shaolin news & inspiration

By Senior Master Steve Nakamura

For twenty years, I bowed onto training mats nearly every day at our Pittsburgh dojo as well as numerous times across the New England states, and the most famous “floor” of all, the Shaolin Temple. I've earned black belts, taught thousands of students, and dedicated my life to the philosophy and practice of martial arts.

Two years ago, I found myself in a very different kind of ring—coaching Rock Steady Boxing for people living with Parkinson's disease. Rock Steady Boxing started in Indianapolis in 2006 has grown to include more than 900 gyms and programs worldwide. The organization certifies professionals as Rock Steady Coaches, and its Rock Steady Boxing program is recognized by the Parkinson's Foundation as an accredited exercise education program. The standardized training ensures quality while allowing for individual expression, just as different martial arts schools maintain their lineage while adapting to their communities. This mirrors the global spread of martial arts—different styles, different teachers, but a shared philosophy and commitment to the practice.

What I discovered on this journey from the martial arts to Rock Steady Boxing surprised me: these two worlds aren't just similar. In many ways, they're the same fight.

The Shared Spirit of the Warrior

When I first walked into Rock Steady, I expected to teach boxing. What I found was a room full of warriors. In martial arts, we talk about the indomitable spirit—the refusal to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds. Every person who walks through the Rock Steady doors embodies this principle. They face an opponent that never tires, never retreats, and fights dirty. Yet they show up, put on their gloves, and fight back.

Research from the largest survey of Rock Steady Boxing participants showed significantly better quality of life and self-efficacy among boxers compared to those who don't participate. But beyond the data, what I witness daily is pure fighting spirit—the essence of both practices: the decision to defend rather than surrender, and to not give up on one’s body. 

Fostering Discipline Over Motivation

In the martial arts, we have a saying: "A black belt is a white belt who never quit." Motivation comes and goes like the tide, but discipline is what brings you to the dojo on the days when every muscle aches and your mind tells you to stay home.

My Rock Steady boxers understand this deeply. They don't come to class because they feel great—they come because the work demands it. Rock Steady Boxing focuses on Parkinson's symptoms including balance, stiffness, tremors, coordination and soft voice syndrome through an arduous hour and a half of non-contact boxing and drills. Rigidity, balance issues, fatigue, weather: none of these are excuses to miss training. In fact, they're exactly why training matters. Just as a martial artist trains hardest precisely because combat is difficult, Rock Steady boxers train precisely because movement is difficult.

The Mind-Body Connection and Neuroplasticity

Traditional martial arts have always recognized that the mind and body are inseparable. We train both simultaneously. A proper punch requires technique, mental focus, spatial awareness, timing, and the integration of breath with movement. You can't think your way through a kata or form, nor can you muscle through it. You must become present in your body.

Rock Steady Boxing operates on this same principle. The program includes multi-modal exercises aimed to improve both fine and large motor impairments through aerobic activity, strength training, core stability, balance and flexibility exercises, along with encouraging loud vocalizations to improve speech.. The combinations we drill—jab, cross, hook, uppercut—aren't just physical exercises. They're cognitive challenges that demand focus, sequencing, memory, and split-second decision-making.

What's remarkable is that science now validates what martial artists have known for centuries. The Parkinson's Foundation reports that exercise may be neuroprotective, with research showing exercise reduces the loss of dopamine-producing neurons and promotes neuroplasticity—the brain's ability to change and compensate. In martial arts, we'd call it "mind-like-water"—that state of total presence where thought and action merge. Science calls it exercise-induced neuroplasticity.

High-Intensity Training: The Warrior's Path

In traditional martial arts, we don't train at comfortable levels. We push beyond what feels manageable because growth lives in that uncomfortable space. The form that makes your legs shake, the sparring session that leaves you gasping—this is where transformation happens.

