Interview Transcript – Yossi Sheriff with Hardee Merritt & Scott Akitoshi Bragg

Hardee Merritt: So, what do you say—ready to get into it? I'm ready. I don't want to waste any time, so let me bring him in. Do you want to introduce him while I'm doing that?

Scott Akitoshi Bragg: Yes. We've had some amazing guests on the show lately—every episode has been phenomenal—and tonight is no exception. We're going halfway around the world, and it’s just after three o'clock in the morning where he is. We’ve pulled him out of bed, although this is apparently normal for him. Please welcome, from AKBAN, Yossi Sheriff. How are you, sir?

Yossi Sheriff: I'm doing fine—and running multiple streams because my students keep asking, “Where's the live feed?” I just tell them, “Check the Facebook page; it's there.” Good evening to you—well, evening for you, anyway. It's much later for me.

Hardee Merritt: We really appreciate you getting up to chat with us. What time is it there?

Yossi Sheriff: It's three a.m. in Israel. One of the useful habits the army left me is the ability to wake up, talk, and then fall right back asleep—anywhere, anytime. So when we finish, I'll just roll over and go back to sleep.

HostsThat's awesome. If you’ve ever searched online for a classical ninjutsu kata, chances are you’ve seen an AKBAN video—Yossi and his senior students have documented thousands of techniques. Based on our earlier conversation, it’s important to say up front that what you present is your interpretation. Could you give us a quick history of your own martial-arts journey and how you became a student of Doron Navon?

Yossi Sheriff: Sure—I'll keep it short because biographies can be boring. A friend of mine was learning judo from Doron Navon, who is a fourth-dan Kodokan judoka and was on the Israeli Olympic team. I heard he also taught ninjutsu, so at thirteen I joined his dojo. Doron had a rule: no one received a black belt without training in a second system as well. He sent me to Muay Thai, which I loved and kept studying even after it was no longer required. Most of Doron’s black belts had to cross-train that way.

Over the years I did ninjutsu, krav maga, judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and while living in Macau for half a year I studied some internal martial arts. I enjoy all of them, but I teach ninjutsu. I've been practicing for more than forty years—usually daily, even during my army service. I've been teaching for about thirty-seven years. (2020)

Everyone in Israel serves three years in the army. I was unlucky enough to be in the first Lebanon War. By the end of it, I’d become a combat paramedic. The experience left a big mark on me: it softened me, gave me perspective, and showed me the limits of a tsuki punch the first time someone shot at me. In a way, that was a gift.

Hosts You’ve studied a lot of arts. Why stay with ninjutsu?

Yossi Sheriff: I smile when people ask that because of Johnny Cash's song “A Boy Named Sue.” AKBAN is a recognizable brand—just on YouTube we have twenty-five million views, and across all platforms about sixty-seven million. People sometimes ask why I “mess up” my reputation by sticking with ninjutsu, which many see as a hoax. I tell them it’s that Johnny Cash moment: this is the family name I grew up with, so let's redeem it. Plenty of amazing practitioners exist; I'm just one custodian of a single perspective. I'll share everything—videos, a semantic wiki, all my notes—so we can reclaim the name together.

Ninjutsu resonates with me because it retains real-world stakes. Hatsumi-sensei is a phenomenal headmaster, but his level is so high that people need translators—intermediaries like me, a third-generation instructor. My teacher Doron Navon was Hatsumi’s first non-Japanese shidoshi. People need different perspectives, and that’s what I provide.

Hosts You mentioned sparring footage in early Hatsumi classes—boxing gloves, kendogu, full contact. Your AKBAN videos still show a lot of sparring, which isn’t common in every ninjutsu dojo.

Yossi Sheriff: When Doron came back from Japan, every lesson with Hatsumi included sparring. That became standard in our group. Around forty-five, I personally stopped doing randori—not because I transcended it, but because I got old. Yet sparring was foundational.

Methodologically, I'm a board-certified physical-education teacher—Israel licenses everything from yoga to martial arts. I wrote our training framework, “The Methodical Pyramid,” back in 1991. It shows how we integrate modern variables—new weapons, varied rulesets—into ancient kata, which are like DNA samples from Jurassic Park. We have to revive that DNA with scientific rigor.

Some obstacles are obvious: I'm not a Japanese warrior from 500 years ago. Different body, different context. We face new power multipliers: firearms, for example—and must fold them into old forms. The Methodical Pyramid is free online; all AKBAN instructors use it.

I respect Stephen Hayes immensely. Without his books and the first American Ninja films, Hatsumi might have had 100 students instead of 100,000. I probably wouldn’t have found ninjutsu at all.

