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Simple Exercise to Increase (Decrease) Reaction Time in Karate

I always surprised when I don’t see exercises like the one I am about to tell you about used freely in Karate training. The following exercise cuts your reaction time down to nothing, and it does it with just an hour or two of training. Check out the video, and then I’ll tell you more.

Where I came up with this one was in feeding people punches to help them block. Being a bit insane, looking for more punches to block, wanting to do the exercise faster and more so i would get to the end of it, I decided to have two people feed the defender.
So two people would stand, shoulder to shoulder, in front of the blocker, and they would throw slow strikes.
Not fast. You can overwhelm easily, and there is no gain then. And, you don’t want to create bruises. You want the guy to input data, not refuse the data because he is getting hurt.
But feed the strikes slowly. Left or right, doesn’t matter. Just keep feeding them slowly.
Now, the two feeders should be looking for the edge. They should be trying to find the point of overload, and stay just below it. You don’t want to go so fast the blocker can’t block, you just want him to get used to it all. After a short while, you’ll find that you can bump up the speed of your strikes, and the blocker learns faster.
Now, one thing to be careful of.
The blocker will overload, and this might manifest in a number of ways, maybe just missing the blocks all of the sudden, making too many mistakes, that sort of thing. But usually the blocker will want to strike back. He’ll snap. He won’t hit hard, but he’ll be unable to stop himself from hitting back.
Well, of course. He is overloaded, filled to the top, and he needs to relieve the pressure. That’s okay.
Try to catch it before it happens, and simply rotate one of the strikers into the blocking position. Round and round we go.
Now, this works wonders. Do it during class, five or ten minutes at a time, and within a month the students will get very relaxed, their blocks will hurt more (tell them to go softer), and they won’t be overwhelmed when the fists start flying fast and thick.
If you like this training tool, check out Monster Martial Arts. I have all sorts of drills like this one embedded in the courses. I especially recommend Matrix Karate. Do a matrix of blocks and you will learn ten times faster, and know ten times as much. And make sure you pick up a free martial arts book on the homepage while you’re there.

Beat up the World with Karate and Make Peace Now!

Good Karate Throwing Technique

I usually talk about Karate forms and applications here, or other stuff that is juicily violent, but let me move to an area that explains why we must be so violent.
We must be violent so that we won’t be violent.
Get it out in the dojo, and what’s left is peace in your soul when you walk around.
But, it’s deeper than that. Let me go whole hog here, and explain the actual process that is working here.
You have heard me say before: control the body to control the mind, control the mind to control the spirit. It’s true. But this is actually a condensation of the five circles surrounding a human being.
You perceive, but what is it that perceives? It is the ‘I am,’ the awareness of awareness unit that is you.
And you have dressed yourself with mind, emotion, body, and chaos.
Chaos is fighting, that’s the outermost circle, that is the world. A buunch of idiots running around and threatening and shaking their fist and getting in trouble.
Train the body and you instantly move out of chaos. You have a plan, an idea, and you are no longer subject to, or perhaps I should say victim to, the violence of a world gone amok.
But, as you train the body you begin to gain control over emotions. You stop getting angry, you lose fear, and you start being happy most of the time. And when you aren’t happy you simply move through and get happy.
Controlling the emotions is the start of controlling the mind, and now you are on the verge of controlling the world. The world, you see, will adhere to somebody who has control of their mind. Simply, the people who can’t control their mind look for some way to get their mind back under control, so they rub up against the sane.
From the mind we move into spirit, and I’m going to stop explaining now, because once you get there you won’t need any explanations.
The point here is that that is why you study the martial arts, not to beat people up, but to get rid of the desire to beat people up, and this has far reaching effects. Think about it, world peace by practicing your karate forms and elf defense moves. Now we’re talking. Drop by Monster Martial Arts if you want to dig into your sanity and learn the truth about the Martial Arts.

Gun Kata!

Perhaps you’ve seen the movie, Equilibrium. Great movie, with a ‘gun kata’ in it.
Interestingly, I ran into a fellow one day, and we started talking, and we got on the issue of mechanics and martial arts and gun control. There were some interesting points made, and I’ll tell you about them right after the video.

He described gun control the exact same way I was describing martial arts.
And we were both surprised, because other people don’t understand these types of physics.
A physics apart, and i had run into one of the few people in the world who could understand, and had even made inroads, into the physics behind everything.
Guns. huh.
I’ve seen them in Golf (probably got me started, my dad taught me gold and we had all these mags every month, and in the mags were geometrical renderings of swings and things.) A fe other plaes, but in all places only in bits and pieces.
It seems that the world can only see in pieces.
Anyway, it was interesting.
Gun mechanics.
Gun physics.
The Gun Kata.
Martial Arts.
It’s all he same if you can only put the pieces together.
Check out my further thoughts on the matter of Karate at Monster Martial Arts.

Blood Everywhere in a Karate Class!

I started thinking bout the worst martial arts injuries I have ever seen in a Karate class, and one came to the front of my mind.
Mind you, I almost never have injuries in my classes, and this because I follow the Injury Formula: Speed + Ignorance = Injury. Follow this, make your students follow this, and you won’t have injuries either.
Check out this vid of some knife disarms, then I’ll tell you about it.

