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What’s the weekly mettle maker?
Training tips and educational info in support of our free programs, that’s what! What’s mettle? Mettle is, “The ability to meet a challenge or persevere under demanding circumstances; determination or resolve.” Want to cultivate your rough ‘n’ tumble mettle? Complete one of our 100 Feats!
Mettle maker #463: Five Ways to Add Realism to Your Sparring
There’s a big difference between training for a competition and training for the street. But beware: many “reality based” fighting methods are just sport fighting re-packaged. If you’re sparring 1-on-1 all the time and always following a rules set, it’s not “reality-based” it’s sporting.
A person who will attack you in the street is the sort of person who will not fight fair. You are going to be attacked by superior forces, with superior weapons, and likely by surprise. Use these three methods to fix your training.
Five Ways to Add Realism to Sparring
Shorten sparring rounds to 1 or 2 minutes, and remove breaks. Run students through 2 or 3 different opponents, then let them take a full round or two off.
Train 2-on-1 or even 3-on-1. Scrum-based sports likely find their origin in ancient games designed to prepare young warriors for battle.
Dump the dueling. One person should always be at a deficit or disadvantage. Ditch weight classes, avoid matching people by size, have one person armed and the other unarmed, etc.
Start rounds in bad positions. One person standing, the other kneeling, one person trapped in a rear bearhug, etc.
Run impairment drills. Simulate injury by putting a rock in someone’s shoe, tucking one hand in a belt, etc. Run some wrestling rounds with one person blindfolded. Get creative.
These ideas can be adopted when training solo as well. For more details, see the video on the right.
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Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ 6/22/25 – Father Mitch
Readings: Genesis 14:18-20, Psalm 110:1, 2, 3, 4, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, Lauda Sion, Luke 9:11b-17
Luke 9:11b-17 World English Bible
He welcomed them, spoke to them of God’s Kingdom, and he cured those who needed healing. 12 The day began to wear away; and the twelve came and said to him, “Send the multitude away, that they may go into the surrounding villages and farms and lodge and get food, for we are here in a deserted place.”
13 But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.”
They said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish, unless we should go and buy food for all these people.” 14 For they were about five thousand men.
He said to his disciples, “Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15 They did so, and made them all sit down. 16 He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to the sky, he blessed them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the multitude. 17 They ate and were all filled. They gathered up twelve baskets of broken pieces that were left over.
There is nothing more controversial than the miracles of Jesus. Even in ancient times there were doubts and disagreements. As early as the second century, Adoptionists and Arianists claimed that Jesus was human, not Lord. In the 18th century, Christian Deists, like U.S. founding father Thomas Jefferson, believed that Jesus was the perfect moral teacher, but disputed the miracles and denied the divinity of Jesus. For many people, then and now, the miracles are just too much to believe.
And yet belief in the truth of Jesus’ miracles persists. Perhaps this is because, like the loaves and the fishes multiplied in our Gospel reading, the miracles provide unending nourishment. Small insights lead to greater and greater insights, and miracles lead to more and more miracles.
Start, for example, with the observation of the church fathers that the multiplication of five loaves and two fishes is symbolic of the limitless nourishment we receive from the Hebrew Bible, which is made up of the five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) and the other two books, the Nevi'im (the former prophets) and Ketuvim (the latter prophets). Indeed, they saw that there is enough wisdom in them to feed all the pagans, gentiles, foreigners who come to eat, with twelve baskets leftover – enough to nourish all twelve tribes of Israel. Next consider that students of mathematics and number symbolism have noticed many curious details. In 1993, Dr. David Fideler discovered the mathematical relationship between the numbers 5, 2, and 5,000, illustrating his ideas by visual, geometric proofs (see illustration).
Literary symbolism and mathematical truths are remarkable, but they pale in comparison to the even greater truths that emerge from continued study of Jesus’ miracles. Time and again, those who are starving for spiritual nourishment are fulfilled. Millions of people, suffering from psychological problems stemming from abuse, drug addiction, and post-traumatic stress have found peace for their souls. Millions more, suffering from fear, anxiety, self-doubt, depression, loneliness, and physical diseases have found healing. Thousands upon thousands of people, lost to egotism, greed, anger and selfish desires have overcome their shortcomings through the teachings of Christ. Over the last twenty centuries, uncounted numbers of believers have not only been healed, but have multiplied the nourishment they have received by passing on what they have received to their fellow man, healing and relieving others in turn. Jesus’ saving power has spread outward like waves through time and space, healing millions and millions.
What becomes clear is that the miracles of Jesus are true at every level of analysis. They are true symbolically, mathematically, psychologically, metaphorically, mystically, and physically – true in a way dizzying to the mind. Merely multiplying five loaves and two fish into enough food to feed five thousand hungry mouths is a small and easily believed miracle when compared to the sheer impossibility of their all-encompassing truth.
So powerful are Jesus’ miracles that they cannot be contained in in the pages of the Bible. What begins by reading about a miracle of the past becomes a miracle in the present when a reader of the Gospel allows Jesus to shatter disbelief – when a baptized Christian allows the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ to pass through their lips and enter their souls.
This is the most real and intimate miracle, at once the smallest and the largest miracle, of all. A tiny scrap of bread and a sip of wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. And these morsels are made to nourish a limitless number of believers who are fed forever, even unto life eternal, never to be hungry again.