Rock Steady Boxing embraces this same philosophy. The American College of Sports Medicine and the Parkinson's Foundation recommend a minimum of 90 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise per week for people with Parkinson's, along with strength training, balance, agility and flexibility work. Recent research goes even further: a Yale study found that high-intensity exercise—reaching 80-85% of maximum heart rate three times weekly—preserved dopamine-producing neurons and actually made them healthier, producing stronger dopamine signals.

This isn't gentle movement therapy. Rock Steady classes are designed to be vigorous, to push participants beyond what they perceive they're capable of performing. As a martial artist, I recognize this approach immediately—we call it strengthening the spirit through hard work because quite frankly, that’s what kung fu is.

Repetition: The Mother of Skill

In traditional martial arts training, you might throw the same punch ten thousand times. Not because you didn't understand it the first time, but because mastery lives in the repetition. Each iteration refines the movement, makes it more automatic, embeds it deeper into muscle memory.

Rock Steady Boxing follows the same path. We drill the same combinations week after week. Some might call it monotonous. I call it essential. For someone with Parkinson's, research shows that this repetition serves multiple purposes: it builds automaticity, reinforces neural pathways, and creates confidence through competence. When a movement becomes second nature through repetition, it's more resistant to the interference of tremor or freezing. The patience required for this kind of training is itself a martial virtue.

Balance and Rooting

Every martial art I've studied emphasizes balance and what we call "rooting"—the ability to stay grounded and stable. In Qigong, you train to sink your weight, to feel connected to the earth. In kung fu, stance work builds the foundation for powerful technique. Without balance, there is no martial art.

Parkinson's disease aggressively attacks balance. It's one of the cruelest aspects of the condition. But through boxing training—the footwork drills, the stance work, the need to maintain balance while throwing power—we fight back. Studies demonstrate significant improvement in balance measures like the Functional Gait Assessment and mobility tests after high-intensity boxing sessions.

Every session includes balance challenges: standing on one leg, weight transfers, and directional changes while maintaining posture. I watch boxers who initially needed a cane or an assistant now stand confidently in their boxing stance. That's not just physical improvement. That's reclaimed territory.

The Value of Community

Martial arts are often misunderstood as solitary pursuits. In reality, you cannot truly learn without training partners. You need someone to practice techniques with, to spar with, to push you, to catch you when you fall. The dojo is a community.

Rock Steady operates on the same principle. As a group exercise class, Rock Steady sessions foster socialization and empowerment with partner and team exercises that promote shared encouragement. Every class has coaches, volunteers, and fellow boxers. We hold pads for each other. We cheer each other through tough rounds. We celebrate small victories like getting up from the mat by yourself, better balance, improved voice volume—as a team.

One of my fighters once told me, "I'm not fighting alone anymore." Neither are martial artists. We never were.

Non-Contact Combat: The Real Opponent

This might seem counterintuitive, but Rock Steady Boxing is non-contact—participants never hit each other. All classes are completely safe, with boxers hitting heavy bags while workouts simulate a boxer's training routine emphasizing safety, strength and confidence . This actually mirrors much of traditional martial arts training, which emphasizes kata (forms) and controlled partner work more than full-contact fighting.

The emphasis isn't on defeating an external opponent—it's on perfecting your own technique, building your own power, and challenging your own limits. The real opponent, in both practices, is internal: your doubt, your weakness, your fear of incapacity.

Breathing and Voice: The Warrior's Kiai

In martial arts, proper breathing is fundamental. The kiai—the shout that accompanies technique—isn't just about intimidation. It's about engaging the core, focusing power, and training breath control.

Rock Steady Boxing incorporates this same principle. We ask boxers to count their punches out loud, to shout out how they're feeling before and after class, to engage their voices with intention. Rock Steady focuses specifically on soft voice syndrome among other Parkinson's symptoms. For people with Parkinson's, who often experience hypophonia and respiratory issues, this vocal training is therapeutic. But it's also empowering in exactly the way a martial artist's kiai is empowering: it's the sound of your fighting spirit made audible.