Anyway, outside of a cut lip or bloody nose, and one cracked rib, injuries don’t occur in my classes. One of my instructors, however, wasn’t so fortunate. He insisted on doing a knife disarm technique with a real knife. He was fast, quick, and one of the best martial artists i have ever seen. But he decided he was going to teach this technique using a real knife.
The guy came in, he moved, and the knife cut all the way up the fleshy part of his forearm.
Man, talk about blood. It didn’t spurt, which was fortunate, and it didn’t cut any tendons. So it was shallow, and it was long, and it bled like a stuck pig.
So, because of that one experience, didn’t even happen to me, I never use real knives in class. I encourage people to handle and train with knives, but not with each other.
I tell them to use rubber knives, which are cheap and who cares if they break, or wooden knives, but never real steel. That’s what I learned because of that karate class, and that’s the recommendation I use when I teach people Blinding Steel, which is the fastest and most efficient knife training course int he world. Check it out at Monster Martial Arts. And make sure you pick up a free martial arts book while you’re there. Actually, I’m giving away two books, though I don’t mention it on the website. Got to change that. Have a great work out.

The Secret of Real Karate Power is Fanaticism!

I chuckle when I see these young kids train. They look so good in their karate uniforms, they are so proud, yet I wonder how many of them can be crazy enough to really learn the real martial art, and actually get some real karate power.
Check out the vid, then I’ll tell you more.

Look, if you want to saw a piece of wood, you don’t take a half a dozen cuts and then stop, you watch the cut, make sure it is happening right, and you continue, no matter how sore you get, until the wood separates.
Now, if you want to break a brick, a simple trick, you simply set it up and start hitting it. And you hit it and hit it, and you focus on it until you don’t even see the rest of the world, and the brick eventually separates.
Now, there is more to it, you want to be able to break that brick with one chop, but the message here is that you have to give yourself over to a fanatical mindset.
You have to dedicate yourself, and do it and do it and do it, and have the firm knowledge that you will not quit, that you will squash any ideas of quit, that you will get where you are going.
It’s funny, I see some martial artists from other countries, and they are actually a little more rabid than USers. Well, there mommie didn’t let them stay home from school if it was raining. She didn’t bring them milk and cookies and console them if the homework was tough…she told them to dry up and get the durned job done.
That’s how it used to be in America, and thats why we achieved greatness.
We can have greatness again, even if you were coddled as a school child.
Simply dedicate yourself, be a fanatic. Tell yourself you are going to do that form a hundred times a day every day for one year,a nd then do it. Belive me, you will understand that Kata, and you will have abilities that you never even dreamed of when you were a lazy school kid. It’s up to you, but you have to give yourself over to fanaticism, and that is the secret of real karate power. If you want to learn more about this mindset, pop over to Monster Martial Arts and pick up a free book. It’ll tell you how to arrange your martial arts so the fanatical mindset can really bite.

The Big Thing Wrong with Classical Karate Training

You know, Karate sometimes gets a bad rap these days. You see all the MMA guys trashing their opponents, and you wonder why, if Karate is so good, you don’t see it in the octagon. The reason, of course, is the problem with Classical Karate training methods.

In traditional karate classes students are lined up in a mass, and they kick and punch and do everything as one unit. This is fine, for beginners. The sad fact, however, is that one rapidly travels through being a beginner, and then needs to have a different teaching method.

Class exercises are fine to warm up, but there is no real exchange of information going on between teacher and student. Oh, you think that everything is in the forms, that you just need to do the forms and enlightenment will burst upon you? Well, true to a certain extent, but there is also the fact that if you hold to this opinion too hard you are saying that karate is for stupid people.

Oh, I’m serious. Look, Karate, be it goju or shotokan or uechi ryu or whatever, depends on physics. And, once a person has mastered the first set of physics, there is a second set of physics pertinent to the mind and the spirit. But, because of antiquated training methods, methods that were used to control unruly children (not teach them) nobody in the martial arts really knows what the second set of physics is.

Let me take one point and blow it up a bit. I had a student who had the most terrible form, and he had taken a year of classical martial arts training. He was terrible, but-smile in the eyes of his teachers-he was rigid.

So his shoulders overextended, his body was always turned the wrong way, his punches wouldn’t hurt a six year old girl, but he was deemed good because he was rigid. All his muscles locked into place at the execution of technique. And, you can see this same tendency on any number of youtube Karate videos.

Now, one of the first rules of combat is, ‘a sitting duck is a dead duck.’ Heck, the reason that bully told you to stand still and face him was because he wanted a stationary target. And this goes against the real karate somebody would learn if they could get past the rigid, no information instruction that is offered in nearly every karate class in the world.

Real Karate is liquid, and the focus points are so short they can’t be perceived, and the karateka is able to move in any direction without preparation or telegraphing. True Karate is like a whip, and only the fist tightens, and that momentarily when it smacks through some fool’s face. Karate is a study in motion, not in rigidity, and that is just one of the problems with Classical Karate Training.

