This autobiography chronicles the life and times of a journey from youth in the midwestern heartland of America, to the maturation of global sword competitions and multiple world record achievements. The seed of this successful lifelong passion was planted in those simple times in rural America when creativity, ingenuity, and honest effort were the staples of a happy life. The son of hard-working middle-class parents, they instilled the lessons and guidance that molded his character as a young aspiring athlete.
In time, those lessons drew a clear parallel of cross-cultural similarities with Japan that would lead him to a lifelong passion and a deeper understanding of himself and the greater world at large. From his earliest experiences at age four watching his grandfather, a modern-day blacksmith swinging his hammer in the forging process, set the template for the beginning of a fascination with swords, the Japanese swordsmiths who made them, and the Samurai that used them. On the heels of incomplete athletic dreams, he sought to fill the void with something that could satisfy and discipline his physical and psychological disposition.
With the first of multiple epiphanies, he moved from the American heartland to the west coast, searching the Great Northwest Cascade mountains near Mt. Rainier to discover what and where his higher calling might be waiting. The world began to turn again, revealing a fascination with Japanese culture and swordsmanship. This eventually became such a passion that he sacrificed a successful business and lifestyle, now in southern California, to immerse himself into an esthetic process of discovery in hopes of answering the sword’s call. It is what the Japanese call ‘musha shugyu’ (a warrior’s pilgrimage), as a journey to comprehend the depth of what this 1000-year-old practice had to teach him about the true meaning of swordsmanship, life, and himself. He pursued the deeper meaning of life through this driving passion of swordsmanship to learn the intimate philosophical principles the practice provides. It was the Hero’s journey as described by philosophers Frederic Nietzsche, Carl Jung, and the great mythologist Joseph Campbell; to leave, undergo a transformation, and return with news of the journey. In the spirit of great martial artists before him like Gunnosuke and Mas Oyama, more transformations of consciousness emerged from his global travels, constant research, and training experiences that would eventually and profoundly change and refine how he interpreted and perceived his sword practice and the greater world at large.
He traveled, camped in forests and deep deserts, training swordsmanship 6-8 hours each day for over five years to the seclusion of all else, accumulating over three million sword swings and what he describes as ‘just beginning’ to understand this passion. With fifteen more years of dedicated practice, he began transmitting the basic principles of this art form to others. By 1997 this fresh perspective enabled Russell to accurately transmit complex principles and philosophies as an intuitive understanding for the elusive quality of life flow on the way to mastery in swordsmanship.
These efforts brought him to the attention of the greater sword community at large when some high-profile Japanese instructors who sought out capable leaders to expand their sword school’s interests here in America. From that, more opportunities emerged in the form of global competition platforms with those and other world-class swordsmen from Japan and Korea when he earned second place at the World target cutting championships in Taegu, Korea in 1999.
The following year in 2000, He smashed the previous Guinness Book of world records cutting an amazing 1181 consecutive cuts without a single missed attempt from a forms based approach. In 2008 he again set another world speed cutting record with four cuts in 1.16 seconds.