The Science of Fighting Back

What distinguishes Rock Steady from many exercise programs is its grounding in research. High-intensity exercise reduces chronic neural inflammation, offering neuroprotection to those with Parkinson's disease and potentially slowing the progression of the disease. This isn't just feel-good exercise—it's evidence-based combat.

The Parkinson's Foundation's research shows that people with Parkinson's who start exercising earlier for a minimum of 2.5 hours per week experience a slowed decline in quality of life compared to those who start later. Establishing early exercise habits becomes essential to disease management—just as starting martial arts training young builds a foundation for lifelong practice.

Adaptability: The Art of Modification

In my decades of martial arts training, I've learned that the best teachers don't apply the same technique to every student. They adapt. A tall student fights differently than a short one. An older practitioner modifies stances. An injured student learns to work around limitations.

Rock Steady demands this same adaptive mindset, but amplified. Rock Steady Boxing has developed various levels of training to meet the needs of people with Parkinson's at different stages of the disease. Every fighter has different symptoms, different challenges, different days. What worked last week might not work today.

As coaches, we must read each person, adjust on the fly, offer modifications without diminishment. This, too, is a martial skill: meeting people where they are while still challenging them to grow.

The Long View

Martial arts are a lifelong practice. You don't "complete" it and move on. The journey itself is the destination, and mastery is always receding before you like the horizon.

Rock Steady requires this same long view. The program has been recognized by neurologists who prescribe it as a recommended part of Parkinson's treatment alongside medication, seeing improvement in their patients who are boxers. There's no graduation, no finish line where Parkinson's admits defeat. But there's also no ceiling on improvement, no age at which training stops mattering.

I've watched fighters in their seventies and eighties continue to progress, to surprise themselves, to find new capabilities. This is the warrior's path: not the path of victory, but the path of continuous engagement with the fight.

Dignity in the Struggle

Perhaps the deepest similarity between martial arts and Rock Steady Boxing is this: both recognize that there is profound dignity in the struggle itself. A martial artist doesn't only have dignity when winning at sparring or achieving the next belt rank. They have dignity in the daily practice, in the sweat, in showing up when it's hard.

My Rock Steady boxers embody this truth. Participants report improvement in non-motor impairments including anxiety, depression, and fatigue, along with significantly better health-related quality of life. Their dignity isn't conditional on symptom reduction or perfect technique. It lives in their decision to fight, to refuse passivity, to reclaim what they can. When a boxer shows up with a bandage on their face or an arm that won’t move well, they tell you the truth. “I lost my balance on the stairs and fell flat on my face.”  They tell you it goes with the territory and they’re not giving up.  At the end of each class we do some breathing exercises then we form a circle, throw a hand into the center and shout 1,2,3 Rock Steady!

When I say goodbye to each boxer at the end of class, I am bowing internally — I'm bowing to that spirit. I'm recognizing the warrior in front of me.

Coming Home

I thought I was leaving martial arts behind when I started coaching Rock Steady Boxing. I thought I was entering unfamiliar territory, learning a new practice from scratch.

I was wrong.

I'd come home to the principles that drew me to martial arts in the first place: the discipline, the mind-body unity, the community, the indomitable spirit, the recognition that how we face difficulty defines us more than the difficulty itself. But now, these ancient principles are validated by cutting-edge neuroscience. The warrior's path and the scientist's data point to the same truth: intensive, purposeful practice can change the brain.

Rock Steady Boxing is martial arts. It's combat. The opponent is formidable, the stakes are high, and the fighters are remarkable. 

Every day, I'm honored to stand in their corner.

Resources:

• To find a Rock Steady Boxing affiliate near you, visit RockSteadyBoxing.org
• For exercise guidelines and resources for Parkinson's disease, visit Parkinson.org
• The Parkinson's Foundation helpline: 1-800-4PD-INFO (1-800-473-4636)

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