If you want to see some excellent karate, check out my Temple Karate DVDs. I’m old, I’ve been doing classical karate for over forty years, but I’ve still got some liquid left in me. There are eleven forms, with TONS of self defense applications.

Making the Right Karate Form

I was watching Karate on the youtube last night, and I was struck by how little people know about the correct form of the martial arts. Check out the vid snip right below, This is how I explain how you get good form, then continue with the article.

They turn their feet out at the wrong time, they separate their body into pieces, they do so many things that dissipate energy and lessen intention.
And I am not talking beginners here, I am talking about people with decades of experience.
Now, it wasn’t always that way. When I started the martial arts were fresh to the shores, and we bought everything we could, read everything we could, and were thirsty for day.
And, we thought about what we were learning.
What has happened that has destroyed the martial arts is the fanatic desire to have ritual.
If I do what teacher says, I don’t have to think, and then I will learn.
Do you see the corruption of logic here?
How can you learn if you don’t have to think?
Why do you think colleges are turning out people who can’t learn?
Because they memorize in ritual, instead of learning how to think.
Question, man, you have to have a question.
And not a questino as to the next piece of the sequence of the kata, but a question as to how it works, why it works, what’s the best (better) way to make it work.
Argh!
That’s all I can say, Argh!
Frustration for a society that prefers to go blind.
Well, the way to not go blind is to ask questions, demand answers, and not be satisfied with what you are taught.
I tell you this,
your teachers have already bought into it,
so be careful of your teachers.
If they can’t give you good reasons for what you are doing,
good scientific, sound, logical, technical reasons for why the form is constructed the way it is, the best way to make a technique work,
all the secondary techniques off the first technique, and so on,
then you are following the blind.
And, don’t believe me.
Check out my sites, see if I make sense, and then you will know whether my words here can be believed.
Monster Martial Arts is one site. Got oodles of stuff on it. Articles, courses, everything.
Or, check out Learn Karate Online. Got an actual free lesson or two on it.
Go on, see if I make sense.
I understand why people are leery of the net, there’s so much crap out there. It’s the same old same old. Well, I tell you, this is the brand new brand new, but you aren’t going to see it if you don’t take a look, and you won’t get it if you just shut your mind up and stop asking questions.

How to Train in the Iron Horse Form in Karate

Analyzing the Iron Horse Stance in Karate!

The Iron Horse Form is one of the best katas in Karate, and in all the Martial Arts. IT gives strength, power, energy, focus, and really makes you feel like you’re getting to the heart of the art. Here’s my version of it. Check it out, and then I’ll tell you more.

To practice this you should loop it and do it in sequence maybe ten times. Don’t do it just once, keep doing it.
Concentrate on the moment of focusing energy down, and letting yourself float sideways to the next position. Have the differences between these two things firmly in your mind.
Have a partner and mirror each other. Critique each other, and get lower and longer and more explosive. Be twins in motion and structure.
Practice just standing in the horse stance (called Kiba Dachi in Japanese). This is called Horse Meditation, and if you can hold the pose for just five minutes, you will have an immensely strong stance, and you will be generating tons of pure, raw power.
Above all, do it every day.
And, most important, look for applications,a nd practice those applications until you can make them work against anybody, and in situation or environment.
Remember, when you do the horse stance you are gripping the ground, enabling yourself to move over slick surfaces, and this could mean on wet grass, oily cement, or even through puddles of blood, and yet still hold your balance and footwork.
Drop by my site, Monster Martial Arts, and check out Temple Karate. I’ve got ten forms plus the one you see on this page, fully broken down and set for combat.

Half a Year of Karate!

Do you know how much you can get done in Karate in a half a year?
The reason I say this is because the year is half over. So if you can remember what you were doing at Christmas, or New Years, and any resolutions or things, then you could have made a lot of things happen since them.

If you are studying a classical art, you could have gone through a belt rank or two. You could have a couple of martial arts forms, had a ball doing lots of kumite, and generally be fit and healthy, and your mind would be calm.
Now, if you had been studying my Matrixing program, you could actusally have your black belt by now. Serious. It’s a three month program, but it takes a lot of work. But six months is enough time to do a lot of work. So you could actually be there.
And, here’s something interesting, if you slacked off a little the last few months, maybe been distracted by the news or something, you can realize that every moment you live and don’t do what you love is a moment wasted.
Hey, if it’s not Karate, then what is it? Kung Fu? Yoga? Ballet? If you love it, then why aren’t you doing it?
Got a dream? You’ve had six months to pursue it. Didn’t do it? It’s not too late, so get yer fanny in gear and get going!
Don’t you understand? I’m telling you to ignore everything that gets in your way, everybody that slows you down or distracts you. I’m telling you that you should pick a goal, and having a black belt is an absolutely incredible goal, and GO FOR IT!
Now, do you want to go waste another night drinking beer, or do you want to be somebody? Do you want to be strong and fit and quick in the mind?
Okay, I’ve enjoyed this rant, and especially because I know it is so right and valuable. So spend the time between now and the end of the year working out and finding the real you. If I can help you reach your goals in Karate, if I can help you get to Black Belt, drop by my site, Monster Martial Arts. My email is there, and I answer all emails. See ya.