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Mr. Joe Walker is a multiple-time world champion martial artist with more than 54 years of experience.

In this podcast, we talk about his start in judo, why judo teachers had more students than karate teachers in the early 1960s and how karate took over, his experience training with Grandmaster Robert Trias, how he learned the Israeli fighting art of haganah, and so much more.

I’m really happy with this episode because we both love talking martial arts. Following the recording of this episode, Mr. Walker showed me his dojo, including his wall of black belts and pictures from around Okinawa and other Asian countries. We’re both excited about bringing you another podcast episode in the future. Rest assured with more than 50 years in the martial arts, we won’t have any issues finding things to talk about.

Mr. Walker asked to preview this episode before he went out. He lamented referring to gis as dojos – he later corrected himself – and for forgetting the name of Seisho Tanahara, so he asked me if we wanted to re-record that segment. I told him I liked the raw feel of it, that I think this podcast works because it is more of a conversation and less of a formal, rigid Q&A. The essence of his response was that he was okay with it, saying that nobody’s ever perfect the first time they do something, and that we have to keep working to get better. I thought that was a great way to look at it.

Upcoming plugs and where I’ll be include…

• Aug. 2 – Martial Arts for St. Jude
• Aug. 15-17 – Share The Martial Arts

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Me and Eddy Parker at the USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame in Indianapolis, April 2014

Mr. Eddy Parker opened up with me about a variety of topics:

• How his uncle trained him old-school in martial arts without him even realizing it until later
• How he blew people away with kung fu in a sparring tournament
• Why the martial arts are like a way of life for him
• How he’s doing teaching at the School of Combative Arts in Peoria

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CORRECTION: I refer to this episode as “Episode 4″ in this podcast, but it’s really Episode 3.

Look, I’ll be honest.

I just started podcasting last month, so I don’t know all of the ins and outs of it yet.

But last week, when I tried to push my new episode live, I hit a snag.

The post appeared in my FeedBurner feed, but it wasn’t iTunes wasn’t updating appropriately. The link worked, the feed (technically) worked, and still no iTunes download of my latest episode.

The quick solution (at least, for me): Put the link to your podcast first.

Here’s why…

I googled this problem for a few days here and there before I finally found what the error was.

Finally, I went to PodMedic in FeedBurner at the advice of Roger on the Apple support forums, except PodMedic sucks because it’s super vague:

“A general error occured [sic] creating the enclosure. We sincerely wish we could provide more concrete detail, but alas, it eludes us.”

As it turns out, the podcast post in question started with a link to an image, not the link to the audio file (even though it contained the audio link). Since FeedBurner looks for the first eligible link around which to put the enclosure tag, it wasn’t seeing the media file I wanted it to.

For me, the solution was to bump up the link to my podcast so that it appeared first in the feed, and I put the image below it.

My iTunes feed was fixed within seconds, and the latest episode of The Martial Arts Podcast was ready for download to the dozens and dozens.

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Steve Aldus, Kim Aldus, and Adam Bockler at the USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame in April 2014.

I sit down with Steve Aldus – who teaches me the Chinese martial arts of tai chi chuan and Hsing-i chuan – to talk about what it was like learning martial arts in Hong Kong in the 1970s. We also talk about how, when he came back to America, he was challenged to prove his martial art worked in an era where full-contact karate fighting and boxing reigned supreme.

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In the first-ever edition of The Martial Arts Podcast, I sit down with my karate instructor, Dave Hawkey.

Mr. Hawkey talks about how he got started in martial arts, as well as the types of things he was seeing in Japan, Okinawa and the Philippines in the 1970s.

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