Hosts Speaking of documentation, AKBAN has filmed more than 1 500 videos, cataloging about 11,000 techniques, yet you’ve covered only one-third of the Takamatsu-den syllabus. How do you choose what to film, and do you have personal favorites?

Yossi Sheriff: Initially, Doron taught an amalgam of kata—streamlined and manageable- because ninjutsu is huge. Later I got hungry and started researching kata that only Manaka-sensei had documented. Some made no sense to me at first, so they became intellectual puzzles.

As for favorites, the crowd’s favorites aren’t mine. YouTube search terms rule the numbers. I once uploaded “Interpretation of Fūdō-ryu Kata concerning Kuzushi-waza in Mid-level Structure” got three thousand views in four months. I changed the title to “Ninjutsu Techniques Against MMA and Judo.” Same video, a million views. Algorithms, not insight, drive popularity.

My favorite is a fifteen-minute video explaining why ninjutsu kamae relates to hand mudra and why that matters today. It was spontaneous—no script, no teleprompter—and it distills what I do. But no one searches for that.

Hosts If a relative could train with you only a short time, what core would you teach?

Yossi Sheriff: First, learn to fall. If you want good balance, don’t fear falling—your body, not just your mind, must accept it. Next, experience contact: let someone bump into you so the shock doesn’t trigger a freeze response. Then learn basic sabaki and three or four strikes—straight punch, hook, push kick. The ninja push kick is versatile and quick to learn. That’s enough for initial competence.

After that, ninjutsu’s endless syllabus keeps curiosity alive. I’m nearly sixty and still learning new kata. That constant discovery fuels daily practice and keeps my students honest; if I slack off, they’ll sense it instantly.

Hosts Tell us about the structure of AKBAN today.

Yossi Sheriff: In Israel we have about twelve groups, each led by an instructor. There are roughly 120 black belts—some no longer active—but around twenty committed instructors, each with at least fifteen years of training. We have dojos in Greece, Berlin, and soon in Chandigarh, India, plus collaborations in Spain and Canada. Growth is slow because there’s no business model; most material is free under Creative Commons. Prospective instructors train with me in person whenever possible.

Hosts: Your black-belt path is famously long—ten to thirteen years. How did that develop?

Yossi Sheriff: Honestly, vanity and greed. I wanted my students to be “the best in the world,” and I wanted to cram as many techniques as possible into shodan. The test alone takes three hours just to name each technique. One relative trained twelve years and was still an orange belt because he never hit the test benchmark. In hindsight, that was a mistake. I’ve proposed shortening the path, but my senior instructors resist—it’s engraved in stone now.

Hosts: You referenced your Detant emotional-regulation workshops. How did that emerge, and how does it intersect with traditional training?

Yossi Sheriff: Long before the pandemic, I wondered whether we could distill the most valuable part of our practice—the equanimity under stress—into something teachable in hours, not years. That became Detant: a six-hour workshop with five core techniques. It draws on the same principles you already know from kamae and breathing, just stripped to essentials. We teach it in the IDF and elsewhere; there’s barely any money in it, but the societal need is huge.

The pandemic amplified that need. Societies, like individuals, respond to shocks with freeze, flight, then fight. We predict more internal and external conflicts over the next five years. One CDC study showed a quarter of U.S. adults aged 18–24 had considered suicide in the past six months. If we can equip people—police, soldiers, civilians—with better emotional regulation, they’ll make better decisions under stress.

Hosts: Your predictions are sobering, but the framework makes sense. Martial arts can offer more than physical technique if teachers highlight those lessons.

Yossi Sheriff: Exactly. We can’t expect everyone to invest twelve years, but we can share the core skill of maintaining composure under pressure. That’s more important to me now than the kata themselves—though I still teach daily.

Hosts: We’re out of time, though we could easily fill five more episodes. Can we schedule a round two?

Yossi Sheriff: Absolutely. I’ve loved talking with you two—and maybe the one guy in Minnesota watching live. Conversations like this show that diverse perspectives can coexist without conflict. I’m not less of an apple because you’re a good orange. Let’s do it again anytime.

Hosts: Thank you so much, Yossi. Go get some sleep!

To everyone watching the replay: we’ll post this on the Ninja Everyday YouTube channel. Please share it. Also, our friends at the Boulder Quest Center have a GoFundMe running to keep their dojo afloat during the pandemic. The link is on the Ninja Everyday page; give what you can or at least send a message of support.

Hardy has a full week of classes, then some surfing. I’ll be reorganizing my garage and preparing for Festival next month, where Mr. Norris Kentoshi will teach hanbō on Zoom—details on the Ninja Everyday page.

Thanks again, Yossi, and thanks to everyone tuning in. Take care, keep training hard, and we’ll see you soon.

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