of the time that has passed since graduation. A black belt who approaches his or her training with mission and seriousness –carries the experience to the grave.

You prepare for your black belt test with everything you have. When you do that, the experience serves you, it is rich, it is life-shaping, and it brings to you skills that you might never have acquired any other way.

Approach your black belt test, starting today, with these ideas in mind. When you step on the mat, remember where you are headed. Make your practice go deep –and then deeper, and then deeper yet. Put as much focus and energy into your hour of practice as you put into anything you do in your life.

Video and Speaking of Faith Interview with Tom Callos

Out of the Dojo from Speaking of Faith on Vimeo.

The UBBT and 100 store link

Stream-of-Consciousness Teaching for the Matial Arts School Owner

Martial Arts School Business Advice –Coming at You From the Future, From Left Field, and Made of Things You Will, Most Likely, NEVER Read About in a Martial Arts Business Publication

Stream-of-Consciousness Teaching By Tom Callos

First things first:

Value. BUILD VALUE. Sell value.

Benefits. BUILD BENEFITS. Sell benefits.

Perceived value and actual value; perceived benefits and actual benefits.

Build them, sell them.

Concepts:

• Make a tool; find out tool serves more purposes, has more value that originally perceived. Tool with many uses is valuable.

• Teach self-defense; discover that people are hurt and/or killed by a LOT of other things besides round kicks and back-fists; learn what these things are –and integrate them into your curriculum.

• Abandon the pursuit of business, become a martial artist committed to enlightenment and service; suddenly realize that this IS the business –and that you now have something (more)valuable to sell that serves you (spiritually) serves your students, serves the community, and serves the world. Realize that’s why you came here in the first place.

OK, with all of that out of the way, I am here to talk to you about your business –and what it’s going to be like in the future.

First off, recognize that our business is life-coaching, not teaching self-defense/exercise.

Exercise is self-defense from ill health. A healthy diet is self-defense from food-related health issues –and the food we consume has a direct effect on the planet, so consciousness about food production and what it does to the world is a form of global self-defense (like it or not, your consumption has a ripple effect far beyond your dinner table).

Practicing meditation is a form of perspective self-defense. Developing a positive and healthy perspective about things like defeat, food, consumerism, relationships, competition, death, impermanence, detachment, and compassion (the short-short list) is mental self-defense. Mental self-defense is the ability to use your mind to create understanding, happiness, health, connection and compassion as opposed to pain, suffering, jealousy, envy, lust, addiction, and hate (another short list).

Community involvement is self-defense from selfishness, narcissism, disconnection, and isolation. Practicing forgiveness and compassion is a form of spiritual self-defense. Spiritual self-defense is the ability to understand, feel, and put to use the idea that we are all of the same family, that we are all more connected than we are disconnected, and that there is nothing more important than love, kindness, compassion for others, and non-violent solutions to our problems. Spiritual self-defense is the idea that we would behave the way, now, that we would if our maker, our God, our _______ (name the person, place, thing, or idea that you would do and be your absolute best for) were here –and watching us.

Now, let me reiterate:

Recognize that our business is life-coaching, not teaching self-defense/exercise, not teaching a complicated skill-set of maneuvers and movements designed to prepare us for hand-to-hand combat. It is not found in the selling of belt programs, of contracts, and of retail gear. Our business is not about simply building self-confidence –we are in the business of LIFE and COACHING and COMMUNITY and UNDERSTANDING.

Now, understand this:

The purpose of your training is to be an example of the benefits derived from the study and practice of the martial arts. This is the best thing you can do for your school, for your students, for your community, and for the world. Getting your own poop together –makes it a LOT easier to help others get theirs together too. And on the other side of that note that helping other people get their stuff together is part of the way you get your own stuff together.

It’s a real give and take, isn’t it? That’s a good thing.

About Your Business

You’re only going to teach people to expand their skills to the place where you have expanded your own. You might fake some of that for awhile, but it won’t fool people for very long. The plan is to expand your own skills, your own awareness, your own level of compassion, understanding, your own sense of humanity, your own wisdom, your own centeredness, your own sense of community connectedness, your own inner-Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, or _________ (name your favorite spiritual person, place, or thing here).

