words of wisdom...

so here's the story. on my second week of teaching at venice fitness a man in his 60's watched as a friend and I did some light technical sparring in the ring. he approached me afterwards and said that he was interested in martial arts and he was very intrigued by our display. I then told him that if he was interested in hitting some mitts at the end of my classes on wednesdays that I would be more than willing to work with him, and he said yes. a couple of weeks go by and we begin to learn more about each other. I learned that he is a retired lawyer, had a stroke 2 years ago and joined the gym in fear of what he went through. he's a very quiet man and very shy at times. every week we would meet up after my class and go through 5 rounds of mitts, mainly for his hand eye co-ordination and reaction timing. we never really get intense with our pad holding, i sense that he wants to do this as more of a social thing and to keep active. we work on timing and reaction and we also slowly work into learning combos. after we hit mitts we usually talk. we talk about business, past experiences, religion and life. yesterday he brought me a book that he talked about the previous week. the book is called "the book of five rings" by miyamoto musashi. he said that it's a good read that compares martial arts to the philosophy of life. i have read the first 40 pages of the book today and couldn't put it down. so far so good! i think it's great how a lawyer used this to help himself mentally prepare himself during his career and has now continued to pass down some words of wisdom...