I’m not really sure how to compartmentalize 2019 other than the fact that it ended… and I survived it. So I’ll try and write this in the same way I lived it — one step at a time, one lesson at a time, and from the heart. It was absolutely one of the most difficult years of my life. I was challenged on so many different planes of the human condition, and much of it at the same time, that there were moments when all I could do was feel in extremes. There were moments when I cried alone and…
Where does one start? These lessons are thousands of years old, and even more so tossed around in my mind which eventually gave way to our brand over the last ten years. I guess… we start by compartmentalizing it all… as the Book of Five Rings does. The point of this article is to help all of you understand the basis of the values that we teach at Five Rings Strength & Conditioning.
The Origin of Five Rings Strength & Conditioning — A tale of love and loss.
We had stopped at a check point in some dusty, windswept Iraqi town bordering canals on our way to a mission objective — a blown out school that our battalion had taken over and fortified for passing patrols. We had a few hours to kill waiting on new intel and provisions, so we were ordered to make ourselves busy. I wandered behind the school to a fire pit where I saw an enlisted intel marine — name tapes blacked out — throwing boxes of paperwork…