Do this and you have something of real, deep, meaningful value. You can then give something to your students that they take with them into their life, something wise, something needed, something that will serve them and protect them better than any technique.

Let me break, here –to make a point:

Which of the following things cause more pain and suffering in the world?

Jabs and right crosses or emotional isolation?

Arm bars or anger?

Side and/or round kicks or unhealthy diets?

Foot sweeps and take-downs or bigotry?

Wrist locks or ignorance?

Knife hand strikes or greed?

Knee attacks or depression?

Our business is the business of making the world a better, safer, more compassionate place. We should go about it methodically, our first step being the introduction of a kind of practice, a physical/mental/emotional/spiritual exercise that helps us battle the ego, helps us see more clearly, helps us deal with the fear, helps us to find our center.

This work is harder than learning a kata, harder to do than mastering a technique, more challenging than running a successful business, but more fulfilling than just about anything else in the world.

A Request and/or Suggestion

I’d like to ask something of you. Consider it a request and/or a suggestion:

• I’d like to ask you to ask more of yourself, this year, than you have in the last 10.

• I’d like to ask you to renew your study –with a new perspective and a new idea of what you/we are here to do.

• I’d like to ask you to re-craft your school’s mission statement, your curriculum, your goals, purpose, and intent to reflect a new understanding of your purpose here.

• I’d like to ask you find a group of spiritually evolved people, not necessarily in your neighborhood, who you respect enough/so much, that when they speak, you will listen.

• I would like to ask you to look very carefully, very deeply at who you’re hanging out with.

• I’d like to ask you to step out of the current methods and intend of martial arts school management advice –and see if there isn’t something bigger, more valuable, and more relevant to today’s world just waiting there for you to embrace it.

I don’t know how to plot your course, exactly, from this place –but I do believe that this is the best work, the best contemplation, the best beginning for your school, your career, your business, your students, and the world.

Tom Callos

Expectations of Your Involvement in the Ultimate Black Belt Test

Expectations of Your Involvement in the Ultimate Black Belt Test

Toss a rock in a still pond and watch the ripples of the impact fan out from the center. This is how I see your involvement in the UBBT. At the center are your own personal achievements; at the outside is the effect you have on the entire “pond.”

First

Your commitment to the UBBT, which is your commitment to your personal test, should first be a physical one:

• Alter your diet by eliminating junk and paying very close attention to what you consume (conscious consumption).
• Increase your cardio training, in whatever form suits you.
• Increase your strength training, in whatever form suits you.
• Practice your martial arts to the point of mastering those skills you’ve decided to focus on for this period of time.

You need to lean out, muscle up, and get rid of that belly. You should come to your final test looking like you’re in the best shape of your life. If you intend to test for rank, this is an absolute must.

Your form should be a masterpiece; as an example:

Here are some Japanese form masterpieces: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU2hqaaK8AA

Here’s an example of a Wu Shu masterpiece:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ7oDlXq9BM

Your martial arts skills should show that you prepared yourself with hundreds of hours of practice for your performance.

Second

You are expected to treat your UBBT team exactly the way you would want your own black belts to treat their own teammates. Do it in a way that shows your students exactly how it’s supposed to be done.

Third

Craft your story in journal and video. While you are a student, always, you are also a teacher, always. Your documentation and test-diaries should explain and illustrate the ABC’s of test preparation –to the best of your abilities. After your test is over, you’re students should be able to review your journals and learn from them, they should model your approach to testing. If you are not doing this test to teach others how a test is to be done, they you have missed a significant opportunity.

Fourth

Your test must engage other people; your students –and your community. At some point, you should realize that your test isn’t all about you, only. In the “ultimate” test, many other people would be affected by your commitment, inspired by your actions, and involved in their own self-improvement because of your efforts.

Fifth

Your 13 month test should add up to be something more significant that a test of your physical endurance. You need to look for a WOW that can be initiated during your year. That WOW can take almost any shape, but it something indicative of understanding of the expanding role of the martial arts teacher –in the world.

In Closing

The UBBT isn’t just a black belt test, it’s a movement to improve the quality of education provided by martial arts schools around the world. Your test must set an example for the industry, you must, at whatever level you happen to be at, understand each layer of the project –and commit yourself to excellence, even in failure.

Tom

Interview with Tom Callos for Martialinfo.com about the Ultimate Black Belt Test, The100., and a New Vision for Martial Arts Teachers

Conducted by phone, April 22, 2008 by Fariborz Azhakh of www.martialinfo.com

Martialinfo: Would you provide us with a little of your background?

Tom Callos: Martial arts wise, I was 6-years old when I saw the first episode of The Green Hornet (1966) featuring Bruce Lee as Kato, 9-years-old when I watched my first judo class (the instructor would invite me on the mat after the adults-only classes and show me how to roll and fall), and 11-years old when I first joined a school. That was 1971.

I received my black belt in taekwondo in 1979, and moved to San Jose, CA to join Master Ernie Reyes’ school in 1980. I opened my first school in 1981 and in 1991 I was overseeing two schools, 10 miles apart with a total active enrollment (at their peak) of about 800 students. Due to my success at the schools, I was invited to join Educational Funding Company’s Board of Directors, which is when I started becoming a teacher and consultant to the martial arts industry. Since then I have worked with most of the key companies in the martial arts industry. In 2003 I created the Ultimate Black Belt Test and in the following year I started working on my own martial arts association, The 100.

Martialinfo: Explain the Ultimate Black Belt Test.

Tom Callos: The UBBT is a complete redesign of the testing process. It expands the purpose of a test, it expands the nature of training for a test, and it investigates and redefines the objectives for all rank testing in the first place. The UBBT is designed to be the most challenging and authentic black belt test in the world, but it was also designed to improve the martial arts industry.

Martialinfo: How does the UBBT improve the industry?

Tom Callos: A friend of mine, John Bielenberg, is a well known teacher and innovator in the graphic design world. One of his primary slogans is Think Wrong, which spells out his viewpoint about conventional approaches to design, creativity, and problem solving.

The UBBT helps the industry by thinking wrong about what activities make the martial artist smarter, better equipped to cope with self-defense issues beyond the obvious physical ones, about the best ways to show and tell the general public the benefits of the martial arts, and about what role a martial arts teacher is supposed to play in the world.

You see, I believe in the power of the individual to make a difference in the world. My heroes are people like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Ali, and just about any person who has taken action for others, for a cause, on the side of right. I believe that a martial arts teacher is supposed to teach, educate, and empower his or her students to fight the big battles, to tackle issues that might scare others, issues that relate to personal protection, protection of family and community, and even of the planet.

The problem is most martial arts schools don’t know how to integrate these ideas into their curriculum. They don’t understand, yet, how to take their martial arts out of their schools –and put it to work in the world. There will be a giant shift in the industry, a huge upgrade in the perceived value of martial arts training, and a monumental change in what a martial arts teacher does in the world when school owners and teachers finally get the scope and intent of this new kind of martial arts educational mission.

Martialinfo: Does the UBBT’s curriculum contain the ingredients for this new mission you describe?

Tom Callos: It does, in part. There are requirements in the UBBT’s curriculum that might force a teacher to step out of his or her comfort zone. The curriculum requires the participant to get off the mat and into the community. It asks people to learn meditation, to get outdoors, to help others, to mend relationships, and to learn new things.

But there is something the curriculum doesn’t contain that is a vital part of the work. That missing ingredient is my belief that martial arts teachers should be extraordinary people –and I mean extraordinary in the image of people like Mandela, Armstrong, Julia Butterfly Hill, Gore, Dita Sari, and Wangari Mattai.

I mean, if a martial arts teacher and/or veteran practitioner doesn’t have the courage, the perseverance, the self-discipline, and the fortitude to tackle issues relevant to people’s health and well being, then who does? If a martial arts master teacher doesn’t know how to make his or her work more meaningful, more effective, more relevant to the world today, then what’s all this training for?

Do kicking, punching, and throwing contain all the value of the martial arts? Or is there something beyond the physical? And if there is something else, then is it meant only for individual benefit, or can it be applied to the world?

My job is to do for the role of martial arts teacher what Ernie Reyes and the West Coast Demo Team did for the martial arts competition world, what Dana White and his colleagues did for mixed martial arts fighting. I think martial arts teachers are in the perfect position to be leaders in a new global view of self-defense, a view that looks at the big picture, and a view that transcends the current definition of ‘what are the martial arts for.’

The UBBT and the 100. are both parts of a community that nurtures and encourages instructors to expand their curriculum, to step out of their schools, and to embrace a kind of thinking that may be new to the martial arts, but that is common among the most self-actualized, cognizant, proactive citizens of the world.

Martialinfo: What is The 100.?

Tom Callos: The 100. is my martial arts association and it was inspired by Rosa Parks. Rosa was a 43 year old African-American seamstress who took action at the right time and place and as a result, helped make history. I started The 100. with the idea that 100 martial arts teachers, I mean people who have spent their entire lives forging themselves to be warriors and teachers, ought to be able to equal the power of one Rosa Parks. Couldn’t we create the right time and place? Couldn’t we see injustice and do something about it? The 100. is an association about martial arts business for people who believe it is our business to make a difference beyond the ring and outside of the dojo.

Martialinfo: So the UBBT is about testing and The 100. is a about activism?

Tom Callos: All my work points to the same place. It’s all about walking the talk of the potential of martial arts training. It’s all about a kind of martial arts teacher that is a hero to others, a living example of martial arts principals put into action.

Martialinfo: Do you have members who are examples of your ideas?

Tom Callos: Mike and Karen Valentine of San Rafael, CA have the first officially Green Certified school in the nation and they have the first ever ocean-based cleanup requirements for black belt testing. What this tells the general public is ‘See, we’re not just fighters, we’re warriors for a better, healthier world too.’ Tim Rosenelli of Pennsylvania is now using his degree in environmental engineering in his martial arts school and it’s bringing him students he would never have met otherwise. Dan and Kim Rominski, Alicia Kastner, Bryan Klein, and Charles Chi, all of New Jersey, are running acts of kindness programs that are making community leaders stop, look, and listen to the martial art in a way that had never happened before. Brian Williams of Nevada has started the One Million Acts foundation where he’s working on getting people all around the nation involved in performing one million acts of kindness. UBBT member Andy Mandell is on the last 1000 miles of a 10,000 mile walk around the perimeter of the U.S. for diabetes education.

What’s happening is that the UBBT and The 100.are expanding the role of the martial arts teacher in the world. We’re practicing a new kind of martial arts that isn’t just physical, but that transcends the subject matter.

Martialinfo: So, someone we know recently called you a “Tree-hugger.” Are you?

Tom Callos: (laughs) No, I’m much more than that, there’s just not a name for it yet. I’m a martial arts teacher that believes in the power of the martial arts to make change. I believe that the fear I faced and defeated on the mat and in the ring was meant to be applied to other things. I believe in martial arts mastery –and I think it’s my job to carry on the work my martial arts teachers, people like GM Jhoon Rhee and Master Ernie Reyes, Sr., have been doing. I think I’m supposed to add to the martial arts world, not just exist in it.

Master Reyes was always fearless in the way he attacked competition and our demo team performances. I think he was showing us what could be done if you focused. I think he meant to empower his students with a belief that we should ‘go for the WOW.’ With the examples of my teachers and heroes, how could I shoot for anything other than something powerful, meaningful, and important?

Martialinfo.com: Are you still accepting people in the UBBT and the 100?

Tom Callos: Any time, any place. My only requirement is courage and the understanding that we are here to do something unbelievable, something most people can’t even get their head around. I’m looking for people who are tired of the status quo and who are willing to try new things to see what happens.

Martialinfo.com: Thank you for taking the time to talk.

Tom Callos: It is my honor to be here and to have an audience for these concepts.

Tom Callos may be reached at tomcallos@gmail.com. The UBBT’s address is www.ultimateblackbelttest.com, The 100’s is www.theonehundred.org.

Watch for a recorded interview with Tom Callos to be aired soon on the NPR radio program Speaking of Faith at www.speakingoffaith.org.